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Etsy, the global online marketplace used by millions, is facing claims from sellers it has been withholding thousands of pounds from small businesses by imposing reserves on accounts that take 75% of sellers’ income for 45 days with no warning.

Sellers say the company is retaining their income with little care for how it will affect families in a cost of living crisis.

Pietra (her surname is not used for fear Etsy will shut her account), a Miami-based Etsy seller, told Sky News she has more than $20,000 (£15,463) held in two of her accounts in an enforced reserve that she is unable to access.

Dan Vass from Aylesbury runs a furniture business through Etsy which was going from strength to strength until a reserve was imposed on his account on June 14 without any warning. "We currently have over £5,000 in reserve and it just seems to keep growing. We haven't been able to pay bills and this is our only source of income," he said.
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Dan Vass from Aylesbury runs a furniture business through Etsy

Since 2015 she has designed wedding favours to sell on the platform full-time, balancing work with being a single mum.

Her business was taking in more than $30,000 (£23,195) per month in orders. From that total, once production and shipping costs are removed, she is left with $8,000 (£6,185) profit.

But after a reserve was placed on her account on May 18, she saw her income drop to just $444 (£343) in June.

“It’s insane that in a two-month period my whole life went to hell because of this,” she said. “They’re holding $20,000 (£15,000) of mine, and I basically can’t buy food.

“I’ve just reached two months of my rent being late and I’ve maxed out two credit cards, one for $5,000 (£3,800) the other for $6,000 (£4,600). It’s been close to impossible to get out of bed.”

Dan Vass from Aylesbury runs a furniture business through Etsy which was going from strength to strength until a reserve was imposed on his account on June 14 without any warning.
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Mr Vass says his business was going from strength to strength until a reserve was imposed on his account

‘We haven’t been able to pay bills’

Dan Vass, from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, runs a furniture business through Etsy which was going from strength to strength until a reserve was imposed on his account on June 14 without any warning.

“We currently have over £5,000 in reserve and it just seems to keep growing. We haven’t been able to pay bills and this is our only source of income.

“There have been times this month when we literally do not know how we can keep the business going and our family fed because the items take a long time to make, have high material costs and Etsy are holding all of our funds, so we can’t actually begin to make them when orders come in.”

Dan Vass from Aylesbury runs a furniture business through Etsy which was going from strength to strength until a reserve was imposed on his account on June 14 without any warning. "We currently have over £5,000 in reserve and it just seems to keep growing. We haven't been able to pay bills and this is our only source of income," he said.
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Mr Vass says he has around £5,000 in reserve with Etsy

‘I’ve had to retrain’

Anthony Whitworth, from Tadcaster in North Yorkshire, owns Etsy shop The Bizzy Box and is ranked in the UK’s top three Etsy sellers.

He’s been running a thriving business for seven years through the online marketplace which has enabled him to make a good living whilst supporting his wife who has Multiple Sclerosis.

His business pays Etsy over £35,000 in fees per year and has a 5-star rating from more than 63,500 sales, but since May his account has been put into reserve swallowing his income.

“I’ve had to retrain as a locksmith just to make enough money to keep things ticking over since May and in case Etsy goes seriously downhill in the long run.”

‘Quite shocking’

The Small Business Commissioner Liz Barclay told Sky News that over the past few months she has received a rising number of complaints from small business owners that online platforms are holding their money in reserves for a longer period of time than they previously did.

“Up until now, we have been hearing of online platforms withholding smaller amounts of money. This is the first time I’ve heard 75% being withheld in reserves and that is quite shocking.”

Dan Vass from Aylesbury runs a furniture business through Etsy which was going from strength to strength until a reserve was imposed on his account on June 14 without any warning.
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Etsy has a “purchase protection programme” which enables a customer to easily apply for a refund

“These small suppliers are the lifeblood and the talent that drives your business success. They need to be paid as quickly as possible or they may go to the wall.”

Ms Barclay said the government has no jurisdiction over online selling platforms such as Etsy, which are not UK companies.

