The way Etsy is calculating their Star Seller percentages fails to take into account a number of important considerations that really need to be addressed first...
I sell both custom and non-custom prints. My shipping ‘guarantee’ is 1 Business Day. My non-custom prints are shipped without fail within 1 Business Day, the majority are shipped same working day (no brownie points for that apparently).
The custom orders involve me creating artwork and sending proofs to the buyer to approve prior to shipping owing to the nature of a custom order and the buyers’ propensity to want to make changes to their artwork once they’ve seen the proofs. Despite this, these orders are always 100% ready to ship within 1 business day, usually within an hour of the buyer placing their order (even at weekends).
Issues the Etsy platform fails to take into consideration when calculating their Star Seller percentages
Overseas Orders
I’m based in the UK and often get custom orders from the US, Canada and Australia which means an order from these locations may arrive in the middle of the night UK time owing to the time difference between the respective countries. This should mean that the 1 Business Day dispatch takes the order location and local order time into consideration but it doesn’t.
Currently, these orders are expected to be shipped same day based on UK time which is not actually possible for some custom orders from the US, Canada and Australia because the buyer needs to approve the proofs I send them which isn’t always possible before the same day last post.
Example
Order received from the US at 04:37, Tue, 22 Jun, 2021
Etsy’s expected 1 Business Day shipping date for this order, Tue, 22 Jun, 2021
Which for me means shipping the same day, not in 1 Business Day in UK time. Had this been an order from the UK at 04:37, Tue, 22 Jun, 2021, the expected shipping date on Etsy would be Wed, 23 Jun, 2021. This issue really needs to be addressed.
If the order is a non-custom one I still ship same day because there is no back and forth between me and the buyer (all UK custom orders are shipped same day where possible based on the time of the order) or next day when ordered after the last post, however with overseas custom orders the time difference doesn’t always facilitate this with Etsy’s perception of 1 Business Day. I will still send the buyer proofs within an hour for all UK orders and within two or three hours for US, Canadian and Australian orders if ordered in the middle of the night.
If the overseas buyer responds quickly the order will go out same day however, sometimes the buyer can take two or three days to reply so I can’t update the shipping date because I have no idea when the buyer will reply as Etsy only allows the shipping date to be updated on any order once. In these instances, I always send follow up emails and Etsy messages daily until I hear back from the buyer (on a couple of occasions I never actually heard back from the buyer despite them providing an email address). This can therefore mean that an order can appear to be shipped after 1 Business Day in Etsy’s eyes despite me having been in constant contact with the buyer throughout the whole process so they know exactly the status of their order and when their order will ship.
If I were to update the shipping date prior to hearing back from the buyer to meet the 1 Business Day guarantee I run the risk of the shipping date still being incorrect and being unable to update it a second time.
UK Bank Holidays
Etsy fails to take into account UK Bank Holidays, so if I get an order the day before a Bank Holiday, the expected Etsy shipping date falls on the Bank Holiday when the Post Office is closed and there is no postal service in the UK. We shouldn't have to manually update the shipping date for these orders or be penalised when in reality they are not shipping late at all i.e. they are still shipped in 1 Business Day.
Message Response Rate
Firstly, as mentioned by others, who is going to respond to Spam messages and why should anyone be penalised for not doing so?
Secondly, sometimes there will be up to 20 or so messages back and forth between myself and the buyer regarding a custom order and they are always informed regarding the status of their order and when it will be shipped and again once their order has shipped. I then follow up a few days later to ensure their order arrived in a timely fashion and in one piece.
Sometimes a message from a buyer may end up being a simple confirmation to my question and is a message that doesn’t require a follow-up…
Example
Me: Hi Lisa,
I just wanted to make sure your Custom Star Map print arrived with you safely. I hope you love your print and that it will take pride of place in Georgia's dressing room once you've been able to surprise her with it... :-).
Best wishes
Simon
Buyer: Hi it's brilliant thank you. Yes, it'll look fantastic, can't wait to give it to her. Many thanks again, Lisa
This last Etsy message from the buyer doesn’t require a further reply, this isn’t a ‘No you put the phone down’ situation, the conversation has to end at some point and sometimes the last message comes from the buyer rather than from myself.
Equally, for custom orders, I always notify the buyer via email that I’ve sent their proofs. Quite often the email address the buyer has registered with Etsy is not an email address they use day to day so I always request an email address from them so I can notify them once their proofs are ready to view (which I send via Etsy). This is particularly true with guest buyers. In around 90% of cases if I send proofs via Etsy to a guest buyer they will message me back saying they don’t have an account or that they can’t find my message or their proofs and subsequently ask me to send them directly via email.
Sometimes a buyer will respond both via email and Etsy message which can result in the conversation continuing via email when the buyer appears to prefer this and mean there is no need to send a duplicate Etsy message in reply to their duplicate Etsy message.
On-time Dispatch and Tracking
I have a rating of 79%, 7 orders missing tracking info - my non-custom UK orders are sent using Royal Mail 1st class post which is a non-tracked service, this keeps shipping costs as reasonable as possible for the buyer. The buyer has the option to upgrade to either Signed For 1st class or Special Delivery both of which are tracked but are also more expensive (especially Special Delivery).
I have 0 orders missing processing time and 0 orders dispatched late. We should not be being penalised for sending an order using the service requested by the buyer just because Royal Mail don’t provide tracking for that service? Etsy needs to understand how Royal Mail works, this is the UK not the US (we’ve only recently stopped using pigeons for delivery).
Etsy’s Estimated Shipping Dates
Example
Order from the US: Tue, 22 Jun, 2021, 15:20
Etsy Dispatch Date: Wed, 23 Jun, 2021
Etsy Estimated delivery: 25 Jun -12 Jul
Not ever in the history of shipping to the US has any order arrived in two days, we’re sometimes lucky if 1st class domestic post arrives in two days in the UK so why are Etsy misinforming buyers about the potential earliest delivery date, especially in the run-up to Christmas?
I’ve previously queried this with Etsy to be told ‘these are the times given to us by Royal Mail’.
Quote from the Royal Mail website, “International Tracked Post - Delivery aim 5 to 7 working days” and that’s an aim, not a guarantee. The average (non-pandemic) delivery to the US is 10 working days. Etsy really need to change this, yes I’m aware I could do this manually but this is an Etsy issue that really needs to be addressed on their platform.
