An Etsy seller earned Star Seller status for March, according to his dashboard – but then he received emails informing him he had not earned Star Seller status, making him wonder if the emails were scams of some sort.
On Friday afternoon, he received an email with the subject line, “Let’s get you back on track for Star Seller.” Twenty minutes later, he received another email with the subject line, “You earned a customer service badge for March” that informed him that he earned a “smooth shipping” badge and a “rave reviews” badge for March, but did not receive the “speedy replies” badge.
He forwarded us the emails, and he also shared screenshots showing his Etsy dashboard displayed the message, “Congrats! You earned the Star Seller badge!” along with the following:
- “You earned the “Speedy replies” badge for March”
- “You earned the “Rave reviews” badge for March”
- “You earned the “Smooth shipping” badge for March”
- “You earned the Star Seller badge!”
Other sellers had some slightly different questions about their Star Seller status notifications on Friday. In a thread on the Etsy boards, a seller said he received an email notifying him that he had earned Star Seller status for March, but, he said he didn’t actually earn it because he hadn’t meet the volume requirements. However, he said the individual badges should have displayed despite his not meeting the volume requirement. (Sellers must make 5 sales totaling $300 in the past 3 months to earn the full Star Seller badge).
In another thread on the Etsy boards, a seller said her Star Seller badge had been removed for March “even though I surpassed the qualifications for 4 out of the 5 categories.”
One seller advised her to download their reports from her Star Seller stats – “From this you will be able to identify where the issue is.” Another seller said, “You need the 10 sales and $300 before you qualify for ANY badges” – but a few sellers said that had not previously been the case to get the individual badges to display.
But the original poster in that thread returned on Saturday morning to write: “Things are getting stranger. I received a message from Etsy last night congratulating me for being a STAR SELLER for March, but it has yet to show up on my shop.”
Let us know if you’re seeing anything odd about your Star Seller status and badge displays on Etsy, or if all is normal.
My Star Seller badges are showing, as expected.
Back in the first grade the teacher used to put little gold stars on the students foreheads when they were good. Is this the same thing???
What is the purpose of star seller badges. They have done nothing for me. I sell or don’t sell the same with or without them.
@GetAGrip – Yes! One of Etsy’s surveys must have informed them that sellers need this sort of encouragement. I will happily trade Star Seller for a search tool that works properly and returns 99% (even 95%) of EXACTLY what shoppers search for.
@TraciKing – The only thing I can think of is that Star Sellers aren’t subject to Etsy holding their money back, as they’ve been doing with some (many?) other sellers. I’ve seen this in Etsy’s House Rules, but can’t find that page right now … so I’m assuming it’s still a thing.
I lost my Star Seller for a few months last Summer. I’d taken too long to reply to ONE message. I suppose I could have marked it as spam but it really wasn’t. It was the promoter of a local show asking if I was interested in getting a booth … and I simply took too long to think about it. My bad. What REALLY sucked is that when I *should* have gotten my Star Seller badge back for messages, I missed out for yet another month because I hadn’t sold $300 in the previous 3 months (I am 150% convinced that I was in Etsy’s Longest Test Ever … which did something to stunt my sales between March and mid-November).