Crappy Customer Service
Today: Flora and Etsy
Many years ago, in another country, I ran a website called Crappy Customer Service. I awarded 1-5 dog poos, based on how poor the service was. Occasionally the companies would even apologise and correct their mistakes after having their dirty linen aired.
I was reminded of it recently when I wrote this surreal post about Scottish Power. And when one of my friends wrote AT&T Hates Our Cat.
Generally, the bigger and more corporate the company, the more enshittified their service becomes. They cut services to boost CEO salaries and bonuses.
Or, in some cases, they just put customer services on the front line but don’t give them any power to fix things, and staff are told not to escalate issues or pass them on, just to spend the minimal time responding in some way, even if the answer is wrong.
Here are a few other brief ones I’ve come across recently.
Flora Food Group
Many companies now use packaging that isn’t recyclable. And, because they don’t want to draw attention to it, they don’t label it in any way. So you look at the wrapper and don’t know whether it is to go in the bin for landfill (terrible), or can be recycled, or even added to the compost bin. Get it wrong, and there are negative effects. Obviously most packaging should be compostable or recyclable. Either way, it should be labelled.
The Flora group had been using paper on some blocks. Brill! The most sustainable packaging. They’d also looked at options like this:
Though note that I never saw that in the shops, and assume it was just a prototype to get attention, but then never widely distributed.
Anyway, the Flora Group made the choice to switch to non-recyclable packaging for their vegan butters, but then removed all disposal information from their packaging. But that wasn’t clear at the time, as they used to have a good paper packaging. I contacted them on April 20th:
“Why is there NO recycling/packaging information on the blocks? I can't tell if it is paper, plastic, compostable, recyclable, burnable. I thought by law you had to include packaging/recycling information?”
They replied on the 22nd:
“Regarding our switch from Paper to Aluminum on this product, our focus on climate action, packaging, waste and responsible sourcing continues. At Flora Food Group we are fully committed to doing our bit for the environment as well as to providing high quality products for consumers which taste good and perform well. As outlined in our latest ESG report, we maintain high levels of recyclability for our packaging format (93%) and have continued to increase our recycled content. Our packaging goals are intended to reduce environmental impact without compromising quality and performance. Unfortunately the new packaging is not recyclable. We will pass your comments on to the relevant team regarding your request to have recycling information on this products packaging. We hope this answers your query. Have a great day!”
Nope, that didn’t answer my queries. Not really. In fact, it was clearly an attempt to fob me off with word salad. And I told them as much on the 23rd:
“Firstly, you do not label what to do with the packaging. If people add it to recycling, they pollute the batch and prevent any of it being recycled. It's a requirement to label packaging clearly with what the customer should do with it.
Secondly, you used to use wonderful paper wrap that was recyclable, compostable, burnable. It worked perfectly. Now some idiot has changed it to awful packaging.
There's no point pretending you care about the environment when the decisions made are obviously anti-environment, and go against your responsibilities. It's bad enough to be irresponsible, but even worse to transparently greenwash it.
I'll be taking this up with Defra and other bodies, and including it in my reviews of Flora (and copying in Ethical Consumer and Which).”
They didn’t reply.
On the 29th April I wrote again:
“Please escalate it to the next tier of support.
This is insulting: "Regarding our switch from Paper to Aluminum on this product, our focus on climate action, packaging, waste and responsible sourcing continues."
It translates as "We are doing something environmentally bad because we care about the environment." It is illogical and dishonest. I expected better.”
They finally responded on the 6th May:
“Thank you for your patience in waiting for us to come back to you.
At Flora, we are actively working to make sure our impact on the environment through our packaging will significantly diminish. However at Flora Food Group we are committed to innovate, test and launch better packaging solutions with less plastic whilst protecting our products against damage, minimize food waste and maintain our high standards of food safety and quality. We are currently hard at work making our packaging more circular also by increasing the recycled content where possible whilst ensuring that the recyclability is optimised to the latest industry standards and regulations. Great taste, quality and performance is the standard we set for all our products and that is why your feedback is important to us.
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention and we hope this answers your query on the reason for the packaging change and clarifies how we are committed to developing our packaging further to deliver both a lower climate impact and higher product quality. If you have any further comments for us, please do let us know. Have a great day!”
It still feels like regurgitation of the corporate sales brochure.
Etsy
I have bought from Etsy. It is annoying in some ways, as you can’t limit results to items made in your country, or made by the seller: only to items shipped from your country. They could be made anywhere, by anyone. Also, they insert unwanted sponsored product adverts into result lists, often not relevant to the search, which are misleading. On the plus side, you can buy without creating an account.
