Art Glass My ^$$

While I was actually in a retail store over the holidays, I stumbled on these bottle stoppers. Art glass for a whopping $4.99! Yeah, right! Pick them up and they have hardly any heft. I seriously think they are plastic! And yet I'm sure people fall for this... I saw one gifted to a friend. ICK!

Nothing like the serious beauties I made for the holidays!

 

It just makes me sick that people fall for this stuff! 

The Plot Thickens!

Welp! After I left her negative feedback and cc'd her on my letter to Etsy, (in yesterday's post) all kinds of sellers (including ones I KNOW) have come out of the woodwork to tell me of similar experiences. I did NOT OUT her... against Etsy policy. People can guess who she is! What a rep!!! The plot gets thicker still but, I'll get to that in a moment.

I love how - once I open my big mouth - others speak up! Am I just an enabler or an inciter??? The other thing I've learned is that many sellers are afraid to ding someone like this with negative feedback for fear of buyer returning the favor.  I say, right is right - negative feedback be damned! Does anyone even look at it until it's too late anyway????

And while one person commented that this is the sellers fault... that maybe I shouldn't come down on Etsy, I do agree. People like this have impulse control issues and yes, that is the buyer's problem. Which makes it the seller's issue. Still another seller wrote to me, "Etsy owns the country club. We just get to play there."

That's part of the problem. Etsy makes money either way. But until they give sellers more control over our shops and who we want to do business with, Etsy will never be great!

I hate to point out the behemoth Ebay, but back in the day when you didn't have to sort through tons of Chinese crap to find good lampwork (always, always search "sra" when shopping there!), even they realized that sellers didn't want to be hassled by "problem" buyers. There, you have the option of not selling to people with no feedback, negative feedback or to block an user entirely. I blocked a number buyers on my account there who cheated my friends. This feature is the BEST thing I can say about Ebay.


And now, back to our plot: After all of my letter writing and being contacted through out the day by other wronged sellers, SHE PAID ME! Instant payment, OK to ship!

Do I dare take bets on whether or not she asks for a refund???

Searching for Quality Lampwork on Ebay

Before I made beads, I bought lots and lots of beads. Ebay was in it's lampwork heyday then. It was glorious.

But I must admit, the reason I rarely sell my beads on ebay is the very reason I stopped buying lampwork there (preferring to buy them artist-direct): it was just too hard to weed through all the "bad" listings to find the good ones! And yes, by bad, I mean Chinese lampwork.

This crap is not annealed...making it weaker than the carefully crafted artisan lampwork I prefer (and make). The photo is never of the actual set you will receive and the set that comes is often not a good representation of the photo. Furthermore, the beads are not cleaned. The leftover "mandrel poop" inside the bead wears down and weakens stringing material making the finished jewelry more likely to break. Not to mention, the piece looks "dirty" in no time.

And even though I was searching lampwork US (not even realizing I may be leaving out many talented artisans working in Australia, Germany, Isreal, Canada and the UK out by searching that way), it was taking hours to filter through the "junk beads."

Case in point: The search I did this morning reveals a search results of 28,862! Who wants to search through that???



As I was wailing my woes to a friend on a lampwork forum and describing my anger, she asked me a very simple question: "Don't you have an SRA number?"

"Why, yes. Yes, I do. It's D50."

"Most all of the artists add that to their description. Search "lampwork sra" instead."

It was like a lightning bolt hitting my head. An SRA number stands for self-representing artist. Most lampworkers have one. It means you represent yourself for sales and that your work is made by you and no one else.

So, I quickly went to ebay and did another search and was amazed at the results! Big difference, eh?

And look, instead of there being "junk" at the top of the page, here's a lovely artisan featured set!

Now, I love searching for beads on the bay once again. And I've even dipped my toes in the selling waters again.