I am sharing this with etsy sellers and other artisans as a cautionary tale. Many of us have spoken about setting up shop on other artisan selling sites. Before plunking down your hard earned moola on Ruby Lane, you might want to investigate them a bit more. Please solicit feedback from other etsy sellers that have closed their shops on Ruby Lane recently. Make sure you understand, exactly, what kind of customer support and shop advertising you purchase for your $35 or more monthly fee.
And so, without further adieu, here is my Ruby Lane Artisan Jewelry shop owner tale….
According to the Ruby Lane (RL) website it is “an online venue that hosts a community of hundreds of individually-owned shops from around the world.” Its a bit more pricey than etsy, but they supposedly advertise in more places and do offer some functionality for shop owners that etsy does not. RL includes ‘lanes’ for antiques, collectibles, fine arts and jewelry. Regarding the supposed advertising, what I found was that RL heavily advertises its antiques, but not much else. RL does offer to reimburse up to 40% of the shop owner’s off site advertising fees - as long as the ads are pre-approved AND link to your RL shop. RL also allows shop owners to contribute articles to their blog. In theory, this sounds good, right?
I wanted to take advantage of the advertising reimbursement program, so I submitted my request and received notification that my advertisement medium was preapproved. I paid for my advertisement and submitted my invoice according to RL’s stated reimbursement process. After not receiving a return email message, I followed up several times, with no reponse nor reimbursement. Around this same period, I also submitted an article for the RL blog. My submission was received by a Ruby Lane staff member who stated that she wanted to use my article, and would follow up with me. She didn’t.
A couple of weeks ago, RL updated the site to include an artisan jewelry ‘lane’. There was an issue with the way the site navigation worked following this change, so I contacted Ruby Lane’s Live Support. The Live Support Rep stated that the navigation worked correctly. It didn’t. Still doesn’t.
So, I tried submitting the navigation issue via an email that included all the pertinent links to Ruby Lane site help. Additionally, based on RL’s previous non-responsiveness, I also emailed the info to two other Ruby Lane shop owners that I know, asking them to submit the same error. I thought that if more than one shop owner contacted them about the navigation error, perhaps RL would deem the change important to us and fix it. (See the details in the email below…)
> Hi
> I noticed a small discrepancy that may keep buyers from finding
> our artisan jewelry.
>
> If you visit the Ruby Lane home page http://www.rubylane.com/ and click the SHOP
> icon, located in the upper left corner of the page, you will be brought to a SHOP WITH
> RUBY LANE page, http://www.rubylane.com/info/shop.html
>
> You will notice in the left navigation links for
> Shop
> Antiques
> Collectibles
> Fine Arts
> Jewelry
>
> And then a bunch of links for the different lanes under Shop Directory. A new visitor
> looking to browse Jewelry items might not notice all those links, but would probably just > click on the JEWELRY link located at the top of the list.
>
> Clicking JEWELRY brings the visitor to
> http://www.rubylane.com/jewelry.html, which ONLY lists Antique and Vintage
> Jewelry, no artisan. Not good for those of us that are in the Artisan Jewelry lane.
>
> Can you add ARTISAN as a category on this page
> http://www.rubylane.com/jewelry.html ? Or else point the JEWELRY link on the shop.html page to a more generic jewelry search page?
>
> The way the JEWELRY link works today, it appears that Artisan Jewelry is not part of > the site. And many browsers may not notice the additional lane link to the Artisan
> Shops.
>
> Thanks!
> Kristy
Guess what, Ruby Lane didn’t think the navigation issue was very important. It still hasn’t been corrected. Below, is RL’s response to me. (SAME DAY! WOW! That’s a first!) I’ve edited slightly to remove my email message above which was quoted in their response.
Hello Kristy,
The information you offered about links on the Shop page was passed along to appropriate technical staff yesterday morning after Customer Support received an email about it identical to your own from a different shop owner and the issue they reported had been investigated.
