Extremely Exploitive Buyer

[cowkiller]

Hi There!

My team and I have been doing an edit for a GTA video for some time now. This buyer is extremely exploitive with the revision button and even threatens to cancel the orders. Basically, the buyer order a GTA video with about 80 different clips. One of my members edited the videos and completed them. He then pressed the revision button and asked him to redo the entire video to a specific way that wasn’t specified by the buyer. After about 5 revisions out of the 2 free provided ones which caused us all to stay up late and making about 17 different full 5 minute videos the guy still is requesting the revisions. He is now telling my team that he will cancel the order if he doesn’t get what he wants. After about 2 weeks of editing videos my teammates will not edit for him and I have decided I would rather not. Here’s the photos the Gig offers 2 revisions and he has used 5 and thinks that $20 is worth our life. Could someone please give advice on what we should do? The chat begins at the bottom of the forum topic.

Thank you!

OHEBigMari

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[Guest lloydsolutions]

You need to remove the name of the buyer as that is not allowed on the forum.

[devsakwib]

Try to convence buyer… If he wants review try to solve the problem.

[cowkiller]

Try to convence buyer… If he wants review try to solve the problem.

Hi there thanks for your reply!

My team and I have spent weeks trying to convince him as well as solving many of his problems which were not specified in the requirements. My team members even did multiple revisions for free to attempt to please him. It’s always fun to edit for people for such a cheap price but when it gets out of hand like this we’d rather not continue trying as they will just request more and more revisions.

OHEBigMari

[valon_art]

This was long to read.
Honestly you have a very patient buyer in my opinion.

[english_voice]

Two weeks of hard work, abuse and stress for $20? You’ve got to get this in perspective. In most Western cities $20 buys two coffees and two cakes in a cafe - something that would be drunk and eaten in 10 minutes. It is pocket money. And yet it sounds like you have given your buyer many, many hours of work from multiple editors. To be honest $200 sounds far more like the going rate for Fiverr… if not closer to $2,000 in the real world.

I’m sorry to sound hard, but you have to take a lot of responsibility here. You have severely underpriced the job, and this has attracted a scammer buyer - they are exploiting you and you have allowed the exploitation to continue over an extended period of time. You should have stood up to the buyer and slammed them down the moment they started to show signs of abuse behaviour.

You have two options only. Finish the order or cancel the order. Neither option is appealing. The first option will no doubt involve much more pain, the second option means you lose all your money.

While you could approach customer support, based on what we’ve seen reported on the forums, they are likely to only encourage you to work out your problem with the buyer.

Sellers, please understand that you absolutely have to stand up to scammer buyers the moment you realise they are being abusive.

[cowkiller]

Two weeks of hard work, abuse and stress for $20? You’ve got to get this in perspective. In most Western cities $20 buys two coffees and two cakes in a cafe - something that would be drunk and eaten in 10 minutes. It is pocket money. And yet it sounds like you have given your buyer many, many hours of work from multiple editors. To be honest $200 sounds far more like the going rate for Fiverr… if not closer to $2,000 in the real world.

I’m sorry to sound hard, but you have to take a lot of responsibility here. You have severely underpriced the job, and this has attracted a scammer buyer - they are exploiting you and you have allowed the exploitation to continue over an extended period of time. You should have stood up to the buyer and slammed them down the moment they started to show signs of abuse behaviour.

You have two options only. Finish the order or cancel the order. Neither option is appealing. The first option will no doubt involve much more pain, the second option means you lose all your money.

While you could approach customer support, based on what we’ve seen reported on the forums, they are likely to only encourage you to work out your problem with the buyer.

Sellers, please understand that you absolutely have to stand up to scammer buyers the moment you realise they are being abusive.

Thank you so much for your reply!

So basically we started a Fiverr page as a way to increase our knowledge on editing by editing other peoples videos as a hobby. Every other customer we’ve had never even asked over the revision limit before. But I suppose my team can use this as a learning moment. With about 2 weeks put into a video with terrible clips and requests for revision I appreciate the comment immensely.

OHEBigMari

[visualstudios]

Thank you so much for your reply!

So basically we started a Fiverr page as a way to increase our knowledge on editing by editing other peoples videos as a hobby. Every other customer we’ve had never even asked over the revision limit before. But I suppose my team can use this as a learning moment. With about 2 weeks put into a video with terrible clips and requests for revision I appreciate the comment immensely.

OHEBigMari

That’s what you get for offering to edit video for $20, specially “gaming videos”. Those clients are THE WORST.

There’s no money to be made there for them (because no random guy doing GTA videos will ever make money with them). So, what’s the metric for “success”? Whatever the client “feels” like he “wants” or “deserves”. It’s not worth it, at all. People only take things seriously if there’s profit to be made somewhere.

