Tindie maintenance

[Mark T]

Tindie has been showing Maintenance underway for at least a week, does anyone using it for selling have any update on whats happening?

[Richard Deane]

Google search shows a lot of user heartache and sensible bitching about bad IT practices. It should have been  a flip over to new system or backout. Weekend at max. 

They never sensibly responded to user requests for VAT/GST/MWT  (sales tax -ish for international users) .

.

My supposition is that they are overstretched and with tariffs etc going belly up. One can hope they survive and improve.

Richard

On Tue, 21 Apr 2026 at 20:09, Mark T <mark...@gmail.com> wrote:

Tindie has been showing Maintenance underway for at least a week, does anyone using it for selling have any update on whats happening?

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[Bill McMullen]

I've been selling on Tindie for about five years now and have received absolutely *ZERO* correspondence from them about this outage.  I know there is at least one outstanding purchaser of my products who has likely paid for the items but I can't access that order and/or the shipping details.  Even if I had that info, there is still the issue that I couldn't receive payment until I could access the website to report the actual shipment and request payment.

An absolute mess with a disastrous response!

I was disappointed when Tindie couldn't deal with the EU VAT changes, let alone provide any options or guidance for foreign sellers dealing with USA purchasers and the new tariffs.  Since Siemes bought Supplyframe (including Tindie & Hackaday) in 2021 for $700M, there really doesn't appear to have been any notable changes or enhancements to the Tindie site.  The longer this outage goes on, the more likely that sellers will be moving to other more reliable platforms that also assist with the practical issues that sellers face.  I know that I will be winding down my involvement with Tindie.

[Steve Cousins]

I agree. I've been trading on Tindie for about 8 years and find the service lacking.

I received no warning of this supposed "scheduled maintenance". It looks more like a major system failure than "scheduled maintenance"

Tindie's failure to implement EU VAT collection (which I thought was a legal requirement for online market places) and to handle USA tariffs is not a good look.

I have other stores and I'm tempted to close my Tindie store.

Steve 

[Dean Netherton]

I have worked on and number of large scale web systems - well large by Australian standards... The idea that your site can have a greater than 1 week maintenance period is ridiculous - the very definition of gas-lighting...

Their social media person, after a couple of days, eventually posted on their mastodon account - that they were not ware of what was happening - and would try and find out.  The social media person, after days of outage, was left in the dark as to what was going on!  To then come back and try and convince a bunch of techies that this was all part of a plan - that a new website was coming soon - to be patient - beggars belief.

Latest post - a few days ago now - was they were almost done - "doing final testing" - and all will be wonderful!

Huh!  Final testing - on production - what?

Just my personal guesses/speculations:

* The dev team, if one even exists, has been seriously under-invested for years - seems to have no technical leadership or required level of competent to operate a web site like Tindie.

* Perhaps they experienced a breach.  I feel like there has been an uptick in hacking/breaching of websites globally - but specifically US based sites -  since the start of war in the middle east started.  Were the team's security practices sufficiently disciplined enough?  Was the site and infrastructure reviewed and patched regularly?

* Perhaps it just 'crashed'.  From my recent experience with the site - its stability was slowly declining - getting 504 - timeouts, etc.  And their forum was being overwhelmed with spam - making that, next to useless to use.

* Whatever this maintenance or migration is - there appears to be no rollback plan - no way to keep the old system running and switch over when ready.

* Backups that can not be restored are not backups!  Have they had issues with their database?  Did they attempt a migration, screw up the the DB - and now are buggered!  Or did the DB just die - and say "I am out of here!"

* Did someone think they could vibe code their way out of this?   I left my job as a web developer because I saw more and more devs 'vibe' coding and making lots of technical debt and mess - I didn't want to be involved in that approach - so left the industry.  I don't know on this one - I doubt it - but these days - the stories I hear!

* Not only has their main site been offline, so has their forum and blog sites - I would have expected these sites to be on separate infrastructure - not have the same deployment cycles.  They all went offline at the same time.  Another technical failure? Or a deliberate shutdown to avoid the need to communicate with customers! 

