Are you kidding me? Someone *I purchased* something from responded to my order comment complimenting them on their shop. They said "thank you." I did not respond to that message and THAT has prevented me from continuing to be a Star Seller?? I have been a Star Seller for well over 6+ months in a row. I am so mad, this is ridiculous.
The Message response rate counts initial messages from all Etsy members, both buyers, and other sellers. This is because fellow sellers could be potential buyers for your shop. If it's not a spam message it requires a response within 24 hours. If it is a spam message you can mark it as such and it won't count towards your score.
Except it was laid out by Etsy from the very beginning, whihc was almost a year ago that one must reply to EVERY first message from someone. The bots cannot tell the difference in a message sent. I usually reply to these with "You're welcome". (Altho people do tell me that is too old fashioned and I should be saying "no problem" LOL)
Same thing happened, to me, I ordered something from another Etsy seller and they responded back with a shipping date, I clearly just ignored it. I shouldn't have. It cost me my star seller badge as well.
Be careful with that, though -- one seller has been told that marking non-spam as spam can have pretty bad consequences for the seller. (I highly doubt it, but it has been recently discussed.)
Etsy would like sellers to exercise social etiquette, which requires a response to a thank you message. You can reply "you are welcome," or send the message to spam. It only takes a few seconds to answer for Star Seller metrics.
There is a highlighted bit under message response rate info that says "The Message response rate only applies to the first message in a thread. Initial messages from both buyers and sellers on Etsy are counted towards the Message response rate. "
That means ALL messages. It also means each individual message thread so if someone sends you 5 different messages with 5 questions instead of putting them in the same message chain you need to respond to all 5 of them. The system is completely automated and doesn't know if the message is from a buyer or another seller. It just sees a message and calculated the response time. That's just how it works.
The info is also right there on the Star Seller page in shop manager. Just go to shop manager > star seller. Once there scroll toward the bottom until you find "Questions? We've got answers." Then click messages. The very first question there says
"What messages count toward the message response rate?
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."
You can try marking the message as spam now and it should be removed from the calculation in a few days.
If the star is important to you then it may be a good idea to read or review all the info Etsy provides about the star seller program.
Bottom line...you have to either reply or mark as spam.
The Message response rate counts initial messages from all Etsy members, both buyers, and other sellers. This is because fellow sellers could be potential buyers for your shop. If it's not a spam message it requires a response within 24 hours. If it is a spam message you can mark it as such and it won't count towards your score.
Just to clarify so people don't think they have to respond to every message and it will be a never ending loop: the FIRST message of a NEW thread must be replied to within 24 hours. It does not matter who sent it, the subject natter, 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. Etsy is now putting a blue text warning / advisory on those messages they consider to be a "new message".
