Star Seller Message Response

[NestingByRobin]

A customer of mine had messaged me for a refund to an order she had accidentally placed.  Within minutes I responded to her through the request and it started a new message thread with this customer.  A representative of Etsy verified what had happened and stated there is no way for them to adjust the message response in star seller.  Now I have a fraudulent misrepresentation of my shop going from 100% to 50% with one message.  I find it hard to believe the Etsy technical team cannot make this adjustment.  After being with Etsy nearly a decade,  this is one more situation in my declining faith with Etsy supporting their sellers.

[ACertainFeel]

Hard but true. Seller Support is very thin. Try sending that message to Spam. That often works in a couple of day. 

[audreytherese]

That will only work if it was a regular message, not a help request. Most messages that come after an order has been placed come in as help requests (because Etsy makes it hard to just send a regular message, they assume any message after placing an order is because you need help). 

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@NestingByRobin: "Within minutes I responded to her through the request and it started a new message thread with this customer." A message thread you initiated should not count (for you) for Star Seller. Have you checked the applicable CSV file available on your Star Seller page to make sure that there is not some other new thread causing this? Is it possible that the buyer messaged you AND started a Help Request?

"I find it hard to believe the Etsy technical team cannot make this adjustment." 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).

[Sedonadustbunny]

This has happened so many times to me, (losing star seller badge in the response section) and Etsy doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. I've chatted with them a few times and the answer is always the same...that they cannot manually change anything.  The most recent one (deduction) is someone sending me a coupon code through Messages??? I didn't want it and didn't respond. Coupons are done through Etsy, not through messages, so I lost my star badge this month because someone sent me a coupon I didn't want. Something is really wrong here. I hate this whole star seller program. Just look at the reviews of each shop and you'll know! 

[BagmakerSupply]

@Sedonadustbunny: "...I lost my star badge this month because someone sent me a coupon I didn't want." Unfortunately you lost Star Seller because you chose to not reply to (or mark as SPAM) this message. As it says right on your Star Seller page and elsewhere, you need to reply to the FIRST message of EVERY NEW INCOMING THREAD within 24 hours. 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 - and this message sounds like it qualifies as SPAM.

If the unanswered new thread is not a Help Request, at least for the time being, it appears that marking an unanswered new thread as SPAM (even after the 24 hour deadline has passed) will cause your reply percentage to change in a day or two (but not retroactively) 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.