Order countdown is ticking, but the requirements will come 'later'?

[cordomia]

Hello Fiverrers!

I have just received my third order for a $5 design—great news! The order countdown is ticking because the buyer has ‘filled out’ the requirements. But the requirements only state the following message:

Hey, dear. I need something else. I will write and describe later in the evening.

The order came in around 9am in the morning, and evening to my knowledge starts around 6pm.
This means (at least) 9 hours will be wasted while my countdown ticks. That’s my entire day at the office!
‘Yikes’. 😟

Since I don’t know what the order requirements will be—as buyers tend to range from ‘uncomplicated’ to ‘the whole fanfare’—I run the risk of delivering late down the line, perhaps receiving a bad review in the process.

Since I’m practically a Seller-Newbie, I was wondering how you would handle this kind of situation, so that I can figure out how to solve this issue professionally.

Many of the topics I find simply state that if the buyer doesn’t send in his requirements, the countdown doesn’t start. But my problem is that he did submit something, just not the actual requirements.

I’m currently a bit worried. Do I contact Fiverr in some way? Do I ask the buyer for an extra day? (1 day is the minimum I saw in a dropdown list.) What if the buyer refuses to grant extra time or doesn’t respond? And so forth. I don’t wish to agitate him in any way but my " time’s a wastin’ " while he is unavailable until tonight at least.

Thank you for taking the time to read my topic,
Cordomia 💛

[cubittaudio]

We had a similar situation over the weekend. The buyer ordered on Saturday, with a 48 hour delivery. They wanted us to record a voice-over and mix in music, but they did not tell us what music they wanted. We guided them to our music library, and asked them to choose a track… 24 hours later, we still hadn’t heard anything from them.

In this instance, we used the Dispute Button to raise a dispute. We politely explained to the buyer that we had lost 24 hours as we did not have the full requirements, and asked the buyer to extend by 24 hours. When he eventually came online, he agreed to the extension and gave us the info we needed. We were actually able to deliver the work within the original timeframe, but we wanted the additional time just in case.

Be firm and be polite. You can’t be expected to work without all of the required information, and if you lose time because of this, you are well within your rights to ask the buyer for additional time to cover that which you have lost.