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Cancellations. How many is common?


kholland65

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I’m just curious to hear from other sellers about how many cancellations they have on average. I’m especially curious to hear from any Top Rated Sellers to know what their average cancellation rate is since I suspect is a big factor in determining if they decide to promote you.

I don’t get too many cancellations and am never in danger of going below the 90%, but every once and a while I get some nightmare buyers that do things like purchase the wrong gig, send me unusable files, dispute bank charges, or are just down right rude or manipulative and I have to cancel an order for no fault of my own. I never have canceled an order because I failed to deliver on time what was asked. Even with adding a line about first contacting me before ordering, adding FAQs, raising prices, and trying to be as clear and upfront as possible, people still either don’t read, or are still just bad buyers.

Overall, I would say I average about a 3-5% of my orders end up getting cancelled in any given year, which is about 200 total. so I usually sit around 95-98% completion rating with maybe a few months here and there where I’m at a full 100%. It just sort of depends when the bad orders come in. Sometimes they are months apart, other times the same week.

So again, are my cancellation numbers high, or are they pretty typical for most people? I figure that with online businesses like this and with fiverr having an international audience, it’s expected that there are going to be some bad apples in the bunch that you run into.

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I have 85 accepted orders, and 16 cancellations.

All cancellations were due to rogue buyers who did one of these:

  1. Ordered a service I don’t provide
  2. Asked for extra work after Order was delivered (most resorted to blackmail, and threatened to give bad review)
  3. Changed their mind mid-project because of reasons not related to the order itself (one guy cancelled a 1500 order because he was having problems with other sellers he had hired)

the first sad thing about it is that most of them had 5-star reviews which means they knew how the system worked and deliberately cheated. The second sad thing about it is that Fiverr’s customer support did absolutely nothing to penalise them or assit me

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I have 85 accepted orders, and 16 cancellations.

All cancellations were due to rogue buyers who did one of these:

  1. Ordered a service I don’t provide
  2. Asked for extra work after Order was delivered (most resorted to blackmail, and threatened to give bad review)
  3. Changed their mind mid-project because of reasons not related to the order itself (one guy cancelled a 1500 order because he was having problems with other sellers he had hired)

the first sad thing about it is that most of them had 5-star reviews which means they knew how the system worked and deliberately cheated. The second sad thing about it is that Fiverr’s customer support did absolutely nothing to penalise them or assit me

Yeah fiverr is very buyer centered. Fiverr support many times defies their own TOS and either sides with the buyer or tries to stay neutral. I believe their thinking is that losing a buyer who might never return to their platform, is much more expensive in the long run, than making a seller lose a sale because the reality is it’s much harder for that seller to leave the platform. Sellers who have built up their account are not likely going to just up and leave because support didn’t side with them on an issue.

Many of my bad clients have been 5 star buyers as well. I think it depends on the service you provide, and also the particular person or situation. I know I’ve been scammed by 5 star buyers. The problem is that buyers have a lot of leverage on this platform. There really is no incentive for them to act professionally because they can easily make a new account and shed any bad review they get from a seller. Similarly, they don’t have to worry about how the search algorithm with place them amongst other buyers.

Support needs to be much more liberal about completing or canceling orders on behalf of the sellers without it counting against them. Otherwise it’s very easy for buyers to blackmail sellers by threatening a bad review. You either have to cancel the order or receive a bad review.

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I’m a TRS, so I can give you the rough details of my cancellation rate. I have 57 cancellations, out of 2,266 orders. Mostly due to orders were being made which outside of my job scope, and like 3-4 cancellations due to buyer dissatisfaction of the final product.

That’s pretty similar to where I stand. I appreciate the information.

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Yeah fiverr is very buyer centered. Fiverr support many times defies their own TOS and either sides with the buyer or tries to stay neutral. I believe their thinking is that losing a buyer who might never return to their platform, is much more expensive in the long run, than making a seller lose a sale because the reality is it’s much harder for that seller to leave the platform. Sellers who have built up their account are not likely going to just up and leave because support didn’t side with them on an issue.

