Star seller messaging

[VelvetBerryHome]

Just reporting the issue with star seller awards for messaging- similar to other sellers, I have lost my star seller status only because 1. I have not replied to a thank you message from a customer after the transaction was completed and 2. customer sent the same message twice( I replied to the first one). 

[audreytherese]

That's not a technical issue though. Those were both your errors. 

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@VelvetBerryHome:  Probably everyone in this forum can sympathize with you but a quick search would show you the innumerable threads about the exact same issue in this forum.

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. 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".

Help Requests always start a new thread.

If you are creating a custom listing based on a new thread, you still need to reply to the message.

Cancellation requests in a new thread must be replied to in the actual message - replies using the cancellation form do not count as a response.

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. Note that subsequent messages from that account may go directly to the SPAM folder.

[WitticismsRus]

@VelvetBerryHome 

I know that the phone support and live chat support folks tell you to post here for help but it's just us sellers here. The live chat and phone call back support people are just a call center folks. They are very very limited in the issues they can help with and pretty much just repeat what's in the help center articles. Unfortunately the Help Center article says the same incorrect thing- to post here.

Here is the link https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403058372503-How-to-Become-a-Star-Seller?segment=selling

it says "Etsy Support can’t make changes to your Star Seller data or manually award Star Seller badges. If you think your Star Seller score was calculated incorrectly, you can let us know in the Technical Issues forum."

But they changed this to a peer to peer support forum a few years ago so it's just us sellers here sadly. Occasionally an admin will pop in if there is a major issue going on but generally it's just us sellers. If you need more help from etsy support you will need to contact them again but this time use the email option. That is the only one that will get you to an actual etsy employee vs the call center folks.

With all that said, your issue isn't really something they will fix. They are pretty clear in all the info about star seller that you have to respond to all messages which means all new message threads or mark them as spam. In the future you should mark the duplicate message as spam to solve the issue.