Decimal digits are very important. Case in point: A glitch at the e-commerce site Etsy briefly caused the company to charge more than thousands of dollars for shipping labels.
Etsy sellers taken over(opens in a new tab) on social media on Monday to inform the company about the problem. Apparently, the e-commerce site’s accounting system failed to notice the decimal point when charging for the total cost for the shipping labels.
As a result, a merchant who thought they were paying $11.64 for postage was billed $1,164. In other cases, the error caused Etsy to empty bank accounts by mistake.
“I just lost $11k. Emptyed my Etsy account, drained my bank account, maxed out my overdraft protection, and maxed out my credit card….$110 in all labels” what should have happened, Tweeted(opens in a new tab) A vendor.
“Do not ship via ATC,” wrote(opens in a new tab) another seller. “Right now they’re charging you $350 for a $3.50 shipping label, their system is rounding off to a decimal.”
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The glitch caused many merchants to stop shipping packages with printed labels from Etsy, which has more than 2.8 million active sellers. Fortunately, the company started(opens in a new tab) Problem solved last night.
“This issue is now resolved and we have given credit to affected sellers for the erroneous charges,” the company said in a customer support ticket. “The exact charges are now being reflected in the payment accounts of affected sellers. For the small group of sellers that were autobilled, we have refunded any resulting card charges.”
Some affected merchants say they also faced overdraft charges due to ATC withdrawing more money than was available in their bank accounts. A company spokesperson told PCMag: “Yes, we will reimburse vendors who tell our support teams that they were charged an overdraft or related fee.”
