To Etsy technical team: a bug in my message inbox affecting my message response rate

[CissyPixie]

Hope this message can reach Etsy's technical team.

I got a message in the inbox but when I click inside, there's nothing, completely blank, not even showing the message sender's info.  However, I can see the message content from my email notification that she attempted payment on two orders but failed and told me I can cancel those two orders.  Then she successfully paid on the third time, which I also received that order.

Back to the problem.  When the message thread do not have any content, I didn't reply it because I think the message was retracted.  Besides, there's no record of those two failed payment orders showing up on my order page.  And now this makes my message response rate drop because I didn't reply to an empty message.

If the technical team need to look, here's the thread:  https://www.etsy.com/messages/1179301707

Please fix it if you can.  Thank you very much!

[SunnytyDE]

We have to reply or spam every message no matter if it's a duplicate or empty. Try putting the message in spam now, your response rate might adjust in a few hours.

[Former_Member]

Same here. It shows one message but when I click there is nothing inside. 

[SunnytyDE]

@Former_Member  Put it into spam or reply with a ?

[thewoollydog]

Well good luck with that! because I've just checked why my message response rate has gone down to 80% from 100% and it was because a shop I had favourited an item from and put in one of my private (locked not public) lists messaged me to say thank you and I'd immediately put it in spam, yet I've been marked down for it when etsy say we don't get penalised for sending messages to spam!    

[ReImagineBrewing]

I'd make your favorites private and not use any of the Etsy marketing tools where they might send you a message. It truly is backwards that we are encouraged to be involved but later punished. Things programmers don't think of but had sellers been involved they would have been mentioned...

[SunnytyDE]

@thewoollydog  How long ago did you spam it? Sometimes it can take 24-48 hours to update the score. 

[thewoollydog]

I spammed it over 3 days ago, but yesterday it appeared back in my open messages for some reason, which is probably why my score dropped, so I messaged etsy and they said put it in spam and it will take 24-48 hours to show. Today my score is back to 100%, but really weird, because I know I spammed it away. Annoying that it was a shop just messaging me to say thank you for favouriting an item of theirs, I'm sure I'm not the only person they messaged and mucked up the scores... but all sorted now.   

[WitticismsRus]

@thewoollydog 

This is exactly why many of us have our favorites set to private. You may want to consider doing the same just so you don't have to worry or even deal with spam messages from sellers like that. They shouldn't be messaging about a favorite but many do. 

Edit to add-doh sorry I see below that it was private. I clearly need more coffee hehe. Is just that list/folder of favs set to private or all of your favs? Maybe check and see if there is another privacy option for all of your favs. I can't remember since they have changed favs set up a few times recently.

[thewoollydog]

@ReImagineBrewing it was in a private favourite list, which is weird in itself, because I thought that meant that not only couldn't it be seen by anyone, but that the shop it was favourited from would only have it showing as 'a secret admirer' so how they knew it was me that favoured it I've no idea.