Gig Multiples for Packages - option to turn off/limit multiples needed

[miiila]

I had switched from the ‘normal’ 1 Gig thing to the Packages.
My packages offer, e. g. 100, 250 or 1000 words, but people can just use the gig multiple thing to up the words to several hundreds or thousands, while the delivery time stays the same,
and obviously I can only translate a certain number of words per day, no matter how long I work.

Please implement an option to limit the multiples, or at least the delivery time must go up with the number of multiples booked.

Being able to limit the bookable multiples I think would make the switch easier for a lot of people who are still not using packages too, it´s what kept me from switching earlier. I don´t want to have to cancel orders because people book more than I can do, and the simple option to turn off or limit the multiples would take care of that.

[blaisefaint]

Dear Miiila:

Have you considered adding a gig multiples gig extra to your gig packages?

Make a special offer for that on Fiverr Anywhere!

Good luck,
Blaise

[miiila]

Dear Blaise,

the problem I face is that with the gig packages and the multiples people can book for example 50K words and the delivery time won´t go up and I´d have to deliver within 7 days, which would be a bit inconvenient…
People don´t read, and they can God knows how many gig multiples, I stopped trying how high I could go when I was over 100.
Will adding gig multiples as extras prevent that the multiples can be clicked? I’ll try and do that then, I´m still not sure why I shouldn´t be allowed to limit the multiples for my gigs, but if that´s a workaround I´ll take it!

Thank you.
Mila

edit: I don´t think it helps, I might have to go back to the non package set-up, there I could control this ‘issue’ with the extras, as I then could set additional time for additional words.
Hm, this doesn´t work with my package set-up, the extras are for all 3 packages, can´t make them different per package. Okay, I fear that means back to the one gig set-up, or take the risk of having to cancel orders. 😕

[blaisefaint]

Dear Miila:

I’m sorry, I was just joking.

I was making fun of the fact that Fiverr has added on so many different ways to do things, that it’s gotten a bit confusing.

I agree with you 100% that Fiverr needs to address your issue, and I suggest you add it to this thread:

Fiverrcast Questions

I also forgot to mention that maybe you should add that to your FAQ and to your pdfs.*

Mea culpa,

Blaise

*Just kidding again!

P.S. You could also ask M where the Fiverrcast transcripts are, given that they were supposed to be back up by the weekend… 

[miiila]

Dear Blaise,

I see, thanks anyway, it was worth a try, because I had found a way around uncontrollable gig multiplication by clicking against my written pleas with the non-package set-up that way, alas, well.
FAQs and PDF is in theory a good idea, but the thing is I have on all 3 packages, where everyone who´d click any of them would have to see it, to please read the gig description, where this point is addressed, and I fear 1.) people who don´t read the description, won´t read a PDF either, and 2.) don´t really want to put PDFs up because the poor people who would read, have to read more then, and while certainly good and needed for some gigs.

And I had more FAQs, but already deleted some of them a while ago, because the more there are, the less the chance that they get read, especially by the buyers who should read them, a lot of buyers message anyway of course if they have big work like ebooks, but, well, sometimes when I´m already booked out and yet wouldn´t have to pause a gig because I could take on small jobs, only not bigger ones, there´s that risk,and a lot is not all…

I also don´t think most of my gigs/offers need a big explanation, those that need ‘talking’ need talking anyhow more than a PDF (I´m wondering about restructuring my gigs/splitting/specialising them more though and for that maybe the PDF approach will be good to keep in mind).
I did change the overlay text on my gig images also to that effect, in the hope some people who don´t read the desctiption will look at the pics, maybe I´ll try to work on that and the wording of the gig description to make it clearer, but, well, the simple ‘limit allowed gig multiples’ would make this a lot easier and DAU-safe too.

Thanks for the joking though and the suggestions, I´ll mull over it all and in either case I´ll add my question there and ask for the transcripts at that opportunity too!

Have a great Sunday,
Mila

[miiila]

Okay… bumping this because the counting of mutually cancelled orders for our completion rate just made this all the more important.

I had 2 cancellations now within short time because a buyer accidentally ordered a much higher gig multiple than they needed. So obviously they asked for a cancellation to reorder the right amount.

