@femtocow safe to say those are the minority of your purchases.
The thing about Tindie is our success is 100% correlated with a buyer's & seller's experience. Because we don't charge listing fees (FREE), our revenue is entirely tied to your (or any seller's success). So yes we are optimizing for revenue - because more customers like to order in stock, and that helps sellers, and ultimately our bottom line. If customers liked backorder, we'd keep it - they don't - so we have to make hard decisions on how to spend our time.
The real point of your post is trying to make it seem like we are a disingenuous company that is trying to be jerks to the community. That is so far from the truth it is silly. We are a team of 3. We have limited resources and time. That means we must focus on the most important areas of the business that will make the entire community successful.
In the last 6 months, we have removed a ton of features & changed much of the user experience. The result - sales & traffic are way up. Traffic was up over 30% last month, and we are on pace to set a sales record this month. The community has spoken - they enjoy a simpler experience.
In an attempt to better that experience, we have been removing poorly selling products with bad listings. We do many manual changes behind the scenes (clean up description formatting as an example). However we can't do everything. Over 4,000 products have been listed on Tindie. With 1 person helping sellers, you can see how that takes a ton of time. So the solution we have is to pull products that haven't sold in over a year which we think could have a better description/photos.
My guess is that is what we did to your friend. Here is the email template we've used-
Hi!
Thank you for listing your product on Tindie! We are starting a new policy to remove products that have not sold well in an effort to better the marketplace. However, we'd love to work with you to improve your listing! Your product is something to be proud of and we want to make sure that shines through. Please check over the following reason(s) we have pulled your listing:
(insert reason here. ie: better description)
If you need some help, feel free to check some of these quick and easy tutorials we have put together here.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
99% of the time the seller's are totally understanding, and resubmit their product. I know of only 1 seller who wasn't happy about this policy. My guess is that was your friend. So the truth is he hasn't had an order in over a year. I'm not going to get into any more of the specifics.
To wrap this up - honestly I get it that you are trying to stir the pot. The truth is that the community likes a simpler experience and the data backs that. But look - we're a 3 person company. Instead of hurling allegations, how about you just ask next time? I'd appreciate it..
