Star Seller Status

[RobinsVintageFinds]

I jump through hoops to meet Star Seller status. For July I have 100% in shipping, message response time and a 5.0 feedback rating. (The previous couple of months I lost the status due to a couple 3/4 star feedbacks beyond my control.) Anyway, I had for the current review period beginning July 1, 100% in everything. However, the system evidently glitched and did not recognize it, telling me I have the speedy shipping and prompt message badges, but excluding the 4.8 or higher feedback one, excluding me from Star Seller status. But if you were to look at the stats it concurs that my feedback is 5.0. I contacted support (request #8934386).Chel with customer service replied on July 2, and said that upon review she could confirm my status as Star Seller, and the system would update within 24 to 48 hours to reflect this and display on my store front. 

Today it has been going on 72 hours (July 5) and it still has not been updated. It is beyond disappointing that someone has not actually fixed this, Come on Etsy, you can do better.

[NanaLetha]

Read this article especially the part about Etsy support not being able to update your star seller, https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403058372503-How-to-Become-a-Star-Seller?segment=selling.  

[RobinsVintageFinds]

Yea, already know this. Which is one of the things that is so frustrating.  So their system screws up, and they can't manually fix it. Truly Etsy has worse customer service for sellers than eBay. Yes, I sell on there too, have since 2004. When I started selling on Etsy it was like a breath of fresh air, but truly not so much anymore...EBAY has better customer service for sure.

[PillowDetails]

@RobinsVintageFinds   Your badge is awarded on the first of the month, for the previous three months.  You have 2 three-star reviews from April that kept you from making that metric for the July star.

[RobinsVintageFinds]

I  know how Star Seller is calculated. Even so with the 2- 3 star reviews, if the calculated period is from April to June 30th, I had met all criteria on June 30th, as the criteria changed to a 4.8 star review rather than based on percentage.  Not sure if my link will show but I attached it. I have already contacted Etsy  customer support  and they confirmed without a doubt that my status "should" have updated to Star Seller on July 1st, which it did not. Hence there is a glitch somewhere in their system. They said I would see it updated within 24 to 48 hours, which it has not. Just trying to see how widespread the issue is. 

Here is an exact snippet from customer support:

Thank you so much for reaching out to us and for explaining your thoughts regarding your Star Seller Scores. I definitely hear where you're coming from, and I'm here to help! 
 
Upon further review I can confirm that you have met all the requirements of getting the Star Seller Badge. Pease note that there might be a delay of 24 to 48 hours before the badge is visible for your shop, especially if you didn’t have the Star Seller badge last month.

[AnnaleasFinest]

@RobinsVintageFinds 

I see it worked out. Congrats!

[RobinsVintageFinds]

Thanks for the reply, however what you say is both correct and incorrect. I know how Star Seller is calculated. Even so with the 2- 3 star reviews, if the calculated period is from April to June 30th, I had met all criteria on June 30th, as the criteria changed to a 4.8 star review rather than based on percentage.  Not sure if my link will show but I attached it. I have already contacted Etsy  customer support  and they confirmed without a doubt that my status "should" have updated to Star Seller on July 1st, which it did not. Hence there is a glitch somewhere in their system. They said I would see it updated within 24 to 48 hours, which it has not. Just trying to see how widespread the issue is. 

[RobinsVintageFinds]

Since my link appears to have not worked here is an exact snippet of the reply I received from customer support:

Thank you so much for reaching out to us and for explaining your thoughts regarding your Star Seller Scores. I definitely hear where you're coming from, and I'm here to help! 
 
Upon further review I can confirm that you have met all the requirements of getting the Star Seller Badge. Pease note that there might be a delay of 24 to 48 hours before the badge is visible for your shop, especially if you didn’t have the Star Seller badge last month.

[AnnaleasFinest]

You are not allowed to quote from private convos with Etsy.

[NanaLetha]

@RobinsVintageFinds  I have the same problem and the lady at the help desk told me there are lots of glitches within star seller but there is nothing she could do to fix it. It’s up to the Etsy coders to get it all fixed. You would think after all these months they could get it right!

[RobinsVintageFinds]

Yes, you would think. Etsy is truly lacking in the customer service department.  Even eBay can manually fix an issue (such as shipping metrics, etc.) if there is a problem.  And you can contact them via phone as well. Now Etsy doesn't even have a phone number for sellers, though if you are a buyer I believe you might be able to chat.

[ModerationCorner]

There have been a few threads about this in the Forums.  The issue seems to be the single decimal display on the Star Seller screen - many are seeing "4.8" but not getting the star.  The calculation behind it seems to be accurate but is coming out less than 4.8, so no star is granted.  
In your case, unless I'm seeing your stats incorrectly, you have 19 reviews back to 04/01.
17 of them are 5 star, for value of 85 (17 x 5)
2 of them are 3 star, for value of 6 (2 x 3)
85 + 6 = 91 total value.  Divide the 91 by 19 (reviews) = 4.78 average

Because it's under 4.78, no star is awarded (assuming the other categories are met).  I believe this is the accurate calculation based on their introduction of the changes a couple of weeks ago.

