Message Response Rate Negatively Impacted by Messages from Sellers

[LunaSundara]

Hi

I sometimes use my seller account to make purchases on Etsy. I noticed my message response rate has been negatively impacted when not responding to a message from a seller. I make sure to respond to all of my buyer's messages, but I did not know that Etsy deducts from my response rate when I did not respond to a seller. The seller sent me an update about my order and specifically said in the message that I did not need to respond to the message. How can I appeal this?

[NanaLetha]

There is nothing to appeal. You get 3 choices - respond, ignore or mark as spam.

[CappuccinoLace]

You can't.

[VintageRescueSquad]

Their metrics are clear that all first messages must have a response (or you can mark it as spam).

Etsy has also stated that they will not manually change any badge determinations. 

You can mark it as spam now, and it might go away

[LolaLovesJewelleryCo]

You can not appeal! Same thing happened to me - a seller messaged me saying they were having a sale, I looked at their shop but did not reply to their message. Response rate dropped and I lost my Star Seller badge. Contacted Etsy support and was advised to set up an automated reply to prevent this from happening again.

[bradgoodell]

Sorry you were blind-sided by this.  You might try marking it as Spam now, and your score will adjust in about 24 hours.

In the future, either reply or mark as Spam.  

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@LunaSundara:  Probably almost everyone on this forum can sympathize with you but as it says right on your Star Seller page, you need to reply to the FIRST message of EVERY NEW INCOMING THREAD. 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.

Etsy is now putting a blue text warning / advisory (blue banner on desktop, and a blue dot on mobile) on those messages they consider to be a "new message" but should semantically be called a "new thread".

Subsequent messages from the same account (a buyer may have multiple accounts) are supposed to be combined into a single thread - but there are exceptions.

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.

If the unanswered message is not a Help Request, 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.

[CraftyAcai]

Hello,

Can you please fix this? this is insane ask when as buyers for fellow etsy sellers have to respond to a blanket request (Such as a review for what we just bought or an update).

This rule should be revised and only apply to incoming threads from buyers or future buyers not people we have bought from. This is what we are paying for in the first place more so with the increase in fees. Why are we paying so much in fees for something as simple as a 'please review my product' from a fellow seller can kick us off the star seller list? I barely get 1-2 messages a month. A single missed message can kick me off the star list for -months-. 

These don't require a response 90% of the time. It actually makes me not want to shop on etsy as a buyer which is again insane. 

[ThePurplePuppy]

@CraftyAcai 

There is nothing to "fix"--it is working exactly the way Etsy intended. No one at Etsy sits and reads every message to see if it is from a seler or a buyer or even a spammer or scammer. All they say is you MUST respond to all first messages or mark them as spam.

You can set up auto reply if you do not wish to have to do this  mannually with every message.

[junkbay]

There was an Etsy glitch this month, where they screwed up and said I didn't respond, but I in fact did. What ETSY did was put the customer question in another thread. So Etsy is not infallible, and of course it can't be fixed. 

[WitticismsRus]

@CraftyAcai 

The system is completely automated and doesn't know if the message is from a buyer or another seller. It isn't reading every message and making a decision if it's from a seller or a customer or what it's about. It's a computer program that calculates data. It just sees a message and calculates the response time data. That's just how it works.

Bottom line...you have to either reply or mark as spam.

You can open a buyer only account and make purchases with that account or you can set up an auto reply every 5 days.

Etsy provides tools for sellers to use , it's up to us to use them.

[HazelsSewingSupplies]

*&%@ zombie messages!

[HazelsSewingSupplies]

Read the rules - You must reply to all new messages whether from Buyer or Seller - loosely translated, but that's what it says in black and white.

OR, you can send them to spam and risk insulting a prospective buyer.

[LunaSundara]

Thank you all for the responses. I will do my best to get the score back up. 

[BeadyiBoutique]

Same thing happened to me. I saw that someone on this thread reported that they were advised to add an auto reply message. I will try this out to see if it works in case this occurs again. 

[LunaSundara]

Yes I am trying the auto-reply method now. 

[OmasFabricStash]

Your message rate wasn’t hurt by messages from sellers, it was hurt because you didn’t respond. The seller did nothing wrong and their message has nothing to do with your response rate. You didn’t respond, like the rules say, so you got dinged. 

[LunaSundara]

Yes I understand that now. I just wrongly assumed that the response rate was calculated by responses to my customers and not my responses to a seller I was purchasing from.

[HazelsSewingSupplies]

That's why it's better to read the rules than to assume anything.  Etsy kind of made it plain in the beginning that you reply to all new messages - whether from buyer or seller and that's the way it has always been.

[LunaSundara]

Well said and lesson learned. Thank you for your input.

[CraftyAcai]

I read every message but I don't buy a lot so color me shocked when I get a warning about responding from something I bought and not a future or current buyer. I have commissions and have to respond quickly or people who have questions for the work I do. 

So at the end of the day why is my BUYER inbox the same as my SELLER inbox? They should not be the same and should be separated. 

With the amount of money they spend on marketing, they can spend the money in separating the two inboxes. I am actually not OK with this and just because 'its the rules' doesn't mean it can't be revised or fixed.  

[ThePurplePuppy]

@CraftyAcai 

You are aware you are responding to people who posted over 2 months ago? I doubt anyone will read and answer this--I just happened to stumble on it and tried to help you out. IF you really want answers from a lot of people you need to star a NEW thread of your own.

And you will get the same replies I gave you . "There is nothing to fix", therefore Etsy will not fix it--they don;t even fix things that are broken!

[CraftyAcai]

That's a good point. Etsy is so broken but now I am just going to shop elsewhere and hopefully find the seller on other platforms. 

And reason why I'm on an old thread is because I didn't want to create a fresh one but it seems its jumped to life with my complaints. Why I even came here is there was no support line or complaint box for etsy to go to. 

The more people are saying its automated and defending etsy has me a bit ??. I'll most likely get ready to move to another platform because now its just disheartening. 

They have already changed StarSeller several times because of complaints, I think as a community we should raise our voices and make a bit of a stink instead of just accepting this. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@CraftyAcai: "So at the end of the day why is my BUYER inbox the same as my SELLER inbox?" Because you choose for it to be so by buying and selling from the same account. We have buyers from whom we also purchase - how would any specific message get allocated then? Do you want some bot reading every one of your messages and guessing? How many threads would there be in this forum that "some bot incorrectly classified my message"?

[CraftyAcai]

I want to ask you why are you OK with that then? Its not about bots or about things being shifting/sorted through. I'm asking why can't we as a community ask etsy to fix their faulty system. We pay so much in fees and receive to what I can say is the ONLY benefit of being on etsy tax allocation to the states we sell in for the US.  

This actually makes me not want to shop on etsy as a buyer and support my fellow sellers. How is that helpful? How is that buyer and seller focus and friendly like they advocate to be? 

Why can't we ask for better as sellers AND buyers. 

I actually hate that I get messages on my seller account from places I buy from.  They can do so much with websites that having a seller/buyer account is not an impossible lift or ask. 

What actually baffles me are the people who are just OK with it without asking for more.