Star seller: messages

[ESBIdesignshop]

Im will likely miss out on being a star seller due to one message not being responded to within 24 hours. I downloaded the history to identify the message and then found the message. The message was to me for an item I purchased. Not sold. It was directing me to their fb page for future purchases. I should not be penalized for not responding to this. Ugh. 

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@ESBIdesignshop: "'I should not be penalized for not responding to this." Fair or not, those are rules that Etsy set. Probably almost everyone on this forum can sympathize with you but as it says right on your Star Seller page, you need to reply to the FIRST message of EVERY NEW INCOMING THREAD 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.

If the unanswered new thread is not a Help Request, 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 (but not retroactively). Note that subsequent messages from that account may go directly to the SPAM folder.

[BootifulLabels]

The rules clearly state that all new messages require an answer or to be marked as spam within 24 hrs in order to qualify for SS. It doesn't matter who they are from or what they are about, no-one reads your messages, the system is automated and simply compares the time-stamps for receipt and response to determine compliance. If you mark that message as spam now, it should update your stats within a day or two, but it will not help with the badges already awarded.

If you don't want your purchases to affect your SS status, you have a couple of options.

1. You can use Auto reply to send a "thank you" or an "I'll get back to you shortly" message. This counts as a response for SS, but needs to be reset every five days.
2. You can create a few snippets with various messages and send quick responses that way in just 3 clicks, Snippets/Select/Send.
3. You can create a new, buyer only Etsy account and keep all your purchases separate from your shop.

No 3 is the easiest.

[ExtremeCreation]

I've been there, done that, and had my lesson learned.