Maybe, and Hanlon's Razor say's your right ('don't attribute malice where incompetence can explain it').
But it seems here mor like Hanlon's Razor is a handy cover for the fact that interest rates are up, which makes it more enticing for Etsy management to steal their sellers' funds and rake off the interest yield under a flimsy and obscure excuse.
Sure, it's only £800 here and £7000 there, but do it a few 10,000 times, and it'll yield material-to-the-bottom-line cash, and nevermind that it hurts the victims more than it benefits them.
IOW, it is just corporate theft because they can get away with it.
Use "blackbox" to avoid any responsibility. This is how c-level executives have layers and layers of people to do the dirty work to not get prosecuted. Now replace 'layers of people' with software/ai/machine learning, etc. This is how financial institutions are debanking people in the name of de-risking (read how politicians and small businesses are being debanked in UK--maybe, banks should debank techocrats) This is how the West will delegate their authoritarian ways to third parties (private entities: banks, utilities, fintech, search providers, mail providers, ring central), while at the same time blaming the third world dictatorships for not upholding western-values such as freedom, democracy, etc.
Yup.. sounds like they implemented some AI system that misclassified the stores and it is highly likely that they don't even know what the model weights mean or how the model got mistrained.
That's pretty standard for any sort of fraud prevention. You never tell people what triggered it because when it's not a false positive you're telling scammers what to avoid next time.
That's a tired and frankly ignorant excuse. An experienced fraudster will in most cases know full well what happened, and if they don't it won't take them long to put together some theories and test them. The "no reason" routine is to shelter the company from legal liability.
Yes but the reason to have rules surrounding this is because the government can lock you up and in some cases end your life.
If Etsy steals actually steals money from you sue them into oblivion but not disbursing money until the check clears is not some evil thing. The fact that they're willing to take the risk for sellers with good reputation is a kindness not a given. If you're more sure than Etsy is about not getting a chargeback then put it on your standby line of credit and pay it back when the money comes.
"If your revenue stream is unfairly disrupted, just sue the major corporation with your backup pile of cash, switch over to your backup line of credit, and if all else fails, ask daddy for a small loan of a million bucks to see you through!"
The interesting part there is the seamless transition from seller/people to scammer. I believe the policy will eventually have to change to accommodate innocence until proven guilty.
There are some pretty dramatic stories out there with people getting unusual amounts of orders forcing them to buy unusual amounts of materials and do unusual amounts of work which creates an unusually full agenda and may drain finances to the edge... and then they don't get their money or the orders are refunded after delivery and they don't get proper assistance resolving the issue. "We wont tell you what you've done wrong because of reasons" is really the stuff you want to hear at that moment.
Not sure what the solution should be but I wouldn't want a role in that movie.
What is the problem usually? We don't know? How do you fix an unknown problem? If it is that someone is selling an unusually large amount it seems doable to limit the number of widgets they may sell in stead of platforms taking more orders they know cant be resolved.
The security in fraud protection (or any detective control) is in the thresholds and triggers being activated and protecting the system.
Protecting the values of those controls is common sense. This is on a need-to-know basis. Users don't need to know.
If you advertise that your system will permit 9,999 transactions per minute, then every client will calibrate to max out at 9,999, malicious or not. Then, you adjust that up or down, and not everyone follows suit. Whoops!
What fraud? The dictionary says: "wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain."
Accusing people of fraud for personal gain seems like fraud to me. If it is beneficial for you to not disclose how the fraud works it seems we are talking about both deception and a false accusation - for personal gain? aka fraud?
Wow you guys! Some of you say that Etsy won't give any reason, and here you say that Etsy is accusing people of fraud!!!
You can't have it both ways! It seems to me like Etsy's silence is the opposite of an accusation, and whatever investigation they're doing, they don't want these sellers to flip out any more than necessary!
Also, these sound like reasons to me:
> Etsy's payment policy states the reasons for putting money on hold include a sudden increase in sales, a shop having only made its first sale recently, the shop committing a "policy violation" or "other risk factors".
Etsy's interest in fraud prevention goes to their reputation as a marketplace, and their relationship with legitimate sellers, buyers, and their payment processor, and any other third-party services in the loop. If Etsy doesn't accurately detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, then their bank and payment processors will ban Etsy for fraud, and I think that would really suck for 100% of sellers!
It is not easy for Etsy to bank-switch. They can't just POKE a register.
Also, some of those reasons aren't necessarily fraud, just indicators. It's a "Yield" sign to slow things down until they can check it out. I mean, do you realize the scale of this platform?
Etsy can pay 5% interest rate when they hold funds. As simple as that, which these companies don't want to do.
Companies and banks use the same nonsensical reason every time: 'whatever investigation they're doing, they don't want these sellers to flip out any more than necessary!' I don't give any benefit of doubt to any company or bank, unless they are audited by a third party not influenced by these companies.
But it seems here mor like Hanlon's Razor is a handy cover for the fact that interest rates are up, which makes it more enticing for Etsy management to steal their sellers' funds and rake off the interest yield under a flimsy and obscure excuse.
Sure, it's only £800 here and £7000 there, but do it a few 10,000 times, and it'll yield material-to-the-bottom-line cash, and nevermind that it hurts the victims more than it benefits them.
IOW, it is just corporate theft because they can get away with it.