If a guy is hiring you to do a “gaming video”, unless he has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and making money with the videos, he’s doing it for ego reasons. “Look at me, I’m so cool, amazing frags”. NEVER deal with people on Ego, deal with people on ROI. If people are doing vanity projects, they will never be satisfied until it’s “perfect” according to their nebulous definition. You may, of course, be lucky, and get clients that are happy right away. But you can be unlucky, and get nightmares.

If, however, they are doing projects for commercial reasons, the only thing that matters is that it works and makes them money, perfection is irrelevant. They can’t keep requesting stupid revisions either, since there are usually deadlines for business.

That’s why I avoid passion projects, artsy projects, personal projects, etc. if possible. They will pay worse and will be, on average, way more nitpicky. Commercial all the way, baby! No ROI? No video for you.

Besides, you really need to think about your pricing. You say you have a team. That means multiple $2k+ machines that need to be upgraded every couple years (I assume you aren’t editing video on a potato pc, but on serious, up to date workstations), software licenses, library subscriptions, plug-ins, salary for the team members, etc. For $20, I won’t even open up Final Cut, it’s not worth it. Making a video consisting of 80 raw clips for $20 is just insane. It will cost more than $20 to just watch the raw footage from beginning to end.

[cowkiller]

That’s what you get for offering to edit video for $20, specially “gaming videos”. Those clients are THE WORST.

There’s no money to be made there for them (because no random guy doing GTA videos will ever make money with them). So, what’s the metric for “success”? Whatever the client “feels” like he “wants” or “deserves”. It’s not worth it, at all. People only take things seriously if there’s profit to be made somewhere.

If a guy is hiring you to do a “gaming video”, unless he has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and making money with the videos, he’s doing it for ego reasons. “Look at me, I’m so cool, amazing frags”. NEVER deal with people on Ego, deal with people on ROI. If people are doing vanity projects, they will never be satisfied until it’s “perfect” according to their nebulous definition. You may, of course, be lucky, and get clients that are happy right away. But you can be unlucky, and get nightmares.

If, however, they are doing projects for commercial reasons, the only thing that matters is that it works and makes them money, perfection is irrelevant. They can’t keep requesting stupid revisions either, since there are usually deadlines for business.

That’s why I avoid passion projects, artsy projects, personal projects, etc. if possible. They will pay worse and will be, on average, way more nitpicky. Commercial all the way, baby! No ROI? No video for you.

Besides, you really need to think about your pricing. You say you have a team. That means multiple $2k+ machines that need to be upgraded every couple years (I assume you aren’t editing video on a potato pc, but on serious, up to date workstations), software licenses, library subscriptions, plug-ins, salary for the team members, etc. For $20, I won’t even open up Final Cut, it’s not worth it. Making a video consisting of 80 raw clips for $20 is just insane. It will cost more than $20 to just watch the raw footage from beginning to end.

Hi there!

Thank you so much for your input we really appreciate your help, we did start doing our little passion projects as a learning experience and to help grow small youtubers but I can see what you mean! Frankly I think my team has spent exponentially more on electricity than what we would’ve earned from this guy. My team usually makes our profit from editing high school highlight videos to local business advertisements which are super easy to edit and make money off of. I think since many of these nitpicky buyers have started critiquing our editing (which no one has done since now) it does really come to our minds that it really is a waste of our time just to edit these horrible videos. I agree with you completely and we are now going to only work for money on this site and not for our personal interests.

Thanks for replying really appreciate it!

OHEBigMari

[visualstudios]

Hi there!

Thank you so much for your input we really appreciate your help, we did start doing our little passion projects as a learning experience and to help grow small youtubers but I can see what you mean! Frankly I think my team has spent exponentially more on electricity than what we would’ve earned from this guy. My team usually makes our profit from editing high school highlight videos to local business advertisements which are super easy to edit and make money off of. I think since many of these nitpicky buyers have started critiquing our editing (which no one has done since now) it does really come to our minds that it really is a waste of our time just to edit these horrible videos. I agree with you completely and we are now going to only work for money on this site and not for our personal interests.

Thanks for replying really appreciate it!

OHEBigMari

My team usually makes our profit from editing high school highlight videos to local business advertisements which are super easy to edit and make money off of. I

Looks like you found a great niche that gets you business, why even waste time with tire kickers at all? I would just laser focus on the market that is actually profitable.

[exitooo]

As buyers, we all hate order cancellation not only because it involves loss of money that we had already worked hard to earn, but also because it means a lower completion rate as well as a lower rank in Fiverr search results. However, keep in mind that cancelling one order and saving your time, effort and peace of mind for future ones is much better than wasting all of that with an abusive buyer.

My advice to you is to cancel this order and report the buyer to Fiverr. As for order completion rate, keep in mind that you don’t need a straight 100%; anything higher than 90% is good enough. On the other hand, as for search results rank, don’t forget that a negative review from your buyer can also cause the same. And while the completion rate refreshes every couple of months, a negative review sticks for life.

[Guest adexmarketing]

Hi,
I will advise you report him to support.