Suggestion: Rethink Revisions

[khalifacyrusuk]

As sellers, there's nothing worse than buyers holding you ransom for your work. 

When a buyer places an order, the seller will often state the number of revisions allowed for this delivery.

However, there is no function to prevent a buyer continually requesting revisions after every single delivery. Although you can ask for further payment from the buyer, or refuse to do further revisions than the quantity of revisions that were stated within the order requirements - there is nothing to stop the buyer ignoring you and continually requesting revisions.

The only thing the seller can do in this position, is continually modify the work as many times as the buyer asks, or request cancellation - and we all know how damaging this can be.

Not only does this result in vulnerable and stressed sellers, it's also not financially viable for Fiverr. Whilst Fiverr want the buyer to satisfied with the delivery, this situation either forces the seller to spend too much time on one order (leaving less time to complete other orders to a high standard) - or leads to cancellations, which benefits no one. 

SUGGESTION: once a buyer requests the number of revisions stated in the order, prevent the buyer from selecting 'request revisions'. Instead, allow the seller to either approve/decline the additional revision request, or allow the seller to offer the additional revision at an extra cost. This would not only benefit sellers, but would also generate further income for Fiverr, as they would receive 20% of all additional revision costs.

 

Let me know what you think - and if you've had any similar experiences.

[visualstudios]

Agreed, and I've been proposing this for years. The current system is a joke.

[newsmike]

2 hours ago, khalifacyrusuk said:

there is nothing to stop the buyer ignoring you and continually requesting revisions.

Actually there is. You can send them this:

When you joined fiverr you agreed to their terms of service (TOS).  https://www.fiverr.com/terms_of_service

The revisions you keep requesting are outside the scope of the quote you accepted. Therefore, I will be happy to send an offer to complete the additional work.  

Continuing to press the modification/revision button in order to bully me into a cancellation or additional revisions is a violation of TOS and if you persist, I will be forced to report you to fiverr trust & safety who may take actions up to, and including disabling your account.

Don't cancel, and certainly don't be bullied. 

 

[khalifacyrusuk]

2 hours ago, newsmike said:

Actually there is. You can send them this:

When you joined fiverr you agreed to their terms of service (TOS).  https://www.fiverr.com/terms_of_service

The revisions you keep requesting are outside the scope of the quote you accepted. Therefore, I will be happy to send an offer to complete the additional work.  

Continuing to press the modification/revision button in order to bully me into a cancellation or additional revisions is a violation of TOS and if you persist, I will be forced to report you to fiverr trust & safety who may take actions up to, and including disabling your account.

Don't cancel, and certainly don't be bullied. 

 

There is absolutely nothing to stop buyers ignoring this - certain buyers will know this is an empty threat and they can still just keep requesting away! Trust me, I've tried this one.

[newsmike]

7 minutes ago, khalifacyrusuk said:

There is absolutely nothing to stop buyers ignoring this - certain buyers will know this is an empty threat and they can still just keep requesting away! Trust me, I've tried this one.

So have I, with great success because I actually report them to CS. 

[smashradio]

Here's my take on this: 

Should the "Request Revision" button be deactivated when the number of included revisions is spent? Yes. 

My question to anyone who says otherwise is: why the hell would we want it to be active when there are no more revisions included? There's no point to having a button there that only results in one of two things: frustrated sellers contacting support or frustrated sellers doing more work for free. 

I'm with @newsmike on this one: don't be bullied. 

With that said: since there's absolutely no point in having a big open invitation to bully buyers in the first place, the button should be removed when the number of revisions is spent. This should be easy to implement and makes total sense logically. The buyer can then send an offer to do more revisions if they want to, and that could automatically put the order in revision once ordered. 

Simple, elegant, and saves a lot of people from a lot of frustration. 

Yes, you can (and should) enforce your terms with the CS team if necessary (and I do) - BUT it shouldn't be necessary to escalate to this in the first place. 

[visualstudios]

4 hours ago, newsmike said:

Actually there is. You can send them this:

When you joined fiverr you agreed to their terms of service (TOS).  https://www.fiverr.com/terms_of_service

The revisions you keep requesting are outside the scope of the quote you accepted. Therefore, I will be happy to send an offer to complete the additional work.  

Continuing to press the modification/revision button in order to bully me into a cancellation or additional revisions is a violation of TOS and if you persist, I will be forced to report you to fiverr trust & safety who may take actions up to, and including disabling your account.

Don't cancel, and certainly don't be bullied. 

Oof, no. Maybe if you deliver 1000 orders a month, and get one or two bad apples, it can work.. But if not, even if that works, that's a guaranteed one star review, if they accept to close the order. If you deliver 10 gigs a month, a single instance of that happening will wreck your profile.

That's my problem - the client can held you hostage with the implied threat of a bad review if you force him to follow the contract. The relationship is asymmetrical (because getting a 1 star review as a buyer makes no difference).

Just disabling the revision button would place the blame on the system, not on the seller. No need for confrontation. Less likelihood of a bad review.

[newsmike]

24 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

the client can held you hostage with the implied threat of a bad review if you force him to follow the contract.

There are loads of threads where people would rather cancel, and allow their work to be stolen, as opposed to standing up for themselves. The reason there are bullies is because a lot of folks are too scared to stand up for themselves. You can't do anything about that. Weakness and fear is one choice you can make. It's not what I'd suggest. I always suggest taking the bad review but also keeping both their money and your pride. Notice the OP was pretty timid also. You choose to either get abused, or you punch a bully right in the nose. If that gives you bloody knuckles, so be it. 

[topaz_muse]

I remember a suggestion I made some years ago about auto charging customers for extra revisions; especially if sellers have this set up on their gigs. It would be nice if something were done about the revision button abuse.