Star Seller Metrics dinged by return shipping label

[ClassyTacks]

Hello, hoping someone here can help me. I always ship on time, rarely late (like 4x in my 10 years of owning my shop). I just noticed that Etsy says I shipped a package late in January, so I downloaded the data to see which one it was. It was a return shipping label that I purchased through Etsy, and somehow it got assigned a "ship by date." So, when the customer shipped the order back to me a day later than Etsy's assigned ship by date, I got a "no" in the "shipped on time" column. 

Why am I being penalized for this in my Star Seller metrics? Should I just not purchase return labels through Etsy anymore? 

[GlassyFields]

Did you create a listing for the return label?

I know sometimes when a customer wants special shipping a buyer will create a listing so that they can purchase ... never occurred to me that this could end up looking like late shipping ... maybe if the customer purchased but the purchased but a tracking number was never entered for that order?

Thanks for posting - this is definitely something to keep in mind when creating a custom order for a shipping upgrade or adjustment of some sort.

[NanaLetha]

@ClassyTacks  there should be no ship by date on a return label. I would contact Etsy Support but don't mention Star Seller or they won't help you. Just tell them it says it was shipped late.

[GlassyFields]

Hypothesis 1: Seller created a listing for a return label for the buyer to use. Buyer purchased the listing. Seller sends the PDF label via message or email and there was no tracking number on the order, so seller gets dinged.

Hypothesis 2: Etsy picked up tracking on a recycled tracking number rather than the tracking number used for this order. Wasn't there something in the forums a week or so ago about recycled tracking numbers being used much sooner than expected?

I would contact Etsy support (nothing to lose except time) about this. Follow @NanaLetha 's advice to not mention star seller.

[PrimFun]

I recently used a return label and nothing like this happened.

Did you create a listing for the return label?  If so that could be the issue but that's unlikely.

The return label shows up but it does not interfere with star seller.

If nothing else reveals a reason, ask Etsy about it.  Ask if a glitch happened.  It could be a reused number.