Consequences of long outage:

Paypal: It been over a week now - I assume a lot of buyers have started to claim back their payments.  The Paypal system is probably noting am uptick in chargebacks for the Tindie a/c.  I dont know what Paypal might do in this case - they, and it might happen automatically, block or close Tindie's paypal account.

Google Ranking: at what point will google start to de-list the page ranking Tindie has developed over the years! 

Trust: As a seller - can we ever trust the operators of Tindie to not screw-up again - do we want to risk the reputational damage to our customers again!  Customers may also not fully trust this platform ever again!

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Its all rather sad.  But also kind of weirdly fascinating - to watch a business self-implode and destroy itself...

The only other platform that I know of, that services the same market space - is https://lectronz.com/  

They seem to technically know how to develop and operate a website -- they are small (although they are probably experiencing recent uptick in numbers).  I do think they need a bit more marketing effort -- but maybe if more buyers and sellers move there (that network effect) - it will hit that threshold and come to be the preferred choice.

Now - where's my popcorn......

Dean

[Jeff Greer]

My personal website was compromised recently. I have had the server since 2009 and the website since the early 2000's. (It was an early educational page for my classes.) I am an amateur webmaster. It was last compromised in 2006. Fortunately, I keep backups. 

As the previous poster mentioned, a lot of this has been going around.

Jeff

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/retro-comp/96db8607-a829-44c8-ba94-9c805dbabc38n%40googlegroups.com.

[Steve Cousins]

Tindie's website seems to have been up and running for sales for a few days, but a seller's ability to withdraw funds is currently disabled. They are currently sitting on hundreds of dollars of my sales income that I can't access. No indication of when this will be resolved. I have closed my store until I'm able to withdraw funds.

As a seller I should have received at least an email explaining what is happening. But no. No warning of this  "scheduled maintenance"  and no progress updates. On top of that, Tindie still has not complied with EU VAT laws for market place websites or USA tariffs.

Steve

On Tuesday, 21 April 2026 at 21:31:36 UTC+1 mcmull...@gmail.com wrote:

[Jon Jones]

"Will the last person to logoff the website please turn off the VM"

;)

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[Bill McMullen]

Given the Tindie problem reports still circulating, I'm also choosing to suspend my store.  Most likely I'll actually be closing it down and getting out of supplying systems altogether once I've sold the current inventory.  With issues like Tindie "maintenance", EU VAT and CUSMA vs tariff issues, I've been wasting a LOT of time for very little reward plus a lot of frustration.

My systems are all based on real Zilog HW, including their only Z80-compatible processors still in production, and I've enjoyed making systems that run CP/M at the Z80 equivalent of about 170-195 MHz.  Sadly this change means that one of the very few (only?) assembled & tested 50 MHz eZ80 systems running CP/M will be taken off the market.

My Tindie store will reflect prices and availability of my products, all of which are now discounted.  Inquiries can be made to the email address at the bottom of the various documents noted in the store.

[Jay Cotton]

Not certain what the issue is.  I just looked at Tindie, it seems to be working fine.

What is the problem ?

jc

[Dean Netherton]

Sellers can't get their money owed

Tindie is taking orders and receiving money.  But the sellers are still unable, since the site resume, to get their funds.  It's been disabled 

"Disbursements are currently unavailable. We'll have them back online ASAP and auto payments will resume. If you have any questions, please contact Tindie Support."

