Star Seller Miscalculation

[WhereTheFearIs]

The only thing holding me back from being a star seller is messages. If a seller I bought something from sends me a message asking for a 5 star review the day I receive my order, I do not respond or do not respond right away. I just realized this is what is affecting my messaging score. Anyone else take issue with this since it has nothing to do with us as sellers....? I don't want to turn on an autoreply because on my shop I prefer a personal approach. 

[DreamGreatDreams]

you can mark them as spam without needing to reply. only thing you can do if you want the ss…

[SugarTaffySoap]

@WhereTheFearIs  There many posts like yours. This is the qualification criteria for Star Seller, based on the last three months of your shop data:

• Message response rate:95%+ of first messages in a thread are responded to within 24 hours. This stat is only considered if you receive new messages during the review period.
• On-time shipping & tracking: 95%+ of orders ship on time with tracking or with a shipping label purchased on Etsy
• Ratings average:Your average rating is 4.8 or higher.
• You must also meet a minimum of 5 orders and $300 in sales during the 3-month review period, and you must have been on Etsy’s platform for 90 days since your first sale.

[WhereTheFearIs]

Totally understand the criteria and know it well. Just stating that it isn't really fair to include messages that have nothing to do with my shop. 

[ParchmentPosies]

Since sellers can be buyers and buyers can be sellers, there isn't really any way for Etsy to know what messages to count without reading all of them. So for now, they all count. Maybe they will come up with a better solution at some point. 

[WitticismsRus]

Fair or not fair doesn't really factor into the program unfortunately. It simply has no way to know the message is not about your shop. The whole thing is just an automated computer program. It uses the basic data and calculates the percentages etc. It isn't reading every message and making a decision as to who it's from ( a buyer or another seller) or what its about etc. It doesn't have that ability which is a good thing in my opinion. All it can do is calculate things based on the data available. All it sees is a missed reply so it calculated things accordingly. 

[HazelsSewingSupplies]

The criteria reads "first message from BUYER or SELLER".  If you know the rules and ignore them you should not expect to get the SSB.

There is no miscalculation.

[ChillwolfArt · Accepted solution]

Just to let you know.  You may receive a friendly Message from another Seller, "How's it going"?  Because you are not the Initiator of that Message, you must respond or Mark as Spam.

Hope that helps.

[BagmakerSupply]

@WhereTheFearIs: Probably almost everyone on this forum can sympathize with you but there is a difference between what any one of us may think is fair and what the rules are. As it says right on your Star Seller page, you need to reply to every FIRST message of a 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.

Make a cut and paste (or snippet) reply promoting your shop as a response to this kind of message - why pass up a perfect chance to convert a seller into a buyer.

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 be aware that doing so may cause other messages from that account to go directly to the spam folder.

[GieseDeseiGns]

Actually messages are the one thing you truly have control over, you only have to answer the initial message in any post, or mark it as spam, and that means ALL MESSAGES, thankfully bots don't read them so do not know if are from customer, friend, client or another buyer, they only know it is a message to be answered. Not so with what happens in mail, or if a customer leaves a one or five star.

[SugarTaffySoap]

@WhereTheFearIs  If you "Totally understand the criteria and know it well" then you must know to respond to all messages and that you can mark the message as spam.  You also don't have badges for shipping and reviews which is part of the SS criteria. I'm not sure why you're posting.

Posts like yours have been ongoing in the forums since its inception. Its to the point where Etsy Staff was posting this:

"We suggest using the Forums' Search function prior to posting (just be careful to not bump an old thread that hasn't seen any activity in the last months/years), as questions regarding the Star Seller Program have been extensively covered by our fellow members since its launch, as well as our official Star Seller Guide, which contains in-depth answers to some of the more common questions regarding Message Response Rate, Shipping, Local Pick-Up, Digital Orders, and other topics. You can check it out here: etsy.com/starseller. "

[WhereTheFearIs]

Thank you to those of you who are not rude in your answers. @SugarTaffySoap can't say you were included in that group unfortunately. I have 100% in all other categories and have since Star Seller started. I am a smaller shop and Etsy is not my main form of selling so usually I am right under the sales threshold of $300.  I have contacted Etsy before about this with no response so I figured someone might be friendly in here and clear things up for me. I have actually never posted a question or query in this forum because I have had other sellers tell me there are rude posters in here but I thought I would give it a chance. Guess I was wrong. I will not be coming on here again that's for sure. Maybe some of you should understand that you are not better than someone because they choose to ask a question. Have a blessed day.

[HazelsSewingSupplies]

I guess most of us are not clear about just what it is that you need clearing up.  You state that you know the criteria well yet you choose to not follow the rules.

You seem to think that it's not fair that you know the rules but you don't want to follow them.  I don't know what you want Etsy to do for you because whatever it is, it wouldn't be fair to the millions (maybe thousands) of us that understand the rules and follow them whether we agree with them or not.

I don't set up auto reply unless I am on vacation for a few days because I also want to be personal with people that contact me by message but I do realize that the rules say first message and I know I have to respond or lose the badge.

As someone else stated of the 5 requirements for SSB, this is the only one we can control so "yes" it's fair that Etsy can set the rules and that if we want to play the game, we go by the rules.

I don't think anyone was rude to you and the forums are a great place to post, learn and a big help in running our shops.  If you have a problem, here's the place to come first before even trying to contact Etsy most of the time.

Advice:  Just don't come to the forum and basically say "I know the rules but I choose not to follow them" because those of us who choose to follow the rules and maybe loses a SSB because of something we can't control will not be that understanding of one that doesn't follow the rules because they think they are not "fair".

[LynnsLittleShop]

@WhereTheFearIs I took a look at your shop, love your tie dyed items.

Wanted to tell you though, if you sell internationally and you haven't been on the forums, you might want to consider that some of the EU countries have packaging laws, where a seller has to have a license to send there. Here's an article that explains it:

Packaging Materials Regulations in the European Union: An Overview (compliancegate.com)

and if you are sending anything to the UK there are specific things you must have on your listings: this is covered in the handbook:

How to Write On-Point Privacy Policies (etsy.com)

If you still want to sell there, feel free to copy mine with the name changes in the appropriate areas.

Right now I only send to Canada, Australia and the UK. 

[SugarTaffySoap]

@WhereTheFearIs  My apologies if you think I'm being rude That's not the case. For some reason you're not understanding the criteria. Best of luck.