I intended to use it once to sell some of my paperbacks. I set up the account, but found it too fiddly and frustrating, partly for issues mentioned above, and others such as severe problems with their 2FA system (I don’t have a mobile phone). In the end I closed the account, asking them to delete all my data.
That should have been the end of it.
A year or so later I decided to buy an item from their site. Guest checkout, as usual. All seemed fine. But a strange thing happened when I clicked on the product in the confirmation email: instead of taking me back to the product page, I was only shown this.
I had closed my account ages ago. Why were Etsy storing personal data that should have been deleted? Email address, photo etc? I emailed them about it on 24th June 2025.
They replied the same day.
“Thank you for reaching out and sharing your concerns.
Closing your Etsy account does not automatically delete all personal data. When you close your account, it is deactivated, but your data may still be retained unless you specifically request permanent data deletion.
If you want your personal data, including your email and photo, to be permanently deleted, you will need to submit a data deletion request. This process typically takes about 14 days to complete, provided there are no outstanding issues on your account.
To request it and to make sure your account is secure, please respond to this email with the following:
Default Shipping address on account
What cities and/or states do you most frequently sign in to your Etsy account from?
For more information and to request permanent deletion, please visit your Privacy settings and follow the instructions under "Permanently close and delete your Etsy account." You can find additional details in this Help Center article: Can I Permanently Delete My Etsy Account?
Looking forward to your response.”
What the fuck? So much to unravel. They were asking for information that didn’t exist, and telling me to log in to something I had no way of logging in to. I emailed back immediately:
“I don't have an account any more, so can't sign in to privacy settings or anything.
I originally asked that all my data be deleted, and was informed it would be done.
I don't have a shipping address on account or anything like that, as I never sold anything or shipped anything.
When I asked last time, while I still had an account, it should have been acted on and ALL data deleted. So please do that.”
Surely now they would get their shit together?
Someone else at Etsy replied:
“I appreciate your response Karl
Etsy takes member privacy very seriously. While we would have liked to have been able to assist you, we hope you understand that we can’t do so without proper verification of your account details.
I would suggest that you review any of your records pertaining to your Etsy account or purchases that you may have elsewhere and contact us again. We should be able to assist you once you can verify your account.
Thank you for understanding.”
Now I was getting angry. I emailed them on the 25th June, as follows.
“"Etsy takes member privacy very seriously."
That's completely untrue. If you took it seriously, you wouldn't keep people's personal data even when they close accounts. Even worse, you refuse to delete the data you shouldn't have kept in the first place, even after multiple requests.
"While we would have liked to have been able to assist you, we hope you understand that we can’t do so without proper verification of your account details."
Nope. You have been unhelpful, I don't have an account so there is nothing to verify.
"I would suggest that you review any of your records pertaining to your Etsy account"
Again, that is impossible. I don't have an account.
"or purchases that you may have elsewhere"
What would that have to do with Etsy? Are you now saying I should provide Etsy with personal data that is nothing to do with Etsy?
The fact that Etsy keeps personal information even after a deletion request is probably a breach of data protection regulations. I'll be investigating this with the ICO and other bodies, including EU ones.
Secondly, even after multiple specific requests (which shouldn't be necessary) you have refused to delete the data. I asked when I closed the account; I asked again yesterday. And you have flat-out refused. That may well be a second breach of data protection laws.
Finally, I'll check with my solicitor. I'm pretty sure your storage of my business brand details (including author name, domain email, and copyrighted author brand photo) against my wishes has opened you up to civil action for infringement. I have screenshots of what you have stored, and copies of the emails where you defended keeping it rather than deleting it. I don't think Etsy's abuses of data protection law will provide a very robust defence.
Yours sincerely,
Karl Drinkwater”
And, as you can guess, Etsy didn’t have the courtesy to reply, or to act on any of the takedown requests.
I’ve been in touch with the ICO about whether Etsy can be fined for non-compliance. We’ll see. Everything has been copied to Which? and other consumer organisations, and will be added to my reviews of Etsy.
As ever, there was an easy fix. My complaint should have been escalated to someone with the authority to do something proactive, rather than just ignoring it. Terrible customer service is where, instead of apologising for poor policy and fixing it, companies prefer to dig their heels in and make the problems even worse.
I wrote to them again to that effect, and they completely ignored me again.
No, I won’t buy from Etsy again.
PS I’m also an author. You can buy my books, or subscribe to my newsletter. I would be grateful for either. :-)
So much for 'the customer is king'.
A few crafters I know hate using Etsy to sell, because it's become a drop-shopping swamp and their hand made items look expensive in comparison, plus it's awful to use, as you found out, as a seller. I rarely use Etsy, and I wish there was an ethical choice for buying and selling handmade/small production run goods that had the same reach as Etsy.