I’m not sure what all the furor is about with this blue message. The intent is clearly to warn people that a message is from a buyer account. I.e. NOT from an Etsy staff person, no matter what the message may say, or if the account has “Etsy” as part of their user name, or an avatar that looks like an Etsy badge. It’s a blue message ribbon - take it as a reminder to be aware, then move on with your day.
Lots of sellers, especially new sellers, don’t/ didn’t know about the “from Etsy” folder, or that it’s not available in the app. Because the scammers focus on brand new sellers who hardly yet know up from down here, flagging individual messages like this is one of the few ways to alert new sellers that all may not be what it appears to be.
It’s not linked to Star Seller. You won’t get dinged unless you ignore the VERY FIRST message from that account by not responding or sending it to spam. I was part of the initial test last week and had several threads with customers where this blue ribbon displayed. I did not always write the last message on those chains, and my on-time message response rate is still 100%
Could the implementation have been a bit better? Probably, but at least they’re trying to rein in these scammers a bit. There seem to be far fewer distressed newbies lately coming to the forum with sad tales of being scammed.
