Star Seller Badge due to no answer to an automated mesaage

[MyMarvelousCups]

Hi there, 

I am an seller on Etsy and my star seller badge got taken away from me because I didn't answer back an automated message I got from purchasing an SVG file from another small business. I don't see what thay should affect my actual business when it was not a client message. Please advise, thank you. 

[NanaLetha]

Read the criteria for star seller 

[AllThingsSpeed]

Same exact problem here. 

[TastefulArtisan]

*self deleted*

[ShimmyBoutique]

send it to Spam, drops off

[bradgoodell]

Etsy says "all messages".  Sorry.  

In the future, you have 3 choices:

1. Reply
2. Mark as spam
3. Set up auto-reply so all messages are replied to.  

[CatsWhiskersCurios]

It’s against forum rules for sellers to provide help to shops that break Etsy’s rules (and the law). IP infringement could get you sued.

[ChillwolfArt]

Any time you are not the Initiator of a Message, you must Respond to it or Mark as Spam.

[BagmakerSupply]

@MyMarvelousCups @AllThingsSpeed  : Probably almost everyone on this forum can sympathize with you but as it says right on your Star Seller page, you need to reply to the FIRST message of every NEW INCOMING THREAD.

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.

If the unanswered message 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. Note that subsequent messages from that account may go directly to the SPAM folder.