If i could choose how many gig multiples were possible to select with my gig, these 2 accidental orders and cancellations wouldn’t have happened, because for high word-counts which usually only would happen by mistake without inbox message and only ever happen per custom order really in my case, a buyer will have to contact me either way to make sure I even can do the order in the required time frame. There is absolutely no need and sense for my gigs to be able to be chosen in multiples like 10 or 20 or 50 or even more.

The only thing that can come of that option are cancellations because either a buyer clicks 10x the amount they want by accident or because a buyer would order something like 20K or 200K words without talking to me first and I might have to cancel it depending on my schedule.

Please let us sellers decide how many multiples of a gig a buyer can book ourselves, or at least give us a choice like 1-10 /1-20…unlimited, so it doesn’t unduly put those of us at a disadvantage who offer unique and custom and time intensive gigs.

There’s a huge difference in what amount you can deliver depending on the gig. I could probably send out 100 or even 1000 premade or mainly premade things like a PDF or a postcard from wherever within 3 days, but there’s a limit to how many words I can translate in 3 days, no matter how much coffee I drink and how little i sleep. 😉

Thank you.

[miiila]

Still an issue. Please an option to limit the number of gig multiples a buyer can book, we can choose a number ourselves to limit orders in queue, this certainly can be implemented for the gig multiples, too.

It´s really an issue, because the delivery time doesn´t change nvm how many multiples are booked, also I can hardly dare to offer any extras because of this. I want to offer some extras, and some buyers might like to be able to choose them, but if people can book as many multiples as they want, plus the delivery time doesn´t go up with the multiples, neither the price for an extra like 24 hour delivery…people who offer things based on word-counts and such, always run the risk of having to cancel, because someone orders so many multiples as it´s not humanly possible to deliver in the specified time.

[eoinfinnegan]

I agree, this is still an issue that should be fixed - considering it affects almost all services, it really needs to be sorted out.

In the meantime, you can try what I have done which is give instructions on how long an order will take when they order. Some buyers don’t understand the delivery time/countdown and so they assume that I will just deliver in the timeframe that I have specified. In these cases, and any case, I can then easily explain this and request an extension to the delivery time with the reason. It doesn’t happen often now that I have specified the delivery times and max words per package but even when it does, it has never been an issue for them to increase it. 

[miiila]

On 4/12/2017 at 1:20 AM, eoinfinnegan said:

I agree, this is still an issue that should be fixed - considering it affects almost all services, it really needs to be sorted out.

In the meantime, you can try what I have done which is give instructions on how long an order will take when they order. Some buyers don’t understand the delivery time/countdown and so they assume that I will just deliver in the timeframe that I have specified. In these cases, and any case, I can then easily explain this and request an extension to the delivery time with the reason. It doesn’t happen often now that I have specified the delivery times and max words per package but even when it does, it has never been an issue for them to increase it.

Yeah, thank you, I made an ‘instructional screenshot’ for gig multiples recently as I had another kind of problem, a buyer used the 24 hour delivery extra to order for 2x the words instead of 2x gig, told me in the instructions that it’s fine to deliver within the normal delivery time which was 3 days and only used the 24 hour option to get to the price for 2x the included words.

Well, as you know but he as a Buyer of course not necessarily, I still had to deliver within the 13 or so hours left after waking up to the order, or spend time on messaging and asking for an extension (with maybe consequences for secret rates and ranking ;)) and to risk it running late.

Well, that hopefully Dorstone happen often and I explained it to the buyer with a Screenshot of the multiple thing, but that other problem cost me 2 mutual cancellations and thus a good drop in cancellation rate already.

The thing here is that while for many of our suggestions there are pros and cons, but here I don’t really see any good reason for fiverr to not do it.

Well, determined to not let this go until it gets a fix or someone fiverry tells me it never will. 😉 

[itamareshel]

Same or similar problem here.
Buyer taking advantage of this fact to get his order done faster.
He took the basic package, and added words to it without the deadline moving at all.
I don’t want to allow this behavior by the buyers as it forces me to do the job twice as fast.

What can be done?
except not giving the option to add words at all?

[miiila]

Same or similar problem here.

Buyer taking advantage of this fact to get his order done faster.

He took the basic package, and added words to it without the deadline moving at all.