Many of my bad clients have been 5 star buyers as well. I think it depends on the service you provide, and also the particular person or situation. I know I’ve been scammed by 5 star buyers. The problem is that buyers have a lot of leverage on this platform. There really is no incentive for them to act professionally because they can easily make a new account and shed any bad review they get from a seller. Similarly, they don’t have to worry about how the search algorithm with place them amongst other buyers.

Support needs to be much more liberal about completing or canceling orders on behalf of the sellers without it counting against them. Otherwise it’s very easy for buyers to blackmail sellers by threatening a bad review. You either have to cancel the order or receive a bad review.

Many of my bad clients have been 5 star buyers

I noted pretty early on in freelance sites that buyers who were clearly death on a sick were getting 5 stars because the sellers didn’t want the “revenge” a truthful rating would bring. This makes the star system not only one-sided but dangerous. If you choose one buyer over another based on star ratings, it is entirely probable that the higher star rated buyer is actually the worse person to deal with.

I gave a more than fair 3.5 to someone a while ago who pushed my price down, paid for 4 hours at this lower rate after I said we needed ~10 hours at least then at +15 hours was still coming claiming that I needed to do more. All after he didn’t follow any of the conventions of sending material ready to be mixed so there I am trying to use demos of other software to try to fix his mess. My fault for letting it happen. We were on Milestones so when he bailed at the end of the first I was relieved but still annoyed. I gave a more than fair 3.5 stars saying he has talent but needs a deeper understanding of the industry. He starts by saying how great I am but then leaves a barb about how he is young and needs to be with a young person who can understand his art better. It poleaxed my ratings out of being a top seller. Interestingly I have not managed to land a job there since that is the first review everyone reads of me.

So star ratings mean nothing.

As for cancellations. None here yet. I had two: that one above and one where it was just a mismatch seeing I couldn’t do that kind of narrow genre formula - no negatives with that buyer.

🙂

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Yeah fiverr is very buyer centered. Fiverr support many times defies their own TOS and either sides with the buyer or tries to stay neutral. I believe their thinking is that losing a buyer who might never return to their platform, is much more expensive in the long run, than making a seller lose a sale because the reality is it’s much harder for that seller to leave the platform. Sellers who have built up their account are not likely going to just up and leave because support didn’t side with them on an issue.

Many of my bad clients have been 5 star buyers as well. I think it depends on the service you provide, and also the particular person or situation. I know I’ve been scammed by 5 star buyers. The problem is that buyers have a lot of leverage on this platform. There really is no incentive for them to act professionally because they can easily make a new account and shed any bad review they get from a seller. Similarly, they don’t have to worry about how the search algorithm with place them amongst other buyers.

Support needs to be much more liberal about completing or canceling orders on behalf of the sellers without it counting against them. Otherwise it’s very easy for buyers to blackmail sellers by threatening a bad review. You either have to cancel the order or receive a bad review.

You are absolutely right. I am a new seller, and my cancellation brought nightmares. There’s a top buyer who has ordered once from me, and she was satisfied with my work. She even gave me a 5-star rating. The next time, she ordered again from me, and I gave the buyer exactly what she required from me, but she started to behave rudely and opened a dispute. I at first canceled the dispute, trying to explain to her that I have done the work just the way she wanted. However, she started to behave way too impolitely, and hence I agreed to cancel the order. It was like a trauma for me; being a new seller and dealing with such buyers was a stress.

I cried that night when she canceled the order. I had to work 12 sleepless nights to complete her project, and for that, I couldn’t even get time to contact other buyers; this even affected my ratings, and now I am unable to get any orders. I am working hard to improve my gigs, but that ONE cancellation destroyed everything. My gigs were on the first page, but now, it’s not even on the 10th page. My impressions got down; my clicks are low; not receiving any buyer requests. Now my order completion rate is at 90%, and no buyers are contacting me.

