Answering publicly, including when the review is unfair.
A buyer can review you once the parcel has been delivered, and the review goes live immediately. You get one public reply to each — one only, and it cannot be taken back.
Two ways, and this is the one part of your shop that does email you: a message headed You have a new review on Artmire, with the score, the item and the first part of what was written, and a Read and reply button. A red number appears on your Reviews entry at the same time, counting the ones you have not answered.
The page opens with anything unanswered at the top, and an amber line saying how many are waiting.
Three scores out of five, all three required, and no overall score for them to set:
The number shown as the review's rating is the average of those three. Your shop's rating is the average of every visible review across all your items — it belongs to the shop, not to any one piece, and it is recalculated from scratch each time anything changes.
A buyer may also attach one photograph to their review. It appears under what they wrote, on your Reviews page and everywhere else the review is shown. Like the review itself, you cannot change it or take it down.
Two of the three are about how you behave, not about what you make. A slow reply and a badly packed parcel can pull down a shop selling faultless work.
Reply sits at the foot of any review you have not answered. There is room for a good deal — the box counts down from 2,000 characters — and the window tells you plainly, before you send: you get one reply, and it is final.
No edits, no deletion, no second attempt. Once posted, the Reply button is gone for that review, for you and for anyone at Artmire acting on your behalf. Write it, read it back, then send it.
Your reply appears under the review in your list marked Your reply. Publicly it shows under the review as Reply from the seller.
On your shop page, below your items, with the star distribution and the three averages — and on your item pages too, at the foot of each one. A reader no longer has to go to your shop to read them.
Which is worth knowing when you reply: your answer is no longer read only by someone who went looking for your reviews. It sits under the review on every page showing that work, in front of people deciding whether to trust you.
A poor review is not the end of a shop; a poor answer to one often is. Anyone comparing two sellers reads the replies, and how you handle criticism tells them more than the star count does.
And if a review is fair, saying so plainly costs nothing and reads better than silence.
You cannot remove a review, and neither can the buyer who wrote it. There is no report button on a review, and ordinary criticism — however wrong you think it is — stays up. Your reply is the answer to it, and it is the one you get.