24 Hour Message Response Miscalculation

[ThreeTurtlesCo]

Hi! I am a star seller for September and on track to be one for October however, the system is saying that I didn't respond to a message within 24 hours. When I downloaded my chat history, I realized that the message Etsy "thinks" I didn't respond to was not from a potential buyer. It was from a seller telling ME thank you for purchasing their file. How do I fix this? 

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@ThreeTurtlesCo  :  There are innumerable threads about this on this forum.  Etsy has been very clear and consistent about messages / convos from the very beginning of the Star Seller program. The Star Seller metric is that the FIRST message of a NEW thread must be replied to within 24 hours. It does not matter who sent it, the subject matter, if it is a duplicate or blank or anything else. If it is SPAM then it should be marked as such. Those have always been the rules.

Subsequent messages from the same account (a buyer may have multiple accounts) are supposed to be combined into a single thread. Help Requests always start a new thread. By the way, if you are creating a custom listing based on a new thread, you still need to reply to the message. Etsy is now putting a blue text warning / advisory on those messages they consider to be a "new message" but should semantically be called a "new thread".

At least for the time being, it appears that marking an unanswered message as SPAM (even after the 24 hour deadline has passed) will cause your reply percentage to change in a day or two if the original message was within the current star seller period.

If you have not yet done so, you might want to read https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403058372503-How-to-Become-a-Star-Seller?segment=selling

[ThreeTurtlesCo]

Okay thank you.

[NanaLetha]

All messages not just some must be responded to.

[vintageNCtreasures]

Etsy doesn't know if a message is from a buyer, another seller or a friend, ALL messages need replied too.

[DesignsbyCher]

Set up the auto-reply feature so that you don't miss any replies to the initial message... once you do, any more back and forth messaging is not counted for or against your star seller rating. But honestly, don't take it too seriously ... you should hold yourself to the high standards they have set for a star seller. Keeping your customers satisfied and happy shouldn't depend on a purple star. The only thing I've changed is to set up the auto-reply for messages, because my Etsy emails which are supposed to notify me of convos/messages is sorely lacking and mostly non-existent since I don't spend every waking hour online or in my shop... I'm busy filling orders.