We note that you contacted several shop owners and sent them the same email you sent to us, along with this request:
===============
My Email Message Quoted here in RL’s response
===============
This activity on your part had the direct effect of making it necessary for multiple members of Ruby Lane staff to spend time investigating the issue relayed about the page, including contacting other staff about it and answering email from the shops you contacted. Realistically, this time could have been better spent. Had only one member of staff checked the issue mentioned and answered questions about it just one time this would have freed time for our other staff and allowed quicker responses by them to other non-artisan shop owners’ issues and concerns.
We understand that you are a shop owner who is fairly new to Ruby Lane. Perhaps you are not familiar with voiced concerns being taken seriously or perhaps in reporting issues of this nature on other sites you are more familiar with receiving no satisfactory response, at all.
Please keep in mind going forward that we do always carefully consider shop owner’s concerns. Every email of this nature received is important to us. We ask shop owners to refrain from asking the same question more than once, as this does not help to speed the investigation or response process along.
There are a very large number of shops currently on the site. We would appreciate if you kept in mind going forward that the Ruby Lane staff is a small professional team. We manage the site day in and day out, while at the same time planning and adding new features, programs and tools – all at a cost that everyone can afford. In the future if you have a concern about a site feature or notice a problem we would of course want you to contact us to let us know. But do offer us the advance courtesy of assuming we might be willing to acknowledge and address it, and refrain from attempting to encourage multiple email submissions to our staff about the same issue from other shops, as though you already know that we will not.
Thanks in advance for your future consideration in this regard.
Respectfully,
Name withheld to protect the less than stellar customer support person
Ruby Lane Customer Support
Um, all righty then. So, my response…………..
Good afternoon “Name withheld to protect the less than stellar customer support person,”
While I appreciate that “every email of this nature received is important to us. We ask shop owners to refrain from asking the same question more than once, as this does not help to speed the investigation or response process along.”, my experience thus far with Ruby Lane customer service has not proved this statement.
To date, I’ve sent 4 messages requesting reimbursement for a previously approved ad as well as two to follow up on a previous message to submit an article for your blog. No response as of yet for the reimbursement requests, which started the end of August
and were approved earlier than that. And, after a preliminary response from your staff that they would like to use the article, nothing when I followed up. And that was weeks ago.
When you say ‘perhaps you are not familiar with voiced concerns being taken seriously” I haven’t experienced that yet, so you are right, I am not familiar.
So, based on my previous experiences with follow through, I thought that contacting 2 other shop owners in which I had a relationship might speed along the process.
Me
You know, I’d almost expect a response like that from a relatively new site, like etsy. But this is a company that has been online since 1998. 10 years!
I’ve closed my RL shop. I’m not spending my dollars with a company that shows so little respect for those that pay their bills. And, was the navigation link updated? Nope. If you visit their home page and click the Shop link, the link for Jewelry on the subsequent page STILL only lists antique and vintage jewelry. Nice. Not exactly “planning and adding new features, programs and tools” for its artisan jewelry shop owners are they?
If you have made it this far, I thank you for reading. 
UPDATE 1: I’ve received several messages from former shop owners with similar and MUCH MUCH worse tales about Ruby Lane. Caveat emptor everyone.
UPDATE 2: The saga continues here http://shinyadornments.com/simplyshiny/2008/10/ruby-lane-a-former-shop-owners-saga-continues/
ruby lane warning problems bad service for shop owners
Don’t miss a single post.
Follow this blog: Click here
Follow via email: Click here
Want to be notified of subscriber only sales and other special events from ShinyAdornments? Sign up for my newsletter
wow. just wow. and I thought etsy search had problems…
Ugh, SO tacky of RubyLane!!
Thank you for sharing, Kristy. For that kind of money a month, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that people be able to FIND your shop.
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
Kristy – thanks SO much for the truth-telling! Truly incredible that someone would be so clueless in today’s world and market – definitely not the place I’d want to be!
Hmmmmpf……..shoddy!
This story amazes me. The grass is definitely browner on the other side.
Vicki
Interesting. Not a place I will be going for a while.