Along with this, they seem to have service agents who are not really familiar with the issue or how to calculate, causing more confusion.

[PillowDetails]

They may round up for the shop rating, but not for Star Seller.  You just missed the 4.8

[StreetwoodDesign]

They rounded up if it was .5 or higher in regards to the on time shipping stat in star seller for me a couple of months ago (at the time I was just below the threshold of that badge measure, but it was given to me because it rounded up), I would assume they would round up for the other measures. Plus being a holiday weekend, maybe, just maybe, the update one of the support peeps referred to is delayed due to the holiday. Wishful thinking, but possible. I had some shipping dates showing due on July 4 all weekend, but when July 4 came, it automatically moved those ship dates to July 5. So maybe in the next 24 hours you will see an update. Fingers crossed X

[VintagePhilly22]

This whole thing is so silly!

[ChristmasIsLove]

@RobinsVintageFinds I see your Star Seller badge finally appeared. Congratulations!

To @PillowDetails , @ModerationCorner , and others who have been saying that Etsy does not round up on the review rating for the Star Seller badge: That is incorrect information. It seems more like the new 4.8 rating simply was not working at first for awarding the badge. In one of my other shops, I had a 4.78 (thanks to a lovely 4 star no-comment rating) that showed as 4.8 on my dashboard (everything else at 100% and met the quantity/dollar limits), but I didn't get the Star Seller badge (I did get the other badges). I filed a ticket on Saturday. My Star Seller showed up today. So they actually do round up for awarding the Star Seller badge, as well as the other badges (apparently). And they ARE able to fix errors after the fact.

@StreetwoodDesign  You were absolutely correct!

[Adorabilities]

Wow, that's great. It would be nice if they announced these things -- otherwise we (other sellers) are flailing around trying to find the reasoning behind everything.

They had not been rounding up when it was based on percentages, at least not for me -- so this is something new. Something good, finally!

Adding... They may have changed this in the last day or so, because in this post from a few days ago, the OP actually got a notice from Etsy explaining that their 4.78 did not qualify them for the badge.
https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/Issue-with-Star-Rating/m-p/138956684

[PillowDetails]

Good to know!  Thanks!

[ModerationCorner]

@ChristmasIsLove Good to know, thanks!

[StreetwoodDesign]

YAY! WOOHOO! Happy Dance! Hey, I'm not always the sharpest blade in my woodshop, but I can still make a straight cut from time to time (big Guy Smiley grin!)

Congrats indeed @RobinsVintageFinds!

[ChristmasIsLove]

@Adorabilities The OP on the thread you linked now has the Star Seller badge. Obviously, he initially got a reply from someone in support who didn't know what they were talking about, or (as you said) Etsy changed their minds. I also got a wrong answer over the weekend from a support person who said something like their colleagues aren't available to answer questions over the weekend, so they decided to answer mine while the others were out on holiday. I replied and said the answer was wrong, which it turned out to be.

[CBGWorkshop]

Etsy rounded to the first decimal digit on the star seller calcs when they were all 95% (94.5% = 95%). I'm guessing the programmer made a small error in the new implementation of the 4.8% (programmers, you all know how easy it is to truncate instead of rounding!) and now it is fixed. Not to apologize for wrong answers in general from Etsy.

[RobinsVintageFinds]

Thanks everyone  for the replies. At least I  I am not the only one this has happened to. I have sent another inquiry to customer support, and will let everyone know what their response is, when I receive it.

[StreetwoodDesign]

It's not a new thing that customer support within any company sometimes gets it wrong. I have this directly with Google support on my website this past week. It is turning out to be a long process, 1-2 weeks of hardcore developer teams diving into it, of them figuring out why some services they provide aren't working correctly not only with my website but others as well, their CS peeps have no answers, so it gets escalated. Meanwhile I spent 2 hours on the phone with Google CS initially, the first hour was spent explaining to Google CS why what they were telling me as answers, wasn't the issue in the end, and I'm the dull blade who knew it. I think they finally understand the issue now, so it is what it is. A slow process to get things resolved unfortunately.

[RobinsVintageFinds · Accepted solution]

Just an update to everyone who took time to offer their insights....Etsy has now upgraded me to Star Seller status! WooHoo!!! Doing the happy dance. Maybe it was as someone suggested due to yesterday being a holiday it didn't update within the time frame that I was given. Whatever it is, I will take it. Coincidentally though, I  only found this out just now when looking at my status. I didn't get a reply yet from my customer support request to look into it further.