What to do when: Buyer Threatens to Kill (and ****** ) You

[cyaxrex]

I’m so puzzled by how this message moderation system even works on here. My message got flagged for having “childish” instead of “child-like” in it by mistake (in reference to the cartoon character’s appearance). Yet, I’m a b**** and a c*** and an a** every once and a while and that’s completely fine.

In your particular case, I second the advice not to engage. You should’ve been done after the first message you’ve sent. You tell them what they want is not possible, inform them what you need to proceed and that’s it. Then you report them and you continue to report them to create a case for CS agent to look through. Then you ask for the follow-up in a few days.

And I would report the message with kill/r*** separately with a brief comment of what your concerns are. That you no longer feel safe/motivated to work on the platform when this is kind of behavior is ignored and nothing is getting done.

I was playing this ignore/report game with a disturbed individual for 8 months before the action was taken once and for all (given the multiple accounts they had) but in your case, with this level of escalation, I’m sure they can be dealt with quicker.

Also, you should edit out the buyer’s name on the second screenshot, it’s still visible. And of course, they have a bunch of 5* reviews from other sellers because this blind review system for sure is helpful and works well. 😕

My message got flagged for having “childish” instead of “child-like” in it by mistake (in reference to the cartoon character’s appearance). Yet, I’m a b**** and a c*** and an a** every once and a while and that’s completely fine.

Yes! I would love to know how buyers can message me saying: "Hi I’m Jason, I own a company, please send samples to jason@imaginary.email and let us know how to pay by PayPal." - Before calling me a 💩head when I say no.

After all, if I try to respond to a message like the above, I get flagged straight away for use of the word pay, email, etc.

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

[lenasemenkova]

My message got flagged for having “childish” instead of “child-like” in it by mistake (in reference to the cartoon character’s appearance). Yet, I’m a b**** and a c*** and an a** every once and a while and that’s completely fine.

Yes! I would love to know how buyers can message me saying: "Hi I’m Jason, I own a company, please send samples to jason@imaginary.email and let us know how to pay by PayPal." - Before calling me a 💩head when I say no.

After all, if I try to respond to a message like the above, I get flagged straight away for use of the word pay, email, etc.

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

Or they’re under the impression we’re discussing donkeys and female dogs all day long.

I have panic attacks using words like “sexy” now. I’m forced to talk like my grandma and use “naughty” instead.

[richardbloch]

My message got flagged for having “childish” instead of “child-like” in it by mistake (in reference to the cartoon character’s appearance). Yet, I’m a b**** and a c*** and an a** every once and a while and that’s completely fine.

Yes! I would love to know how buyers can message me saying: "Hi I’m Jason, I own a company, please send samples to jason@imaginary.email and let us know how to pay by PayPal." - Before calling me a 💩head when I say no.

After all, if I try to respond to a message like the above, I get flagged straight away for use of the word pay, email, etc.

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

@cyaxrex I’m really trying to avoid hyperbolizing stuff and dislike complaining, but in all honesty: I sincerely believe no filters and rules whatsoever apply to the buyer accounts on Fiverr. Not even national or international law (as infractions like these and what @lenasemenkova went through would definitely involve police and get sanctioned by law, not need 8 freakin’ months to get the abuser’s account restricted).

[lenasemenkova]

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

@cyaxrex I’m really trying to avoid hyperbolizing stuff and dislike complaining, but in all honesty: I sincerely believe no filters and rules whatsoever apply to the buyer accounts on Fiverr. Not even national or international law (as infractions like these and what @lenasemenkova went through would definitely involve police and get sanctioned by law, not need 8 freakin’ months to get the abuser’s account restricted).

Well, I had this call with CS some of us had last year and they offered to look into the person to make sure they and any of their other possible accounts are “dealt with”. But it’s been taken care of a year ago and I honestly don’t want them to poke that person to provoke them into action again.

They assured me such behavior was not okay and absolutely wouldn’t be tolerated. And then I read stories like yours (and another seller last month who’s got racist insults wielded at them) and it just breaks my heart, honestly. I understand that they can’t take action immediately but I always hope it will get taken care of at some point.

[richardbloch]

Well, I had this call with CS some of us had last year and they offered to look into the person to make sure they and any of their other possible accounts are “dealt with”. But it’s been taken care of a year ago and I honestly don’t want them to poke that person to provoke them into action again.

