Messages moving from order to inbox affecting Star Seller

[KilianCellarDoor]

Hi I have had a problem with Etsy messages and have not been able to convince them that it is a glitch.

I received an order and in the order part it had a message saying - please can you post earlier for me as we need it by Friday.  I was able to respond to the message in messages, so it is the very first message to the buyer in the thread as the original message was attached to the order.  I was able to post and also upgraded the postage so it would get there quicker and managed to do and send this with a couple of hours.  I had then messages from the buyer underneath the first message saying thank you etc..  The item was then gone and done in the first day.

The next day I was in front of my computer when I received the identical message from the order into my inbox and this was about 26 hours after the first response etc.. I replied to the buyer immediately saying, I have received this message again, but we dealt with it yesterday and it has been sent.  She replied saying she hadn't sent any message and she had no idea what had happened.  I thanked her etc..

A day or two later I saw that my 100% message rate had dropped to 95%.  I had a look and this repeated message was coming up as the issue.  When checking - the original message that was attached to the order had disappeared and had been resent the following day in some kind of glitch and Etsy was treating the repeated duplicate as the original which of course I replied to after 24 hours of receiving the original but within minutes of the duplicate which was dated for the day before (I know - stick with me!)  I contacted them and they will not understand despite me obviously replying to a message which I apparently hadn't received as my response is the very first item in the thread, so how could I have known they wanted it early and why would they email me asking for it early when they had already been advised of dispatch the day before and spoken to me about it the day before.  I am really angry about this as Etsy make an enormous deal about our responses and yet this glitch penalises me and I can't seem to get them to see what has happened.  It is evident in the thread that the buyer has not sent this message and I am also asking why it has been sent again a day after it was all replied to and sent off.  Can anyone else explain or had this happen or can Etsy review their decision?  Every email I sent just had the same bot like response saying I had replied 2 hours after the 24 hours without understanding or looking at what I was actually saying.

Many thanks!

[BagmakerSupply]

@KilianCellarDoor: There have been several other reports of seller initiated threads being incorrectly classified as a new incoming thread.

"Every email I sent just had the same bot like response ,,," Often the first response you get from customer support is an automated reply meant to weed out the people who contact support over common issues that can be easily solved. Every eMail from Etsy support should have a link something like "I Still Need Help". Click on that link in each reply from Etsy (or actually reply stating that you still need help) to keep the report alive otherwise Etsy will assume that it is resolved. You may have to do this innumerable times, before anything is done but do not give up. DO NOT open a new issue or contact Etsy multiple times about the same issue (doing so closes the one you already opened and puts the new one on the bottom of the pile).

[KilianCellarDoor]

Hi thanks - I have done this and have been told they cannot do anything and to open a thread here, I sent lots of emails explaining over and over again.

[Photokapi]

I have had a similar issue, a custom order that they said "thank you for doing this for me" counted as a first contact that wasn't responded to.

[KilianCellarDoor]

Do Etsy look at these threads as I would like them to comment or advise - holding a measure over our heads and then glitching it and holding us responsible is problematic

[SonomaRepurpose]

I had this exact issue happen to me last night.  Talked to and resolved an issue with the client last night and this morning have the same original email (1st email) from client again in another email.  Like it was duplicated...  there is a bug Etsy and it needs to be fixed!!

[KilianCellarDoor]

Etsy told me to raise it here which I have and I then went back in email to tell them others have raised it and I received the exact same email just telling me to raise it here.  No one from Etsy seems to be responding here so what is the point of this forum?  Just feel gaslighted all the time.

[C20Ceramics]

Simplest way would be to mark all the effected messages as spam, and it will resolve that way too until Etsy fixes it. 

[KilianCellarDoor]

HI thanks but that doesn't work.  The message came in as a new message 26 hours after being dealt with so that has missed their arbitrary target and messed up my stats. 

[C20Ceramics]

@KilianCellarDoor it will take at least 24 hours to update star seller status - sometimes 2 days - if moving messages to spam....The cut off date seems to be as long as it is done by the next review period..... It has always work in the past...I have done this with problem messages that are 3 weeks old. 

[ACertainFeel]

Marking spam after the fact still should work for clearing it. Etsy cannot/will not fix these issues and you aren’t wrong about the gaslighting. 

[CraftyCornishMaids]

do not mark a customer as spam, because if they message back with a problem with their order, and you miss it, they open a case, they will be automatically refunded from you,

you have to reply to messages from customers.

.......

do NOT reply on the order, they are not counted as replies to messages,

you have to reply to each new message thread, in messages.

[TheArtfulTwig]

I had the same thing happen months ago.  Apparently, there is a glitch in the app that prompts you to reply, but also has, in tiny print, that you need to reply in your message folder, not the convo thread.  This dinged me out of star seller for two months because I get few messages.  Exactly the same thing happened.  When I was on a browser, the message came up (again) in a different thread in messages.  This seems ridiculous to me, since the information about the order, and what the buyer wanted to discuss, was an ongoing discussion in the convo thread.

It also irked me to reply again to the buyer to shut down the open Etsy message thread, when we'd already resolved it in the convo about the order. 

I'm sorry this happened to you.  This is how I learned a hard lesson, too.