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Hello hello,
A TRS here. 🙂
I’ve had 3250 orders and so far 80 cancellations.
My last cancellation was back in August, the one before that was goes way back, so
overall I think my cancellation rate ain’t that bad.
At one point I got a cluster of cancellations, but after I added the " PLEASE COTNACT ME FIRST BEFORE PLACING AN ORDER!!!" message to my description and my image, it reduced the numbers a lot.

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I’m a TRS and completed 132 jobs with 5 cancellations. I think it is unlikely you would get promoted to TRS unless your completion rate is closer to the upper 90s at the time, several months in a row. I empathize… those buyers who cannot read are certainly plentiful.

One job was a task I canceled because the client’s content was not in line with Fiverr TOS. I reported it to CS and they said I should do it–which I found really strange! I still didn’t. So, I took the hit there. It would have been a very uncomfortable read.

One was canceled by the buyer when she booked an edit of 10k words and delivered 32k words in the actual job! I pointed out the “mistake” and she became abusive and disappeared.

The third was canceled after the client simply asked for a thousand revisions (I exaggerate! But the offer was for one revision only and she had appalling grammar… so each “revision” was to ask me to undo the corrections and plaster in more errors again, ha. It got to a certain stage where I was wanting to leap from the nearest window. I spoke to my Fiverr success manager and he agreed we cancel, and Fiverr paid me in full within minutes. This one was a long time ago and I checked on Amazon recently, to see the client still doesn’t have that job complete.

A fourth cancellation was when the buyer sent a perfectly comprehensible sample of a forthcoming edit, but when the full script landed in my inbox, it was 130k words of nonsense. I couldn’t begin to understand it.

The final one was where the buyer just couldn’t deliver the script for me to work on. It kept getting pushed back and back until we ran out of time. I couldn’t extend because I had a full schedule then.

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A level 1 seller here with 28 completed order 2 cancellations ( both cancellations from other sellers on fiverr whom their buyers weren’t satisfied with the products) not because of my incapabilities to accomplish their task.

As I don’t get much orders. My “Order completion rate” increase after I completed an order and decreased the next day. Again completed an order and it increases a bit unlike how it decreased.

Well due to the current cancellation from other sellers, I’m thinking of stopping myself from accepting an order from another seller here. I’ve bought from other sellers but I make sure I provided them with everything they need and contact them before the order just to avoid cancellation as the seller is always the victim in cancellation.

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Hello hello,

A TRS here. 🙂

I’ve had 3250 orders and so far 80 cancellations.

My last cancellation was back in August, the one before that was goes way back, so

overall I think my cancellation rate ain’t that bad.

At one point I got a cluster of cancellations, but after I added the " PLEASE COTNACT ME FIRST BEFORE PLACING AN ORDER!!!" message to my description and my image, it reduced the numbers a lot.

I definitely did that a while ago, which helped, but it still hasn’t eliminated all of them. Some still don’t read that and just place orders without talking to me. Some seem great at first, but then just turn out to be nightmare clients or scam artists.

I’ve had people try to cancel orders because they just decided they needed the money for something else. I’ve had orders get cancelled because the person disputed the bank charge a month later. I once had a buyer who asked me to do something with vague but reasonable instructions, after doing it, it came to light that what she wanted was far more specific and not possible to achieve with what she had provided. Rather than take my advice for how to go about achieving her result, instead I was called a scammer for taking an order for something that was apparently not possible to do. For a while I also had a handful of orders get cancelled for the quality when it turns out, it was because people were previewing the audio from fiverr’s app which was using a severely quality reduce files. Took a random comment by a buyer to figure that out after a year and probably 5-10 cancelled orders due to it (I had to now add a disclaimer to my deliveries).

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I’m a TRS and completed 132 jobs with 5 cancellations. I think it is unlikely you would get promoted to TRS unless your completion rate is closer to the upper 90s at the time, several months in a row. I empathize… those buyers who cannot read are certainly plentiful.

One job was a task I canceled because the client’s content was not in line with Fiverr TOS. I reported it to CS and they said I should do it–which I found really strange! I still didn’t. So, I took the hit there. It would have been a very uncomfortable read.

