Check your SPAM Folders!!

[TheRusticNest13]

!!! SELLERS CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDERS !!! Last week I opened a new message in the middle of the night on my phone that I wasn't prepared to answer right away. I went to mark it as "unread" so that I would remember to follow up the next morning. This is something I do often so I tapped the 3 little dots in the top right hand corner and then hastily tapped the top button which up until recently has been the “Mark Unread” button. A warning pop up screen came up saying that the message had been marked as SPAM and the user would be blocked. I immediately panicked so I rushed to my computer to message customer service to see if they could help me get the message back and noticed that there was a SPAM folder. Luckily the message was there and I was able to mark it as “not SPAM” and move it back to the inbox. However, I was shocked to see that along with that message there were several other messages in there as well that had been sent 4-5 days earlier. None of the messages were SPAM. They were all messages from potential new customers that had questions they wanted answers to before placing their orders. One was a very large time sensitive order that had been sitting in there for 5 days. Needless to say, the customer moved on and went elsewhere and now won’t even respond to any message I send her. I also noticed that all of these messages were counted against me for Star Seller which I did not get this month. Since then, I have accidentally marked several messages as SPAM because I cannot get used to the mark as SPAM button being on top. Every time I go there to move the message back to my inbox there are new messages that have been sent to the SPAM folder that are not SPAM.  It is totally unacceptable that messages are being sent there automatically that are not SPAM. I never receive actual SPAM messages in Etsy anyway so I'm not sure why this is all of a sudden something that is happening. Why is that button even on top to begin with? Our shop has decreased greatly in sales over the last several years making it almost impossible to even stay in business and when we lose an order that would have made us almost $1,000.00 it's really frustrating that we missed it because of a glitch on their end that caused us to lose the sale altogether. Not to mention my shop now doesn't have Star Seller for an entire month because they’re holding it against me for not answering those messages. I have messaged customer support before coming here to post this so hopefully they get it fixed. Although I see several other people have been having the same issues for weeks now and obviously it hasn’t been fixed since this just started for me over the last week or so. Another friend of mine that sells on Etsy said she also had messages in her SPAM folder that were not SPAM. 

[peacefrogdesigns]

Thanks for the heads-up. Just checked my spam folder and there was a message from 3 days ago from someone inquiring about a large order I've likely missed out on now. Hopefully it's just a glitch but I'll definitely be checking my spam folder daily from now on.

[TheRusticNest13]

Such  bummer. I hope you still get the sale.

[DaysofYoreTreasures]

This bug has been ongoing since at least March 19.
This is the one and only response we have had from Etsy in the Forums, dated March 20.
Hello,
Thank you for reporting -  This doesn't appear to be impacting all members, but we've got a team investigating just to be safe.
In any case, please file a support request by visiting help.etsy.com and a member of our team will be assisting you shortly. Just click “I Still Need Help” if none of the options apply to you. 
https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Non-spam-ends-up-directly-in-Spam-folder/m-p/14510807...

Sellers are losing sales because of it! I am flabbergasted.

[MED505]

I've lost two sales since March.

[VenusComplete]

Technical issues do occur in the live environment, though you hope they did sufficient testing before pushing whatever update caused this issue live, or it could have been an unexpected result of something else. It sucks, but it does happen. We can all be reasonable and understand that.

The real issue here is communication. This isn't something any seller has needed to be concerned about in the past. I certainly never had this issue since 2019.

Etsy can post banners to our dashboards, or send emails to sellers. As far as I am aware, there has been no attempt to notify sellers of a 'potential' issue that could be occurring since almost a month ago. 

Instead, we are all finding this out in various ways and many sellers are still likely unaware of the issue. Even worse, if you only use the app you don't see the Spam folder (to my knowledge).

Not only have many sellers lost sales, but lost relationships with customers for recurring/future sales. I'm sure not all customers believe us when we say we never saw the message because it was in the spam folder.

Regardless, when a bug is introduced into the live environment, those working in that environment need to be made aware of the issue. The lack of communication around this issue is very concerning given how great the impact can be, and has been to many sellers.

I don't know of any valid excuse for how this was handled.

[TheRusticNest13]

Agree. You'd think they'd care too b/c they're losing money as well.

[MED505]

I just noticed three new messages were sent immediately to spam and I've missed out on two sales. I sent the screen shots to Etsy, but I've been reading so many bad things Etsy is doing. I'm hoping they fix any internal issues.

[Sawdusted]

Thank you so much Rustic Nest 13 and all who offered information regarding this issue.  When I checked my Spam Folder I did have a potential customer asking about a custom sign.  I got back to him immediately but his message was sent five days ago so I don't blame him if he doesn't respond.

I hope no one else misses any sales.  I have certainly added checking my Etsy Spam Folder to my daily 'things to do'.

Take care and wishing everyone happy sales.

Lynn @ Sawdusted

[DoorMattersCT]

Thank you so much for this!  I just looked and sure enough there was one message.  Luckly it was 'only' 5 days old.  I immediately reached out and may now make a sale from that message. I will continue to check spam!

[CreativeMonsoonParty]

Wow yup about 7 messages in there that are not spam

[HalfSweetSwaps]

Thank you for posting about this!

Etsy seemed to have fixed the issue, but not until I missed 20 (!!!) messages in Spam. How do you think that affects our Star Seller, or potential Star Seller, ratings? NOT well. Etsy has continued to tell me in email that they have fixed the issue, but that doesn't help the lingering damage from missed sales and massive dings on the communication piece of Star Seller.

Etsy Support asked me to post about this here on forums, that there would be nothing that calling Etsy Support could do to help. Feeling very discouraged.

[UniqueByHoneyB]

Happened to me too.

A customer had messaged an address change, it went to spam so I sent flowers to previous wring address. She was annoyed and messaged me 3x then from another profile which I received.

I had no idea the problem, she thought I was lying and I refunded full amount.

I contacted customer services and found out about this spam folder issue.

Sent screen shots of their convo to customer and called her down and insisted Etsy refund me, which they did.

I wish they would leave things alone, I don't need them monitoring my messages!!