They assured me such behavior was not okay and absolutely wouldn’t be tolerated. And then I read stories like yours (and another seller last month who’s got racist insults wielded at them) and it just breaks my heart, honestly. I understand that they can’t take action immediately but I always hope it will get taken care of at some point.

They assured me such behavior was not okay and absolutely wouldn’t be tolerated. And then I read stories like yours (and another seller last month who’s got racist insults wielded at them) and it just breaks my heart, honestly. I understand that they can’t take action immediately but I always hope it will get taken care of at some point.

I really hope it’ll be taken care of as well. So far haven’t received any word from the Customer Support, will keep you updated. Hope to receive it today before evening.

[richardbloch]

Update: the Customer Support has cancelled the order and issued a refund to the buyer, and apparently banned his account.

So the buyer got work for free, verbally abused and threatened to kill me, racially discriminated me and will get to create a new account and just do it all over again to a new seller.

Must say I’m not really satisfied with how the things have turned out.

[cyaxrex]

Update: the Customer Support has cancelled the order and issued a refund to the buyer, and apparently banned his account.

So the buyer got work for free, verbally abused and threatened to kill me, racially discriminated me and will get to create a new account and just do it all over again to a new seller.

Must say I’m not really satisfied with how the things have turned out.

Must say I’m not really satisfied with how the things have turned out.

If you want you can borrow my flying monkey.

Customer Support has cancelled the order and issued a refund to the buyer, and apparently banned his account.

As your buyer threatened to dispute their order with their credit card company, could it be possible that they used a chargeback to have their money refunded?

[richardbloch]

Must say I’m not really satisfied with how the things have turned out.

If you want you can borrow my flying monkey.

Customer Support has cancelled the order and issued a refund to the buyer, and apparently banned his account.

As your buyer threatened to dispute their order with their credit card company, could it be possible that they used a chargeback to have their money refunded?

Could be. The reason why I believe it wasn’t the case is because I was checking the messages regularly and the “order is cancelled by the customer support” arrived at the same time as “[said buyer] can’t be contacted at this time”. This is why I believe it was the CS who has cancelled the order alongside terminating the account.

Well… In any case, I’ll pursue the matter through court instances.

Thanks for replying and caring @cyaxrex . Helps to know you have the support of fellow colleagues (and even that some are going through the same thing) when the going gets as tough as this.

[richardbloch]

Update: as I’ve promised, I’m not letting this one slide as easy as one would think.

Once again, me delivering honest, hard, quality work with what I had in full respect to the ToS only to be insulted on numerous occasions, racially discriminated, told to “go suck a c***” and threatened to be killed and to have the buyer be refunded and keep my hard work while getting a meaningless ban which will enable them to sign up and do it to another Seller is on the other side of the red line which I’m willing to tolerate.

I have received response from a US based law firm that I’ve hired, explaining my case.

As @pacquo said, they’ve told me that this kind of intimidation, and threats fall under the “civil offense” category in the U.S. law. The further actions would be to have them file a police report and start a civil lawsuit, while providing the court and the police with all the documentation and evidence (screenshots, my ID, course of action in which the threat happened and similar).

They’ve said that most likely, with clear evidence provided, the judge will decide to accept their plea to send a court order to Fiverr to provide the court with the necessary information (IP address, contact info, phone number, everything) in order to serve the accused a court order and summon them in front of the judge.

It will take time, money and energy, but in case I see this through and win, the accused, as they’ve said, will be held liable to the civil offense, all the court’s and lawyer’s fees, and, depending on how the proceeding goes, other sanctions which I wouldn’t all state here as advised by the lawyers in order not to release information crucial to the potential case.

I’m going through with this.

I’m a hard worker and quite well off, and an extremely proud and self-respecting man. No one will insult me for days in the most gruesome manner for no reason, threaten my life, verbally abuse, belittle me and get away to go with my work, my money and dignity smiling all the way to the bank. I’m willing to shell a few thousands $$$ on what’s needed to see this through to justice. Trust me on that.

I’ll keep you updated on everything. Promise.

Especially fellow colleague @cyaxrex, since you’ve expressed you’ve waited for years now, to see whether us online workers can get justice. I hope to show that we can.

