Stop hiring bad sellers! ?

[gina_riley2]

It boggles my mind when I see buyers come onto this forum to complain about a seller, when clearly it was their (client) fault.

When I check the gig the seller is offering, it is something that is way below market value, has atrocious writing skills, items in portfolio are unmistakenly stolen, or the profile picture is a celebrity model. 😑

I don’t have time to scroll thru bunch of “good job” reviews, but I do take the time to read thru the gig description and such. Yes, I have been duped even though I am careful but as harsh as this may sound, 75% of the time, it’s the buyers fault.

A simple inbox message could have solved their issue. Because they live in a fantasy la la land, they pay someone $5 or $10 to do work, they know in the real world should be at least $100 or more.

Expecting a unique logo for $20 then surprised that it was stolen after they’ve printed flyers, :woman_facepalming:t2:.

They say it takes money to make money. If you are a serious buyer or a small business owner, do yourself a favor, set aside at least $100 to experiment.

Buy a bunch of $5 gigs for $7.27 to see how well you mesh with the seller during the process, to see what the procedures are here, and finally what the end product looks like.

** NEVER ** buy from a seller that has a short gig or profile description. It’s short for a reason.

A seller doesn’t have to be proficient in English to be legit as long as they don’t offer writing gigs. An artist that cares, will take the time to hire someone to write them a great gig.

My suggestion, if you hired a seller without communication, with a short & poorly written description for $10, you are getting your just deserved payback.

Don’t expect freelancer to give you samples for a $10 project you are going to buy. Time is money, so if you have a large project, pay the measly $5 to get a sample.

It will be well worth the time, money and headache you saved yourself.

Finally, stop complaining about bad sellers, when it’s your fault. All freelance platforms have doozies and this one is no different. Pouting and saying you won’t ever buy here again is childish. There are great sellers here who offer top notch, professional work. You just have to find them.

[looseink]

You make many valid points.

As I have 40+ years experience in Media/Marketing, have owned and operated a storefront business (newspaper) and currently operate two home-based businesses (media marketing and a specialty food product) I know a bit about pricing and pricing for quality.

There have been thousands of new Sellers join this platform since COVID and self-isolation became topics of discussion.

Many have come here due to a reduction in work or job loss at the hands of the pandemic.

Sadly, a fair percentage of those new Sellers are under-qualified.

We are currently living in difficult times.

Shopping for things online at freelance platforms is going to be a crap shoot at the best of times as a result.

That doesn’t make it right, but it is what it is.

[enunciator]

Barriers to entry for sellers on Fiverr are minimal to non-existent and being able to meaningfully validate a seller’s services and skills is not possible without fundamentally changing the structure of Fiverr. Due to this, Fiverr truly is the wild west with sellers ranging from the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Poor and scammy sellers almost always have blaring warning signs for buyers to stay away, but unfortunately, many buyers purposefully overlook these signs as they are primarily driven by trying to find the cheapest service possible…

The rotten apples drag the entire platform down, but they are oblivious of the harm they inflict and only focus on attempting to extract as much money as quickly as possible from the site, apathetic of the damage in their wake.

[smashradio]

It boggles my mind when I see buyers come onto this forum to complain about a seller, when clearly it was their (client) fault.

When I check the gig the seller is offering, it is something that is way below market value, has atrocious writing skills, items in portfolio are unmistakenly stolen, or the profile picture is a celebrity model. 😑

I don’t have time to scroll thru bunch of “good job” reviews, but I do take the time to read thru the gig description and such. Yes, I have been duped even though I am careful but as harsh as this may sound, 75% of the time, it’s the buyers fault.

A simple inbox message could have solved their issue. Because they live in a fantasy la la land, they pay someone $5 or $10 to do work, they know in the real world should be at least $100 or more.

Expecting a unique logo for $20 then surprised that it was stolen after they’ve printed flyers, :woman_facepalming:t2:.

They say it takes money to make money. If you are a serious buyer or a small business owner, do yourself a favor, set aside at least $100 to experiment.

Buy a bunch of $5 gigs for $7.27 to see how well you mesh with the seller during the process, to see what the procedures are here, and finally what the end product looks like.

** NEVER ** buy from a seller that has a short gig or profile description. It’s short for a reason.

A seller doesn’t have to be proficient in English to be legit as long as they don’t offer writing gigs. An artist that cares, will take the time to hire someone to write them a great gig.

My suggestion, if you hired a seller without communication, with a short & poorly written description for $10, you are getting your just deserved payback.

Don’t expect freelancer to give you samples for a $10 project you are going to buy. Time is money, so if you have a large project, pay the measly $5 to get a sample.

It will be well worth the time, money and headache you saved yourself.

Finally, stop complaining about bad sellers, when it’s your fault. All freelance platforms have doozies and this one is no different. Pouting and saying you won’t ever buy here again is childish. There are great sellers here who offer top notch, professional work. You just have to find them.

I agree with you on this one. Post-covid, it’s been even worse, as the quality has dropped a lot among both the sellers and buyers. Companies are looking for great deals on services that they used to pay a lot more for, so they often go for the cheapest deal possible. Then they are surprised when it turns out to be low-quality or stolen content.

With all that said, I think it’s just as much the seller’s responsibility, if not more. When a seller offers stolen crap or delivers horrible content, they lie to their buyers in their marketing and stealing content from others. That’s unethical, even if the price is low.

The fact that these sellers are allowed to continue operating is not the buyer’s fault, and I prefer to hold each individual 100% responsible for their own decisions. I wish the bad sellers would be held accountable, even financially, when they offer stolen or lousy content.

