I opened a support ticket because messages after 9/26 were not shown or counted towards my star seller badge. Those messages would have made the difference, as I missed 1 message back in July.
This was their response:
"With regards to your concern, I want you to know that the messages sent after Sept. 26 are not missing on your account. Please be advised that the messages sent on the last two days of the 3-month review period may be excluded from the current review period and counted towards the next period instead."
This is not stated ANYWHERE I can find. I checked the handbook, the star seller terms of use etc. Everything I show says it should be part of the calculation. How do I get these counted? Any ideas. I can't even get to chat because I lost star seller.
Sorry but it is mentioned here
Messages sent on the last two days of the 3-month review period may be excluded from the current review period and counted towards the next period instead. This is to allow Sellers a full 24 hours to respond and not be penalized for messages received late on the final day of the review period
https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403058372503-How-to-Become-a-Star-Seller?segment=selling
Correct - it's not stated anywhere in the handbook or the help center but it does happen. We have no control over it.
Sorry but it is mentioned here
Messages sent on the last two days of the 3-month review period may be excluded from the current review period and counted towards the next period instead. This is to allow Sellers a full 24 hours to respond and not be penalized for messages received late on the final day of the review period
https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403058372503-How-to-Become-a-Star-Seller?segment=selling
UGH I hate this so much. I don't get a ton of messages, so there's nothing I can do.
@SimpliStampedJewelry: A controversial workaround : if the unanswered new thread is not a Help Request, 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 not retroactively). Note that subsequent messages from that account may go directly to the SPAM folder.
Even if it was an error on Etsy's side and you got through to chat, there is nothing they can do to 'fix' it. Etsy does not recalculate and award SS mid-month.
@SimpliStampedJewelry: "... messages after 9/26 were not shown or counted ..." Keep in mind that the Star Seller metric is NOT all new messages but only the first message of all new incoming threads.
The Etsy "handbook" is known to be vague. All Star Seller stats are in UTC not your time zone. New threads are not counted until after the 24 hour reply window has passed regardless of when you answered. Orders appear to not be counted until after the scheduled ship by date regardless of when you shipped. Star Seller stats (and the CSV file) seem to be updated only once per day so there may be an additional day's delay.