[kbenson]

> They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made.

That seems illegal. Then again, Etsy does its own payment processing now, and Paypal's been using that same tactic for years. I wonder if Etsy could get in trouble for doing both, since they have more info and can generally confirm shipment, given you print labels from them, and the problem is not that your items were misleading or fraud, but that they prefer you not sell those types of items on their platform?

[throwawaylalala]

Most likely, it was held for the period in which customers could get returns. This is sane.

[20years]

Held for 180-day period. Far longer than needed for customers to get returns and far from sane imo.

[ves]

180-day holds are generally standard if you're worried about chargebacks.

[paulcole]

>That seems illegal.

Just curious but based on what?

In Etsy's interpretation, the seller violated the terms of service.

[kbenson]

In what was does violating the terms of service of the platform mean that the platform gets to keep the money but not return the goods? You don't get to keep someone's money just because you decided so. That's theft.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think there are probably fairly clear laws on exactly what you can and can't do an an intermediary of payment. I doubt "we decided to deliver your goods but keep your money" is one of the things they are allowed to do, at least for longer than a very well defined period of time. I imagine suspected fraud might supersede this to some degree and have its own rules, but that's what I was pointing out, this isn't a case of suspected fraud, it's a TOS violation, and since Etsy has more insight than paypal into the situation as the marketplace and should know this, treating it like fraud when it's not might be something that could land them in trouble(?).

[natermer]

Contracts are power stuff that overrides most things. If you agree to something then people, and courts, will hold you to it.

I expect it is in the agreement they require you to use before you join Etsy.

[maccard]

Contracts aren't as powerful as you think. Lots of people are signed up to unlawful contracts (NDAs being a prime example).

The threat of a contract is powerful though, because to challenge it you have to go through courts, and a company like test had far deeer pockets than you do.

[CodeWriter23]

It's called deep pockets.

[creepydata]

Amazon does it too.

It's standard practice.