User.shop throws a NilClass error without code change

[jetblackstar]

So on a system that has remained unchanged for months, this exception started coming up today.

I've not fully ruled out the user doing something but I don't think they could have broken this.

Getting the following exception on Console as an example. (validusername is obviously not a real username/id)

Etsy.user('validusername').shop

NoMethodError: undefined method `associated_shops' for nil:NilClass
        from /home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/etsy-0.3.3/lib/etsy/user.rb:80:in `shops'
        from /home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/etsy-0.3.3/lib/etsy/user.rb:46:in `shop'
        from (irb):12
        from /home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/railties-4.0.2/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:90:in `start'
        from /home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/railties-4.0.2/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:9:in `start'
        from /home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/railties-4.0.2/lib/rails/commands.rb:62:in `<top (required)>'
        from bin/rails:4:in `require'
        from bin/rails:4:in `<main>'

Etsy.user('validusername') does return a valid Etsy::User response.

But looking into the code of the Etsy Gem,
etsy/user.rb;

          options = {:fields => 'user_id', :includes => 'Shops'}
          options = options.merge(:access_token => token, :access_secret => secret) if (token && secret)
          tmp = User.find(username, options)
          @shops = tmp.associated_shops.map { |shop| Shop.new(shop) }

Its tmp.associated_shops that is throwing the NilClass.
My guess is Shops is recently no longer is being allowed to include in the Etsy API? Or rather its just not returning a result to tmp in this query?

I've personally written around this issue by changing any calls of Etsy.user('validusername').shop to instead call Etsy::Shop.find('validshopid') which is probably a better way to directly access shop. But I wanted to flag this up.