I don’t want to allow this behavior by the buyers as it forces me to do the job twice as fast.

What can be done?

except not giving the option to add words at all?

Yes, despite several changes for lots of things, this is still a problem. You can’t do much more than ask people to contact you before placing orders over x words and pray that they’ll do. A bit sub-optimal, and that without any real reason I could see or guess. 😕

[miiila]

Once more, I´m waking up to an order where the buyer used the gig multiples of the basic gig to get to their desired word count. Makes sense, from their perspective, the drop-down is there, so why not click. They are in another time zone, so 10 hours of the 3-day delivery time have already passed, too.

So… someone ordered and paid, where’s the problem?

The problem is that the buyer ordered 14x the words the basic gig offers with a delivery time of 3 days, and that delivery time doesn´t change a bit, never mind how many words a buyer orders! That makes exactly zero sense.

Yes, I do ask in my gig to contact me for orders of more than xxxx words, because, you know, I need time to do my orders, unfortunately, I only sell time-intensive gigs, and I have other orders in my queue all the time. But some buyers don´t read, or simply order yet, we all know that.

Why can´t we
either limit the number of gig multiples a buyer can choose
or the delivery time does not change according to logic or numbers we set ourselves?

Again, gig multiples aren´t a problem if what you´re selling is pre-made PDFs or something, but it is a problem in a category like Writing & Translation, how can that not be obvious? It is a level perk that we get more gig multiples. Well, for me, and I´d think a lot of us, it´s a problem, not a perk.

My options now:

• annoy the buyer with cancelling (yeah, cancelling, you know…) and explanations and ask him to accept a custom offer instead

• annoy the buyer with opening a dispute and explanations and ask for a delivery time extension (potentially risking a cancellation, yeah, you know…)

• do nothing and try and risk delivering late (yeah, you know…)

• somehow make it happen and squeeze it in, which means working through this entire Sunday or working through one of the coming three nights, seeing that I already got orders in my queue which I must work on

This is not the fault of the buyer, mind you, the system offers those gig multiples, so why wouldn´t he use them.

What is wrong here is that we sellers can´t set the number of gig multiples a buyer can choose to a number that won´t lead problems for us (and consequently for the buyer too, if we can´t deliver on time, have to cancel etc.).

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The solution, pretty logical and shouldn´t be hard to implement:

let sellers limit how many gig multiples buyers can choose (the setting is there for allowed orders in queue too, so why not here?),

or make it so that the delivery time changes accordingly.
Gig option A offers 100 words in 1 day? Then, if a buyer orders 500 words, the delivery time should change to 5 days - or to something the seller specified in advance.

Makes total sense, and should to buyers as well if they think about it - they still can use express delivery if offered/gig option B or C which might have more words included but a better delivery time ratio/ask for a custom offer for their needed word count and their desired delivery time.)

or, preferably, both of that.

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Apropos, please also review the way the gig extras are handled.

In a category like Writing & Translating, you can order an extra like fast delivery/proofreading/whatever custom extra 1x never mind how many words you order. This should be made technically impossible. The number of extras that are ordered must automatically adjust to the number of words.
10x main gig (let´s say translation of 100 words=1000 words) with only 1x extra like 24-delivery (for 1000 words) or 1x proofreading (for 1000 words), makes no sense - obviously, the amount of extras needs to go up with the amount of multiples a buyer clicks.

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The way it is set up now, keeps sellers, and thus buyers, from using all available options.

Pretty sure some sellers might offer lower delivery times and more extras too, if those unneccessary pitfalls were out of the way. My delivery times, for instance, are higher than need be, to at least give me a slight chance of being able to deal with situations like the above without any bad effects for buyers and myself.

[authoreva]

As a longtime writer and editor here on fiverr, I second that!!!

Thank you for this post.

[Anna]

One would think it would be very easy to implement since it’s already available in the VO category (screenshot attached)

I can only imagine the stress and hiccups for you if the above happens. :roll_eyes:

[miiila]

One would think it would be very easy to implement since it’s already available in the VO category (screenshot attached)

I can only imagine the stress and hiccups for you if the above happens. :roll_eyes:

Forum.jpg1280×720 41 KB

Thank you, exactly, if there is any reason for not implementing this in the Writing & Translation category, I really would like to hear it.

