Fiverr not only suspended, but permanently blocked my account.

[wrenaker]

The account from which I am writing this message technically no longer exists. My account, which I had been developing since April 2018, was permanently disabled by the administration under the pretext of violating the rules. Even though I never violated any rules and my account had the status of 1-st level seller and full 5 stars. The only thing I have left of it is a page of one of the gigs saved in the web archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211129051516/https://www.fiverr.com/wrenaker/develop-a-telegram-bot-for-selling-goods

But it looks like thanks to chance and the technical imperfection of Fiverr I can still post. Maybe once I clear my browser cookies I won't be able to log in to this forum anymore.

That's why I'll leave this message. Fiverr has ruined almost 4 years of my work and left my customers without support and me and my family without a last chance to earn money to survive in a country on the verge of default.

What was the reason for this? I believe the reason was the indulgence of a general discriminatory agenda against russian residents. I was born in the USSR just before it collapsed and survived in poverty and fear thanks to my mother. One of the most important things I learned while surviving in Russian Federation is to never trust or rely on the government. That is why I have never supported and do not support the current government and its rash actions. 

I have found a way to make a livelihood for my family here on Fiverr. And I am grateful for that opportunity. Among other things, my gratitude was always expressed in 20% commission of each completed order which Fiverr took for itself - don't forget about that. And what the administration of Fiverr has done to my account is unforgivable.

It's worth adding that before getting blocked I joined the appeal to the CEO of Fiverr - you can read it here:

Or here, if my message has already been deleted:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220314185803/https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/277435-appeal-to-micha-kaufman-from-russian-seller/page/4

I have already recovered from the shock, and I hope that the administration will restore its reputation if it reconsiders its decisions. Then my family would have a chance to survive this crazy time. But I had almost given up hope.
 

So this post is primarily for other people - freelancers and clients - who have not yet had problems with Fiverr. It is worth realizing that something like this can happen to you at any minute, if Fiverr has even gone to the trouble of violating its own community standards:
https://www.fiverr.com/community/standards/objectionable-content

Archive page if they rewrite the standards:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220312113411/https://www.fiverr.com/community/standards/objectionable-content

[wrenaker]

I should also add that I did not want to give it all the publicity until the last moment. The day before the blocking tech support representative assured me that my account would be fine and I would keep my reputation on Fiverr. I hoped that if I change my residency I would be able to continue my work. But it was the other way around. Administration is silent on my request from the new account.

[donnovan86]

Pretty sure the account is just limited, meaning it seems like it's disabled but it's not, they can bring it back at any time.  

[wrenaker]

15 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Pretty sure the account is just limited, meaning it seems like it's disabled but it's not, they can bring it back at any time.  

I'd like to believe it, but this one says it quite clearly. I could be wrong, of course, because this is the first time I've encountered a situation in which I've been accused of breaking the rules. All I did was to warn my clients that they might not be able to contact me in the near future due to this unprecedented discrimination action. Now I just lost access to my contacts - I can't log into my account.

 

[donnovan86]

16 minutes ago, wrenaker said:

I'd like to believe it, but this one says it quite clearly.

I was banned accidentally a few years ago due to a maleficent buyer that manipulated the system and got banned himself eventually after Fiverr studied the case.  When I was banned, it said the same, but customer support sent me a message after a while saying that my account was restored. So yes, it's disabled for now, but not gone forever. That means whenever Fiverr gets back in business in Russian, i assume they can bring these accounts back. However, I don't know if you will still have the gigs available or not. I didn't lose any reviews when I was banned accidentally, nor my gigs. That's my experience and all I can share regarding this...Hopefully it helps. 

As far as I can see from your discussion, the CS representative clearly says the account does not get deleted. So I am sure that's the case. However, they don't have a message saying hey, the account is suspended. They all say disabled, but disabled doesn't mean deleted forever. It just means inactive. 

[uk1000]

24 minutes ago, wrenaker said:

All I did was to warn my clients that they might not be able to contact me in the near future due to this unprecedented discrimination action

When you let your clients know that, did you give out any outside contact info to them (eg. email or other sites you could be contacted through?) if so that might have been the reason for the "disabled.." message where it talked about outside business.

