My Etsy shop was suspended. What do I have to do?
We know that this might be a very stressful situation for you, so we want to help!
Here you’ll find how you can regain access to your Etsy shop based on the reason behind its suspension.
Before starting, what you need to have in mind is if Etsy suspended your account for a good reason or you haven’t a single clue about why this happened. Many people reported having their stores closed without a single email from Etsy explaining the reasons behind the suspensions.
We advise you not to open a new store before having tried to regain access to your suspended one. The reasons for this are that you can have your account back (especially if it was closed for no reason), so you don’t have to restart everything from scratch, and that Etsy might do the same thing to your new account if the previous issue isn’t solved.
Why did Etsy suspend my store?
There’re three main reasons why Etsy can suspend your account. Specifically:
- You have an overdue balance to pay
- You’ve violated Etsy policies or infringed someone else’s intellectual property
- Other reasons, such as you selling something that isn’t allowed on Etsy, late shipments or you have many buyers’ complaints.
Technically, there’s also another possibility which is that Etsy closed your account for no reason.
When your account gets suspended, you should see a banner when accessing Etsy or receive an email explaining the reason behind the suspension, and how to have your account back. However, this doesn’t always happen.
But let’s see how you should behave in the different situations one step at a time!
If you’ve got an overdue balance
This is the easiest suspension to reverse. You just need to pay the money you owe and Etsy will automatically give you back access to your store.
If you’ve violated policies or infringed intellectual property
In this case, your store would be permanently suspended by Etsy. But you might be eligible for an appeal.
Note that this solution requires a long period of time (usually some weeks to hear back from Etsy and have your account reinstated) and you can submit only one appeal, so you need to make sure to complete it in the best way possible. Moreover, during this procedure, you won’t be able to access your account, open a new one and sell/buy on Etsy.
You can submit an appeal here.
When submitting an appeal, you’ll be asked for different information. Specifically:
- Your email (make sure it’s the one connected to your Etsy account)
- The subject of the message
- A description of your situation: here you need to make sure to include any relevant information, such as your shop name, as you won’t be able to file another appeal. If you think your account was closed without a reason, you should state that here.
- Why your account was suspended: in this section, you’ll need to insert the reason that Etsy provided you with.
- Add any documentation that you deem necessary
Usually, it can take up to two weeks to hear back from Etsy, but this depends on the situation.
What happens if my appeal is unsuccessful?
If your appeal resulted unsuccessfully, Etsy states that it won’t further consider the matter, but if did nothing wrong and your store was closed for no reason, you should contact again customer service by email or phone explaining your situation and send them a copy of your appeal. Don’t give up!
If your account was suspended for other reasons
In this case, your Etsy store would be temporarily suspended until the discovered issue isn’t solved.
Here before contacting Etsy, you need to:
- Fulfill any open orders you received
- Refund or provide proof of shipping for overdue orders
- Communicate order status to buyers
If your account has been temporarily suspended, you can access it but you cannot:
- Place orders
- Receive orders as your shop won’t be viable on Etsy
- Create listings
- Purchase or print shipping labels other than the ones needed to fulfill your existing orders
- Cancel existing orders
- View reviews
Moreover, your star seller badge might be removed together with the possibility to regain it in the future.
You won’t need to file an appeal in this situation, you just need to contact Etsy to understand the situation and what you can do the solve the issue. If you received an email from Etsy reporting the reason for the suspension, you can contact them by replying to the email.
This procedure should require days to solve the problem. But, again, it depends on the different situations.
Note that sometimes Etsy reinstates your account without telling you, so if you find yourself in this situation, you should keep checking your store to see if it’s still suspended.
