Have You Ever Left A Buyer A Bad Review?

[humanissocial]

I’m at a point where I don’t care if the Buyer is unhappy about getting a bad review. My reviews are fair and not over the top. I’ve not gone lower than 3 stars yet. If the Buyer/Reseller was being difficult, I want my fellow Fiverr sellers to be aware of this. If it affects their seller status, so be it. Respect is a two way street. And chances are if one seller has had a bad experience but was too afraid to post a negative review, there are plenty of others who also have had this experience.

If the Buyer/Reseller was being difficult, I want my fellow Fiverr sellers to be aware of this.

I’m super late in responding to this, but it deserves an applause.

Being honest could save other sellers a lot of grief. Let’s look out for each other (by being honest, of course, and focusing on facts).

[polinka_dot]

Just had a terrible experience with the buyer and left my first negative review. Feel stressed about it actually ) I left 3 stars, the buyer first talked me into an order for half a price I usually do. I sometimes agree to things like that if the reason is convincing. Then said he needs it faster, I decided that, well I agreed already, no big deal. Then he requested multiple revisions that he didn’t explain in details and kept asking if it’s ready once in a few hours. I’m so frustrated! That was my worst experience on fiverr. I felt justified leaving negative review and blocking him

[damilolabolu]

I have been a Level 2 seller on this platform for a while and I know it's hard to give honest feedback as a seller who has had a bad experience. 
The fears include: 

1. What if I give a bad review to a buyer who was considering using my service again? 
2. What if they give me a good review when I have given a bad review. 
3. Not being sure what would be a fair "bad" rating. 
 

The problem with not doing the right thing when you have met an impatient, badly mannered, unprofessional client, is that other freelancers on the platform will not know to avoid them. We will also see your good recommendations and have a fear of sharing our bad experience. 
 

Fiverr cannot do so much to deprioritize bad buyers because this is a profit platform. However, sellers can help each other by eating bad clients badly. 
 

Here's the catch, the chances that you will want to have another experience with a bad client is almost zero. And they will often likely rate you badly. Only a few buyers still give a good review after a bad experience but I believe more sellers give a good review after a bad experience. You shouldn't be so unfair to yourself by looking forward to working with a bad client. Rate them badly! If a buyer wants to rate you for a bad experience, they wouldn't go higher than a 2-star so don't worry about giving a bad client the same. You can see the rating as 1 = never ever work with this person, 5 = this kind of client is good for Fiverr Sellers like me! 
 

I hope this helps and I would like to hear your own experiences. 

[mabeljacob481]

Hi, I'm surprised that this post has no comment yet, I was thinking the same thing. Sellers are always complaining about bad experiences with buyers but you seldom see these buyers with bad reviews. In my opinion, even if you don't want to outrightly give a 2 star, you could hint other sellers with your comments cause bad buyers could also have behaviours you like about them. Like "Buyer communicates his expectations excellently, this helped the project. He doesn't accept delivered orders, he lets them auto complete or He takes his time to respond to messages after initial conversation to kickstart order".

I think this will make buyers adjust without causing much damage. Lol.

[mandyzines]

4. What if they retaliate by creating a new profile after you've blocked them?

Seller retaliation is one of the justifications for buyer private feedback. I can see how this would be the case for sellers, too--only they have a LOT more to lose. With my experience having a bad review full of documented lies and CS saying nothing could be done about it unless it was outright abusive or doxxing, I feel less inclined to be truthful. When that happened to me, I don't think some sellers could have a contact prior to order setting, so it didn't seem like I would be benefiting other sellers to be truthful at the time, either. 

[vickieito]

4 hours ago, mandyzines said:

4. What if they retaliate by creating a new profile after you've blocked them?

Actually, @damilolabolu & @mabeljacob481, buyers can retaliate before blocking.

