Hi - I am trying to regain my star seller status, and Etsy shows my message response rate as 50% or 0%. I reached out to an Etsy cust svc agent and he said there are no messages. "After deeply investigated, it looks like in the last 3 months any messages have been answered". And "I have checked it with my support and from our side it looks normal..."
There are several messages in my Etsy inbox that I responded to ASAP, recent (this month, last month, etc).
And lastly, I did not get a notification that I had a message in my inbox from 3 days ago, either.
So now there are several issues with my Etsy messages.
Set an automated message response to catch the ones you miss or aren't notified of.
Not a perfect solution, but it may help.
@ThreadgoodeClothing: First, keep in mind that the Star Seller metric is NOT all new Messages but only the first Message of all new incoming threads.
You can confirm the response percentage by checking the applicable CSV file available on your Customer Service page (previous period for February 1st 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) are updated only once per day so there may be an additional day's delay. There is also a link to the actual message thread so you can verify if the data is correct or not.
Unfortunately any notification system can fail, the general advice is to check a shop at least once daily for Messages and Orders via a browser,