Interesting indeed…it is a good reminder that there are no get rich quick schemes without a catch to it-
That’s amazing !IM too busy with Etsy and other stuff to start a new shop . I will never consider ruby lane . Thank for sharing this precious information
Well, see if I get into RL. I plan on getting into Etsy though. Thanks for the info. It was great
That’s such a shame, because I had heard such good things about Ruby Lane. Thank you for your version of the story. I’m definitely steering clear. Anyone who has time to take my money, but no time to talk to me when I have concerns doesn’t need my money or my business.
How many customers could they have helped in the time it took them to write that email? Seems like they wasted way more of their own time chastising you than you did getting 2 others to report the same very important issue!
wow! that’s pretty stupid of them. For one, they’ve already acknowledged that you are willing to spread word of their incompetence, so why would they send such a condescending email?
this is good to know.
Thank you so much for sharing! I was thinking about Ruby Lane, with the Holidays coming up and everything. They are on more of the pricey side so I have been putting it off. I won’t even consider it now and this is why – NOT because they didn’t look into the problem, NOT because they didn’t fix the problem, but because of the less than stellar (I’d like to use a different word.) Ruby Lane’s customer support e-mail.
Again, Thanks for the info…Tammy
I’ve looked at ruby lane before and wondered if it would be the right place for me. Appears that they need to take a look at how they operate and their customer service before I join. Thanks for the honest opinion.
This is so unfortunate and I am so sorry this happened to you Kristy. I’ve had some issues with RL but none quite so disturbing. In fact, I did go ahead and forward my concerns about the same issues and I noticed it was still not fixed. However, I am not willing to give up yet. I have been fortunate to have really great sales on RL compared to other sites so I have a lot invested. I too, take part in their co-op advertising and I know that in July, they had a lot of people on vacation so the reimbursement took longer than usual and in September the Marketing rep was on vacation so the reimbursement too a bit longer as well but in the end, I did get my re-imbursement.
However, I have no problem contacting them again about the navigation issues until I at least get a decent response. It seems every time RL updates their site, they tend to oversee some really obvious issues that us as shop owners see. So again, I will contact them and see if they plan on addressing this issue. Hopefully, I’ll get a better response.
I am afraid your experiences are pretty common and somewhat mild compared to the battle we waged with them..There is an arrogance about them that is unmistakeable. They are rude & threatening. We left them after several disputes and came close to hiring a lawyer regarding a takedown threat to our personal website.They cost us a bunch of money in lost sales, but we are glad to be gone.
You absolutely MUST play by their rules or they drop kick you off their site. It’s happened to several people I know.
Avoid them at all costs. The atmosphere at their site is toxic.
Sheesh. I’m so glad that I closed my Ruby Lane shop last year. I could not justify their high fees and monthly charge for the number of sales. I did get some good customers but it was costing me money.
Sorry you had such a hard time.
I’m sticking with Etsy.
Hi Kristy! As you know, I was one of the others who contacted Ruby Lane about the problems with easily getting to the Artisan Jewelry Lane from the Main page. I have not received a response to that email. However, that said, I have had nothing but courteous, informative help from Live Chat customer service. In another instance, I brought to their attention after the many technical changes that occurred recently that there was a problem with the uploaded photos and they immediately let me know that their technical staff was working to solve the problem and thanked me (actually twice) for reporting the problem. I used to be with Etsy but did not find them to be as considerate in responding to problems brought up and many of mine were left unanswered. They are not an organized selling site and I got tired of some of the other jewelry makers undercutting other sellers with lower priced and lower quality jewelry to the point that you had to lower your prices or reduce the quality of your products. I wasn’t willing to do either and quit Etsy to go to Ruby Lane. I also had an issue with the forums and the ‘cliques’ that appeared to control the forums. It took an exorbitant amount of time to keep up with the forums and the listing process was very time consuming. Yes, Ruby Lane is more expensive and I can’t justify their maintenance charges with the number of sales I have made but I find their site user-friendly, their customer support for sellers to be excellent and easy navigation and uploading tools. I am still disturbed by the Artisan Jewelry Lane and will address that issue again. They do appear to concentrate most of their efforts on Antiques and Vintage items but I have paid for an ad that will run in March at a reasonable price for the magazine they do advertise in that lists Artisan jewelry items. For the time being, I will remain with Ruby Lane until I find a better alternative. I will not return to Etsy.