Since buyers can leave private and public reviews on each order, they could give you a good public review and you could give them your honest, negative review of working with them. After reading your honest negative review, the buyer can then leave a very bad private review in retaliation, since they have 14 days to leave their private reviews (and yes, they can see your negative, public review before leaving their negative, private review of you). Although we can't see the negative private review, it'll be evident because your impressions will plummet and your account may be hurt for 90 days or more. Some sellers can never recover from the negative private review.

Here's a post that talks about this:

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/288420-hidden-private-feedback-is-the-worst-idea/

This is probably the biggest reason why sellers are hesitant to leave negative public reviews of their buyers.

@domenikbrenner (also on the thread above) gives a first-person perspective on this if you want to read more.

[mabeljacob481]

Wow! thanks for the insight @vickieito, I read through the thread and I must say I now understand why sellers hesitate when it comes to reviewing buyers honestly. I hope we all get amazing buyers and we the sellers offer top-notch quality that's worth positive reviews. 

[damilolabolu]

On 12/3/2022 at 2:59 PM, mabeljacob481 said:

Hi, I'm surprised that this post has no comment yet, I was thinking the same thing. Sellers are always complaining about bad experiences with buyers but you seldom see these buyers with bad reviews. In my opinion, even if you don't want to outrightly give a 2 star, you could hint other sellers with your comments cause bad buyers could also have behaviours you like about them. Like "Buyer communicates his expectations excellently, this helped the project. He doesn't accept delivered orders, he lets them auto complete or He takes his time to respond to messages after initial conversation to kickstart order".

I think this will make buyers adjust without causing much damage. Lol.

Thanks for being the first to respond and I agree with you. I'm starting to think buyers who order without speaking to sellers and who just accept deliveries without communicating could be prompted to improve with a review like this. In my experience, they often give less than a perfect rating which makes you wonder on what basis they are eating when they are not even engaging the process. Sellers should prompt them with detailed feedback. 

[damilolabolu]

On 12/3/2022 at 9:02 PM, mandyzines said:

4. What if they retaliate by creating a new profile after you've blocked them?

Seller retaliation is one of the justifications for buyer private feedback. I can see how this would be the case for sellers, too--only they have a LOT more to lose. With my experience having a bad review full of documented lies and CS saying nothing could be done about it unless it was outright abusive or doxxing, I feel less inclined to be truthful. When that happened to me, I don't think some sellers could have a contact prior to order setting, so it didn't seem like I would be benefiting other sellers to be truthful at the time, either. 

I'm not clear about this part: 

"When that happened to me, I don't think some sellers could have a contact prior to order setting, so it didn't seem like I would be benefiting other sellers to be truthful at the time, either. " 

I'm sorry to hear about that experience. I hadn't actually thought about the possibility of retaliation. 

[damilolabolu]

On 12/4/2022 at 1:38 AM, vickieito said:

Actually, @damilolabolu & @mabeljacob481, buyers can retaliate before blocking.

Since buyers can leave private and public reviews on each order, they could give you a good public review and you could give them your honest, negative review of working with them. After reading your honest negative review, the buyer can then leave a very bad private review in retaliation, since they have 14 days to leave their private reviews (and yes, they can see your negative, public review before leaving their negative, private review of you). Although we can't see the negative private review, it'll be evident because your impressions will plummet and your account may be hurt for 90 days or more. Some sellers can never recover from the negative private review.

Here's a post that talks about this:

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/288420-hidden-private-feedback-is-the-worst-idea/

This is probably the biggest reason why sellers are hesitant to leave negative public reviews of their buyers.

@domenikbrenner (also on the thread above) gives a first-person perspective on this if you want to read more.

Wow! I think Fiverr support should really help Sellers in addressing issues of this nature. I don't think it is beneficial to the system to keep buyers who would hurt even top sellers just because they can. These private reviews shouldn't have so much power over gigs. I suspect that some of my gigs were affected by some private reviews now. 

[vickieito]

50 minutes ago, damilolabolu said:

I'm starting to think buyers who order without speaking to sellers and who just accept deliveries without communicating could be prompted to improve with a review like this. In my experience, they often give less than a perfect rating which makes you wonder on what basis they are eating when they are not even engaging the process. Sellers should prompt them with detailed feedback. 

