Star Seller Message Response Not Accurate

[CurlySueStudios]

I had a customer reach out because although her package said it was delivered, she did not receive it.  I responded and was all ready to send her a replacement item when she contacted me again and said she had found the package.  For some reason, I have 2 message threads from the same customer and Etsy thinks I did not respond in 24hrs and dinged my response rate.  As a result, I will likely lose my Star Seller status.  Is there any way to get this fixed?

[stitchesandthreads67]

This happened to me and I was not able to get help with it. I lost my star seller status. Every so often I get repeat messages so now I respond to both. Best of luck! 

[CraftyCornishMaids]

you have to reply to each new message thread. Etsy highlights each new thread in blue.

etsy separates the ones from the "help request", from the others, as they start the clock ticking for opening a case, and refunding. So wants to make them stand out.

[mommawhazelsquilts]

"Is there any way to get this fixed"?  There's nothing to fix.  You have to reply to all new messages.  I hear you can spam the message but you would be spamming a real customer and that might not be the best of ideas.

[DragonflyDreams1]

Agreed. Take a step back and look logically at the messages. On one hand, you took care of the customer in a timely manner and attended to what they needed. In a perfect world, the customer would have responded to that original message and not started a new one. Combine that with the message was an "I found it" message that didn't need a response. There is an argument to be made that a duplicate message is spam as long as the customer has been taken care of and not ignored. I have never heard of marking a message as spam interrupting future purchases. I doubt Etsy does anything with it. You occasionally see a person in the forum who has had their messaging muted but this comes from sending a volume of messages. Once upon a time, I sent out update notices to all my customers who purchased a tutorial. (It was a free update). Etsy quickly disabled my ability to send messages. 

[CraftyCornishMaids]

if you spam a customer, 

future messages go to spam, if you don't respond to those, and they open a case, etsy will automatically refund, and recoup from the seller.

only spam messages should be marked as spam.

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@CurlySueStudios: Unfortunately this is one of those gotcha situations. Was one of the messages your customer sent you a Help Request? Help Requests always start a new thread because they also start the clock ticking on a possible claim. Since you need to reply to the first message of every new incoming thread for Star Seller ...

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.