Giving Up on Zibbet was Hard to Do

Zibbet makes me sad.

It's been two months since I last blogged about Zibbet and I really thought I'd be "over it" by now.  But I'm not.  Yes, I'm selling a bit of vintage on Etsy (and a lot of pet and house portraits).  More vintage selling on ebay.  LOTS more. 

But I wanted to sell on Zibbet.  I invested in the promise...and promises...of Zibbet, and watching it slide back into oblivion makes me angry.  So unnecessary.  Like witnessing a teenager who self destructs - so needless, so sad, pathetic and wasteful.  Every site stat is going backwards.

The owners seem to think that if they finally do relaunch the site, it will solve all their problems.  Their self-inflicted problems.  They had some of the best, brightest and energetic sellers buy into Zibbet last fall and they alienated almost every one of them. 

By doing nothing to promote sales.  Nothing to promote Vintage.  And the strangest public relations from any owners of a business most of us have ever seen.

The owners, Jonathan Peacock and Andrew Gray oddly thought that by revamping their forums to be "positive" and muting people would draw savvy sellers.  Today I looked at it, zero activity in the Business forum.   The only forum with life ... if you call posts 4 hours ago life ... is the Promotion one.  Forums matter.  It's the little window into the site, and when the owners take it upon themselves to moderate them, it's a little window into the management of the site.  And the view in has been a horror show, or a lesson in what NOT to do to maintain and gain paying customers.

In this case, Owners who call sellers "trolls" in a secret forum they conspired in with other sellers, designed to artificially keep sellers from speaking their truth about the site and pit seller against seller.  And then publicly mock those who say the owners are doing just that.  (Screen shots sure can come in handy!)

Owners who publicly discuss their company's personnel issues and their failure to hire competent staff, or manage the project, so blame their employees for the debacle.  Owners who made time to patrol forums, private group posts, twitter posts, to mute discussions, join in on private forums to name call their customers, but can't find the time to oversee the project that ALL of their customer's livelihood depends on.  And that we paid for.

Owners who publicly discuss paying customers who they have decided to mute from their forum, allowing a virtual feeding frenzy on rumor and untruths go unchecked, and the victims unable to respond.  For instance, floating a rumor that one of us attacked another seller on the Zibbet forums, using profanities, which interestingly was never seen by anyone, nor been substantiated.  Yet that rumor keeps being whispered down the lane, like 12 year olds at a slumber party.

Owners who mute sellers who warned that a Google rep told them that  Zibbet's partnership with a pay-for-links scheme site would very likely result in "punishment" for all items on Zibbet in Google searches.  Owners who deleted that warning. 

Owners who wait until they are "outed" on their own forums before disclosing ugly things...like that they support controversial political views and tweeted about them connecting our Zibbet shops with that ugliness.

Or that they were not providing services they charged us for.

Or that they were not meeting the deadline they advertised for the rebuild, not even close.  Not until confronted on the forums were these issues disclosed.

There was a reason so many of us invested MONEY in Zibbet. It was the promises there, the potential there and the direction Etsy was heading.  Etsy is still heading in that direction, the promises are still being made at Zibbet, but the potential was not only halted, but put into reverse.

I wanted it to work and I'm angry it obviously won't.  Because I spent $237 in good faith and so did lots of other sellers.  A waste.  All I have left from my Zibbet dreams is the ability to warn others.  If you are thinking about investing your time or money there, I'd invite you to read this blog from the bottom up.  You'll see screen shots that are fact, not rumor.  I'd invite you to google and read others' warnings about the site.  I'd invite you to visit their forums.

And if after that, you want to invest in it, well, all the best to you.  At least you have info that we didn't have last fall about the site.  There are a few folks who sell well enough at Zibbet as a second site to keep a presence there.  But it could have been sooooo much more.  And it should have been, for all the money we invested.