After reading this Ruby Lane is one Lane I plan to avoid !!!
Thanks for informing us about your experience, shiny.
Thanks for the info, Ruby Lane was one place that I have considered opening a shop in, but not so sure now.
Thanks for the heads up–this is very useful information to know–i wasn’t familiar with Ruby Lane, but it sounds like it wouldn’t behoove me to become too familiar with it anyway…lol
Thanks Kristy. I’ve been wondering about other places to have items on. I think that it’s great that you followed up on everything. Will you open up another shop on any other sites. Does anyone know of any other good sites to open up a shop?
Hi Kristy…I feel your pain! I dumped RL last year after they decided that my wire-wrapped rosaries were not worthy of them. An old cheap, machine-made rosary of base metal and plastic beads could be listed under antiques or collectibles, but my gemstone, and precious metal artisan rosaries could not be listed as jewelry (even though I know people that wear them as necklaces). Someone flagged 1 of mine and they removed it, indicating that they would probably remove the others as well. I said, see ya! Oh, “less than stellar customer service person” was working there then as well
I love your jewelry, by the way!
~M
Thanks for sharing your horror story about RL. I’m sorry this has happened to you, but I will not be wondering if it’s worthwhile to open a shop there.
Power to the people!
Nicely handled, Kristy!
Your closing up shop is RubyLane’s loss, for sure.
Kristy, I’m so glad you wrote about this. I was seriously considering RL, but after reading your story, I’ve decided not to. I believe customer service is key in any business. In the amount of time it took them to write and send you that disrespectful email, they could’ve been working on what you had suggested. No way they will get my money!!! Thank you so much for voicing your experience with them.
“When you say ‘perhaps you are not familiar with voiced concerns being taken seriously” I haven’t experienced that yet, so you are right, I am not familiar.”
Love it.
I have a high end antique shop on Ruby Lane and I love the site because I consistently sell to an international customer base, despite the worsening economy. The cost of maintaining the Ruby Lane shop is only 6.3% of my gross sales.
I am sorry about your experiences as a new shop, but really there are too many jewelry shops on Ruby Lane anyway. There has been an explosion of new shops opening on Ruby Lane as sellers exit eBay, but mostly shops that only sell little low cost items, and it must be hard for the customer service people to deal with so many issues caused by the sudden surge in growth.
Lavender says ” but really there are too many jewelry shops on Ruby Lane anyway” and “mostly shops that only sell little low cost items”.
Wow. I’m not even going to comment on the second blurb about “little low cost items”, but with regard to your comment about too many shops on RL, that’s really not your decision, is it? If RL takes my fees as they did yours, I expect at least a modicum of decor in my fairly simple request of them. Hard or not for the customer service personnel, there really is no excuse for the type of interaction I, as well as many other shop owners, have experienced.
As RL opened it’s ‘lanes’ to artisan designers, it is RL’s responsibility to ‘deal with the issues’ and my expectation that ‘issues’ are heard and responded to in a professional manner.
Shiny K
I should add it was another RL antique shop who passed me this link, and she got it from another RL shop, so the link to your expression of dissatisfaction towards RL is making the rounds among the better antique shops on RL.
I wish you luck on this site.
Kristy, poor you! RL obviously, couldn’t take up the responsibilities nor are able to manage complaints very well, I am amused by how they’d wrote 3 paragraphs worth of words just to ask you not to contact others to report the same issue – it would have been nice if that 3 paragraphs were describing how they are going to fix it instead of indirectly saying “of course we will fixing it, one day.”
Hugs,
Corra
I had a poor experience with RL many years ago. They just decided to shut down their artisan lane one day and that was it. They didn’t give any consideration whats so ever to their artisan dealers. Now, they are forever sending me these “please come back” e-mails and I just have to laugh. I’m sorry this happened to you. I really can’t believe they are still in business…
Nice site you have!