Special thanks to everyone who have replied, especially to @misscrystal , @vickiespencer , and @lenasemenkova whose responses, experience and support have significantly encouraged, inspired and helped me remain calm and collected through this terrible ordeal.

Edit: Oh, and not to forget, also special thanks to @pacquo and his valuable advice, for which I basically had to pay a U.S. law firm I’ve hired to give me in order to practically tell me the same thing. Not complaining though, it’s the beginning of the process and had to be done.

[elenaelena568]

Update: as I’ve promised, I’m not letting this one slide as easy as one would think.

Once again, me delivering honest, hard, quality work with what I had in full respect to the ToS only to be insulted on numerous occasions, racially discriminated, told to “go suck a c***” and threatened to be killed and to have the buyer be refunded and keep my hard work while getting a meaningless ban which will enable them to sign up and do it to another Seller is on the other side of the red line which I’m willing to tolerate.

I have received response from a US based law firm that I’ve hired, explaining my case.

As @pacquo said, they’ve told me that this kind of intimidation, and threats fall under the “civil offense” category in the U.S. law. The further actions would be to have them file a police report and start a civil lawsuit, while providing the court and the police with all the documentation and evidence (screenshots, my ID, course of action in which the threat happened and similar).

They’ve said that most likely, with clear evidence provided, the judge will decide to accept their plea to send a court order to Fiverr to provide the court with the necessary information (IP address, contact info, phone number, everything) in order to serve the accused a court order and summon them in front of the judge.

It will take time, money and energy, but in case I see this through and win, the accused, as they’ve said, will be held liable to the civil offense, all the court’s and lawyer’s fees, and, depending on how the proceeding goes, other sanctions which I wouldn’t all state here as advised by the lawyers in order not to release information crucial to the potential case.

I’m going through with this.

I’m a hard worker and quite well off, and an extremely proud and self-respecting man. No one will insult me for days in the most gruesome manner for no reason, threaten my life, verbally abuse, belittle me and get away to go with my work, my money and dignity smiling all the way to the bank. I’m willing to shell a few thousands $$$ on what’s needed to see this through to justice. Trust me on that.

I’ll keep you updated on everything. Promise.

Especially fellow colleague @cyaxrex, since you’ve expressed you’ve waited for years now, to see whether us online workers can get justice. I hope to show that we can.

Special thanks to everyone who have replied, especially to @misscrystal , @vickiespencer , and @lenasemenkova whose responses, experience and support have significantly encouraged, inspired and helped me remain calm and collected through this terrible ordeal.

Edit: Oh, and not to forget, also special thanks to @pacquo and his valuable advice, for which I basically had to pay a U.S. law firm I’ve hired to give me in order to practically tell me the same thing. Not complaining though, it’s the beginning of the process and had to be done.

I’m so proud of you, man.

Go get this fella, and show him that he can’t hide behind a screen and get away with threatening and intimidating people!

[richardbloch]

I’m so proud of you, man.

Go get this fella, and show him that he can’t hide behind a screen and get away with threatening and intimidating people!

Thank you for the encouragement, @elenaelena568!

I’ll do my very best. Not just for me, but to set a precedent and show everyone who went through something similar that we don’t have to put up with it and that justice can be reached, if one is willing to try hard enough.

[elenaelena568]

Thank you for the encouragement, @elenaelena568!

I’ll do my very best. Not just for me, but to set a precedent and show everyone who went through something similar that we don’t have to put up with it and that justice can be reached, if one is willing to try hard enough.

I think you have all the sellers’ support here 🙂

It will also make Fiverr take notice of the situation and - hopefully - make appropriate changes to protect its sellers more.

[catwriter]

Update: as I’ve promised, I’m not letting this one slide as easy as one would think.

Once again, me delivering honest, hard, quality work with what I had in full respect to the ToS only to be insulted on numerous occasions, racially discriminated, told to “go suck a c***” and threatened to be killed and to have the buyer be refunded and keep my hard work while getting a meaningless ban which will enable them to sign up and do it to another Seller is on the other side of the red line which I’m willing to tolerate.

I have received response from a US based law firm that I’ve hired, explaining my case.