[wrenaker]

11 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I was banned accidentally a few years ago due to a maleficent buyer that manipulated the system and got banned himself eventually after Fiverr studied the case.  When I was banned, it said the same, but customer support sent me a message after a while saying that my account was restored. So yes, it's disabled for now, but not gone forever. That means whenever Fiverr gets back in business in Russian, i assume they can bring these accounts back. However, I don't know if you will still have the gigs available or not. I didn't lose any reviews when I was banned accidentally, nor my gigs. That's my experience and all I can share regarding this...Hopefully it helps. 

As far as I can see from your discussion, the CS representative clearly says the account does not get deleted. So I am sure that's the case. However, they don't have a message saying hey, the account is suspended. They all say disabled, but disabled doesn't mean deleted forever. It just means inactive. 

Thank you for the information. My hope of restoring the account has been strengthened.

However, in any case, I do not understand why I can not log in to the account. Suppose I can not accept new orders, but I should at least be able to communicate with technical support to eliminate misunderstandings in such cases. And they instead block access. I had to create a new account and make a request to support from it, but it is just ignored.

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, wrenaker said:

I do not understand why I can not log in to the account.

This is normal. When the account is suspended, all the orders are canceled ( I Had 75 orders when i was banned randomly and they were all canceled). So yes, they are treating you just like you were banned or the account was suspended because there's no system in place on Fiverr to do this. Stuff like that takes lots of development time, and no one expected this war to randomly appear. 

5 minutes ago, wrenaker said:

I had to create a new account and make a request to support from it

You can send them an email directly, creating a new account broke the rules and that alone can get you banned..... That was not exactly a good idea honestly.

[wrenaker]

15 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

When you let your clients know that, did you give out any outside contact info to them (eg. email or other sites you could be contacted through?) if so that might have been the reason for the "disabled.." message where it talked about outside business.

The specifics of my work (I develop Telegram bots) suggest that customers can find me there even without a direct call to do so. And yet, all this time I continued to correspond and place orders through Fiverr. Since it is, after all, the guarantor of a transaction between strangers.

In all this time I have not even once received a warning about withdrawal of customers from the site. Yes, and who wants to take such a risk that then, waste time on account recovery and dialogues on forums? Frankly, I already have problems and worse.

 

7 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

This is normal. When the account is suspended, all the orders are canceled ( I Had 75 orders when i was banned randomly and they were all canceled). So yes, they are treating you just like you were banned or the account was suspended because there's no system in place on Fiverr to do this. Stuff like that takes lots of development time, and no one expected this war to randomly appear. 

You can send them an email directly, creating a new account broke the rules and that alone can get you banned..... That was not exactly a good idea honestly.

Thanks again for sharing your experience. Of course, I wrote right away from my old email, but I still haven't received a reply. Understand that time is a very important resource right now. How I proceed in the future depends on a timely response from support. After all, my family's well-being is at stake right now, so I can't wait.

[mikavirtanen]

25 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

When you let your clients know that, did you give out any outside contact info to them (eg. email or other sites you could be contacted through?) if so that might have been the reason for the "disabled.." message where it talked about outside business.

They won't let us work and send any messages here, but they also don't let us contact with our regular customers outside while we're blocked. Just like a jealous girlfriend.

That's a dirty move, fiverr.

[donnovan86]

6 minutes ago, mikavirtanen said:

but they also don't let us contact with our regular customers outside while we're blocked. Just like a jealous girlfriend.

That's a dirty move, fiverr.

I understand where you are coming from. However, it's in their rules that they don't allow you to contact customers outside the platform. Why would they do that, since they don't have any benefit from it? In fact, contacting people outside of the platform is one of the things that can get you banned right away. Try to avoid that, as this temporary suspension can turn into a permanent one...

[mikavirtanen]

21 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I understand where you are coming from. However, it's in their rules that they don't allow you to contact customers outside the platform. Why would they do that, since they don't have any benefit from it? In fact, contacting people outside of the platform is one of the things that can get you banned right away. Try to avoid that, as this temporary suspension can turn into a permanent one...

