Star Seller program needs to be assessed...

[LapinsLair]

The Star Seller program is helpful for buyers to determine a good seller based on their average star rating. However, I do have the following concerns...

I recently had a customer purchase from me and they received the prompt to leave feedback one day after the expected delivery date. This was odd because other buyers have had to wait for a couple weeks to leave a review. Anyway, she had not yet received the item in the post and marked it as 1 star, stating: "I have not received this item." She honestly did not realize that it would affect me, personally, and thought she was giving feedback to Etsy. I reached out to her and explained and she felt awful. She received her order the next day or so and was very happy with it and wanted to give me 5 stars, but Etsy would not let her and would only remove the 1-star rating, tarnishing my consistent 5-star rating by bringing it down to 4.8. 

I am now being told by Etsy that it cannot be corrected back to 5. That is not at all fair. The tech department can certainly change that back to 5. Further, if I had only had a small number of customers giving me feedback, the average would have gone down lower than 4.8, so that could be very damaging to a shop owner at no fault of their own!

This really needs to be assessed. Thank you for the opportunity to voice my concerns! 

Caroline 

[CraftyCornishMaids]

all your feedback over the last year is 5*

[Former_Member]

Personally, I don't give any merit to the star seller program since Etsy also awards resellers (Kit Kats, Doritos, etc.), counterfeiters and the like a star seller badge.

Even with five star reviews, you might get one less than four or five stars.  If a seller has a lot one to three star reviews, then I might be tempted to pass them by.

[moonbeamgifts]

As a buyer, I take reviews with a grain of salt.    It's a little like restaurant reviews:  if there's a theme that's repeated in multiple people's comments, I pay attention.   If it's just one person with the most gigantic humongous error committed against them that they've ever experienced, well....   
I also buy a LOT on Etsy and while I'll glance through the recent reviews, I couldn't tell you who had a SSP badge.

As a seller, I find it a bit frustrating - I just received a blank one star from a buyer who didn't read the listing.   They expected 10 full sized baseball bats for under $4.    That's unrealistic at best and puzzling at worst since I photograph next to a ruler, include measurements, use the word "mini" ~ I'm pretty sure even the dollar store is more expensive than that for a set of 10.   But because it's buyer opinion expressed in a message (review/star was blank), it doesn't qualify for review/removal.   
<shrug>   Literally nothing I can do about that so onto the next one I guess.