I'm one of the lucky Seller Plus sellers that have the Request to Order feature on all of my gigs. No one can order from me unless they contact me first. This helps a lot of the misunderstandings that happened when someone would just order straight from my gig page.

Quote

For those who don't have Request to Order, they should take advantage of the new Cancelation policy because sellers can now cancel orders and reissue new orders with new requirements that both seller and buyer can agree on without it hurting their order completion rate.

I think Fiverr is leaning more towards these types of feature updates rather than helping sellers leave more truthful reviews on their buyers.

[mandyzines]

10 hours ago, vickieito said:

I'm one of the lucky Seller Plus sellers that have the Request to Order feature on all of my gigs

I want that. How do I solve that Fiverr riddle? 

10 hours ago, vickieito said:

For those who don't have Request to Order, they should take advantage of the new Cancelation policy

Sometimes they already have what they ordered from you, though. That was the case with me. The person was demanding more free things or deeply discounted future orders before accepting the delivery. It was a truly wretched experience. This was a seller, too, by the way. They knew exactly what they were doing, and how Fiverr works. 

I suppose it could have been worse, like the person that you mentioned earlier from a previous post who no longer has any impressions whatsoever after a few months and is being told by CS everything looks okay on their end--so, basically they aren't seeing what they see. Wow. Ouch.

 

Edited December 6, 2022 by mandyzines

[vickieito]

4 hours ago, mandyzines said:

It was a truly wretched experience.

That sounds terrible, @mandyzines! I think I found the seller/buyer you were talking about in your reviews. I'm sorry you had to deal with her!

5 hours ago, mandyzines said:

I want that. How do I solve that Fiverr riddle? 

I wish I had the power to give it to you! It's great and I'm using this instead of OOS right now.

Do you have a Success Manager that you can ask, maybe?

(By the way, I love the updates you made to your gig images!)

[mandyzines]

2 hours ago, vickieito said:

That sounds terrible, @mandyzines! I think I found the seller/buyer you were talking about in your reviews. I'm sorry you had to deal with her!

I wish I had the power to give it to you! It's great and I'm using this instead of OOS right now.

Do you have a Success Manager that you can ask, maybe?

(By the way, I love the updates you made to your gig images!)

Ha! I'm pretty sure the person who left the review isn't the super sexy super model woman in the photo, who's also selling her super sexy super model SEO services on Fiverr! Rawr. But, thank you for the sentiment. :) This would be the type of person I'd want a request for order for, as red flags waved just by looking at the profile.

I had one meeting with a success manager then downgraded to the lower premium level. I might try again later. It would be great to know who we have the ability to select from before upgrading! I only saw two people specializing in something related to what I do. All but two were in Israel, which would make meetings complicated.

I'm not sure what OOS is. :)

Thank you for the compliment on my gig images! I'm slowly getting to all of them.

[vickieito]

Just now, mandyzines said:

I'm not sure what OOS is. 🙂

Out-of-Office. 😊

[lawan21]

Wow...so sellers were not honest up to this moment ?😁

[williambryan392]

12 minutes ago, vickieito said:

14 minutes ago, mandyzines said:

I'm not sure what OOS is. 🙂

Out-of-Office. 😊

OK, light bulb moment. I've been using OOO for years. Is it actually OOS? Like when I was in my late twenties and learned that vivid didn't mean blurry 😆

[vickieito]

Just now, williambryan392 said:

OK, light bulb moment. I've been using OOO for years. Is it actually OOS? Like when I was in my late twenties and learned that vivid didn't mean blurry 😆

No that was me misspelling this all over the forum. Sorry for the confusion!

[williambryan392]

2 minutes ago, vickieito said:

Sorry for the confusion!

Nothing to be sorry for! 

@mandyzines, @vickieito is right, I just stalked your profile and it's come a long way, nice work!! Also, congrats on the level 2 achievement, and the constant great reviews since that negative experience. 

