Star Seller rating dinged due to Spam messages

[DrizzleDotsDesigns]

Early April Etsy marked couple of legitimate messages as spam and I did not notice it until after a week, the Etsy app does not show spam folder and I rarely look at message from my computer. In any case, Etsy Star Seller eligibility clearly states messages that were marked Spam is not considered for Star Seller, but it sure did when I replied to those messages and marked them as not spam. How is this my issue? Also, the June progress doesn't look great as this happened in April, those 2 messages going to be considered for next 2 months star seller eligibility calculation. How can I resolve this?

[GoldDoorVintage]

Same issue! And no help from customer service, nor can they forward the issues directly to the "technical team" 

[DrizzleDotsDesigns]

Exactly! I reached out to customer service and even logged a service ticket, but it went nowhere. Service ticket was closed without a resolution and guidance. The chat with customer service was a copy paste response. I know Etsy says the Star Seller does not impact your search result but when Etsy promotes Star Seller is something that every seller should strive for, they should stand by their statement when the sellers do their part. This infuriates me.

[Adorabilities · Accepted solution]

Put them back in the spam folder.

They said they were fixing this, and that non-spam removed from the spam folder wouldn't be counted somehow. But if those messages are still counting against you, back into the spam folder they go.

(I never took mine out from the very beginning, and it never counted against me.)

[DrizzleDotsDesigns]

But, how would you respond to the message if you hear back from the customer? I made a sale with one of those messages, and I don't want to get on my computer every time to monitor the spam folder and respond to them.  I don't get notified if a response goes to spam.

[Chrysalism]

Putting a message in the spam folder blocks the customer from messaging you, so it's not a good fix for this situation unfortunately.

[Adorabilities]

You can carry on a complete conversation within the spam folder. 

You'll have to look at your account once a day (or more) to see if there are replies to ongoing threads your spam folder. I'm assuming we do that anyway now because real messages are being sent to spam.

It's not a perfect solution but it's better than losing the star if you want to keep it.

@Chrysalism I was able to have a long conversation within the spam folder. They may be blocked from sending you new threads, but there aren't supposed to be multiple threads from the same person anyway.
In other words, they are not blocked from replying to the existing conversation.

[Chrysalism]

@Adorabilities 
Was this recently? Because Etsy updated their help section recently and it says marking a message as spam blocks further contact from that person:

"If you receive a suspicious message, you can block the sender by:

1. Sign in to Etsy.com and go to Your Account.
2. Go to Messages. 
3. Select the suspicious message from your inbox. 
4. Choose Mark as Spam.

This will move the message out of your inbox and into your Spam folder. You won’t receive any new messages from that member, and they’ll be unable to reply to messages in an existing thread. However, blocked members can still purchase items from your shop."

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000343128-How-to-Handle-Scams-and-Suspicious-Messages

It's totally possible the help page is wrong though, it wouldn't be the first time. I would just be very cautious about marking legitimate customer messages as spam just in case.

[Adorabilities]

@Chrysalism 

The in-spam message thread I'm looking at was from April 3-9, which I believe is after that article was written/updated.

I would never mark a customer message as spam that came in as non-spam. But if it came in as spam, I have no intention of pulling it out.

Until things change yet again, of course.  : )

[TBQSC]

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