The Federal Trade Commission is a US government department that works “to ensure that our markets are open and free.” In a free market, businesses compete based on their merits, and consumers freely choose to patronize a specific business.  Being forced to sign up for Plaid - a service that we do not want - in order to keep our Etsy shops open and keep getting paid is the exact opposite of this ideal.  We believe that Etsy’s Plaid requirement violates US Antitrust Law. The exact law in question is “Tying the Sale of Two Products”:

For competitive purposes, a monopolist may use forced buying, or "tie-in" sales, to gain sales in other markets where it is not dominant and to make it more difficult for rivals in those markets to obtain sales. This may limit consumer choice for buyers wanting to purchase one ("tying") product by forcing them to also buy a second ("tied") product as well. Typically, the "tied" product may be a less desirable one that the buyer might not purchase unless required to do so, or may prefer to get from a different seller. If the seller offering the tied products has sufficient market power in the "tying" product, these arrangements can violate the antitrust laws.

The consumer bulletin on antitrust law includes an example:
For example, the antitrust laws likely would not permit a drug manufacturer to require customers to buy a patient monitoring system they don’t want along with the prescription drugs they do want.

Based on our research, it looks like past cases of tied sales were settled in favor of the corporation only when they could prove that the tied product was necessary, and they could not offer another option to consumers.  As Etsy already offers manual non-Plaid account verification to sellers outside the US, that does not seem to be the case here!

In any event, the FTC can sort it out and tell us for sure.

Please file a formal complaint with the FTC.  The more complaints filed, the more likely it is that they investigate this issue.  Click here for copy-paste email templates, and complete instructions.

Thank you so much for joining us in this fight.
#indiestrong!