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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
I didn’t qualify for the Badge in December 100% messages and shipping, reviews 92%, however all of a sudden the badge appeared on my shop around mid December. ??? First message to Etsy produced a canned response, second message said they will look into it and respond. No reply from Etsy. Then, to make matters even more confusing the Badge appeared for a couple days in January with stats of 100% messages and shipping, 95% reviews and now the Badge has disappeared. Too many technical issues that Etsy doesn’t know how to fix. And, they don’t want to admit that this Star Seller program is a joke!
Many of our orders are picked up by the customer. These transactions have no tracking number. This counts against our “On-time shipping & tracking”.
Before Etsy considers it has the knowledge, expertise, and responsibility to micro-manage individual sellers, it first must fix problems with the services it sells: faulty search, undesired mature content, poor responsiveness to its customers, troublesome shipping products, and the rampant reselling, counterfeiting, and trademark infringements that are coming to characterize the entire platform. Until Etsy improves its own services, Etsy does not have the moral authority to tell others how to treat their customers.
We sell in excess of $400K USD of tableware a year and as a marketplace, Etsy has always been our only one. As of 2022 we will set up a standalone – Josh and his SSP math – the Silverman Effect as we call it, some of us – is driving us away. NOT TO JOSH! – if you sell hundreds of thousands of dollars of dinnerware yearly, you may get 4 4-star ratings against your sales – we lost 8% of our SSP for 4-star ratings. OMG. AND your app on old phones only lets the customers rate a max of 4!!!!!
Post Christmas the 4-star reviews tend to be greater. I think it is related 1. to people getting their cc bills and being in a bills blues mode. The larger issue Etsy would be able to and should address is the “old app, only 4 stars available” review option for buyers. Three customers indicated to me within the last 30 days that they use an app and it only allows them to rate a max of 4 stars, it does NOT offer them a 5-star rating option. When I brought this to the attention of Etsy online support (through chat) the rep told me they had (a) never heard of this problem and (b) that if it were the case, I should go back to the customer and ask they go onto a desktop or laptop to leave reviews and to update any reviews that they felt were not correct. I was also told by the same rep that “even if the Buyer updates the review, only the first review is calculated into the SSP”. ETSY! four stars is not dissatisfaction and sellers should not be penalized for four stars. Also, if some of these 4-star ratings are related to app issues you should fix them – not penalizing sellers for 4-star reviews solves the whole mess entirely and I feel that is the easiest remedy!