Look a reviews policy under the TOS

[emmaki]

My interpretation of the situation and the wording is this.

CS are separating the behavior before review and the review itself. The threatening behavior goes to Trust and Safety while CS themselves deal with the review - the actual wording of it.

The actual review without the threat would not really warrant removal, even if it is incorrect, it is a subjective gig that can mean different things to different people.

The thing is, other than removing the feedback, I don’t see what we could expect Trust and Safety to do here. Will it be a message saying “Don’t do that again”? They are hardly going to suspend or ban them for it.

TO ME, a fair resolution would be removing the review.

The reason being that I don’t believe reviews should be allowed to be a bargaining chip. Sellers know that buyers can review, those buyers who threaten a bad review while seeking cancellation should not be allowed to leave one IMO. But that is just my view and not how Fiverr seem to see it. I suppose as you mentioned somewhere, it does seem like a backwards step as it will likely make cancellation more attractive to sellers, especially those who have few reviews.

cancellation more attractive to sellers, especially those who have few reviews.

It’s the smart move. As we know, the much-loved new cancellation rate doesn’t, in theory, affect anything. For a new seller, a horrible review similar to the one I got–let’s say it’s a seller with a couple of “outstanding experiences!” is going to crash and burn. The outstanding experience is meaningless in terms of information for prospective buyers, while the angry review can be incredibly specific. Aside from the hugely damaging affect on your overall profile, it’s going to be very difficult to come back from that (no BR, for starters). I’d cancel–particularly as this could be all for just $5.

This theoretical seller is a good seller, by the way. I have no problem with poor sellers receiving poor reviews. However, letting false/misleading/whatever reviews up damages the review system’s accuracy just as much manipulation the other way around.

They now can leave a bad review while Trust and Safety looks at them

I’d be OK with that if there was a process in place. Maybe you get a message after a day or two letting you know that the investigation has been completed, and that the T&S team has concluded that either the review violated policy and has been removed, or that it stands due to [reason, link to FP for more information]. Plus, of course, the old favorite “due to reasons of privacy, we cannot tell you…”.

Easy! Make a couple of templates, c&p the reason and Bob’s yer uncle.

[eoinfinnegan]

cancellation more attractive to sellers, especially those who have few reviews.

It’s the smart move. As we know, the much-loved new cancellation rate doesn’t, in theory, affect anything. For a new seller, a horrible review similar to the one I got–let’s say it’s a seller with a couple of “outstanding experiences!” is going to crash and burn. The outstanding experience is meaningless in terms of information for prospective buyers, while the angry review can be incredibly specific. Aside from the hugely damaging affect on your overall profile, it’s going to be very difficult to come back from that (no BR, for starters). I’d cancel–particularly as this could be all for just $5.

This theoretical seller is a good seller, by the way. I have no problem with poor sellers receiving poor reviews. However, letting false/misleading/whatever reviews up damages the review system’s accuracy just as much manipulation the other way around.

They now can leave a bad review while Trust and Safety looks at them

I’d be OK with that if there was a process in place. Maybe you get a message after a day or two letting you know that the investigation has been completed, and that the T&S team has concluded that either the review violated policy and has been removed, or that it stands due to [reason, link to FP for more information]. Plus, of course, the old favorite “due to reasons of privacy, we cannot tell you…”.

Easy! Make a couple of templates, c&p the reason and Bob’s yer uncle.

Exactly, limiting the reasons CS can remove feedback is a difficult move as while it means more negative reviews will stick which is something I think Fiverr wants - in the sense of honest reviews help with trust of the whole platform - it will increase the number of cancellations as buyers become aware of it and this is something Fiverr does not want - they have implemented policies to reduce cancellations.

I suspect they are trying to tread a fine line here and it will take some time for them to get the balance right. That’s my hope anyway.

[markp]

I never thought the policy was overly lax. Surely there must be a way to differentiate the bad sellers from the good ones rather than penalize all sellers unfairly.

Bad cheating sellers routinely give refunds as a normal business policy and simply hope there are a few buyers who never complain so they can make a few bucks.

I never cancel after a delivery.

Imagine for a moment if four or five people were sitting round a table. hypothetically of course, and these people were having a discussion about the feedback, cancellations etc and even referring to posts on this very forum where people in the past had made light of, and made jokes about the complaints made elsewhere about behaviour of the sellers on the site etc.

Someone, in this discussion lays down a decree, that no one else can argue with, and decides that feedback will not be removed, going forward, as this will interfere with a buyers right to leave feedback, based on their experience…on their experience. Someone may even have mentioned the right to leave feedback after all they (buyers) have paid for that right. Of course if the feedback is left based on user experience and that is the (single) qualifying factor, then the obvious and logical conclusion would be that there will no separate policy for feedback and no feedback is getting removed.Ever. unless a buyer goes far off the tracks.

The question here is how far off the tracks does the buyer have to go. As there is no policy on this it would be down the person on support to make a judgement call. I don’t know about you but I would not be wanting to remove feedback from orders, left, right and center when there are instructions from above that buyers should be able to leave feedback based on their overall experience, which may have no relationship to what they ordered or even to normal human behaviour, and their experience may down to the simple fact they do not like the way the conversation went, so you are getting 1 star for communication, even if you spent 6 hours straight helping them. One star for would order again, and one star for would (not) recommend. Until they place their next order with you.

Now everyone is happy. Support is happy they don’t have to spend 24 hours a day dealing with feedback removal requests because…its staying.

Buyers are happy because. They are free to leave any feedback they like without it getting removed.

Who isn’t happy? The doers who are getting done are not happy.

If you take this to its logical conclusion Instead of finding complaints outside fiverr about fiverr potential buyers land on the site and will find an increasing amount of malicious feedback. On and off the site as well.

With regards to this.

Surely there must be a way to differentiate the bad sellers from the good ones rather than penalize all sellers unfairly.

This is the whole crux of the matter as far as Fiverr are concerned. Who better to do this than the buyers who are dealing with you. Of course there will be a small number who have missed their daily dose of Saphris. It is this minority who cause the most problems and run amok, both on and off Fiverr and it is this minority whose feedback really needs to be looked at. Unfortunately these people have now wised up to the fact that if they avoid saying certain things in their feedback it is not going to get removed.

In my opinion if someone breaks the TOS of the site it logically follows they are breaching what they agreed to when they signed up for the site and this flows down to the feedback as well.

To state that someone has broken the TOS, but their feedback has nothing to do with that is a non sequitur. If a person breaks the TOS in their feedback, or how they state they are going to use the feedback, then what they have stated in the feedback also breaks the TOS. No “yeah-but” and the feedback, logically, should be invalidated.

[miroslavglavic]

Is this for @emmaki ?

no no no no no no no no

sorry for the multiple no but apparrently two characters is not enough for a reply.

[design_palace]

I had very similar experience and I urged TS to point out my mistake. The template answer of CS is something that irritates me like anything. I gave up and accepted, though I was not at all in the fault. And believe me, I, genuinely, have sense to accept the faults if I have made the one. Anyway, the balanced policy is the need of the hour and we the sellers should be given fair treatment too.