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The first two bullets are fairly reasonable (especially shipping on time...24 hours response isn't great but whatever), but expecting that high of a 5 star rate

The first two bullets are fairly reasonable (especially shipping on time...24 hours response isn't great but whatever), but expecting that high of a 5 star rate is almost unheard of. I see shops that do it, but we get 4 stars quite often for things like "Oh it was smaller than I expected" even though the listing says the exact measurements like 4 times. Also note that it says "95% of orders" not "95% of ratings." We get feedback, maybe, like 40% of the time if we're lucky. If you're not begging for ratings, you won't hit that number. They aren't overtly doing much with the Star Seller program yet, but I can almost guarantee that they will in the future. I'm 99% sure it's already influencing search rankings (since they influence them in other ways already, such as prioritizing listings with free shipping). I understand some of that is to promote sales which benefits the seller and Etsy, but if they are or start using Star Seller to tweak results, that's not really benefiting anyone that I can see.

tmp_anon_22 5y ago
Seems to me they should offer at least 2 tiers of this rating system. Star sellers for organizations that can give out free product in exchange for 5 star reviews, and ~Premium sellers for those who can't.
DanTheManPR 5y ago
It effectively means that a 4 star review has the same impact as a 1 star review.
mym1990 5y ago
Programs like this also encourage bots to come review or even buying reviews to game the system and if there is not a good way to combat this misuse, it can get out of hand pretty quick. Most reviews I look at on Amazon are pretty useless to me nowadays because I can't tell what's real and what's not.
nanidin 5y ago
95% only seems reasonable for thumbs up / thumbs down style rating systems. Too many people treat 5 and 10 star rating systems differently to require 95% 5 star ratings. Etsy and others should disclose the downsides to leaving a 4 star review at the time the customer is leaving the review. For me, 3 is OK, 4 is good, and 5 is PERFECT and is rarely ever given out on any system.
- kbenson 5y ago
  > 95% only seems reasonable for thumbs up / thumbs down style rating systems. Maybe for average of ratings, not for average of all things that could be rated, whether rated or not. Those are very different things.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  Exactly. Even more so when having anything other than the top 5% or 10% is functionally as bad as having a 45% rating.
systemvoltage 5y ago
As a buyer, there are so many ways to get screwed on eBay/Etsy, I am 100% with these requirements. eBay has had super sellers for 20 years now. Not as stringent but it is beneficial to customers. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to dilute their store with no control over review authenticity. Not saying Etsy isn’t prone to that but Amazon’s entire business model is to let these things slide. Etsy is at least doing something. I really don’t care about sellers. I want a place for high quality products. Period.
- lkbm 5y ago
  I'm definitely skeptical of dinging people for 4-star reviews, but each of these bullet points are encouraged by Etsy because they improve customer satisfaction and sales. The petition does make a good point that some products may be better just shipped dirt-cheap without paying for tracking, but overall Etsy is pushing sellers to provide better service and do things that bring in more revenue, both for them and the seller.
vitaflo 5y ago
My wife is a star seller on Etsy and it hasn’t been hard for her to maintain at all (and she’s never asked for ratings). But she’s also never had even a negative comment made about her product after thousands of sales. I wonder if some product types are more open to criticism than others.
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  My guess is that price (relative to the competition) is a good signal for this. If someone is buying an $80 mug for example, they probably really like that mug even before they get it, and so they're more likely to leave a good review. A $10 mug might be more of an impulse buy
Beltalowda 5y ago
> we get 4 stars quite often for things like "Oh it was smaller than I expected" even though the listing says the exact measurements like 4 times. It's hard to really gauge the size of something from just measurements. One thing that often annoys me about product pages is that have a bazillion images of the thingymabob, but don't actually have a bunch of images where it shows the thingymabob in perspective; e.g. somehow actually holding it, a wider-angle picture of it in regular context (e.g. a painting actually framed on a wall in a regular living room or whatnot), and that kind of stuff. Anyway, just an aside. I also see a 4-star review as "excellent", but many of these platforms seem to see anything less than 5 stars as "bad".
- jeremymcanally 5y ago
  I agree, but we've really tried everything to be honest! We put comparative photos on there, mention comparative sizing (e.g., "This is about the size of a normal business card"), and so on. Still, people get it and think it's going to be bigger/smaller and somehow that's a defect? It's just part of working with retail customers of a physical product, but unfortunately minor things like that have an outsized impact in a sales ecosystem like this that expects perfection in these interactions.
  - Beltalowda 5y ago
    As a customer, it's really hard to write these kind of reviews; people may still end up expecting something slightly larger, because even with the best of efforts it's just hard to judge these things from a picture or video. This is not anyone's "fault", it's just that humans aren't really good at judging these sort of things. So what review do you leave? 5-star because the product is "as advertised" and otherwise good? Or 4-star because it's not quite what you were looking for? I think both options are reasonable. The Real Problem™ here is thinking you can automate these sort of things without any human judgement and expect to somehow end up with a reasonable response. There will always be outliers that any human would judge as "yeah, that's just silly" but computers don't care.
    - mosseater 5y ago
jeromegv 5y ago
You seem misinformed, this is 95% of ratings. https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/your-star-seller-checklist/1020956976086 https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/your-star-selle... https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/introducing-star-seller/1021005855344 https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/introducing-sta...
- jeremymcanally 5y ago
  Perhaps it’s all ratings then because we’ve shipped 100% on time, pay someone to respond to customer messages within 8 hours, and we still somehow don’t meet the criteria.
mdoms 5y ago
I ordered a bunch of stickers from AvE, my one and only purchase on Etsy. It seems ridiculous that he should have to package my stickers with tracking to get them to me, and I live on the other side of the world in the midst of a shipping crisis so I don't care one jot if it takes him a few days to pop my stickers in the mail. Consumer expectations these days are so ridiculous. They're stickers.
jdmichal 5y ago
I really don't understand these systems where it's "5-stars or bust". Why even have stars if the only thing that matters is 5 or not-5. If you only care about a binary signal like that, then just make it a binary question. "Were you satisfied with this purchase? Yes / No." You'll probably get a much higher response rate, and it will be truer to the actual intent. A bunch of people that would hand out 4 or even 3 stars may still answer yes to that question.

tmp_anon_22 5y ago

Seems to me they should offer at least 2 tiers of this rating system. Star sellers for organizations that can give out free product in exchange for 5 star reviews, and ~Premium sellers for those who can't.

