No one seem to talk about much about what happens after Etsy suspended your shop. This is what I am going to share. I had a qipao shop operating on Etsy for 3 years and one day I woke up, realizing it has been suspended without any notification. I immediately sent out an appeal. After about 2 weeks of waiting, Etsy sent out a template message and saying that they will not reinstate my account and they will not reveal the reason as to why as well. By that time, I had about 500 USD in my Etsy payments that I could not take out. In the next few days, a few customers who placed order before decided to cancel their order, probably seeing my account being suspended, and they opened cases against me. Whenever a case is opened, regardless what it is about, the case would be automatic closed simultaneously.
There were a few customers remained, so in the next few days, I still send out all the packages to make sure customers will get their products. Along these days, more customers reached out for order cancellation and soon my account was reduced to 0 and they started to deduct money from my credit card, one day I received a charge from my credit card. One customer opened a case, but just to ask me when her package will arrive, I was shocked that it was again immediately refunded. Later I received an 5 start review from the customer and learned that she has received the item. Customer was very nice and she sent me back the refund by Paypal. Then a few days ago, a customer wants to see more photos of the listing and opened a case, and once again I was charged immediately for a refund. By this time, I decided that I had to stop this, otherwise Etsy will just STEAL money from my credit card whenever a customer open a case for whatever reason, so I called the bank and cancelled the credit card.
In the past month, I managed to open my own independent site and start working from there. At this time, I can say that I am happy to walk away from Etsy completely, the way it works seems to arbitrary and chaotic.