I have been staring at this one vintage brass mirror for like three weeks now and it is driving me crazy because it is just slightly out of my budget. I have about eighty dollars set aside for this specific hallway project but the seller has it listed for a hundred and ten plus shipping. I am convinced it is gonna go on sale soon because it has been sitting there for a while and they have a lot of stock but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get a simple notification if the price actually drops.
So I was thinking that the heart icon, the favorites thing, would just automatically do it. My logic was that if I favorite an item Etsy would obviously want to tell me when it gets cheaper so I would buy it right? I went into my settings and enabled every single notification under the sun but I am still not getting anything. I read on some help forum that you have to save for later in the cart instead of just favoriting it but I tried that with a different item and nothing happened when that shop ran a 10 percent off sale. It is so frustrating because I do not want to keep refreshing the page every four hours like a crazy person.
I also saw some people mentioning that you only get an email if the seller specifically creates a sale event and not if they just manually lower the base price of the listing which seems totally backwards to me. Like why would the method of price change matter if the end result is a lower price? I am trying to get this done before my sister moves in next month and I really need to know if I am missing a toggle somewhere in the app or if Etsy just does not have this basic feature. I even looked at some chrome extensions but they look super janky and I dont really trust them with my account info. Is there a hidden menu or something? I am literally clicking around the listing page and there is no bell icon or anything similar...
Quick tip since I had the same issue with a rug last month. Etsy is pretty bad at notifying you for manual price edits, but Ive been really happy with this Etsy price tracker for my vintage finds. It actually catches those small manual drops that the heart icon misses. No complaints at all, it just works well and saves a ton of stress. Definitely a solid workaround for that mirror situation.
I totally agree that Etsy's notification system is basically a nightmare for this!! The same thing happened to me with an amazing brass lamp last year because I was waiting for an alert that never came even though the seller dropped the price by fifty bucks. It was so frustrating, ngl! Since Etsy wont do it natively, using a tracker is definitely the move to catch those sneaky manual price drops. But here is my one big safety tip: stick to the trackers that just ask for the product URL. You really dont want to be giving your Etsy password to some random browser extension just to save twenty dollars. Keeping it simple with a URL-based alert is way safer and it still catches those manual changes perfectly!
Etsys API is pretty limited here and honestly, they dont have a native price drop toggle. Favoriting only pings you if the seller sets up a formal Sale event or a coupon for items in carts. If they just change the price manually, the system wont trigger a notification... kinda annoying. In my experience, using a tracker like Visualping is way more reliable for catching those manual edits.
Ugh, I am right there with you. Honestly, as someone who has been a power user on Etsy for like a decade, it is so disappointing that they still havent fixed this. I have been watching this one wool rug for months and it is the exact same story... crickets from my inbox even when the price moves. The technical side of why Etsy fails here is basically down to how they categorize their data:
@Reply #5 - good point! I totally get the frustration but I actually disagree that jumping into trackers is the best move for everyone. Honestly, I am super cautious about my account info and some of those extensions look so sketchy to me! I had this amazing experience recently where I was trying to find specific hardware for a DIY cabinet and I was so worried about janky tools that I just decided to do it myself. I set up a dedicated folder in my browser for my top five items and checked them while having my morning coffee. It felt way more secure and honestly kinda fun like a little daily treasure hunt! Safety is a huge deal for me even when I am looking for deals. For example, I just started using Easy Cart Share for Walmart to send my grocery list to my roommate, it is way easier than taking a bunch of screenshots and I love it because it feels so much more legit than those random scrapers. If you are really nervous about privacy like I am, definitely stick to the manual route or only use tools that have a ton of verified reviews. It might take an extra second but knowing my info is safe is a fantastic feeling!
There is definitely no hidden menu for this and it is honestly so fantastic to see someone else just as frustrated as I am!! I have been dealing with this exact same issue for nearly two months while trying to track a specific mid-century dresser for my office. My experience has been completely identical; I have systematically tested every notification toggle in the account settings and none of them trigger for manual price adjustments. It is incredibly draining to manually refresh the listing page multiple times a day just to ensure I stay within my project budget! I have even been looking into PriceDropCatch for my other shopping because I desperately need a reliable method to catch these discounts before the inventory sells out. It is just mind-blowing that a professional platform still hasn't implemented a functional bell icon for price drops after all these years!!
Just wanted to say thanks for everyone chiming in. Super helpful discussion.