I had a perfectly awful experience with RL. They have a practice of some of their “insider” flagging items in stores and if you think about it, it is a bunch of know- it -alls who are very cliqish and in competition with you judging your things.They even told me I could not name one of my dolls Maureen O’Hara! They wanted documentation if I mentioned a date or era (No one else has to do this)It isn’t, but I got flagged, and they said my turquoise looked like it might be dyed. I also got flagged for that. They closed my shop temporarily right after Xmas and could not be reached. When my helper e-mailed them and called them EBay lane and said they were anal I got kicked right off and never even got to get any guidance from them. I had just worked for at least 10 hours making all the changes they wanted and my Mother in Law died on Xmas day, so this was in the middle of that.An unbelievable group of people getting flunkies( fellow shop owners) to nit pik their competetors.
Ruby Lane is a great place to sell if you like people telling you what you can and cannot do based on their little rules. And yes, you should enjoy having someone with waay too much time on their hands FLAG you because they happen to sell the same item and don’t want the competition. They have plenty of fees and you have nada to show for your work.Oh- don’t expect to see your items in a Google search, they don’t pay for that. You can place an ad in one of the lame magazines they list in. Don’t expect any sales from that either.
Basically, they are worthless, but are enjoying making lots and lots of money from YOU.
They should not be complaining to you about the small staff trying to serve a large number of shops. Sounds like they don’t know how to run a business.
In fact, I know they don’t because I had a shop there for about 3 years in their earlier days. I guess I’m a little surprised they haven’t improved, yet have managed to stay in business. I made enough there to make it worthwhile until they started nickel and diming us to death.
One time they closed down 12 shops without warning because they found a forum where those 12 shop members were discussing Ruby Lane. Just like that, with the click of a button, those shops were out of business. They will probably try to shut you up too. LOL
Every time they see something like this, they contact a shop owner to go sing their praises…like the one who wrote to you claiming to be making so much money. Yeah, right. That letter was probably from the owner. LOL
I guarantee you no shop owner at Ruby Lane is making enough money to earn a living. Ruby Lane has built a business out of suckering mostly hobbyist artisans and collectors.
Just to let you know the customer perspective. I spent thousands of dollars at Ruby Lane over the years and I just cancelled my account. Ruby Lane has changed and I don’t even recognize it anymore. The reason I shopped there in the first place was because I wanted to be treated like a customer, not someone to scam. And the only reason I kept buying there were the few really good store owners who made me think the whole place was nice, so when I went to buy from them, I would stop and look around at the other stores. Well, one day I went to buy and found out that I was blocked. Since I had never bought from that store, I discovered it was another store blocking me from buying from this other store. I went to complain and was told customer service was not around so come back some other time. I was really upset that I had been treated this way after all this time, so I started actually reading the fine print on the site and I thought, you know, I don’t like the way you are doing business, Ruby Lane. So I canceled my account. Over the years I had encountered quite a few bad sellers on Ruby Lane and just gave the stuff to Goodwill and didn’t complain to anyone. I only stood up for myself on rare occasions, but apparently that was too many times for Ruby Lane. The thing is, I want the nice store owners to know that I didn’t stop shopping there because of them but because of Ruby Lane. Please, sellers, consider alternative venues so your loyal customers can find you when something like this happens. I’ll never shop at Ruby Lane again.
In my experience with Ruby Lane both as a Buyer and Shop Owner, I’ve learned that Customer Service is non-existent. If you complain, you get a smack on the wrist and quite possibly, if you say something that in the rep’s mind is negative, they will close your shop temporarily, if not forever. But you NEVER get help. Just BS. And invoices. And more BS.
Lately I’ve seen items that even the Bay would reject on RL…no Maker’s Marks…fabricated TMK’s…plain junk. Cannot believe people are still buying there, as the Shop Owner’s have become a pack of nit-picking Bay rejects. They target anyone and anything that might be competititon and “Flag” them in a New York Minute! RL removes the disputed item immediately without notifying the Shop, without giving the Shop a chance to defend themselves, without so much as a “Hello.” Pure Poor, Non-Existent CS.
Compared to the “old days” of Ruby Lane, their standards have dropped so low, I’d be embarrassed to have another Shop on their arrogantly run site…
Good-bye Yellow Brick Road…and Ruby Lane, too!
