Messaging Muted

[AroidzOasis]

I’m not really sure what we did but we can’t reply to our customers. Maybe we sent too many messages based on previous posts? Anyone from Etsy that can help us here? We’ve called and have not really gotten anything but “it” being forwarded. We really need to communicate with our buyers over the holiday and answer questions. This will cause issues with orders and my star seller status.

edit: we didn’t spam we just replied to messages that come through and have an auto response. 

[NanaLetha]

When you send too many messages in a short period of time, Etsy mutes you for a while.

[AroidzOasis]

Would replying to messagesbe considered spam? We are still confused. We have an auto response that is sent to anyone that messages, does that count?

[CraftyCornishMaids]

If you have been sending messages, that were not a result of a query from  a customer, etsy deems it spamming, which is illegal in most countries,

the bots decide if it's spam or not

they block your messages for about a week or more the first time,

I have never seen anyone back a second time, I presume if you do it again, your shop is shut.

[bradgoodell]

From past posts, if you send 25-50 or more near-identical messages within a short time frame, Etsy considers it spamming and the lock is minimum of 2 weeks.  It can also be triggered if numerous people report your message as spam.  If you were notifying your previous buyers about your current sale, that would do it.  

[AroidzOasis]

We don’t send messagesabout sales. We just replied back or had plant care conversations when asked. I’m thinking it’s the auto message that is sent back automatically when someone messagesthat triggered this? 

[bradgoodell]

How many messages are you getting a day?  

If you are getting a lot of questions about your products or orders, maybe make your listings as clear as possible?  Or include the information in your "Note to buyer", something to reduce the need to reply to lots of messages.

[hopeandjoystudios]

With Etsy who knows..it could be a bunch of auto replies were seen as similar outgoing messages and counted as spam. Unfortunately you are going to have to get Etsy to fix this. They should be able to look at your messages and decide if it was a glitch or something they consider spamming. Replying to messages and/or auto replies should not send your shop into mute mode, but..Etsy.

[Amaradorn]

Can't say for certain but judging by the bugs I've heard about on this site over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if it was your auto responder that triggered the message block. Etsy have some very clever tech that somehow manages to sabotage us when we least expect it.

Going forwards it might be a good idea to try to include some of the FAQs on your shop page or in the listings themselves (if you haven't already) so that people don't have to contact you quite so much.

[NancyQstudio · Accepted solution]

You will see your auto response within your messages.  Has the auto response message along with your own responses equal to a high volume of messages?  If so, this could be the issue which obviously would be a flaw in Etsy's auto response program.  It may be necessary to turn off the auto response unless it's absolutely needed? 

[AroidzOasis]

I think that was it, the issue was fixed and I was told to remove it for the time I am able to answer to avoid multi replies.