As @pacquo said, they’ve told me that this kind of intimidation, and threats fall under the “civil offense” category in the U.S. law. The further actions would be to have them file a police report and start a civil lawsuit, while providing the court and the police with all the documentation and evidence (screenshots, my ID, course of action in which the threat happened and similar).

They’ve said that most likely, with clear evidence provided, the judge will decide to accept their plea to send a court order to Fiverr to provide the court with the necessary information (IP address, contact info, phone number, everything) in order to serve the accused a court order and summon them in front of the judge.

It will take time, money and energy, but in case I see this through and win, the accused, as they’ve said, will be held liable to the civil offense, all the court’s and lawyer’s fees, and, depending on how the proceeding goes, other sanctions which I wouldn’t all state here as advised by the lawyers in order not to release information crucial to the potential case.

I’m going through with this.

I’m a hard worker and quite well off, and an extremely proud and self-respecting man. No one will insult me for days in the most gruesome manner for no reason, threaten my life, verbally abuse, belittle me and get away to go with my work, my money and dignity smiling all the way to the bank. I’m willing to shell a few thousands $$$ on what’s needed to see this through to justice. Trust me on that.

I’ll keep you updated on everything. Promise.

Especially fellow colleague @cyaxrex, since you’ve expressed you’ve waited for years now, to see whether us online workers can get justice. I hope to show that we can.

Special thanks to everyone who have replied, especially to @misscrystal , @vickiespencer , and @lenasemenkova whose responses, experience and support have significantly encouraged, inspired and helped me remain calm and collected through this terrible ordeal.

Edit: Oh, and not to forget, also special thanks to @pacquo and his valuable advice, for which I basically had to pay a U.S. law firm I’ve hired to give me in order to practically tell me the same thing. Not complaining though, it’s the beginning of the process and had to be done.

I’m going through with this.

Awesome. Please keep us posted.

It will also make Fiverr take notice of the situation and - hopefully - make appropriate changes to protect its sellers more.

This is what I’m hoping for, too.

[miiila]

My message got flagged for having “childish” instead of “child-like” in it by mistake (in reference to the cartoon character’s appearance). Yet, I’m a b**** and a c*** and an a** every once and a while and that’s completely fine.

Yes! I would love to know how buyers can message me saying: "Hi I’m Jason, I own a company, please send samples to jason@imaginary.email and let us know how to pay by PayPal." - Before calling me a 💩head when I say no.

After all, if I try to respond to a message like the above, I get flagged straight away for use of the word pay, email, etc.

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

I’ve been wondering about that for a while. It could be but it could also be that they just ignore the red pop-ups.

I try to avoid flag-triggering words when possible without sounding too weird because I don’t want my message to be sent for review and having to send the buyer another message without the “bad” word or alternatively let them wait for up to 24 hours until the message gets waved through but sometimes when I’d feel too stupid to not use such a word, let’s say I’m discussing with a buyer about their email templates they want me to translate, I simply use it despite the pop-up, and the messages don’t usually go into quarantine. In most cases, it seems to indeed just be a reminder.

No idea if the algorithm simply sends every n-th message for review, or if it has some complicated rules about which ones to send, but I guess it’s possible that there’s a number of factors, like if a buyer already got reported by sellers for something, or a seller already got an account warning, or if a certain percentage of their messages contain trigger words, maybe the chances of the reminder becoming a flag are higher, for example.

Not sure what to make of Lena’s experience, though, perhaps (hopefully!) it’s so rare that people use those words when messaging other users that they were not on the trigger list.

[uk1000]

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

I’ve been wondering about that for a while. It could be but it could also be that they just ignore the red pop-ups.

I try to avoid flag-triggering words when possible without sounding too weird because I don’t want my message to be sent for review and having to send the buyer another message without the “bad” word or alternatively let them wait for up to 24 hours until the message gets waved through but sometimes when I’d feel too stupid to not use such a word, let’s say I’m discussing with a buyer about their email templates they want me to translate, I simply use it despite the pop-up, and the messages don’t usually go into quarantine. In most cases, it seems to indeed just be a reminder.

No idea if the algorithm simply sends every n-th message for review, or if it has some complicated rules about which ones to send, but I guess it’s possible that there’s a number of factors, like if a buyer already got reported by sellers for something, or a seller already got an account warning, or if a certain percentage of their messages contain trigger words, maybe the chances of the reminder becoming a flag are higher, for example.

