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So I keep going back and forth about what to get for my first fabric tail, and I keep going back to Etsy to see what is available there. The trouble is that a lot of the stores on there don't seem to have any reviews or feedback here which makes buying from them feel like more of a gamble. Is there any general advice for how to figure out if an Etsy seller is legit?
Well try to see if the seller has a review on the Etsy's profile for the tail you want to buy.
Also you can tell us what are the tailmakers you're looking at maybe someone here can tell you something.
Anyway if you want may I suggest you to look at Mer-tails?
If you look at the Facebook page from your PC you can find the complete listing with examples in the section "Tail & Entertainment Pricing" and a complete album of the tails we have already made.
This is the link to the Facebook page
www.facebook.com/mermaidKassandra
Right now I'm favoring https://www.etsy.com/shop/OnceUponAMermaid. They have a ton of positive reviews on their shop, but I wasn't sure how trustworthy Etsy reviews are, like if they could get friends to post fake ones or have bad ones removed or anything like that.
I did take a look at your tails, although on the Facebook app I couldn't find the section you mentioned. Right now I'm trying to find a simple, cheap tail because I have the feeling I am going to completely wreck my very first tail with constant scraping, and I don't want to do that to a really nice custom one. But I will keep your shop in mind for once I get the hang of staying the heck off the rough pool bottom!
Read their "about" page and their shop policies, avoid the shops that have nothing written in their "about me" and shops with bad, unclear, or nonexistent policies.
You can also try Googleing the shop to see if the have a facebook page or a website.
Is there anything specific they should have in their policies?
Refund policy and product guarantee are two I can think of.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ciriun
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ciriun
Ciriun unfortunately Facebook don't allow people to se that section from the app if you have time try to look at the page from your PC (you will find the section for sure in this way) anyway you can still look at all the pictures of the completed tails from the app.
Anyway we have a lot of fabric tails that are cheap but at the same time customizable and they're very resistant to scraping as we reinforce them very strongly!
Mermaid Tasha brought from us a bunch of guppy tails for her business I wish she would still be active here so that you could ask her about us and the durability of our tails!
I think I should open a new thread about us on here like others did before.
Anyway let me know if I can help you in anything 😉
Facebook app is so stupid sometimes. Anyway, I did log in properly to take a look and you do have very reasonable prices, but my concern would be that shipping and customs would put the price out of the range I'm looking for currently.
There is also a list of tailmakers on this website that includes reviews from fellow mermaids.
It's also tough since there are of course, a number of tail makers on Etsy trying to break out into tailmaking. I bought mine from https://www.etsy.com/shop/SeasideFai...hopheader-name. I know the lady who just started it up, and I trust her. I paid for and sent in my measurements, and just have to wait!
That being said, I'd suggest to judge both by reviews and price. I know a lot of mers suggest the fin fun (as many of us already know) for starting tails because they're cheap. I think that if trusting the integrity/legitimacy of a seller on Etsy or something like that is in question or doubt, that a good idea is to use that same fin fun practice for Etsy (and similar sites) sellers. Go cheap if you want to test the waters of their store. Depending on the price of course. But this way if it's not what you like, it's not hurting as much to lose more money. On the other hand, if it IS quality, then you can get a general idea of their quality and look. I feel like this approach runs a fine line between playing it safe and jumping right in. I'm generally a very reserved and cautious person, but for me I felt that it would be worth the money to support them (the particular store I chose), get down to business simple and clean, and get my hands on a custom tail just for me.
Definitely not the approach for everyone, but it is one possibility if you can afford to spend the money.
Make sure too to do a thorough research on their monofins. There are a few that I liked, back when I first started to look for a tail, but when it came to the monofins, they were flimsy pieces of plastic or the fin was made of neoprene. With the neoprene ones, there is nothing inside, unlike the Fin Fun ones which do have an rubber fin insert. They had made it to look like Fin Fun's monofin cover but that was it. No fin, just another layer of neoprene. So be careful and find out as much as possible, even emailing the business to find out what their monofins are made of.
I also suggest asking the seller questions- I chose a seller who had a couple of solid fin options, and when I told her that I was buying my fin from a different location ( but it was one of the options for her tails) she immediately praised my decision, for reducing the shipping cost of the tail! I also feel comfortable with this seller because she immediately asked for my design input and won't give me a complete price until we have the fabrics selected.
Communication says a lot about how a business is run. Yes, there are a lot of start ups who don't know what they are doing, but there are also a lot of start ups who do. There are also a lot of companies who used to know what they were doing, but don't any more. Communication tells a lot about the responsiveness of a maker, and if their communication is strong when things are going well, there is a lot more hope that communication will stay strong if things go poorly. If a company has poor communication before a purchase, that communication can only go downhill from there.
At the same time, if a company seems to be making impossible promises-they probably are!