They wouldn't either have any benefit from blocking a whole country. And no one would.

p/s I'm not encouraging anyone to break the Fiverr's ToS

[mariashtelle1]

I’m afraid it’s not because of discrimination… You have telegram links in your description that you attached here and it’s not allowed. 
I know you are saying you had this gig for years however that just means that fiverr didn’t notice it earlier and all this situation probably just made someone manually check it and now that they saw it they disabled your account for having links to telegram in your description. 

[wrenaker]

9 hours ago, mariashtelle1 said:

I’m afraid it’s not because of discrimination… You have telegram links in your description that you attached here and it’s not allowed. 
I know you are saying you had this gig for years however that just means that fiverr didn’t notice it earlier and all this situation probably just made someone manually check it and now that they saw it they disabled your account for having links to telegram in your description. 

Links to demo versions of bots are necessary so that the customer can verify the performance of what he buys. This is not a logo that can be added to a portfolio. There is no other way for my product to demonstrate it otherwise.

I've been using demo bots and links to them almost since I first published my gigs on Fiverr more than 3 years ago. They couldn't have escaped the attention of Fiverr representatives during that time. I have occasionally communicated with technical support and even once made a request to remove gigs that were created by copycat competitors who completely copied my gigs, including the links in the description.

Demo bots for my gigs did not contain contact information, so I thought it was acceptable. And it seems that the representatives of Fiverr thought the same. If links in my gigs had been a problem - I would have received a warning or blocking years ago. But that has only happened now. What a convenient coincidence, isn't it?

p.s.
I have now added a link to my Telegram profile in all my demo bots so I can use those demos in my mailings to potential clients. I have to keep working somehow, after all.

[wrenaker]

So, I finally got a response from the administration, please note, to the new account. The old one is still ignored.

After requesting the data on the blocked account, I literally in 10 minutes got the quite expected answer:

Translated to human this response means "We did the right thing, and even if we didn't, we won't look into it. Get out of here and don't come back."

No details, no clarification and no chance to explain the situation - the second account was blocked at the same minute. In this thread I've already laid out how things went down. Now I can make a general chronology of the conflict.

The situation before the beginning:

• Level one seller account with 5 stars for all orders (developing bots for Telegram). 
• Links in "t.me/botname" format to demo bots, which were present in the gig description and repeatedly sent in personal messages to Fiverr users.
• No contact information in the bot, except a link to my seller account on Fiverr.
• No warnings about rule violations from Fiverr or Fiverr users. And no account restrictions.

March 11. 
After receiving a letter from Fiverr with a warning about suspension of Russian Federation representatives, I contacted technical support to clarify whether the account would be blocked and whether I would keep my reputation and gigs position in search after the restrictions were removed. On the same day I joined the appeal of Russian sellers to the CEO of Fiverr and informed my active customers about this discrimination action, also warning that they probably will not be able to contact me in the near future.

March 13, 9:42.
Fiverr tech support replied and assured me that my account is safe and won't be deleted.

March 13, 12:23.
Fiverr blocks my account stating as the reason for trying to do business outside of Fiverr. I am starting to look for ways to contact the administration to understand what exactly of my actions they consider this violation and restore the account.

March 14.
I created this thread to alert the community and draw attention to the problem, since tech support is simply silent and the only reason for the blocking I can assume is my claim of discrimination and the fact that I ask unwanted questions in the forum.

March 15.
No response from tech support, and I'm starting to look for other ways to find customers. I register at the local exchanges.

March 16.
Tech support remains silent. I add links to the demo versions of the bots in the business newsletter, which organizes my friend, but since Fiverr is blocked, I add a link to my Telegram profile in the welcome message of the demo bots. 

Today, March 17.
Tech support finally responded. But without going into detail and without providing evidence of a violation, I was denied the reinstatement of my account.