She said the government is reviewing the tools it has to help small businesses get paid faster with a report expected to be published in Autumn.

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An Etsy spokesperson said: “Etsy Purchase Protection is designed to protect both buyers and sellers as Etsy covers the cost of refunds for all eligible orders; since launching last year, we have received positive feedback around this program.

“And while we understand that payment reserves can cause short-term disruptions to a seller’s payment schedule, these temporary holds are common practice across marketplaces.”

‘I’m worried I’ll lose lots of sales’

Sky News understands Etsy began using payment reserves in 2021.

Reserves are not uncommon amongst seller platforms.

Sellers who have been on Amazon for over a year and have processed at least 100 orders will have 3% of their daily payments held in a reserve for the purpose of covering transaction disputes.

In comparison, Etsy sellers have shown evidence to Sky News that whilst in a “reserve”, 75% of the amount they receive from orders is unavailable to them for 45 days or until they have provided tracking proof.

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This means the money needed to pay for the product and ship it out is not received until after it is made and shipped.

A lot of sellers don’t want to force their customers to pay for tracked shipping because international tracking can rack up a huge cost.

Steen Ross, from Norwich, has £1,800 held in a reserve on her Etsy account.

She has sold custom costumes to a largely American customer base on Etsy for a decade and relies on her Etsy income to pay rent.

“Most of my sales go to America and about 90% of people don’t want to pay the additional cost of tracking because it’s so expensive, they are happy for me to just provide proof of postage.

“I’m worried that if I raise prices to include tracking, I’ll lose a lot of sales, but if I don’t Etsy won’t release funds from my reserve before 45 days.”

Etsy’s purchase protection programme

In June 2022, Etsy introduced a new “purchase protection programme” which enables a customer to easily apply for a refund if they claim their item is lost or stolen.

Since then, Pietra, Steen Ross and Dan Vass claim they have experienced no-challenge refunds, where funds appear to automatically leave their reserve when a claim is made.

These complaints have been echoed by hundreds of people online tweeting Etsy’s CEO John Silverman and a Facebook group ‘Etsy Reserve Strike’ has been set up in the last month to organise a strike amongst sellers.

Etsy has almost 90 million buyers worldwide and about 6 million sellers but last year, for the first time since 2012, Etsy experienced a fall in its number of users and sellers.

Mr Silverman has dropped $24.4m (£18.7m) of his shares in the company since the beginning of February.

As of 10 July, Etsy’s share price sat at $85.83 (£65.56) compared to the all-time high share price of $297 in 2021.

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Heathrow bosses ‘warned about substation’ days before major power outage, MP committee hears

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Heathrow bosses 'warned about substation' days before major power outage, MP committee hears

Heathrow Airport bosses had been warned of a potential substation failures less than a week before a major power outage closed the airport for a day, a committee of MPs has heard.

The chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee Nigel Wicking told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring took out lights on a runway.

A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe’s largest airport for a day – causing travel chaos for around 200,000 passengers.

“I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience”, Mr Wicking said.

“So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern.

“And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned.”

Mr Wicking also said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, and that “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.

However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month’s power outage would have been “disastrous”.

There was a risk of having “literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them”, Mr Woldbye said.

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after ‘prolific’ rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after 'prolific' rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.

The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.

Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.

“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
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Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth

Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.

Read more: How a student described as ‘smart and charming’ was unmasked as a prolific sexual predator

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He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.

“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.

“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”

***ONLY USE IF HE IS CONVICTED OF AT LEAST TWO RAPES***It is feared Zou may have carried out dozens more sex crimes. Pic: Met Police
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Pic: Met Police

Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.

He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.

Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.

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Moment police arrest rapist student

Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.

“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.

“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.

“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”

Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”

Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”

The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.

An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.

Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.

A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.

Location of Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich, where 11-year-old girl Kaliyah Coa went into the River Thames on 31/03
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Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames

Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.

He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.

He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”

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“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”

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On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.

When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.

Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.

Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.

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