Star Seller Stats Wrong

[ManifestedMiniatures]

My message reply stats as a seller include a message that was sent to me as a buyer from another seller that I did not respond to (and did not need a response) and this driving my response rate way down and is affecting my ability to become a star seller.  How do I get this message taken out of my seller statistics??

[BirdsongEmporium]

Etsy does not look to identify what a message is about. ALL messages have to be responded to within 24 hours of receipt unless they are spam. If you mark a message as spam it will remove the message from the star seller calculation.

This has been set this way right from the start and the help articles indicate all messages need a response. If you don't want to risk missing answering a message where you are the buyer, you can set up an account for buying only or buy as a guest.

[thePaperFramer]

You don't.

And yet another seller that hasn't read the policies or looked this up in this forum. This is the 7 zillionth thread on this exact same issue. You have to reply to all first messages. Like it or not, this is what you have to do to keep from getting dinged for your Star Seller. Every body does this once. Hopefully to learn from this and not do it again.

[NanaLetha]

Reply to all messages or mark as spam.

[ManifestedMiniatures]

Thanks to those who responded.  For those who are assuming that I was ignorant to the protocol of replying to all messages or didn’t research the forum before posting, I wanted to add this particular message was sent to me a month before I even had a selling account.  I opened my shop on September 30th and the message in question was sent to me on September 1st.   I assume that it's being included because it was in the same month I opened my shop. I am also fairly certain that this little caveat is not in Etsy's star seller information.

[audreytherese · Accepted solution]

If you only started selling on September 30th, you're not eligible for the program anyway. You need to have a shop with at least 90 days history to be considered. 

[cutebutton]

This info is 100% stated by Etsy very clearly.

With that said it’s understandable you might not have realized it before you actually started selling.  Also it could be that you don’t have enough stats to qualify anyway since you are relativelynew.

[NanaLetha]

@ManifestedMiniatures  - You stated none of those facts in your original post. If you had, you probably would have received different replies.

[ManifestedMiniatures]

Yes, I realize that now. I didn't think about the timing issue when I initially posted- I was confused about why a message I got as a buyer was being included.  I understand now why it was.