Messages - copy help request sent after resolution

[PumpjackPiddlewick]

Hello 

I am having an on-going 'discussion' with customer service about a GLITCH in the Etsy message system. I would love love love to have an actual person take a look and see what is happening. Not a band-aid response to the gloss.

I had a customer request help regarding non-delivery of a package. This was dealt with and notified as satisfactory by the customer.

AND THEN there was a REPEAT request, an EXACT COPY of the original help request email from well before the resolution, sent through after all was sorted.

As this was resolved, eg the customer said they received the package they hadn't received, the copy message was ignored.

And I was penalised for not responding to the very obvious glitch in a copy being produced. 

Customer service were duly contacted, twice. And in both times all they focused on was the 'Star Seller' and how I should set up an automated response (already done). No mention was made or even commented on the fact that the second help message came AFTER all was resolved.

Customer Service is of no service if it does not address the actual issue.

Still waiting for response on the actual issue to hand.

Has anyone else had this problem?

[TonsOfPaper · Accepted solution]

Hello there,

Messages from the same buyer will now be consolidated into fewer threads. However, when a buyer reaches out via the Help With Order request, a new thread will be created which needs a response separately. A buyer can open a Help Request message once per order. These types of message threads need to be responded to in 24 hours to be counted positively toward your Star Seller score. New threads will now have notification badges showing if a message is a buyer’s first time contacting you, or a new help with an order request. 

For more information about this, you may check out the Message Response rate section in this Help Article.

Thank you very much!

[ReImagineBrewing]

HOWEVER, Help messages do NOT show up on the ORDER PAGE at all. You click on messages and they aren't there. The only way to know if a customer sent a help message prior to starting an order is to search in the message page by that customer's order number Prior to working on the order AND Prior to shipping it just in case they put in a request before the item is shipped.

How does this make sense? Aren't these the most important messages? Don't these impact the order? Then even if you didn't approve a change a customer requested Etsy will force a refund because you made the item to what was in the receipt BUT because a change was sent in a message that DOES NOT LINK to the order the order then is wrong. 

I've had about 10 changes after the fact and the items were DONE. Who is going to pay for these to be remade? About $1k lost.

My shop has a strict change process to put in a new order and request the first one to be cancelled. This way, a star shows up as a repeat buyer and we check to see if two orders are open. The new order is what the customer really wants and we cancel the first one.

Recently, Etsy refunded a customer's order that we had started due to them wanting a change. The item was not scheduled to ship yet and was done. A finish modification would be needed if they wanted a different finish, requiring a new purchase to insure the order matched what was made, no chance of a case being opened. Well, Etsy gave them a refund and we are sitting with a finished product and the customer won't re-purchase.

Your HELP MESSAGE system is BAD. These messages need to be visible On The Order Page. They are Not no matter what you try to do. This creates horrible customer service or constant searching for every order on both the order page and message page to make sure nothing is missed. Then after the fact a change comes in that is still missed and somehow it is the shop's fault and not Etsy. Etsy made this bad change.

[TwoOaksTrading]

I just had a similar issue, I had an established convo thread with a customer. That customer sent me a help request. I clicked on the order link on the right hand screen and submitted a request to send a return label to the customer, I have to type a message in order to submit the return label which I did, but the Etsy algorithm ATTACHED THAT MESSAGE AND THE RETURN LABEL TO THE ORIGINAL CONVO, NOT THE HELP REQUEST CONVO. I thought the issue was resolved until I saw that I had a convo that went unanswered. I RESPONDED AND RESOVED THE ISSUE WITHIN 30 MINUTES OF RECIEVENG THE HELP REQUEST. So now I lost my star seller status because of this, through no fault of my own. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@PumpjackPiddlewick: Not disagreeing with you, but the short answer is that the Star Seller metric is that the FIRST message of a NEW thread must be replied to within 24 hours. 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.

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.