 

Making this chronology I realized that most likely it was March 16 I made a mistake. In theory this gives those who check my bots right now the opportunity to claim that I purposely taking away customers by indicating direct contact. Now it can not be corrected and was unrealistic to foresee this, since March 11 I have been sleeping at best 3-4 hours a day. So I can understand why the tech support representative refused to help.

But do not forget that my account was blocked on March 13. At that time the direct contacts in the bots were not specified and adding links to external services in the description of the gig is not a violation of the ToS. Moreover, in the welcome message from the bot originally offered to place an order on Fiverr and gave a link to my seller profile.

So what was the reason for the blocking in fact?
And how do I get this to the one who makes the final decision when I get blocked without any investigation?

I wouldn't draw unnecessary attention and deal with it all here on the forum if I had a choice. But I'm tired and I can't keep quiet. In my country, trying to express an honest but unpopular opinion threatens not only loss of earnings, but also torture, prison and death. 

But what I observe here and now is not very different from similar cases in my country. My earnings were in danger and I got out of "read only" to object - and now I've lost my earnings.

The policy of restricting rights under a far-fetched pretext with no opportunity to oppose and defend one's position is purely Putin's way of solving problems. Think about it.

[jonbaas]

47 minutes ago, wrenaker said:

After requesting the data on the blocked account, I literally in 10 minutes got the quite expected answer:

Translated to human this response means "We did the right thing, and even if we didn't, we won't look into it. Get out of here and don't come back."

That's not, at all, what "Shift Manager" said in his response to you. He even shared the off-site link that you provided to your clients. You cannot share offsite communication options. That's against the site rules. A social media site, in this case, Telegram, is an offsite communication site.

53 minutes ago, wrenaker said:

the second account was blocked at the same minute.

You cannot have two accounts on Fiverr either.

[wrenaker]

1 hour ago, jonbaas said:

That's not, at all, what "Shift Manager" said in his response to you. He even shared the off-site link that you provided to your clients. You cannot share offsite communication options. That's against the site rules. A social media site, in this case, Telegram, is an offsite communication site.

You cannot have two accounts on Fiverr either.

That's exactly the attitude I'm talking about:

Don't study the situation. 
@
Immediately judge. 

Thanks for a great example of how NOT to do.

[jonbaas]

27 minutes ago, wrenaker said:

Don't study the situation. 
@
Immediately judge. 

There was no judgement on my part. I merely shared two important site rules that cannot be broken. If they are broken, as it appears they were, then Fiverr takes the kind of action they chose to take with you. It's a cause and effect issue. I honestly don't know what anyone else can tell you. 

[wrenaker]

18 minutes ago, jonbaas said:

There was no judgement on my part. I merely shared two important site rules that cannot be broken. If they are broken, as it appears they were, then Fiverr takes the kind of action they chose to take with you. It's a cause and effect issue. I honestly don't know what anyone else can tell you. 

You haven't even read the thread, and you've already sided with Fiverr. So to me it's the same thing.

You are referring to the rules of the site, but if you had read this thread, you would know that I have been on Fiverr since 2018 and am familiar with the rules. And yes, according to ToS links in gigs are allowed and my links were not a violation.

[donnichols]

Regarding the "coincedence", I believe someone just went to your profile after your forum posts, saw the links and reported it. That explains why nobody drew attention to them before. I'm on this forum for quite a long time and can confirm people indeed get banned for such links in their gig descriptions exactly the same way, without a warning and chance to explain. I agree that it's very questionable policy, but that's how they work for years.

There is limited list of domain URLs that are allowed in the description, telegram isn't there:

https://www.fiverr.com/support/articles/360011421218-Gig-Policies

[wrenaker]

13 minutes ago, donnichols said:

Regarding the "coincedence", I believe someone just went to your profile after your forum posts, saw the links and reported it.

Needless to say, my faith in people and common sense is all but dead, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened. But then again, I had no choice. No matter how it ended up, it would be a good example of the values Fiverr cultivates and what their manifestos about equality and discrimination are worth.

[mrashrafomi]

sad issue

[gddsakib]

I don't know why fiverr do this bad thing with you. You can contact with fiverr support I hope they can Only give you best solution. 

Best of luck dear