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Was I Scammed? Digital Downloads


karie_nora

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I recently purchased some pages to color from two different sellers. Both said the pages they sold could be used for commercial use. My plan was to also sell these coloring pages. I made one listing last night and woke up to a warning from Fiverr about copyright issues. I contacted the seller and all she said so far is where did I buy from. Still waiting on response.

I decided I should contact the other seller to make sure I didn’t get flagged again. Well that particular seller has disappeared and account is gone.

Have I been scammed?.’ I am new at trying to sell digital downloads. I figured if commercial use was checked it would be ok to use.

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You probably were.

Sadly, there are many Sellers here who are new to freelancing and are eager (translation: desperate) to earn some cash thanks to COVID eliminating or downsizing many jobs.

While that doesn’t make it right, it does mean that the old saying “Buyer Beware” is more true no than ever.

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So, you can’t really be absolutely positive that you are buying something legit. Ugh. . . .

Yah.

That pretty much sums it up.

That being said, you have to remember that there are thousands of top notch, professional freelancers here as well.

They are the ones who don’t normally offer their services for $5.

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I’m curious too.


Did you contact these sellers before you ordered? Did you get to see the sketches before they were ‘inked’?

Concerning the second vanished seller, have you run the images though a search engine? (Both as you received them and reversed.)

I did and yes. They both responded to me right away after purchase too when I was having issues seeing the pictures. Everything downloaded correctly.

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They sent you the sketch files as a part of the delivery?

Also, that message looks to be from Etsy, not Fiverr.

The msg is from Etsy. I bought it from her here at Fiverr. I listed it on Etsy and immediately got flagged.

I ordered the prints and that is what I got.

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Seeing sketches won’t guarantee avoiding getting scammed, but if you buy original and you never see the WIP, that’s sometimes a red flag.

Speaking of, did the gig or order pages outright state ‘original’ anywhere? If so, you can ask Fiverr to cancel the order due to misrepresentation of services. If the seller was clever, though and avoided using words like ‘unique’ or ‘original’ or ‘one-of-a-kind’, then unfortunately the loophole might prevent you from canceling.

Concerning the second vanished seller, have you run the images though a search engine? (Both as you received them, and with the image reversed.)

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Seeing sketches won’t guarantee avoiding getting scammed, but if you buy original and you never see the WIP, that’s sometimes a red flag.

Speaking of, did the gig or order pages outright state ‘original’ anywhere? If so, you can ask Fiverr to cancel the order due to misrepresentation of services. If the seller was clever, though and avoided using words like ‘unique’ or ‘original’ or ‘one-of-a-kind’, then unfortunately the loophole might prevent you from canceling.

Concerning the second vanished seller, have you run the images though a search engine? (Both as you received them, and with the image reversed.)

I have not run the image’s through an image scanner. . . Do you have a link for something like that? Yeah, so I though everything was good and already closed out both orders. Also, I ended up using the word unique in my description. Do you think that got me flagged? Also, I tagged the person I got them from because I figured that is what you do.

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I have not run the image’s through an image scanner. . . Do you have a link for something like that? Yeah, so I though everything was good and already closed out both orders. Also, I ended up using the word unique in my description. Do you think that got me flagged? Also, I tagged the person I got them from because I figured that is what you do.

You can right click an image on someone’s portfolio and there is a “search google for image” alternatively there are sites like tineye.com where you can upload the work you received from the seller and it searches where it was potentially taken from…

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karie_nora, I’m sorry that this happened to you. I never thought there some bad sellers would do this to scam the buyers on the platforms then disappeared with the account, because they knew that buyers would find out and contact the CS to solve this.

As an artist and seller, I always do the Google Image search to see if my artwork appears on any site and it turned out, some are trying to sell my mermaid and dragon painting for print on several website. Although Bing search is my personal favorite for tracking down my artwork which is illegal sold by sellers who trying to make money off my art on other website for years. At the time, couldn’t I do much since I didn’t have enough to afford the DMCA take down, at least for now – I will at least save up some I’ve earn a bit on Fiverr to use those to pay for the DMCA take down whenever I track down those who try to sell my art on there.

However, I don’t mind people are sharing my artwork on the forum, Tumblr, Pinterest or on website, as long as they’re not selling it. But whatever the seller is selling to you, it is a bad excuse for someone to do such like that to a buyer. As few other on the post here mentioned whatever seller do, provide with sketches or WIP, this could be a red flag though. I would be suspicious since there is no problem the seller really create the artwork when there is no sketches and if the image is low quality.

I hope the CS able to help you to get your money back, karie_nora.

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karie_nora, I’m sorry that this happened to you. I never thought there some bad sellers would do this to scam the buyers on the platforms then disappeared with the account, because they knew that buyers would find out and contact the CS to solve this.

As an artist and seller, I always do the Google Image search to see if my artwork appears on any site and it turned out, some are trying to sell my mermaid and dragon painting for print on several website. Although Bing search is my personal favorite for tracking down my artwork which is illegal sold by sellers who trying to make money off my art on other website for years. At the time, couldn’t I do much since I didn’t have enough to afford the DMCA take down, at least for now – I will at least save up some I’ve earn a bit on Fiverr to use those to pay for the DMCA take down whenever I track down those who try to sell my art on there.

However, I don’t mind people are sharing my artwork on the forum, Tumblr, Pinterest or on website, as long as they’re not selling it. But whatever the seller is selling to you, it is a bad excuse for someone to do such like that to a buyer. As few other on the post here mentioned whatever seller do, provide with sketches or WIP, this could be a red flag though. I would be suspicious since there is no problem the seller really create the artwork when there is no sketches and if the image is low quality.

I hope the CS able to help you to get your money back, karie_nora.

I’m honestly not worried about the 10 bux I spent. Just sux. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

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Sorry for your experience, copyright infringement unfortunately happens.

You can report the seller to Fiverr.

On another note, please edit your screenshot, it shows name and email of the person who seems to hold the rights.

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