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[7alken]

hi guys, I myself was not aware too much during recent few months what's happening in LLM field, but it were THE months of crazines when new and new agentic tools were released or started to be used more, probably, as I understood during only few weeks back, and LAST week was even more drastic; cheap things usable even on local machines released, and huge push of new automated "agentic loops" (if specified well including testing, tools can do automated dev loops "fixing code" until it works by tests, even "almost unattended", brutal, trust me -and I myself don't know how to use it all yet, NO) ... is possible that some overheated something (themselves too) and  while trying to enhance something quickly or use new tools improperly, there my be rather some serious overlooked damage, I don't know, only guessing if some bad things are related just NOW ... that is my feeling from recent developments, because it is really crazy ... fact is that these tools can work in fact very well, probably "too much", but it is like that "fire" finally ... I tried to fetch some info even on that retrobrewcomputers but, found nothing new :( if it was DDoSed/hacked or what ...and here at Tindie - also don't know; only as I am reporting here, if you don't follow what's happening in LLM field, many devs are probably trying new tools but it can be also hard and confusing, initially ... although when learned well, it MAY result in huge help with coding (the blue-collars part), sure not with design/architecture ... no magic in swdev, no no; sad if there can be things related to Tindie also ... grrr

Petr

[Steve Cousins]

I received this email today. This person and the company have little presence on a google search. A little digging suggests "EETree LCC" is possibly a typo and the name should be "EEree LLC". Doesn't inspire confidence. Still can't transfer my balance out of tindie.

Steve


An Update from the New Tindie Team

Dear Tindie Community,

My name is Gongyu Su, and I am writing on behalf of the new Tindie ownership team.

First, we sincerely apologize for the recent downtime and the disruption it caused. We understand that many buyers and community members were left without clear information during the transition, and that this created frustration and concern.

Tindie is now owned by EETree LLC, a Washington State company. Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world.

The recent transition was more complex than expected. Tindie runs on an older technical framework with many connected services, and the migration from the previous operating environment to the new one took longer and caused more disruption than anyone wanted.

We know this was not the experience the Tindie community deserved.

Our immediate focus is to stabilize the platform, resolve payment and order-related issues, and support sellers and buyers through the transition. If you have an order-related concern, please contact Tindie support so the team can review your case directly.

What we are focused on

Stabilizing the platform

Restoring reliable access for buyers, sellers, and the community.

Resolving open issues

Working through payment, refund, and order concerns case by case.

Investing for the long term

Renewing attention, support, and improvements for the community.

We also want to be clear about our long-term intention: we did not take over Tindie to let it fade away. We took it over because we believe it deserves renewed attention, investment, and support.

Tindie has always been more than just a marketplace. It is a place where independent creators, makers, and hardware enthusiasts can share useful products, tools, kits, modules, and ideas with the world. We want to preserve that spirit while improving the platform step by step.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will share more about our plans and will listen carefully to feedback from sellers, buyers, and the broader community.

Contact Tindie Support

For order-related questions, reach us at sup...@tindie.com

Thank you for your patience and continued support. We know trust must be earned through action, and we are committed to doing that.

Sincerely,

Gongyu Su

On behalf of the Tindie Team

[Tadeusz Pycio]

It seems that Tindie has been taken over by a Chinese company. 

Joke - Our designs will now be available on AliExpress XD

[Mark T]

It seems they will keep selling your products but keep the money for themselves. Buyers will be pissed off because you didn’t send them something they paid for.

The old owners and new owners of tindie will be pointing at each other for who has your money.

[Alan Cox]

Your contract is with the old owners who seem indirectly to be Siemens.

So at least they will be worth suing

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[Paul de Bak]

Perhaps what GPT-4o-mini replies to my question *may* help clarify:

You say "Tindie has transitioned to new ownership under EETree LLC" does that mean Siemens no longer owns Tindie ?

Yes, that is correct. Siemens no longer owns Tindie. The platform has transitioned to EETree LLC, which has taken over management and operations. This shift indicates that Siemens has divested its ownership, allowing EETree to focus on revitalizing and enhancing Tindie for the maker community.

[Mark T]

From the last week or two “revitalizing and enhancing” seems to mean enshittification. 

Siemens probably didn’t see Tindie as a profit centre, EETree LLC probably does.

https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/29/tindie-is-back-online-and-now-owned-by-eetree-llc-a-suzhou-fpga-tutor/

[7alken]

scientology-nazi enshittification of the world is in progress since 2014 ua majdan;