Star Seller Badge mis-calculated!

[BramblCo]

Hi, I went to my Star seller section of my shop to make sure I was on track for July and it said I wasn't based on ONE missed message. I was extremely confused, since I always respond, within minutes most times, but especially within 24 hours. My other ratings are stellar - all my reviews are five stars, 98% tracking and shipping and before this "one" message, I had a 100% message response rate! I downloaded the list to see which message was not responded to within the 24 hours and it was a review request from another shop I purchased a digital file from! I read the message immediately. At the time I was busy with other orders, & since I gaged its level of importance and saw that it wasn't from a customer or potential customer, I left it until I had more time to respond. I don't feel that message, requesting a review of their product & not pertaining to my shop or an order, should count against me, especially when you can see I clearly work very hard to have excellent customer service, as all my reviews will attest, & on my shop, to keep an almost perfect record!

I hope this can be corrected or resolved in some way especially before July. I would be so disappointed to loose that over a message that had nothing to do with MY shop, even for a month, that would be a huge loss to me as that is always a business goal each month for my shop. Thank you!

[w5wbfzaz]

When you made a purchase with your shop account you conflated your personal purchase with your business account. There is nothing to correct, but you can gain a better understanding of the importance of keeping personal and business separate. 

[GrandGear]

You could mark that particular message as spam and your Star Seller message rating should return to the 100% rating it was before that message. It might take a day or so to go back up though. Good luck with it.

[BramblCo]

Thank you @GrandGear for your kind response and simply sharing information that is useful and I was unaware of! I appreciate your time. 

[bradgoodell]

It is not miscalculated, it is the way it works.  Etsy said "All new messages, from buyers or sellers..."   Which actually makes some sense, since sellers and buyers both buy and sell on Etsy, just like you do.  Without reading the message, how would one know if it is a buyer or a seller message?  I for one don't want to pay a staff to read every message sent on Etsy. 

In the future, just a "thanks" or "thx" or even "ty" will do.  Sorry you were blindsided by this.  

[VintageRescueSquad]

Etsy doesn't read out messages to determine who it was from or what it was for. It was an incoming message that you didn't address within the 24-hour window. Etsy will not manually override this or correct it as it is within the rules/metrics. As stated above, you can mark it as spam and it might drop off, but might not before the July 1 deadline, which is Saturday

[OmasFabricStash]

Did you get a message? Yes.      
Did you respond to it? No.   
There isn’t really anything to correct. You need to respond to all messages and you didn’t. A number of sellers have done the same thing, not responding to a message they didn’t think needed to be responded to, even when the rules state they have to respond to all of them. And as the new month starts there will be more sellers wondering why they didn’t get the SS.  

[WitticismsRus]

@BramblCo 

As others have said above, there is nothing for etsy to correct. It's working as intended.

Etsy is pretty clear about how the message response rate is calculated in help center here https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403058372503-How-to-Become-a-Star-Seller?segment=selling

There is a highlighted bit under message response rate info that says "The Message response rate only applies to the first message in a thread. Initial messages from both buyers and sellers on Etsy are counted towards the Message response rate. "

That means ALL messages. It also means each individual message thread so if someone sends you 5 different messages with 5 questions instead of putting them in the same message chain you need to respond to all 5 of them. The system is completely automated and doesn't know if the message is from a buyer or another seller. It isn't reading every message and making a decision if it's from a seller or a customer or what it's about. It's a computer program that calculates data. It just sees a message and calculated the response time. That's just how it works.

The info is also right there on the Star Seller page in shop manager. Just go to shop manager > star seller. Once there scroll toward the bottom until you find "Questions? We've got answers." Then click messages. The very first question there says

"What messages count toward the message response rate?

Your message response rate is based on just the first message in a conversation, not ongoing conversations. This means you just need to respond to the first message within 24 hours. This applies to messages both from buyer and seller accounts. Messages from Etsy staff do not count toward your response rate, and neither do messages that you mark as spam. You can also now find a breakdown of your message response rate score by downloading a CSV."

If the star is important to you then it may be a good idea to read or review all the info Etsy provides about the star seller program.

Bottom line...you have to either reply or mark as spam.

It takes just a few seconds to send a simple 'Thank you'. Or you can set up an auto reply every 5 days. Etsy provides tools for sellers to use , it's up to us to use them.

Also, this is a peer to peer support forum so it's just us sellers here trying our best to help each other. You aren't reaching etsy support here. 

[LAKEandFELLart]

This part of the measuring metric does tend to catch sellers out and we see this query a lot . This is why forum members are somewhat fed up answering this question. Unfortunately nothing to be done about it as it isn't an error. it has been this way since set up 2 years ago. To put it  simply it happens when sellers don't understand how the Star seller metric works.

I've attached a link back to the star seller criteria in the help section so that you can familiarise yourself with it help.etsy.comHow-to-Become-a-Star-Seller 

You may want to consider using the automated message feature in the future .

Also as a final point you can always run reports from your star seller dash if ever you need to check specific metrics 

[PantryandPetticoats]

This is my first month  in all my years selling here that I have gotten the star seller badge and the reserve taken off shoppe, I am delighted and it feels wonderful , but that being said , I still had fabulous sales and business even without the badge ,as Etsy has stated , the Star seller badge is not easy for everyone to obtain due to shipping costs and ability to track items out of country etc. I just had this  one month where I was able to track all parcels , I am sure the badge will fall off again at some point and time I strive to do the best at all times ,but we are also human. Just try not to get to hung up on the badge overall it does not affect your placement or sales IMO, just something to remind us to do our best

[UppNorthEh]

ditto

[nineteen27]

i understand why etsy does it this way.

i also understand why it is confusing.

it is called the *star seller badge*

but when you use the same account as a buyer and a seller.

you also need to be a *star buyer* when it comes to messages.

so yes... it is okay to spam a message asking for a review from another seller.

as for the other forum posters.

they are just telling you what the rules are.

i have learned 99% of everything i know about etsy.

from these sellers.

[ModJose · Accepted solution]

Hello, everyone! Discussion and debate about themes relevant to Etsy are welcomed and encouraged but it is also recommended to keep said discussions civil and friendly to comply with our  Community Policies. Hence, due to the recent exchanges and seeing how the discussion has reached its endpoint, this thread will now be closed.

Thanks to everyone who participated.