Not sure what to make of Lena’s experience, though, perhaps (hopefully!) it’s so rare that people use those words when messaging other users that they were not on the trigger list.

No idea if the algorithm simply sends every n-th message for review, or if it has some complicated rules about which ones to send, but I guess it’s possible that there’s a number of factors

It could depend on what CS does about the first flag. eg. if a seller needs to use a particular word in a particular gig, CS might click to accept that that word is okay for use on that gig (or on messages in general for that seller because of their particular gigs) so it might not get flagged again or be less likely to be flagged in future for that seller.

[cyaxrex]

Update: as I’ve promised, I’m not letting this one slide as easy as one would think.

Once again, me delivering honest, hard, quality work with what I had in full respect to the ToS only to be insulted on numerous occasions, racially discriminated, told to “go suck a c***” and threatened to be killed and to have the buyer be refunded and keep my hard work while getting a meaningless ban which will enable them to sign up and do it to another Seller is on the other side of the red line which I’m willing to tolerate.

I have received response from a US based law firm that I’ve hired, explaining my case.

As @pacquo said, they’ve told me that this kind of intimidation, and threats fall under the “civil offense” category in the U.S. law. The further actions would be to have them file a police report and start a civil lawsuit, while providing the court and the police with all the documentation and evidence (screenshots, my ID, course of action in which the threat happened and similar).

They’ve said that most likely, with clear evidence provided, the judge will decide to accept their plea to send a court order to Fiverr to provide the court with the necessary information (IP address, contact info, phone number, everything) in order to serve the accused a court order and summon them in front of the judge.

It will take time, money and energy, but in case I see this through and win, the accused, as they’ve said, will be held liable to the civil offense, all the court’s and lawyer’s fees, and, depending on how the proceeding goes, other sanctions which I wouldn’t all state here as advised by the lawyers in order not to release information crucial to the potential case.

I’m going through with this.

I’m a hard worker and quite well off, and an extremely proud and self-respecting man. No one will insult me for days in the most gruesome manner for no reason, threaten my life, verbally abuse, belittle me and get away to go with my work, my money and dignity smiling all the way to the bank. I’m willing to shell a few thousands $$$ on what’s needed to see this through to justice. Trust me on that.

I’ll keep you updated on everything. Promise.

Especially fellow colleague @cyaxrex, since you’ve expressed you’ve waited for years now, to see whether us online workers can get justice. I hope to show that we can.

Special thanks to everyone who have replied, especially to @misscrystal , @vickiespencer , and @lenasemenkova whose responses, experience and support have significantly encouraged, inspired and helped me remain calm and collected through this terrible ordeal.

Edit: Oh, and not to forget, also special thanks to @pacquo and his valuable advice, for which I basically had to pay a U.S. law firm I’ve hired to give me in order to practically tell me the same thing. Not complaining though, it’s the beginning of the process and had to be done.

They’ve said that most likely, with clear evidence provided, the judge will decide to accept their plea to send a court order to Fiverr to provide the court with the necessary information (IP address, contact info, phone number, everything) in order to serve the accused a court order and summon them in front of the judge.

It will take time, money and energy

I am in full support of you. However, I personally would step back at this point, unless your attorney can provide you with a fixed cost which you might be liable to pay for the services you have detailed.

I know that I can benefit from certain UK/EU protections if I were to pursue a matter like this. However, I also know that in the U.S. justice can be a game of who pays the most wins.

I do wholeheartedly support your efforts, but I would look at the cost of pursuing action. If this cost seems prohibitive, I would then look to the Freelancer Union and crowdfunding to try and take my case forward. Also, if I was in the EU or near abouts, I’d probably engage with lawyers in Europe and have them focus efforts on Fiverr’s HQ in Cyprus.

I don’t mean to undermine the severity of what has happened to you. However, do be wary of US law firms which promise a lot upfront but don’t tell you what you actually pay.

[miiila]

Aren’t there attorneys who work for contingency fees, i.e., you only pay them if they win the case? I don’t know if they’d take a case like this, though. I assume they’ll only take cases on contingency basis if they see a really good chance of winning.

