Is this fair to sellers?

[steveeyes]

This has happen to me several times. A buyer will demand a modification 4, 6 and even 8 months after the gig is completed.



I contacted Fiverr CS and they told me their is no time limit on buyer’s modifications. There is also no time limit on buyer’s changing your rating. So in other words, do as the buyer asks, no matter how unreasonable, or they will give you a poor rating.



Can you imagine going into a store buying a shirt and 8 months later trying to return the product for a different shirt?



It doesn’t matter what you put in your gig description. You can say “please contact me before ordering” or “no modifications after 30 days” or “the $5 gig is only for 60 words” and so on. My point is, you can write instructions in the gig description until you are blue in the face and unless there is a way to enforce those rules, the buyer can simply ignore your instructions. Most unethical buyers do just that.



I know a store/business would not let you return a shirt 8 months later for a different one.



Fiverr needs to put rules in place to make the market fair to both sellers and buyers – not just buyers.

[oranjewebdesign]

It would be very difficult to install those changes, especially if all this solves is the odd come back now and then. Surely you should use this opportunity to upsell!!

[glowindia]

Q1 : A buyer will demand a modification 4, 6 and even 8 months after the gig is completed.



Answer : Will it’s not sound fair but we need to modify them to save our ranking and rating. It’s sound unfair but very less buyer come to rework after 1 week. If you make them happy then you will win the game.

[nickih]

That’s happened to me, and it’s frustrating. They had plenty of time to review and request modifications during the 3-day period after you delivered before the order is marked complete. And if the buyer marked the order complete themselves without requesting any changes, in essence, that basically means they reviewed the delivery and had no comments.



If they want modifications, I’d tell them that I’ll address their request when I am able to based on my schedule and workload (meaning that I’ll get to it when I can). If they want it sooner that “when I can,” they should have to purchase a gig for the additional services.

[itsyourthing]

bachas85 said: I would be very mad if they told me that..... That's not right.

You should as for a different CS rep because that's just plain old ridiculous.

Yep, try again, toss the coin, you may get a better answer.

 

nickih said: And if the buyer marked the order complete themselves without requesting any changes, in essence, that basically means they reviewed the delivery and had no comments.

Once an order is marked "complete" by any means, it should be considered complete.

 

Regardless of an opportunity to "upsell" or how much 'over-delivering' a seller chooses to do, there should not be a policy that every buyer has the right to perpetual, free work from sellers.

 

 

[steveeyes]

Thanks for the comments. Forget up-selling. You have to realize most of these people are trying to get free changes and don’t want to pay a dime to do so.



From reading the comments, it made me realize that the type of gig could matter. If you have a gig that is pretty simple work, maybe no problem. But for more complex gigs, the work can be quite substantial.



I don’t buy the “if it only happens a few times” excuse. I’m sure a person who runs a store doesn’t say to his salespeople, "it is ok to exchange items that are months old if it only happens a few times a year."



There needs to be standards that is fair no matter if it happens once a year or once a day.

[animusargentis]

Fiverr is always up in arms about violating TOS…



Maybe you could include a clause - "Blah blah blah, no modifications after thirty days, your initial review is final, you agree to it not being changed for any reason after the initial thirty days… By ordering this gig, you agree to my terms and conditions and will be held liable by Fiverr for breaking them…"



That’s a lot to put in your description - perhaps in Instructions to buyer?



Granted, if they do break it, Fiverr probably won’t do do jack. But - warnings and ‘fear tactics’ tend to make sure that most people aren’t jerks about things.

[nickih]

While this doesn’t occur every day, when something like this does happen to me, it’s typically the case that the buyer has rewritten their document based on my suggestions or writing advice (I offer editing and proofreading services) and now wants me to edit what is essentially completely new content, thinking that a brand new edit will be a continuation of their original purchase. Once, a buyer rewrote her entire novel and then contacted me months later wanting me to re-edit the entire thing based on the fact that she had placed a previous order. Nope, that’s not how it works.



It may sound silly, but I take the approach of playing dumb (I’m sorry, but I guess I’m confused by what you’re asking. Was there an issue or problem with my original delivery? Was there something wrong with my work? Are you needing a completely new file edited? Is that the case?) When they have to reply back and explicitly spell out the fact that they basically just want me to edit a new file completely free of charge, they’ve pretty much done a good job of making my case that they’d have to order another gig for me, and I don’t need to do a ton of explaining after that. It’s definitely frustrating to deal with that, and it makes me feel so taken advantage of.

[cheezees]

Reply to @bachas85: You are so right! This is what you don’t do. You only need to “give in” once, for it to become your policy and for buyers to trample all over you. There are so many stories of buyers who are relentless in getting free work out of you and then turning around and ordering more and expecting the same outcome. What would be your choices then? To continue to give in? To cancel the orders? That would certainly trash your ratings/ranking.



Have a clear modification policy and they can’t touch you.

[steveeyes]

Thanks for the Good comments

[newbold3d]

I think i probably spend 40% of my time making modifications now compared to around 5 - 10% i did last year with the same amount of sales. Its really starting to get out of hand.



Need something like this perhaps… Could do with some more thought but i don’t think im alone when i say its getting out of hand.

[cheezees]

Reply to @newbold3d: Wouldn’t we all love something like this! 🙂

[itsyourthing]

Reply to @newbold3d: It would have to be this sort of thing so it applied to all sellers. Some buyers are simply able to devote more time than others and as long as they are willing to ‘do whatever it takes’ to keep a rating it just puts more pressure on other sellers to compete.



Unless everyone operates the same way, it’ll never work.

[newbold3d]

Reply to @itsyourthing: If you had an option to set the modification fee and that fee was displayed on the gig too i think it would work quite well. It would deter those from the gig that expect the world for nothing and encourage buyers that don’t mind paying a little extra for a few improvements here and there.

[itsyourthing]

Reply to @newbold3d: I set my gigs up so there shouldn’t be any modifications, and clearly state “No Revisions” (so far I’ve only had one mod request), but yes, I agree there should be an obvious and simple way to charge for modifications.



Although I don’t think it would take long for sellers to start complaining about that sort of system too. 😉