I think a bigger problem is sellers complaining about bad buyers when it’s the seller’s fault. This happens way more on this forum than the other way around, in my opinion.

But, I agree 100% when it comes to expectations. I charge relatively low rates, but if you need anything extra, you have to pay. My base price is for a basic service and nothing more. Still, I do get buyers who seem surprised that they have to pay extra to use my voice in commercials on the radio.

And hey, if you don’t like what this platform has to offer, you’re of course free to not use it, but the fact remains that Fiverr has plenty of genuinely great talent at bargain prices. And when I say bargain, I mean 200 bucks for a custom professionally designed logo by someone who used to work as a graphic designer for big studios etc. and not 5 dollars for an automatically generated logo.

Don’t expect freelancer to give you samples for a $10 project you are going to buy. Time is money, so if you have a large project, pay the measly $5 to get a sample.

You’re absolutely right.

[moikchap]

It boggles my mind when I see buyers come onto this forum to complain about a seller, when clearly it was their (client) fault.

When I check the gig the seller is offering, it is something that is way below market value, has atrocious writing skills, items in portfolio are unmistakenly stolen, or the profile picture is a celebrity model. 😑

I don’t have time to scroll thru bunch of “good job” reviews, but I do take the time to read thru the gig description and such. Yes, I have been duped even though I am careful but as harsh as this may sound, 75% of the time, it’s the buyers fault.

A simple inbox message could have solved their issue. Because they live in a fantasy la la land, they pay someone $5 or $10 to do work, they know in the real world should be at least $100 or more.

Expecting a unique logo for $20 then surprised that it was stolen after they’ve printed flyers, :woman_facepalming:t2:.

They say it takes money to make money. If you are a serious buyer or a small business owner, do yourself a favor, set aside at least $100 to experiment.

Buy a bunch of $5 gigs for $7.27 to see how well you mesh with the seller during the process, to see what the procedures are here, and finally what the end product looks like.

** NEVER ** buy from a seller that has a short gig or profile description. It’s short for a reason.

A seller doesn’t have to be proficient in English to be legit as long as they don’t offer writing gigs. An artist that cares, will take the time to hire someone to write them a great gig.

My suggestion, if you hired a seller without communication, with a short & poorly written description for $10, you are getting your just deserved payback.

Don’t expect freelancer to give you samples for a $10 project you are going to buy. Time is money, so if you have a large project, pay the measly $5 to get a sample.

It will be well worth the time, money and headache you saved yourself.

Finally, stop complaining about bad sellers, when it’s your fault. All freelance platforms have doozies and this one is no different. Pouting and saying you won’t ever buy here again is childish. There are great sellers here who offer top notch, professional work. You just have to find them.

If you are a serious buyer or a small business owner, do yourself a favor, set aside at least $100 to experiment.

That’s basically what I was thinking when I came in. Part of my budget is just “learning Fiverr” where I take losses to run into all the pitfalls without being too disrupted by it.

I essentially pay people to audition (after checking first via Contact Me, I pay for a Basic tier just to see what I get for a Basic tier). I go through 20 people, find 5 people I like and want to continue working with. What actually happens though is those 5 people raise their prices and I’m back where I started needing to pay people to audition. A buyer’s scouting/try-out budget needs to be very high, both in cash and time.

I don’t think there’s going to be a good general rule of thumb though. But probably, the more nitpicky technical the thing is you’re buying, probably the higher ratio the scouting budget will need to be. My “fail” rate on $5 artists is about 25%, but for $25 D&D writers it’s about 80%. For artists, I can easily say “close enough, ship it”, and plop it on a page. For D&D writers, when considering things I don’t want on a page, there’s spelling, grammar, internal consistency, gameplay balance. It’s rare I regret my art orders. It’s common I regret my D&D writing orders.

[ahmedservice24h]

How to find a bad buyer ??? As a new seller very bad effect to Fiverr profile for the bad buyer review, fixed Budget then more and more demand work. they cannot satisfy anymore. as a result of a bad review.

[porma9]

I usually message sellers and have a micro interview with them. I ask 3 or 5 questions, slowly drilling down until it is known if they offer what I want, at an agreeable price. Lately I’ve been hiring illustrators, so my questions will start a little broad (can you do this art style, can you draw this object) and after a few questions I can generally figure out if the person meets my requirements or not. Hope that makes sense.

I don’t really hire anyone without at least a small conversation. My project is pretty specific and I tend to unleash a flood of words for my actual gig project (lol, I’m such a writer), so the questions help me understand if the seller can fit the slot or puzzle piece of my project’s super specific need(s).

[anapdcarvalho]

Be careful with translation gigs. I am surprised with the grammar mistakes I find on sellers’ gig descriptions. I understand that more often than not, the buyer does not know the foreign language they are translating into, but please interview the person and ask for samples and links to other platforms to check their work. Many times, the seller makes serious mistakes with English as well, and that should raise the flag!

[vickiespencer]

Be careful with translation gigs. I am surprised with the grammar mistakes I find on sellers’ gig descriptions. I understand that more often than not, the buyer does not know the foreign language they are translating into, but please interview the person and ask for samples and links to other platforms to check their work. Many times, the seller makes serious mistakes with English as well, and that should raise the flag!

I see translations that have been done by apps that come to me for proofreading. I have had to cancel two orders in the last two weeks because even though every word in the text was English, the sentences made little sense.

[ruddra_das]

I completely agree with you.

[vickiespencer]

I completely agree with you.

With who? :thinking: Me? @gina_riley2, who created the thread, or one of the many people who have posted since she first started the thread?