Sad to see not much has changed since this was first posted. I’ll be updating my site traffic numbers soon. It will be interesting to see if they have risen or fallen in the rankings.
K
Thank Youhttp://www.antiques-collectibles.us
I also left Ruby Lane. They are unfair and greedy. Like someone already stated, they block your buyers and try to get you to buy extra advertisements. What bothers me the most is that most of my items stopped appearing on google and if they happen to show up at all, it was because they were just listed with a long Ruby Lane list or they would not come up at all. My shop name stopped showing all together. Ruby Lane kept sending me notices that I needed to advertise more. I really stopped having any sales. The last sale that I got the person called me on the phone and said that they were being block from my shop. Now that I have my own shop just about every item that I’ve checked appears on google and now Ruby Lane shows my item also. Now isn’t that just real raggedy? How come they could not show my ads and shop name in the first place? They are worse than I thought. WOW!
I want to take out the time to thank you for having this site. I feel so much better now that I have vented, I know that I kinda of barged in. I have never been on Etsy and when I somehow found your site and it gave me a chance to let someone know what has happened. Plus I didn’t feel so alone about this issue. Thank you again and Kindest Regards
RH…I’m glad you found the post and made time to leave your comments.
Just started on Ruby Lane as a seller.Had no problems and sales are good!
http://www.rubylane.com/shops/ye-olde-england-emporium
Added by Kristy 8/2010: If you click the link above, the shop is no longer open. Guess sales weren’t so good.
No wonder all I’ve heard anything positive about was “Etsy”
Too soon for 1000 markets but they actually have had quick
Resonse’s when I’ve ever had issue’s and I’ve not had
A lot of them. All the best, Dee. (:
[...] A couple weeks ago, I posted an entry about my very poor experience as a shop owner on Ruby Lane. You can read it in its entirety here [...]
This has been very interesting reading all of the comments about Ruby Lane. I have been collecting vintage clothes for a couple of years now – yes another one! from 50s day dresses to Biba & Ossie Clark. I have also acquired a large collection of 20s and 30s dresses, which I have chosen not to sell at vintage fashion fairs (some dealers and customers are far to rough when looking at garments – too many get damaged).
I was looking at an alternative method to sell initially (not Ebay), with the view to possibly taking a unit at one of the London Antique Centers, if my business is successful.
I have just been on the Ruby Lane website to have a look; one dealer gives their address as a PO Box address in the UK – hiffy! I also looked at the 30s vintage clothing section and saw that another dealer is listing an 80s dress as 30s style – what is the differnce between Ruby Lane and Ebay.
On a final note, I also rung their customer service number listed, with the view to enquiring about opening a shop – and of course was met with voice mail recording, asking me to leave my contact details. This was my deciding factor – basically if their customer service is non existent – what is the difference between this site and Ebay?
Also forgot to add, when doing a google search for them, there are very few links appear.
I have been a Ruby Lane customer for a few years now.
THE GOOD: I have had some amazing experiences with sellers who went above and beyond to package and please. One seller nearly became my personal shopper. Another one sent a Get Well gift when I was ill, and trinkets for my girls with every order. Others have been very accommodating in combining shipping charges and allowing me to agree to purchase and pay later.
THE BAD: I did encounter one bizarre seller who complained that I had not paid for an item when the ad stated that I would be contacted with shipping charges and grand total. So after being informed of the complaint, I signed in to find out what was going on. The seller had up and closed the shop so the complaint was no longer valid, and neither was my purchase. This all transpired over 2 or 3 days.
THE SURPRISING: I sell online but have never sold through Ruby Lane or Etsy. Typed in “Ruby Lane vs. Etsy” and was led here. There is indeed a difference between being served as a customer, and being expected to serve as a seller under another company’s banner. I feel terrible for those who’ve had terrible RL seller experiences. Thanks for sharing. I’ve found it very valuable…
Now check this out: http://etsybitch.blogspot.com/2011/07/rob-white-on-etsys-unique-brand-of.html
I’ll carve out my own venue. In my case, neither seems worth it. To those who do find satisfaction and success as a seller with either, enjoy every bit of it! There is a path made for each of us.