I had a customer accidentaly place 4 orders of the same item. They messaged me 3 times within 30 minutes to let me know they wanted to cancel 3 of the orders. The messages did not come in as a single thread as stated in this article Streamlining Messages
So one of the messages did not get responded to and because this feature did not work it dropped my message response rate to below the star seller requirement.
They can only send to spam if it was a regular message. If it was a help request they cannot. Since Etsy makes it hard to send a message that is not a help request after you've placed an order with a shop, I'm willing to wager a bet all these messages were help requests.
Most likely these came in as help requests. Help requests do not get combined into a single thread. Each one requires a response.
All you can do is spam that extra message, but that comes with them not being able to correspond with you and may effect their leaving a review (that one is complicated but it happened to me).
They can only send to spam if it was a regular message. If it was a help request they cannot. Since Etsy makes it hard to send a message that is not a help request after you've placed an order with a shop, I'm willing to wager a bet all these messages were help requests.
It doesn't give me the option to mark it as spam. I think audreytherese is correct, it was a help request. Thank you for responding.
If these were HElp request then you need to answer each one individually. These messages are separate from others. If the buyer sends a Help and regular message then you have to answer both.
Also you cannot answer a message on the order message area. It will not reflect in the message area.
Sometimes it pays just to respond with a simple answer to make sure all is covered.