Can't respond to buyer

[embers25]

Hey guys. I got a message from a buyer this morning and noticed later that my reply never sent. Tried again, same thing. Tried using the site, not the app, only to see that the message box was greyed out/not accessible with a message above saying, among other stuff, "[name] is not available to receive orders until [date]".

So I'm guessing this person marked themselves as out of office (or whatever the term is), so buyers can't message her until the date she set. The problem is that she messaged ME as a buyer, and now I feel horrible because she might not realize and might think I'm ignoring her. The date she's available again is end of December which is far off. I was thinking I would have to wait until then to message her back and let her I know I wasn't in fact ignoring her, but does anyone know if there's a different way to get around this?

It's silly that apparently people are able to message as a buyer while marked out of office when it prevents the people they're messaging from responding.

[embers25]

Ah shoot, I just noticed it's going to affect my response rate since it says to respond within twelve hours. This is frustrating.

[embers25]

Alright, well since no one had any input/answers, I figured I would post an update for other sellers who may come across the same issue in the future. So it's obviously past the 24 hour point of me not responding, and it thankfully hasn't affected my response rate stat. But, the buyer's message still shows the red clock icon by her username with the message 'Respond within 0h'.

So I'm hoping it won't affect my stat once she becomes available again, but I shall see once that time comes.

[embers25]

Wow! Well colour me (not really) surprised lol. The time came today for me to respond and bam, response time shot up from 1 hour to 386! Lesson learned, I guess. Another thing the lovely Fiverr system punishes sellers for when it's not their fault. Hoping Support resets it but not really expecting it based on previous experiences with them.

Edited December 31, 2021 by embers25

[embers25]

Update: Support responded already and I was right to expect no help.

So, I guess this can at least serve as a warning to other sellers in the future. Tiny silver lining, I suppose.

[uk1000]

Maybe post in the ticket that it seems like/is a bug. It seems like it, since it shouldn't punish you for not responding when it's physically not possible on the system to respond because the buyer (who's probably also a s seller) has gone out of office (I'm not sure if it allowed them to send the message while they were out of office or if they went out of office less than a day after they sent it - but either way they shouldn't punish sellers in this case).

It should be fixed as well to prevent competitors doing it to worsen other sellers' stats on purpose. If you know it's a competitor you could mention that to CS.

It's also bad because the system could be actually making it better not to respond to buyers at all if you haven't been able to for a day or a few days because that's going to affect whether other buyers decide to message.

Edited January 1, 2022 by uk1000

[embers25]

@uk1000

I unfortunately don't think saying that would make a difference. In the reply, the reason I got was "--unfortunately, I am unable to influence this in any way since response time is managed entirely by the system."

Which doesn't really make sense in my opinion because it's THEIR system, but whatever.

[rykcazzola]

I'm 1 year late, I'm new seller on fiver and I have the exact same problem. Any update or suggest of what to do? 

[chris_ld]

16 hours ago, rykcazzola said:

I'm 1 year late, I'm new seller on fiver and I have the exact same problem. Any update or suggest of what to do? 

Use main keyword and take inspiration from others

[catwriter]

9 minutes ago, chris_ld said:

Use main keyword and take inspiration from others

That's a response that has literally nothing to do with the question.