Cancelled order after client recieves all files

[heimdaldesign]

Hi. So I am a first time seller on fiverr and so far my experience is pretty bad to say the least. I`ve been working and communicating with a client day and night for a big project. I consulted with my client and showed him some of the work to make sure he was happy with the result. After delivery he cancelled the order after half an hour stating that the files are corrupted. I double checked, none of the files has issues.

Now what? He`s got the files, will not respond to my message and he get`s his money back. If this is how fiverr works this will definately be my first and last experience here.

[heimdaldesign]

And I just noticed he blocked me.

[smashradio]

35 minutes ago, heimdaldesign said:

Hi. So I am a first time seller on fiverr and so far my experience is pretty bad to say the least. I`ve been working and communicating with a client day and night for a big project. I consulted with my client and showed him some of the work to make sure he was happy with the result. After delivery he cancelled the order after half an hour stating that the files are corrupted. I double checked, none of the files has issues.

Now what? He`s got the files, will not respond to my message and he get`s his money back. If this is how fiverr works this will definately be my first and last experience here.

Sorry to hear about your experience. Naturally, we can only know your side of the story here on the forum. With that said: 

You could reach out to customer support to ask what happened. This happens from time to time, and the only ones who can do anything about it is the customer support team. 

If you didn't accept their cancellation request (or got one in the first place) it means the buyer cancelled via customer support. As a seller, I've never had this happen to me in my eight years here on Fiverr. 

If you can prove to Fiverr that the delivery was in fact not "corrupted", they might be able to reverse the request. 

If you got a request for cancellation and accepted it, that's on you, and this should be a learning experience for the future. 

In the meantime, you could always check out my guide to red flags when working on Fiverr, and hopefully it might be of help in the future. 

As always, I recommend vetting your buyers before working with them. You say you've been communicating day and night with this buyer. If a buyer expected that of me, I would immediately consider it a red flag of a needy buyer. 

 

I hope you don't let this single bad buyer stop you from selling on Fiverr. 

Greetings from another Norwegian seller, by the way. Welcome! 😄 

Edited May 27, 2022 by smashradio

[studioheimdal]

Thank you so much for your informative reply. I did not recieve a cancel request so he must have gone through the customer service. I have contacted them myself now and hopefully they will be able to help. Not sure how I would prove that the files are not corrupted, any suggestions? 
 

Oh and hi fellow Norwegian! 😊

[studioheimdal]

I will keep updating here as this might be to help for someone else in the future.

 

So I contacted the fiverr support snd they told me that my client had actually deleted his account after I finished the order and that’s why they cancelled it. 
 

They are looking into it, so keeping my fingers crossed.

 

What I learned so far is a few red flags and that I definately must split the payment into milestones.

[nftsworld007]

I am sorry to know that you have had a first bad experience. I wish the customer support help you to resolve this issue.

 

Have a good one 🙂

[studioheimdal]

Thank you, I hope so too!

Have a great day😊

Edited May 28, 2022 by studioheimdal

[smashradio]

7 hours ago, studioheimdal said:

I will keep updating here as this might be to help for someone else in the future.

 

So I contacted the fiverr support snd they told me that my client had actually deleted his account after I finished the order and that’s why they cancelled it. 
 

They are looking into it, so keeping my fingers crossed.

 

What I learned so far is a few red flags and that I definately must split the payment into milestones.

That explains why it happened. Even so, if you had completed the order and it was delivered, it shouldn't have been cancelled, in my opinion. So I hope Fiverr Support will fix it for you. After all, you did the work and should be compensated for it. 

Proving that the files aren't corrupted should be fairly easy, if you're not working with niche formats. If it's a Photoshop file or something similar, sending it to Fiverr should prove that the files aren't corrupted. 

I've heard about buyers who sign up, order with Paypal, then delete their account and orders a chargeback from Paypal. That would lead to a cancellation, since Fiverr can't pay you if they don't have the money. 

These "buyers" will do this simply to scam sellers on the platform. Luckily, I haven't heard about many of them, but I know they are out there. 

I hope Fiverr will make you whole again, but I doubt they can/will. Usually, there could be other ways of dealing with this. If you made a logo, you know their company name. You have the files. You could probably do reverse image searches and look up the company name online. If you manage to identify them and they are using your work without permission, you could take legal action against them. 

[studioheimdal]

1 hour ago, smashradio said:

That explains why it happened. Even so, if you had completed the order and it was delivered, it shouldn't have been cancelled, in my opinion. So I hope Fiverr Support will fix it for you. After all, you did the work and should be compensated for it. 

Proving that the files aren't corrupted should be fairly easy, if you're not working with niche formats. If it's a Photoshop file or something similar, sending it to Fiverr should prove that the files aren't corrupted. 

I've heard about buyers who sign up, order with Paypal, then delete their account and orders a chargeback from Paypal. That would lead to a cancellation, since Fiverr can't pay you if they don't have the money. 

These "buyers" will do this simply to scam sellers on the platform. Luckily, I haven't heard about many of them, but I know they are out there. 

I hope Fiverr will make you whole again, but I doubt they can/will. Usually, there could be other ways of dealing with this. If you made a logo, you know their company name. You have the files. You could probably do reverse image searches and look up the company name online. If you manage to identify them and they are using your work without permission, you could take legal action against them. 

Aha, proving the files are not corrupted is easy then. I will just have to sit back and wait for more feedback from customer service.

