Anyone else being disqualified from star seller wrongly?

[ShawnaLaneCreations]

For the last several months, I have been disqualified from star seller for supposedly taking longer than 24 hours to respond to messages. I believe in my entire Etsy career, there have been less than 10 times I've taken more than 24 hours to respond. I pride myself on being quick to answer messages, even if they do not require me to say anything. You can see in my feedback that people are happy about my response times. I was confused the first couple of months this happened, and now for at least the 3rd month, I 100% believe it is wrong. Is this happening to anyone else? I haven't gone so far as to comb through every message for tangible proof, but it's on my very long to-do list. I just know for a fact that I get anxious having unanswered messages, so I'd never let them sit longer than it takes me to sleep a few hours at night. 

[PlatypusDream]

Download your files and see what you missed.

Don’t lose sleep - set an auto reply. You’ll never miss another message if you remember to reset it every 5 days.

[ShawnaLaneCreations]

How do you download files to see that? I'd never remember to do something every 5 days, in all honesty. lol. I have a bad memory and ADHD, which is why I get anxiety having unanswered messages. I check my messages before I even get out of bed, and when I go to bed and am settling down for the night. That's at least twice a day, and most days, several times during the day as well. I answer them when I see them so I don't forget or get distracted by something else. 

[LaRenaissanceGirl]

@ShawnaLaneCreations 

I've tried to remember the auto-reply thing every 5 days and I can't either, lol. I don't have ADHD, but I do have a 4 year old who is not in school yet. So, I'm constantly getting distracted against my will haha! What I do is set the business hours auto reply. That way, if someone messages you outside of your business hours, it will do an auto reply and you never have to reset it. It's worked every time for me. Good luck!

[audreytherese]

It seems to happen most often when the message is from another seller that the shop has purchased from, as many sellers believe it's only potential customer messages that require a response. Do you respond to any message you receive from shops you have purchased from?

[ShawnaLaneCreations]

I respond to every message of every kind, even spam to ask them to stop messaging me. lol

[TheHomespunLoft]

@ShawnaLaneCreations 

Go into your Star Seller page and on the right hand side there is a link to download your message history.. find where they are wrong and you are right and send them a message to correct it. Remember about time zones tho too. 

Set yourself a timer if you think you will miss a message and reset the auto reply every week or what ever the max time frame is. After a while it seems like it would be just routine.

[ACertainFeel]

You probably ignored a spam message or answered someone in the order page and not the message. Missing one can take you out for 3 months if you don’t have a lot. Mark as spam after the fact if they will let you. 

[WitticismsRus]

Also remember that the messaging system messages are different system than the financial systems for like adding a note on the refund page. So if someone sent a help request in messages to cancel an order and you canceled and refunded and just added a note on the refund/cancel page that doesn't count as a reply to the actual help request in messages system. They are 2 different systems and the star seller bits only count replies in the messaging system not the financial refund system. Hope that makes sense.

[TBQSC]

Business hours auto reply … set it (once) & forget it … one of the best tools Etsy has created for sellers!  🥳  

[BagmakerSupply]

@ShawnaLaneCreations: You need to check the applicable CSV file available on your Star Seller page (previous period for January Star)? When you look at the file remember that that the dates / times are in UTC (not your time zone), only the first message of a new incoming thread is included (all that counts for Star Seller), and usually a new incoming thread is not included until after the 24 hour reply window has passed regardless of when you replied. Star Seller stats (and the CSV file) seem to be updated only once per day so there may be an additional day's delay. It is simple math to see if the response was within 24 hours of the message. There is also a link to the actual message thread so you can verify if the data is correct or not.