There is data out there that a perfect profile is concerning for buyers, so perhaps this will actually help you over the long term! Crazy notion I know!

[moikchap]

20 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

There is data out there that a perfect profile is concerning for buyers

If a depiction of a seller has good lighting, good framing, good posture, good clothes, and good backdrop; my gut says its a stock photo rather than the actual seller. I start to feel like it's a trick. If I see "a picture only a mother would Like" then it feel more like the seller must feel like that's their only option because it's the only good picture of themselves they have.

There's a marketing thing along those lines, which I forget the name for; if you lead with admitting a flaw, everything else afterward becomes more believable. Like, Dr Buckley's Cough Syrup increased its market share by advertising with the slogan "It tastes bad, but it works." Avis did a similar thing revolving around the idea that they're only the second best-selling car rental company, so they have to do better to be worth it, and increased market share.

From what I understand, japanese commercials are "weird" due to something along those lines where "hard sell" comes across as being a deceptive distraction, so you have to use soft sell techniques to demonstrate confidence in your product. There's a lot of little counter-intuitive things like that for different buyers across different cultures. I think most sellers do talk about making specialized gigs that appeal to thin spectrums of clients. That sort of thing may be another factor to consider, research, and plan for. I don't think I've seen much discussion of it, but I'm not around as much as most.

[williambryan392]

4 minutes ago, moikchap said:

If a depiction of a seller has good lighting, good framing, good posture, good clothes, and good backdrop; my gut says its a stock photo rather than the actual seller. I start to feel like it's a trick.

Yep, or if they are just ridiculously good looking my spider sense tingles and google lens is my friend!

When I said 'perfect profile' I meant perfect reviews 5* all the time reviews. I think it's near impossible to have a perfect profile. Perfect doesn't exist. But you're completely right, being negative/admitting flaws does build trust, it just has to be done the right way!

[seoranks1]

If you think that Buyer is not good for your business just block it , they will never find your profile on fiverr.

[freddysaint]

Hi community's have been on fiverr for a while and some clients, doesn't Mather how nice u are, will be pain in the a.. I would like to give them a honest review ( 2stars ) but then i remember a hidden review part. Client is able to leave a hidden review even months after delivery.Hidden reviews are very important ( perhaps way more than a public one).Even if i provide the best quality service do endless free revisions which where not part of original order and i am 100 % sure that i will never work with them anymore in my life ( i am still afraid to leave a bad review) 

What is your experience with that ? have you left a bad review to someone who gives you 5 stars ? how you left a bad review to someone in general? how did that impact your stats ?

Would be nice if all of us could leave a hidden reviews for buyers (which only sellers could see) honestly explaining how it was to work with them 🙂 

[moonstaredits]

21 minutes ago, freddysaint said:

What is your experience with that ? have you left a bad review to someone who gives you 5 stars ? how you left a bad review to someone in general? how did that impact your stats ?

Regarding free revisions is better your gigs offer a maximum of two to none. If a buyer needs a revision so badly they should be charged an extra amount, or else they are going to abuse the feature. I gave a 3 stars review once to a buyer for his nonsensical behavior, don't know how it affected my stats but I guess it was not bad as I continued receiving orders. I don't really care how many stars they gave me as I can't see the review until I give my own, but if the experience was bad I think other sellers deserve to be alerted.

 

 

[freddysaint]

When it comes to revisions i only offer ( two rev for minor adjustments ) and always explain the clients whats covered by them and how much it would cost if they want me to do other things which are not part of original order but even then u 1/10 people will be abusing revision feature(just part of the game) expecialy in the service i provide. The public revie ( how many stars he gives u is just there for a public and dosnt affect your performance as much as the hidden reviews(usualy clients forget to fill them in.I would say 10% of all my clients fill them in.But they can leave that review even 3 month after your delivery.So imagine yourself in situation that a seller who you bought a service from leave you a 1 star review saying how terrible it was to work with you 😄 of course once they receive the notification on their gmail "tell us about your experience working with seller X they will say its terrible 😄