[misscrystal]

Aren’t there attorneys who work for contingency fees, i.e., you only pay them if they win the case? I don’t know if they’d take a case like this, though. I assume they’ll only take cases on contingency basis if they see a really good chance of winning.

It depends on what state the defendant lives in if they take contingency fees or not. Most wouldn’t want to take this on a contingency basis as it’s much too iffy. Every state has different laws for how attorneys take fees.

[miiila]

And if it’s a criminal offense? Would you get a public defender, or only as the defendant? Or would that only be possible for US citizens anyhow?

[misscrystal]

And if it’s a criminal offense? Would you get a public defender, or only as the defendant? Or would that only be possible for US citizens anyhow?

A criminal offense gets a prosecutor. They defend the law basically rather than the one who was threatened and it would be up to them if they want to file charges which in this case I seriously doubt if they would.

[joyh97]

Not American but did study law. Over here (the UK) plenty of lawyers work on a “no win, no fee” basis - and if they do win, it’s the defendant who pays up. Hopefully OP will be able to find something like that. This seems like it would be an incredibly easy case to win, given the racial basis of it, which is NOT taken lightly these days, so a “no win no fee” lawyer/firm likely wouldn’t have much reason not to take it, other than the fact there is little monetary gain to be had. But still, there is some, based on compensation for mental anguish etc which would be plausible.

All that being said, while I do have a law degree and have worked as a legal consultant on criminal cases, I am not a qualified lawyer and have no experience in this specific field (or with American law)

[misscrystal]

Not American but did study law. Over here (the UK) plenty of lawyers work on a “no win, no fee” basis - and if they do win, it’s the defendant who pays up. Hopefully OP will be able to find something like that. This seems like it would be an incredibly easy case to win, given the racial basis of it, which is NOT taken lightly these days, so a “no win no fee” lawyer/firm likely wouldn’t have much reason not to take it, other than the fact there is little monetary gain to be had. But still, there is some, based on compensation for mental anguish etc which would be plausible.

All that being said, while I do have a law degree and have worked as a legal consultant on criminal cases, I am not a qualified lawyer and have no experience in this specific field (or with American law)

This seems like it would be an incredibly easy case to win

If it is a civil lawsuit then there has to be money to collect, which means there has to be some actual hospital and doctors bills. And there also needs to be a defendant with money to pay for that plus the lawyers fees. It’s not about something being easy to win.

A criminal case has to have a reasonable expectation the person is going to do something further and is near by and in a position to actually carry through with it. Just being angry about it isn’t enough. There must be a reasonable expectation of danger not an idle threat. Yes it’s a crime though and it’s up to a prosecutor if he wants to bring this to trial.

I’m not a lawyer and this is not meant to give advice, just an opinion, so consulting an attorney would be the best thing to do.

[lenasemenkova]

I presume the same filters don’t apply to just buyer accounts?

I’ve been wondering about that for a while. It could be but it could also be that they just ignore the red pop-ups.

I try to avoid flag-triggering words when possible without sounding too weird because I don’t want my message to be sent for review and having to send the buyer another message without the “bad” word or alternatively let them wait for up to 24 hours until the message gets waved through but sometimes when I’d feel too stupid to not use such a word, let’s say I’m discussing with a buyer about their email templates they want me to translate, I simply use it despite the pop-up, and the messages don’t usually go into quarantine. In most cases, it seems to indeed just be a reminder.

No idea if the algorithm simply sends every n-th message for review, or if it has some complicated rules about which ones to send, but I guess it’s possible that there’s a number of factors, like if a buyer already got reported by sellers for something, or a seller already got an account warning, or if a certain percentage of their messages contain trigger words, maybe the chances of the reminder becoming a flag are higher, for example.

Not sure what to make of Lena’s experience, though, perhaps (hopefully!) it’s so rare that people use those words when messaging other users that they were not on the trigger list.

I do applaud you fighting this. In my country, unless it’s heavy bodily harm and up the courts are pretty much useless so I do have a fatalistic attitude about the whole legislative process in any scenario so I’m very curious to see where it goes.

Also, banning buyers is not a punishment. I wish fiverr would stop treating causing minor inconveniences as some kind of penalty. It’s not a punishment if you’re back with the new account in minutes (literally, minutes, I timed it).

