Star Seller email reply rate error question

[KintsugiCollections]

My Etsy was marked as having not replied to an email within 24 hours but the email was sent in response to something that I purchased on my “shopper” account (the seller gave me a coupon for next purchase). Why would my shop be marked down when it wasn’t an email for my shop but for me as a buyer? I have screen shots I can send verifying that’s the only reason I was marked down and am now below the line for message response rate. 

[Former_Member · Accepted solution]

It's all messages.  If you mark that message as spam, your score should go back up in a day or two.

[JackisJustVintage]

From the star seller page:  Your message response rate is based on just the first message in a conversation, not ongoing conversations. This means you just need to respond to the first message within 24 hours. This applies to messages both from buyer and seller accounts. Messages from Etsy staff do not count toward your response rate, and neither do messages that you mark as spam. You can also now find a breakdown of your message response rate score by downloading a CSV.

[BagmakerSupply]

@KintsugiCollections  :  How is Etsy supposed to know the nature of a message? Do you want some bot reading every one of your messages and guessing? Etsy has been very clear and consistent about messages / convos from the very beginning of the Star Seller program. The Star Seller metric is that the FIRST message of a NEW thread must be replied to within 24 hours. 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. Those have always been the rules. Subsequent messages from the same account (a buyer may have multiple accounts) are supposed to be combined into a single thread.

Help Requests always start a new thread. By the way, if you are creating a custom listing based on a new thread, you still need to reply to the message. Etsy is now putting a blue text warning / advisory on those messages they consider to be a "new message" but should semantically be called a "new thread".

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.

If you have not yet done so, you might want to read https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403058372503-How-to-Become-a-Star-Seller?segment=selling

[FabioMcMustache]

Hello, and welcome to the Etsy Community Forums!

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.

Having said that, and since this thread does not pertain to a technical issue, it will be closed to prevent it from going off-topic.

Thank you!

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