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No Emoji in Gig Description& Forced to Take Test Prior to Publish


silberma1976

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I can’t even remember the last time I read a post by a buyer on the forum bemoaning a poor buying experience when the service in question was priced higher than $10.

There’s this post from 9 days ago:

Hello, I bought a seller’s service in May with great reviews on your site. His account is *********** . The gig was a developement of a telegram bot. This person asked me to accept the closing of the job in advance but he cheated me. After many requests of claring attempts he canceled his account and I paid on Fiverr €196. Since the seller was well reviewed I trusted his service, now I asked for a full refund. I was about to buy a new service but at this point I stop until you guarantee me …

and I paid on Fiverr €196

There’s this post from 9 days ago:

193391_2.jpg.35d189824405f99e491cfbf00b119eff.jpg SCAMMED frowning by *********** seller Your Fiverr Experience

Hello, I bought a seller’s service in May with great reviews on your site. His account is *********** . The gig was a developement of a telegram bot. This person asked me to accept the closing of the job in advance but he cheated me. After many requests of claring attempts he canceled his account and I paid on Fiverr €196. Since the seller was well reviewed I trusted his service, now I asked for a full refund. I was about to buy a new service but at this point I stop until you guarantee me …

This post obviously concerns a scammer. Asking someone to complete an order before delivery is not a sign of poor professional competency. It is a sign of someone purposefully defrauding a buyer.

Yes, this is a poor buying experience. However, it does not fit the context I had in mind when writing my last reply.

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There’s this post from 9 days ago:

f60683b637f19cb9d2062a8ffb538f04b4541c2dSCAMMED frowning by *********** seller Your Fiverr Experience

Hello, I bought a seller’s service in May with great reviews on your site. His account is *********** . The gig was a developement of a telegram bot. This person asked me to accept the closing of the job in advance but he cheated me. After many requests of claring attempts he canceled his account and I paid on Fiverr €196. Since the seller was well reviewed I trusted his service, now I asked for a full refund. I was about to buy a new service but at this point I stop until you guarantee me …

This post obviously concerns a scammer. Asking someone to complete an order before delivery is not a sign of poor professional competency. It is a sign of someone purposefully defrauding a buyer.

Yes, this is a poor buying experience. However, it does not fit the context I had in mind when writing my last reply.

It could also be a sign he wasn’t competent doing/completing what the buyer had asked. If the seller had been competent they could have completed the order and not risked their account.

If you look in Google cache, the only other review they had, which was from after the review posted by the buyer whose post is linked above, and was posted “1 week ago” according to the cache, probably got done by another seller because there’s 1 review as a buyer on the “scam” seller’s profile also listed “1 week ago” [shows that due to the cache but’s older - may be about 1 month ago really based on the review on the live seller profile they bought it from] where they bought from a seller selling the same thing the “scam” seller sells (mobile apps).

So the seller didn’t/couldn’t complete an order for his gig (so put his account at risk by apparently scamming) and the only other reviewed gig was one he outsourced (or looks like it). So he may not have been competent enough at doing what he claimed in the gig description. So a test could have at least helped to confirm whether he was competent at it, even if it wouldn’t guarantee that he was or guarantee against fraud.

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You also have pretty much all the tests being easy to find online, coupled with the fact that the same tests are used by all main freelance platforms. You can take a test on you know where, record the questions, research the answers, then take the same test here and come out with top marks, even if you have a brick for a brain

They shuffle the questions around from what I know. So you may technically have all the answers available but since there is limited time to answer the question, it’d be difficult to get the right one if you really know nothing about the topic.

My only experience was with the “logo design” test and half of its questions were about CorelDraw. I’m not saying it’s an obsolete software as far as vector graphics go but it’s the least popular and somewhat of a meme at this point. Especially when the client who demands you take the test before even talking to you actually needs the files done in Adobe Illustrator.

Then there were a few odd ones about the overall process and the technique. I don’t think there is necessary a single “right” way to approach the process in the creative field.

It kind of felt like the test was compiled by an alien, in other words.

I’m not against testing and I take IELTS every 2 years but that one is put together and done by an internationally recognized organization and the piece of paper I get at the end actually holds some power.

I don’t know who these particular tests are put together by and why should they top my 10+ years of expertise. And again, I’m not sure creative fields can or should be approached with the “one correct answer” evaluation technique.

I actually found several skill testing sites that are far better than the one Fiverr settled on and have yet to get a response to the inquiry of how they went about the selection process.

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Checking spelling, grammar, readability level, everything else that could be tested

The problem here is that the highest readability scores reflect the lowest end user reading ages. i.e. Getting a high Flesch-Kincaid readability score means using simple words, short sentences, and few passive words. This is not practical for most real-world writing assignments. - Especially anything creative.

It also gets to a point where testing becomes absurd. The biggest problem with buying anything online stems from people having unrealistic expectations. This is the most common problem encountered in the freelance and non-freelance software outsourcing industry.

The ways to make buying safer are easy:

  • Let sellers link to their personal blogs and portfolio sites, etc
  • Give buyers a popup notification when placing an order, reminding them that they quality of service isn’t guaranteed. Then give them the opportunity to re-read reviews and confirm their order.
  • Stop top-down search result manipulation by Fiverr, which makes best selling and average rating search filters completely irrelevant.

I can’t even remember the last time I read a post by a buyer on the forum bemoaning a poor buying experience when the service in question was priced higher than $10.

All making all sellers jump through more hoops does to counter mek-sell problems, is decrease the motivation of normal sellers. Some people will place orders they ate not happy with after delivery. That’s just part of life. Trying to create a Fiverr version of Skynet to police everyone with AI is just silly.

I actually saw a buyer on YouTube that made a series of purchases on the site all ranging from $$ to $$$ and didn’t complain about a single one; not even the one that cancelled. Though the second suggestion won’t do much as many won’t read it anyway.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Do you really think Fiverr would punish him for attempting to use emoticons in his gig description?

Not a punishment but rather a test. Imagine you wrote an essay then added a smiley face, print it then hand it over for final mark. Would the teacher mark that as proper English?

And I’m not an English teacher, but am a publisher in addition to being a freelancer. In an email, I wouldn’t be upset with emoticons under the right circumstances, but in a writing gig request. No, I wouldn’t hire you for that reason alone. I expect a certain level of professionalism in those I hire.

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