Message Response Rate Miscalculation

[GoldMountainCo]

I am a 4 month old shop working very hard to provide excellent customer service to my buyers. I have 2/3 badges for star seller, but have a big hit on my message reply rate because of a seller messaging me with a promotional code for a purchase I made to their shop previously. This was not someone interacting with my shop and therefore, I did not reply. Why would a marketing message from some other shop be included in my customer service evaluation?

That is the only message I did not reply to within the required 24 hours to have the badge. 

Can this be removed?

[NanaLetha]

The criteria for star seller is very clear. Reply to all messages or mark as spam.

[StitchyFrood]

It's not a miscalculation and it won't be removed. We all have one messaging system per account and Star Seller requires every message to receive a reply or be sent to spam. You may still be able to spam that message now. It won't hurt to try spamming it and see if your Star Seller stats update tomorrow. 

[SugarTaffySoap]

@GoldMountainCo    Many have done the same thing you did (not respond). Here is what Etsy Staff says: 

"The Message response rate counts initial messages from all Etsy members, both buyers, and other sellers. This is because fellow sellers could be potential buyers for your shop. If it's not a spam message it requires a response within 24 hours. If it is a spam message you can mark it as such and it won't count towards your score."

[HouseofWhisperingFir]

This has become such an issue with sellers !!!

I'm not sure why they do not understand that ALL messages on an initial thread have to be responded to.  ALL !!!!

Either respond to the message or send to spam.  How difficult it this???

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@GoldMountainCo: Probably almost everyone on this forum can sympathize with you but a quick search would show you innumerable threads about your exact issue.

The Star Seller metric is that the FIRST message of a NEW thread must be replied to (or marked as spam) within 24 hours. 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.

If you are creating a custom listing based on a new thread, you still need to reply to the message.

Cancellation requests in a new thread must be replied to in the actual message - replies using the cancellation form do not count as a response.

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. Note that subsequent messages from that account may go directly to the SPAM folder.

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