Star seller calculation

[EmmyandAveryMarket]

Who do I contact regarding star seller incorrect calculation?  

My calculation of message responses in 24 hours included a shipping notification that I received from a personal purchase. There was no response warranted and should not effect my business platform.

Please help.

Thanks,

[JJewellerySuppliesUK]

All messages need to be responded to because the bots can't distinguish one from the other.  All the info is on your seller dashboard about how it works.  Mark that message you didn't reply to as spam and your score will recalculate.  

[Former_Member]

It's all messages.

[FallenAngelBrass]

All together now:

"We must respond to every message thread if we want our purple candy!" 

[NanaLetha]

@FallenAngelBrass  My chuckle for the day.

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@EmmyandAveryMarket  :  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.

Etsy had made it clear that they will not manually adjust Star Seller data.

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

[mommawhazelsquilts]

Does anyone ever read the rules?

There is no ambiguity in the rules as set out in our dashboards well over a year ago.  It plainly says ALL NEW MESSAGES.

I guess technically it's FIRST MESSAGE but the meaning is clear.

[AcmeRainbows]

still don't understand why anyone cares about star seller ratings.  geeze.  Focus on making your products ones that people want to buy instead of fretting over this etsy-induced nonsense...sales come from the products, not the star ratings.

[mommawhazelsquilts]

Not sure that's true anymore.  Might have been in the beginning but as the buying public (which includes Etsy sellers) realizes what the SSB means (good service, good customer service, good products) I think the climate may be changing.

[AcmeRainbows]

@mommawhazelsquilts 

i disagree.  There are so many protections against bad sellers, etc., the star ratings are irrelevant to me as a buyer and at best are a punitive metric installed by Etsy rather than an actual buyer decision making tool. 

Product reviews, however, do matter to me as a buyer.

When I've bought at Ebay, I don't even notice the top-rated seller stuff...in fact, all factors equal, I would buy from a non-top-rated seller just to give the little guy a leg up...

[AcmeRainbows]

oops!

[TonsOfPaper · Accepted solution]

Hello there,

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.

Thank you very much!