Every business deals with crazy, impossible people but it seems like Etsy sellers get even more Karens than the rest of us. In fact, this situation has become so bad that two websites have been created that allow Etsy sellers to check for “Karens” in advance. Here’s the details:

KarenCheck - This site allows the seller to see all of the reviews a buyer left. Here’s a phenomenal example of the awful reviews a single lady left for 9 SELLERS! 

This Karen seemingly hates everything she purchases; her plants arrived dead, her hats are poor quality, the seller didn’t give her a free heat pack… this lady even wanted to return custom wedding tank tops because the wedding was canceled. All of these 9 sellers were slammed with a 1 - 2 star review.

Another thing that is really cool about KarenCheck is that if you get suspicious messages from a potential buyer, KarenCheck will show you how many reviews they have left and what each star rating was!

I know the image above is a little hard to read, but on the right side of the screen it shows that this message came from a buyer who has made 50 total purchases and has left two 1-2 star reviews, two 3-star reviews and 46 reviews that were 4-5 stars.

EtsyCheck: This is a second site that allows sellers to check on buyers and also leave buyers reviews to help fellow sellers. There’s currently a Reddit thread about EtsyCheck and people seem to like it a lot, especially those who operate multiple Etsy shops.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU DISCOVER YOUR BUYER IS A KAREN

Honestly, the best course of action is to cancel the order if possible. I have always said that “Bitchy money spends the same as Nice money’, but at the same time there’s people who aren’t worth the headache, no matter how much money they spend because they will run you around, waste your time (time IS money!) then slam you with a bogus review if they don’t end up getting whatever it is that they want (which is usually to keep the merchandise and get a full refund).

If you have already shipped the merchandise and are currently dealing with headache or Karen Chaos, read our blog post How to Deal with Bathsh*t Crazy Buyers and also be sure to use KarenCheck and/or EtsyCheck moving forward!