Tricky buyers vs Cancelation Rate

[wuerz123]

It’s been a very good month for me so far. Better than last year.
But together with this small success, came a higher rate of canceled orders 😒
Now is the third time happening in this month… and I would like to tell (and at the same time ask) about this experience:
A new client approaches me, he’s polite and asks for a job done. First contact is for a 3 pages boocklet. I give my price, it’s OK. I send my Custom offer.
The next contact he says it would not be 3 pages, it will be 4 (8 sides). I withdraw my offer and send a new one: “too expensive”… OK, I take away some extras like PDF files and extend my delivery time. That’s OK. I send again my new Custom offer.
My offer is accepted, he opens the order but doesn’t send me all the info, instead writes: “as mentioned in previous messages”. I ask him to send me all information, and not the sketch he has showed me in our messages. He takes 2 days to do so… order time is ticking…
He sends the info after those days and I discover it is not 4 pages (8 sides) but 16!!! 😡
Same thing happened 3 times this month… with people asking for a job done, and then in the order they want much much more for the offer I’ve sent!
I’ve sent a cancellation request, because I am not motivated anymore to work for someone who tricked me and gave me false information. Also because he already considered my previous price "too much" … was that maybe the sign I’ve should have seen before accepting the job??
The reason for the cancelation is "Seller order something not offered in the GIg"
I hope that, by picking that option, it will not affect my rate, as I believe choosing the reason of why I ask for a cancelation should be because they (the Fiverr Bosses) control it, does someone really? … and it’s not just for mere statistics.

[roycohn]

Short answer: no one cares that your cancellation rate is going up. They just put it there to force you to complete as many orders as you can, so you can feed them more of that sweet 20% rate.
They don’t care that buyers can be problematic; they don’t care that cancellations are, for the most part, due to buyers being the ones who cause the issues. Even if you send a ticket to support, and they cancel the order for you, it’ll still be counted as a cancelled order.
And of course, these cancellations only affect the seller negatively. So a buyer can come over and mess up your stats by ordering over and over again something that you don’t offer, for example.
Best thing to do? Be as specific as possible, make sure you have most buyers contact you prior to placing orders and if all else fails, cancel the order and forget about it. If Fiverr will continue on insisting on this stupid, useless, money-hungry metric, it’ll be their loss as all sellers will eventually get hit by it.

[wuerz123]

Short answer: no one cares that your cancellation rate is going up. They just put it there to force you to complete as many orders as you can, so you can feed them more of that sweet 20% rate.

They don’t care that buyers can be problematic; they don’t care that cancellations are, for the most part, due to buyers being the ones who cause the issues. Even if you send a ticket to support, and they cancel the order for you, it’ll still be counted as a cancelled order.

And of course, these cancellations only affect the seller negatively. So a buyer can come over and mess up your stats by ordering over and over again something that you don’t offer, for example.

Best thing to do? Be as specific as possible, make sure you have most buyers contact you prior to placing orders and if all else fails, cancel the order and forget about it. If Fiverr will continue on insisting on this stupid, useless, money-hungry metric, it’ll be their loss as all sellers will eventually get hit by it.

They just put it there to force you to complete as many orders as you can, so you can feed them more of that sweet 20% rate

I agree 100% with your statement. At the end is every business’s goal, Isn’t it? But for the records: who’s maintaining Fiverr’s income? Buyers with their $$ or Sellers with their work and good offers? I will once and again incline for the latter.

And of course, these cancellations only affect the seller negatively.

That’s a fact. I’ve been controlling my Gig since the cancellation “options” came up. And sometimes my Gig varies in position (when using the search tool), right after a cancelation is accepted (of course my GIg goes down). But, these 3 times were for different reasons “Buyer orders something not offered…” and I couldnt see any difference in my Gig the first two times. If that’s mere “Zufall” (coincidence), then why forcing me (or the buyer) to explain or choose the cancelation reasons?

[roycohn]

As far as I’m seeing, and I’ve been around Fiverr for years now, there is no difference whatsoever between the reasons you choose for cancelling an order. Next time I’m going for Other and writing in ‘My dinosaur ate my order’.

[wuerz123]

As far as I’m seeing, and I’ve been around Fiverr for years now, there is no difference whatsoever between the reasons you choose for cancelling an order. Next time I’m going for Other and writing in ‘My dinosaur ate my order’.

‘My dinosaur ate my order’

😂 …

[miiila]

Well, what is written in a few places is something vague like (my bolding):

It is one way for you to track the quality of the service you’re providing on Fiverr and can also be a factor that influences your Gig’s position in search rankings.

What I can tell you is what CS told me, when I inquired because I had two cancellations within that counted 60-days period alone by a customer who ordered by mistake, plus some more, all because of the buyers and nothing I could have done to prevent it.
They said that the reason for the cancellation counts and that it will not affect my gig’s ranking.

If that is the case or not I can´t tell, I don´t really track my gigs’ rankings.
What I definitely noticed after the change to mutual cancellations counting for the completion rate (of course I never had any cancellations when it didn´t yet count but right thereafter several -_-), were fewer orders, and I read something along that line a few times on the forum, but I can´t definitely say that those two things are linked, might be pure coincidence.

My cancellation rate still is higher than ‘that of top sellers in my category’ or whatever they quote you there to get you depressive (seems the top sellers in my category don´t have so many buyers who order by accident and such things) because you already know that the link on ‘how to have fewer cancellations’ won´t help you at all with your cancellations, but I have enough orders to fill my time, then again much of my work is for return/regular customers, so, all in all, it´s hard to tell, I can´t say if it has/had an influence or not.

I´m operating on the assumption that it is as I´ve been told - then again, you know what you gave as cancellation reason,
but not what your customer told them, they could just click the first reason on the list or tick something wrong because they don´t want to tick ‘other’ and have to type up a reason themselves (we know a lot of buyers just click the 5 stars and don´t want to type a personalized review either) or whatever, because it doesn´t have any effect on them and they might not know or care that it does have an effect on you.