Ugh, I am so sorry that happened to you! I have heard about Etsy doing this to people, so I never joined. I had enough trouble with RedBubble. My theory is that they simply don’t want new accounts because so many people are trying to open shops. The best route is to have your own website where you control everything, but it’s very hard to get traffic. I gave up on POD. It’s a lot of work for little return.