Why I don't check my Etsy feedback anymore or how to sleep better at night if you sell the things you make

Ah, feedback.

I am grateful (usually) that people take the time to comment on the things they buy from me in the public feedback forum, but please don't ask me to look at it.

This "don't look at it" thing was a gradual process.

It started a couple years ago with a particularly unhappy customer whose cork was "too beige".

Now if he had emailed me about this "too beige" thing I would have fixed him up somehow, probably with a refund, cork is ... well... kind of beige, after all.

But he left me a negative (not even a neutral!) feedback out of the blue, the day after Thanksgiving and then he did not respond to my emails to "kiss and make up".

I thought I would have a coronary.

I imagined every potential customer heading over to my feedback page, cork in cart - reading his comments and saying to themselves "wait a minute, what was I thinking, this guy's right, cork is too ... beige". I imagined "clear item from cart" buttons being hit all over the country.

I lost sleep. I knew I needed a change (not with this 'beigeness thing', but with my reaction part of it).

 I set up some parameters for myself (yes, this is what us obsessive, crazy people do).

At first I wouldn't look at my feedback late at night because if there was a problem it would keep me up. Then I wouldn't look at it late in the week, because if there was a problem I wanted to be able to have it resolved by the end of the week.

Finally I just stopped looking. It's been months.

(I will admit to keeping half an eye on the 100% positive on my front page - but it would take something pretty substantial to move that by this time - I've been doing this awhile) 

And I do not say this in any way to offer anyone else advice - and if you are a new seller - you maybe need to earn a few wrinkles (yes, I blame feedback for what is happening with my eyelids) through sleepless nights over some craziness that hits you out of the blue.

I told another maker this and she said to me "but you miss all the good stuff then".

Ugh, she was totally right, of course - but even this did not dissuade me. 

I am missing the 200 feedbacks that read "I love it" to avoid reading the 1 "this hits my baby in the head when I bend over" neutral.

(yes, there is something like that in there).

Now, this might send you over to my feedback and then you will know more than I do. I will have to live with this. Don't tell me anything that is happening in there. I mean it. I don't want to know. My feedback is like my daughter playing quietly across the room when she was little, even when I half suspected a tube of lipstick might be nearby - I don't want to look.

(and no, this is not the post I am trying to get my nerve up to write - this one isn't even close)

Of course when a customer contacts me with a problem I take care of it - I am not perfect with this stuff and mistakes happen and I guarantee my work with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

I know that my stuff being up to snuff impacts not only whether that customer comes back to me, but maybe she comes back to the handmade marketplace at all - maybe next time she heads down to Walmart for a cheapie - my goal as always is to keep everyone away from Walmart.

When customers email me with their kind words I always print them out and have a huge collection on my bulletin board - sometimes I put on red lipstick and give the pages a big old kiss before I hang them up there.

(even though Olive does a little - cuckoo for cocoa puffs - cuckoo hand signal behind my back that she thinks I don't see when I do this - I truly love my customers, truly I do)

I have found though that when people leave a problem feedback and I write to them to resolve it I never hear back from them anymore.

(in the early days I had a couple kiss and make ups and a couple that could not be satisfied, but now when I respond back to help, I just get ... crickets)

I think the public feedback isn't really about getting the problem solved. If I have a problem with a seller I will email them because I want something resolved. This isn't about resolution. Maybe people just want to say what they want to say ... in public. It isn't personal to them and I get that, of course.

To me, the Jersey Girl with skin as thick as a piece of onion peel, it's a whole other story

And yes, I envy you banana peel girls - except for those sallow complexions, of course - but I just can't be that girl. I've tried. I can't do it.
 
And yes, I also realize something about this will come back to me in some other way to be worked out - because changing the "doing" without changing the "being" isn't long lasting, but for right now, I am just fine with this.

For now, the only one I will be kiss and makeup-ing with is my husband.