One was canceled by the buyer when she booked an edit of 10k words and delivered 32k words in the actual job! I pointed out the “mistake” and she became abusive and disappeared.

The third was canceled after the client simply asked for a thousand revisions (I exaggerate! But the offer was for one revision only and she had appalling grammar… so each “revision” was to ask me to undo the corrections and plaster in more errors again, ha. It got to a certain stage where I was wanting to leap from the nearest window. I spoke to my Fiverr success manager and he agreed we cancel, and Fiverr paid me in full within minutes. This one was a long time ago and I checked on Amazon recently, to see the client still doesn’t have that job complete.

A fourth cancellation was when the buyer sent a perfectly comprehensible sample of a forthcoming edit, but when the full script landed in my inbox, it was 130k words of nonsense. I couldn’t begin to understand it.

The final one was where the buyer just couldn’t deliver the script for me to work on. It kept getting pushed back and back until we ran out of time. I couldn’t extend because I had a full schedule then.

This has overall been my experience. 90% of the cancellations are 100% the buyers fault, however, CS’s actions don’t seem to fall in line with that. I think 1 time out of 10 CS has sided in my favor and completed the order on my behalf. Even when there is clear TOS violation. They even refused to pay for an order where the person disputed the bank charge which automatically cancelled it and took my funds away.

It’s obvious they don’t want to lose money, which I understand, so they always try and get you to finish the orders at all cost, but really they should not want problematic buyers on their platform anyway. If a really bad buyer leaves the platform because they feel they had a bad experience with CS taking the sellers side, in my opinion that’s still a positive for everyone. I would not want that person to continue their abusive behavior on the platform which hurts it’s reputation.

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I have 418 completed orders and only 1 cancellation.

Maybe I am just lucky?

I think it somewhat depends on the service you provide. If you provide a service that is very subjective in nature, or is technically complicated, there is more likely to be problems.

Edit: I also add that in my field for example, much of the quality of my work is dependent on the quality of what the client sends me. While I try to manage expectations in this regard, it’s still sort of a wildcard factor that I can’t always do much about.

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Many of my bad clients have been 5 star buyers

I noted pretty early on in freelance sites that buyers who were clearly death on a sick were getting 5 stars because the sellers didn’t want the “revenge” a truthful rating would bring. This makes the star system not only one-sided but dangerous. If you choose one buyer over another based on star ratings, it is entirely probable that the higher star rated buyer is actually the worse person to deal with.

I gave a more than fair 3.5 to someone a while ago who pushed my price down, paid for 4 hours at this lower rate after I said we needed ~10 hours at least then at +15 hours was still coming claiming that I needed to do more. All after he didn’t follow any of the conventions of sending material ready to be mixed so there I am trying to use demos of other software to try to fix his mess. My fault for letting it happen. We were on Milestones so when he bailed at the end of the first I was relieved but still annoyed. I gave a more than fair 3.5 stars saying he has talent but needs a deeper understanding of the industry. He starts by saying how great I am but then leaves a barb about how he is young and needs to be with a young person who can understand his art better. It poleaxed my ratings out of being a top seller. Interestingly I have not managed to land a job there since that is the first review everyone reads of me.

So star ratings mean nothing.

As for cancellations. None here yet. I had two: that one above and one where it was just a mismatch seeing I couldn’t do that kind of narrow genre formula - no negatives with that buyer.

🙂

I can attest to this. I’ve given 5 star reviews to buyers I would have much preferred to give 3 or 4 star reviews, but mostly because while they were not the greatest of clients, I would still be willing to work with them again under the right circumstances if just for purely financial reasons. But I’m afraid that if i give them any less than 5 stars, they will get mad and not come back. Some of these buyers explicity say they intend to come back before the order is fully complete/rated so again, why would I give a bad review to a buyer who is already intended on coming back.

I understand the reason behind rating a buyer, other similar sites do it as well, but it’s not as trustworthy a system as you think. Only on a few occasions have I given bad buyer reviews because the person was truly a nightmare and I had no intention of working with them again, so I wasn’t afraid to be honest in my review.

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