[vickiespencer]

Oh miiila, I have feared that very thing happening to me. I would offer to help you out of your bind, but my German is limited to: “Danke, Mein Hut hat drei Ecken, drei Ecken hat meinen Hut. Gehst du in die Bibliothek?” All remembered from high school German class many moons ago. That small vocabulary I am sure would not do you any good. 😕

[miiila]

On 1/21/2018 at 4:29 PM, vickiespencer said:

Oh miiila, I have feared that very thing happening to me. I would offer to help you out of your bind, but my German is limited to: “Danke, Mein Hut hat drei Ecken, drei Ecken hat meinen Hut. Gehst du in die Bibliothek?” All remembered from high school German class many moons ago. That small vocabulary I am sure would not do you any good. 😕

It´s okay, this time, I spent my Sunday on it, but Fiverr really should fix this, there is no reason they can´t do it for our category and they obviously have figured out the technicalities as Anna´s post shows. Well, here´s to hoping. ⏳ 

[pacquo]

Oh miiila, I have feared that very thing happening to me. I would offer to help you out of your bind, but my German is limited to: “Danke, Mein Hut hat drei Ecken, drei Ecken hat meinen Hut. Gehst du in die Bibliothek?” All remembered from high school German class many moons ago. That small vocabulary I am sure would not do you any good. 😕

my German is limited to: “Danke, Mein Hut hat drei Ecken…

All I know is “Keine Gegenstände aus dem Fenster werfen”.

[vickiespencer]

On 1/21/2018 at 4:36 PM, pacquo said:

“Keine Gegenstände aus dem Fenster werfen”.

Good advice! I had to google translate it though. 

[miiila]

my German is limited to: “Danke, Mein Hut hat drei Ecken…

All I know is “Keine Gegenstände aus dem Fenster werfen”.

Haha, well, I like Vickie´s vocabulary better 😉 but actually, the trains here usually feature signage in German, English, French and Italian, so that might be the gist of my Italian skills too… but, luckily, there are so many Gelaterias and Italian restaurants. ☕

[miiila]

Bumping this site suggestion after reading a post by another seller having the same problem.

We shouldn´t have to beg for a time extension for this reason and pray that the buyer will accept it before the order goes late. It is an issue, Fiverr, please fix it!

[topaz_muse]

This would be nice to see especially with so many issues surfacing due to lack of control. Reminds me of high school a bit where my class was tasked with translating from English to Spanish for an assignment. But poor ol’ me was tasked with English to Spanish to French.

Hope this gets implemented.
🍵

[inka_iskandar]

I currently having the same problem.

One of my package is a 4 days delivery package but a buyer order 4 multiples and the delivery time doesn’t add up into 16 days. It’s basically cheating the system to order with extra fast without actually add an extra fast option. And any cancellation will also backfire.

So, why don’t we have an option to disable gig multiples?

I just don’t get it, what’s the use for extra fast option if the system could be cheated like this?

[miiila]

I´m repeating myself, but it still is a problem (I need to keep my delivery times “artificially” long and can´t offer fast delivery as a gig extra to avoid too many problems/cancellations - even more relevant now than it was, since all and any cancellations affect not just our completion rate and thus most probably ranking but also can lead to us losing our levels):

The Writing & Translation category needs the same overhaul regarding Gig Multiples that VO already got quite a while ago.

Why exactly can people just use gig multiples as they please to order any number of words without the delivery time changing? It doesn´t make sense - sorry, but if our gig offers, for example, 500 words in 1 day, that doesn´t mean we can automatically deliver 5000 or even ‘just’ 1000 words the next day just because someone uses the Gig Multiple drop-down to order more than the gig promises within a certain timeframe.

I don´t think it can be that difficult to implement something that either lets us choose the number of gig multiples available for our gigs ourselves or to automatically up the delivery time when the buyer ups the gig multiples, after all, it was done for the VO category, so it´s obviously possible technically.

[ghorairy]

Well, what I’ve done, for now at least, is increase the price for adding words/minutes (depending on the service) to my services. So, the 3 packages are quite cheap with quick delivery, but to add more words/minutes it’s just going to cost more. It doesn’t solve the core of the problem, but it means I’m going to charge more money for delivering more work in a short amount of time.