I must admit that this experience makes me think twice about wanting to continue on fiverr. How common is it to meet scammers like this? I mean some will be easy to spot as scammers on the way they communicate and they often ask to continue conversation outside of the platform. However in this case I could not have seen it coming to be honest. 
 

In regards of taking any legal actions it will probably not really lead anywhere as allthough I have the source files they are not a registered trademark. It’s not common practice to trademark logos and other graphics unless it’s for great big companies like Nike, Pepsi etc. But one red flag I definately should have picked up on as I see this in retrospect is that they asked for a brand mark without a company name. This is not so common but still happens so I did not find it suspicious at the time. 
 

Still crossing my fingers that fiverr will resolve this to my best interest, but not getting my hopes up to high.

[smashradio]

1 hour ago, studioheimdal said:

How common is it to meet scammers like this?

I usually have a good radar for such things. I have not been scammed once on Fiverr in my eight years selling on the platform. So I think you've just been unlucky. Fiverr is a lot bigger than it was back then, you're a new seller, and probably that can have contributed to you becoming a target.

Most of my working experiences on Fiverr have been great. I love working on Fiverr because it makes things so simple.

It takes care of the marketing side of things, the accounting, has a complete CRM solution (Workspace) and most of my orders follow the same, simple process: A couple of messages, order gets placed, order gets delivered.

There's less back and forth (usually) and less time is spent negotiating. I don't have to spend time doing pointless meetings all day, and I set my own schedule. 

Even so, I have seen my share of buyers wanting to take advantage of me and other sellers. But you quickly learn to deal with them and recognize them. It's rarely a "scam" per se, but you'll find the Scrooge McDucks of this world, to say the least. Some buyers will also leave you in endless revision loops, unless you stay firm and hold your ground when needed. 

The trick is to not let anybody push you around, while being polite and friendly (with a good dose of firmness when the situation calls for it). 

2 hours ago, studioheimdal said:

In regards of taking any legal actions it will probably not really lead anywhere as allthough I have the source files they are not a registered trademark.

I think you've misunderstood how copyright works. Any intellectual work you create (write, design, draw, take a photo of or even my voice when I do voice overs) is your property. You don't have to register anything: it belongs you to because you made it. In other words, if I stole a logo that you made, i.e. used it without your permission, you have the legal grounds to stop the usage and require compensation. 

I'm not sure about logo designs, but for photos, it's normal to charge the full fee + 100% for the illegal use. As an example (I'm a voice over, writer, translator and journalist) is a website that "borrowed" a bit too much of my content without proper creditation or permission. I sent them an invoice along with the documentation I had collected (screenshots, source code, original article, web archive) for a total of 200% of the original freelance rate I would charge for such a project. If they hadn't paid up, I'd have taken them to court, and most likely won.

So don't skip it if you ever find out that the logo is in use somewhere. Remember: you don't have to "register" anything as a trademark to own the copyright to the work: it comes automatically when you create something. 

 Now, the laws aren't identical across borders, but in the EU and the US, the laws are pretty much similar when it comes to copyright. Here's a (translated) part of the Norwegian copyright law, know as "Lov om opphavsrett til åndsverk": 

"A literary or artistic work that is an expression of original and individual creative effort is protected as a work of art. The creator of the work is described as the author, and his right to the intellectual work is called copyright, see § 2. No registration or application is required for the author to obtain copyright. Copyright arises when the intellectual property is created."

Sourse: https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2018-06-15-40

[rabia_sabir]

If I were you, I would've been disappointed but after sometime, I usually consider it a loss. Good and bad people are everywhere. This is a philosophical reply.

Technically, I would've provided all the evidence to Fiverr, and they might have returned me some of the amount which is a kind of good thing. having something is better than nothing

[studioheimdal]

Yes you are right, I’ll just take it as experience and learn from it rather than dwell on it for a long time. Right now CS is looking into it so I will just have to wait and see. 
 

I am very happy to hear that people here have mostly had good experience with the platform. I probably just had really bad luck with my first buyer.

[heimdaldesign]

I´m popping in to update this thread as I got an e-mail from customer support this morning. I really thought this was a lost case, but I actually got my money. This turned from a really bad experience with my first client to a really good experience with customer support. Yay!

 

[williambryan392]

46 minutes ago, heimdaldesign said:

I´m popping in to update this thread as I got an e-mail from customer support this morning. I really thought this was a lost case, but I actually got my money. This turned from a really bad experience with my first client to a really good experience with customer support. Yay!

 

This is awesome! I'm very happy for you!

People complain about CS, but I think most of the time they do a great job, especially when you haven't done anything wrong!

[heimdaldesign]

3 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

This is awesome! I'm very happy for you!

People complain about CS, but I think most of the time they do a great job, especially when you haven't done anything wrong!

Yeah, I´ve read a lot of complaints about the CS but as you say it seems that they do a great job as long as you have followed their guidelines.

😊 

[lalitsdmittal]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience here but every client is not like that. I also faced this type of issues. But Don't worry, You'll get more success.

[smashradio]

3 hours ago, heimdaldesign said:

Yeah, I´ve read a lot of complaints about the CS but as you say it seems that they do a great job as long as you have followed their guidelines.

😊

I think most of the situations where sellers complain about CS is a PEBKAC-situation. Happy to hear you got your money and that they solved this for you! 😄

By the way, @heimdaldesign - I sent you a PM here on the forum. 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by smashradio

[farrukh_bala]

Congratulations, wasn't expecting this to be a happy ending. 😀