May 9, 2018 04:16 PM
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_...73821.html
EXCERPT: “My interest with everything to do with the supernatural and paranormal began when I was a teenager,” explains Victoria Zasikowski, 44, from her home in Cardiff. [...] Now she’s taken the hobby and made it a profession. Since 2012, she’s been casting spells for money online, helping people with marriage and cash problems through a remote service.
[...] Purchasers receive photographs of the spells being cast as evidence that they’ve been conducted. Whether the hoped for effect actually happens is up to fate. It might sound odd to some, but many do avail themselves of Ms Zasikowski’s services – “a steady stream”, she says. The witch casts between 20 and 30 spells per month, with a handful of regular customers who have been calling on her to cast spells for more than a year. It’s enough to keep Ms Zasikowski in part-time work. And while many may be sceptical that her services are doing anything more than parting the gullible from their cash, no one forces those who use her services to seek her out and pay for them.
[...] Initially, she sold her wares (at that point mostly remote tarot readings, rather than spells) on eBay, where she sold for six years. However, in August 2012 the auction website banned the sale of a number of different “intangible” items [...] “The rug was completely pulled out from under me and everyone else,” Ms Zasikowski recalls.
[...] One of the first things she did was to migrate her business from eBay to Etsy. “That was a bit of a challenge in itself because I was starting off on there with a zero feedback rating, starting from the bottom again,” she says. [...] But then much like eBay, Etsy decided that – on the basis of customer feedback – it too couldn’t allow such sales on its platform. In 2015, it closed off access to “metaphysical services”. [...] “any service that does not yield a tangible, physical item is not allowed”.
For Ms Zasikowski, it was a massive setback. “It was a huge chunk of income just gone,” she says. “We didn’t get much warning. It was all very much out of the blue and everything was gone.” She has managed in the intervening years to build up a successful business on her own site, free from any future risks of removal, but the memories of being moved on twice in three years still rankles. “We never did get a definitive answer [as to why we were kicked off],” she says.
Discussions among the metaphysical community of spell casters posited various reasons why they were kicked off both platforms. “The only consensus we came to was because of the nature of what we do, there’s perhaps a higher number of chargebacks, complaints and requests for refunds that earmarked our little niche as problematic.”
And that certainly could be an issue. When you’re selling services and not products, it’s far easier for unscrupulous traders to muscle in....
MORE: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_...73821.html
EXCERPT: “My interest with everything to do with the supernatural and paranormal began when I was a teenager,” explains Victoria Zasikowski, 44, from her home in Cardiff. [...] Now she’s taken the hobby and made it a profession. Since 2012, she’s been casting spells for money online, helping people with marriage and cash problems through a remote service.
[...] Purchasers receive photographs of the spells being cast as evidence that they’ve been conducted. Whether the hoped for effect actually happens is up to fate. It might sound odd to some, but many do avail themselves of Ms Zasikowski’s services – “a steady stream”, she says. The witch casts between 20 and 30 spells per month, with a handful of regular customers who have been calling on her to cast spells for more than a year. It’s enough to keep Ms Zasikowski in part-time work. And while many may be sceptical that her services are doing anything more than parting the gullible from their cash, no one forces those who use her services to seek her out and pay for them.
[...] Initially, she sold her wares (at that point mostly remote tarot readings, rather than spells) on eBay, where she sold for six years. However, in August 2012 the auction website banned the sale of a number of different “intangible” items [...] “The rug was completely pulled out from under me and everyone else,” Ms Zasikowski recalls.
[...] One of the first things she did was to migrate her business from eBay to Etsy. “That was a bit of a challenge in itself because I was starting off on there with a zero feedback rating, starting from the bottom again,” she says. [...] But then much like eBay, Etsy decided that – on the basis of customer feedback – it too couldn’t allow such sales on its platform. In 2015, it closed off access to “metaphysical services”. [...] “any service that does not yield a tangible, physical item is not allowed”.
For Ms Zasikowski, it was a massive setback. “It was a huge chunk of income just gone,” she says. “We didn’t get much warning. It was all very much out of the blue and everything was gone.” She has managed in the intervening years to build up a successful business on her own site, free from any future risks of removal, but the memories of being moved on twice in three years still rankles. “We never did get a definitive answer [as to why we were kicked off],” she says.
Discussions among the metaphysical community of spell casters posited various reasons why they were kicked off both platforms. “The only consensus we came to was because of the nature of what we do, there’s perhaps a higher number of chargebacks, complaints and requests for refunds that earmarked our little niche as problematic.”
And that certainly could be an issue. When you’re selling services and not products, it’s far easier for unscrupulous traders to muscle in....
MORE: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_...73821.html