Not Receiving Message Notifications

[Urbancitytreasures]

I received an email to my business email from Etsy stating I had not yet replied to a message from a customer. The problem is that I never received the notification in the first place either in my Etsy shop or on my cell phone.  I can send a screen shot of my Etsy messages that I have received. It clearly shows I was never notified that I had a message waiting. This bug has effected my star seller status for December. Please look at my prior response times to customers. You will find that I generally respond to my customers within an hour of receiving said messages. I log into Etsy and my cell phone every single day and am vigilant about checking for any messages. There is no possible way I would have missed a message for over 72 hours unless their is a bug.

I would appreciate someone looking into this to se3 what the issue is.

Thank You,

Joan.

[ChillwolfArt]

Hi Joan, Etsy Support won't see this post, sorry.  We are other Sellers. Were you using the App, when it didn't show a Notification when you were Signed In on Etsy?  I've not used it, but it's not always reliable, so I'm wondering if that could have been the problem.  I always use my desktop computer, which has always shown the Notification for receiving a Message

[Urbancitytreasures]

No I wasn’t using the app. I have my Etsy notifications set up to alert me on my cell phone whenever a customer has sent me a message. So I took a screen shot to show them that I never received the notification. 

Also, when I went through the help center to alert Etsy about this issue, the directions told me I would need to post this issue in the forums under Technical Difficulties. I thought that was odd but I just followed the directions. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@Urbancitytreasures: "This bug has effected my star seller status for December." Are you basing this on the applicable CSV file available on your Star Seller page? 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) seem to be 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.

Etsy has made it clear that they will not manually adjust Star Seller stats. However they have sometimes been able to correct errors in the underlying data and then the Star Seller stats will auto update (but not retroactively).

There are lots and lots of threads in this forum about issues with app and eMail notifications. The consensus is that a seller needs to check their shop for messages and orders at least daily via a browser (even their mobile browser) until these issues are resolved.

Even though the Help Pages sent you here this is a seller peer to peer forum, and should not be considered a way to contact Etsy, if that is your hope (although Etsy does sometimes read and reply to posts).

[Urbancitytreasures]

Yes I thought it was odd that I was referred to technical issues in the forums. I did finally go back to the help center and they are looking into the issue. I log into Etsy every single day and trust me, if I had a message notification waiting for me there is no way I would have missed it for 3 entire days. Not to mention I sent them proof from a screen shot of my cell phone clearly showing I was never notified that I had any messages waiting for me. It’s just a bug of some sort that needs be fixed. It happens, unfortunately that bug has effected my star seller status for December.  I’m sure they’ll fix it. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@Urbancitytreasures: "I’m sure they’ll fix it. " If they do, please come back and let us know.

A controversial workaround : if the unanswered new thread is not a Help Request, 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 (but not retroactively). Note that subsequent messages from that account may go directly to the SPAM folder.