DanTheManPR 5y ago

It effectively means that a 4 star review has the same impact as a 1 star review.

mym1990 5y ago

Programs like this also encourage bots to come review or even buying reviews to game the system and if there is not a good way to combat this misuse, it can get out of hand pretty quick. Most reviews I look at on Amazon are pretty useless to me nowadays because I can't tell what's real and what's not.

nanidin 5y ago

95% only seems reasonable for thumbs up / thumbs down style rating systems. Too many people treat 5 and 10 star rating systems differently to require 95% 5 star ratings. Etsy and others should disclose the downsides to leaving a 4 star review at the time the customer is leaving the review. For me, 3 is OK, 4 is good, and 5 is PERFECT and is rarely ever given out on any system.

kbenson 5y ago
> 95% only seems reasonable for thumbs up / thumbs down style rating systems. Maybe for average of ratings, not for average of all things that could be rated, whether rated or not. Those are very different things.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Exactly. Even more so when having anything other than the top 5% or 10% is functionally as bad as having a 45% rating.

systemvoltage 5y ago

As a buyer, there are so many ways to get screwed on eBay/Etsy, I am 100% with these requirements. eBay has had super sellers for 20 years now. Not as stringent but it is beneficial to customers. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to dilute their store with no control over review authenticity. Not saying Etsy isn’t prone to that but Amazon’s entire business model is to let these things slide. Etsy is at least doing something. I really don’t care about sellers. I want a place for high quality products. Period.

lkbm 5y ago
I'm definitely skeptical of dinging people for 4-star reviews, but each of these bullet points are encouraged by Etsy because they improve customer satisfaction and sales. The petition does make a good point that some products may be better just shipped dirt-cheap without paying for tracking, but overall Etsy is pushing sellers to provide better service and do things that bring in more revenue, both for them and the seller.

vitaflo 5y ago

My wife is a star seller on Etsy and it hasn’t been hard for her to maintain at all (and she’s never asked for ratings). But she’s also never had even a negative comment made about her product after thousands of sales. I wonder if some product types are more open to criticism than others.

mitchdoogle 5y ago
My guess is that price (relative to the competition) is a good signal for this. If someone is buying an $80 mug for example, they probably really like that mug even before they get it, and so they're more likely to leave a good review. A $10 mug might be more of an impulse buy

Beltalowda 5y ago

> we get 4 stars quite often for things like "Oh it was smaller than I expected" even though the listing says the exact measurements like 4 times. It's hard to really gauge the size of something from just measurements. One thing that often annoys me about product pages is that have a bazillion images of the thingymabob, but don't actually have a bunch of images where it shows the thingymabob in perspective; e.g. somehow actually holding it, a wider-angle picture of it in regular context (e.g. a painting actually framed on a wall in a regular living room or whatnot), and that kind of stuff. Anyway, just an aside. I also see a 4-star review as "excellent", but many of these platforms seem to see anything less than 5 stars as "bad".

jeremymcanally 5y ago
I agree, but we've really tried everything to be honest! We put comparative photos on there, mention comparative sizing (e.g., "This is about the size of a normal business card"), and so on. Still, people get it and think it's going to be bigger/smaller and somehow that's a defect? It's just part of working with retail customers of a physical product, but unfortunately minor things like that have an outsized impact in a sales ecosystem like this that expects perfection in these interactions.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  As a customer, it's really hard to write these kind of reviews; people may still end up expecting something slightly larger, because even with the best of efforts it's just hard to judge these things from a picture or video. This is not anyone's "fault", it's just that humans aren't really good at judging these sort of things. So what review do you leave? 5-star because the product is "as advertised" and otherwise good? Or 4-star because it's not quite what you were looking for? I think both options are reasonable. The Real Problem™ here is thinking you can automate these sort of things without any human judgement and expect to somehow end up with a reasonable response. There will always be outliers that any human would judge as "yeah, that's just silly" but computers don't care.
  - mosseater 5y ago

jeromegv 5y ago

You seem misinformed, this is 95% of ratings. https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/your-star-seller-checklist/1020956976086 https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/your-star-selle... https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/introducing-star-seller/1021005855344 https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/introducing-sta...

jeremymcanally 5y ago
Perhaps it’s all ratings then because we’ve shipped 100% on time, pay someone to respond to customer messages within 8 hours, and we still somehow don’t meet the criteria.

mdoms 5y ago

I ordered a bunch of stickers from AvE, my one and only purchase on Etsy. It seems ridiculous that he should have to package my stickers with tracking to get them to me, and I live on the other side of the world in the midst of a shipping crisis so I don't care one jot if it takes him a few days to pop my stickers in the mail. Consumer expectations these days are so ridiculous. They're stickers.

jdmichal 5y ago

I really don't understand these systems where it's "5-stars or bust". Why even have stars if the only thing that matters is 5 or not-5. If you only care about a binary signal like that, then just make it a binary question. "Were you satisfied with this purchase? Yes / No." You'll probably get a much higher response rate, and it will be truer to the actual intent. A bunch of people that would hand out 4 or even 3 stars may still answer yes to that question.