Not sure what to make of Lena’s experience, though, perhaps (hopefully!) it’s so rare that people use those words when messaging other users that they were not on the trigger list.

I think when it comes to a manual review (that is, when you directly report a person to a CS agent, with screenshots) buyer’s track record on the platform is taken into a consideration. Which is why the harshest abuse of rules often comes from the top buyers. They feel entitled to do this because they “bring money to the platform”, they did it before with no repercussions.

I reported a brand new user who wanted me to work for free for his charity and after I refused, I was told I should be ashamed of myself and I was a terrible person. Technically, no overtly bad words here to trigger the algorithm (or a CS agent) but they were removed from the platform 10 minutes I reported them.

Now, the most recent guy, directly called me names but a) a top buyer, b) 12 5* reviews from other sellers (one 4* with “there were some issues” which can be interpreted as exactly what it says or can be a coded language for “run, save yourselves”), c) years and years on the platform.They are still active and I can guarantee they will remain active. Me declining to take the project (not my area of expertise) triggered them to have an outburst in my inbox while the others (seemingly) had a great, fantastic, awesome experience working with them so their experience (and $ paid) tops mine and I get it.

With automatic flagging, I think you do have a point about a number of factors coming into it. I have to report the most obvious spam with a bunch of no-no words from new accounts that will hang there untouched for days until, I think, it accumulates a certain amount of complaints from other sellers and is removed.

Also, buyers do get strikes for being rude to sellers (I remember someone complaining about it here). But if you choose to be rude and it makes sense to you, to begin with, would you even care?

• Sorry for all the rambling, but the entire topic bothers me a lot.

[richardbloch]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

@misscrystal, not sure why you’ve decided to withdraw your posts, as they were tremendously helpful. I’ve read through them using the Edit history button in the upper right corner, and must say that you’ve provided me with literally invaluable insight, information and understanding on how things work. Understanding that I’ll be able to use to present the law firm with the right questions and decide on the course of action that will be the most efficient and reliable.

Thank you so much, your posts have been tremendously helpful! Tremendously!

I’m equipped with a whole new level of practical knowledge now that will enable me not only to better understand the situation, but better deal with the law firm I hired and gt information on what, how, when and for what cost they intend to take action.

You’ve helped me a huge deal with your knowledge and generosity by making these posts. Thank you!

Thanks to your insight, I’ll try not to rush it due to angst I’m feeling, take a deep breath, and contact the law firm for more information, try getting a fixed cost, and similar. Will keep everyone updated!

[richardbloch]

They’ve said that most likely, with clear evidence provided, the judge will decide to accept their plea to send a court order to Fiverr to provide the court with the necessary information (IP address, contact info, phone number, everything) in order to serve the accused a court order and summon them in front of the judge.

It will take time, money and energy

I am in full support of you. However, I personally would step back at this point, unless your attorney can provide you with a fixed cost which you might be liable to pay for the services you have detailed.

I know that I can benefit from certain UK/EU protections if I were to pursue a matter like this. However, I also know that in the U.S. justice can be a game of who pays the most wins.

I do wholeheartedly support your efforts, but I would look at the cost of pursuing action. If this cost seems prohibitive, I would then look to the Freelancer Union and crowdfunding to try and take my case forward. Also, if I was in the EU or near abouts, I’d probably engage with lawyers in Europe and have them focus efforts on Fiverr’s HQ in Cyprus.

I don’t mean to undermine the severity of what has happened to you. However, do be wary of US law firms which promise a lot upfront but don’t tell you what you actually pay.

Thank you @cyaxrex. After @misscrystal tremendously insightful posts that provided me with truly invaluable information, I’ll take a different, more serious approach and not let emotions take over me.

I’ll try to get a clear outline of the course of action from the law firm, the expected (or even better, fixed) costs and even consider the option of engaging with lawyers in Europe and have them file a report to the Cyprus’ court. It would definitely be easier and more affordable as I’m based in, and much more closely connected with individuals through Europe. Could get the much needed help much easier.

I’ll talk it through with the law firm. Thanks a lot for the great insight! Much appreciated.

Your guys’ responses have been more than helpful. You can’t even imagine how much!

Real quality advice and insight I’m able to use right away to better formulate my strategy and planning ahead with this situation.