Is Fiverr doing some housekeeping?

[smashradio]

Just today I've come across multiple (three or four) topics about people having their profiles put under review for being flagged with "low-quality deliveries". 

At the first couple of posts, I thought little of it. I just thought the Trust and Safety team got a new coffee maker in the office and were celebrating. 

But then another showed up. And another. 

Now I'm beginning to think that Fiverr is actually doing some much needed housekeeping. I'm by no means taking sides when it comes to the individuals being put under review. That's not my place nor my desire. 

But we have talked about this for quite a while now, and I do remember @frank_d saying something about upcoming changes that would address some of the issues on Fiverr. 

Might this be it – or part of it? We used to get the odd post from sellers who got their account suspended, sure, but 3-4 in a day with the exact same message?

[katakatica]

Just now, smashradio said:

but 3-4 in a day with the exact same message?

It's either that or another weird bug (like when promoted gigs were off for everyone). It feels a bit abrupt if it's housekeeping to be honest - is it a new way to report people? How does Trust and Safety determine whether a service is actually bad (in more obscure cases where it's not, say, a logo made off a template or a copy pasted book or something along those lines.)

My first idea was definitely 'that's odd' but it could be a lot of things I guess?

 

[smashradio]

1 minute ago, katakatica said:

It's either that or another weird bug (like when promoted gigs were off for everyone). It feels a bit abrupt if it's housekeeping to be honest - is it a new way to report people? How does Trust and Safety determine whether a service is actually bad (in more obscure cases where it's not, say, a logo made off a template or a copy pasted book or something along those lines.)

My first idea was definitely 'that's odd' but it could be a lot of things I guess?

 

It's odd, indeed, unless they have started some sort of automatic process for sellers below a certain satisfaction rate. 

I'd guess they would know based on the buyer satisfaction rate. They already have a system for QC in place, so why not use it more actively to clean up the marketplace? 

Then again, it happened to a level two seller as well, and you don't get to level two by delivering low quality (usually). It happens, sure, but it made me sceptical. 

It might be a bug, but wouldn't it happen to even more sellers if it was a bug in the system? 

[frank_d]

There is an initiative that I know for a fact Fiverr is working on, that will essentially draw a line in the sand in terms of who can work on the platform in certain categories.

Said initiative is based on quality of output. 

I don't know if this is part of it, or if they decided to work on existing accounts that have low quality plus almost zero traction, as the original plan was to create a wall and not allow new sellers in certain catagories without proving they can actually deliver.

I only saw just one post, so not sure if something started happening or if this is actually Fiverr turning on a "purge" switch. Can you link to the other threads, either here on in private?

[uk1000]

13 hours ago, katakatica said:

How does Trust and Safety determine whether a service is actually bad

In the help page for cancelling an order it shows a menu that gets shown when the buyer wants to cancel and one of the options is "The quality of the work I received was poor". That's one way.

But if this is happening more and it's a new thing they may be doing other checks.

1 hour ago, frank_d said:

Said initiative is based on quality of output. 

Do you know what they are basing the quality of output on? Is it just the public & private review scores and cancellation reasons specified by buyers or are they manually looking through deliveries to judge quality (or both)? Or is it an automated thing (at least in some subcategories) where the system gives a score to work delivered (eg. in the writing category)?

Edited August 2, 2022 by uk1000

[frank_d]

14 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

Do you know what they are basing the quality of output on? Is it just the public & private review scores and cancellation reasons specified by buyers or are they manually looking through deliveries to judge quality (or both)? Or is it an automated thing (at least in some subcategories) where the system gives a score to work delivered (eg. in the writing category)?

I can't share more information about how they are going about this.

In this early stage, the customer has multiple points where they can declare that what they received was of poor quality.

Once when a delivery is made and they request for a revision, and then once again when a cancellation is initiated.

(My theory is that those flags still count and stack up. So even if you do get to re-deliver a bunch of times and the buyer accepts the delivery, if you keep getting that specific flag raised, it will lead into an investigation. Same goes for cancellations of course.)

Those are manual triggers that casue for an actual investigation, and as a policy accounts under investigation get freezed out until a conclusion is reached.

The new system goes a lot deeper than that, and I am not sure we'll see it implemented any time soon. But it is coming.

[smashradio]

1 hour ago, frank_d said:

There is an initiative that I know for a fact Fiverr is working on, that will essentially draw a line in the sand in terms of who can work on the platform in certain categories.

Said initiative is based on quality of output. 

I don't know if this is part of it, or if they decided to work on existing accounts that have low quality plus almost zero traction, as the original plan was to create a wall and not allow new sellers in certain catagories without proving they can actually deliver.

I only saw just one post, so not sure if something started happening or if this is actually Fiverr turning on a "purge" switch. Can you link to the other threads, either here on in private?

I guess this would be another way of dealing with quality of output-issues with excisting buyers. That is exactly what the message they got says: review due to being flagged for low-quality deliveries. I've never seen anyone getting suspended for this before (not that specific message) so it would make sense that they are purging some bad gigs. Or it could just be a coincidence.  If this is happening en masse, I would expect far more posts about it in the coming days/weeks. 

The initiative you talk about is already in effect in certain categories, right? I know some sellers have to go through skill tests to open a gig.

I've PMed you the links. 

29 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

In the help page for cancelling an order it shows a menu that gets shown when the buyer wants to cancel and one of the options is "The quality of the work I received was poor". That's one way.

But if this is happening more and it's a new thing they may be doing other checks.

Do you know what they are basing the quality of output on? Is it just the public & private review scores and cancellation reasons specified by buyers or are they manually looking through deliveries to judge quality (or both)? Or is it an automated thing (at least in some subcategories) where the system gives a score to work delivered (eg. in the writing category)?

From what Frank already told us, this has more to do with new sellers having to verify their skills. But I wouldn't be surprised if other metrics will be used on excisting sellers, like buyer satisfaction rate and the other options to flag something as Frank mentioned. 

[melanielm]

This is very interesting to read, and I look forward to learning more about how they change things going forward.

This is not a question really, but I wonder if there would be some designation of why a person requests the revision taken into account. I have some buyers who request a revision with almost every order in order to give themselves more time to assess my work. (I believe they outsource to me and have to get client feedback elsewhere.) I have never seen it from a buyer's side, so I do not know if there are listed reasons why revision occurs.

[frank_d]

1 minute ago, melanielm said:

This is very interesting to read, and I look forward to learning more about how they change things going forward.

This is not a question really, but I wonder if there would be some designation of why a person requests the revision taken into account. I have some buyers who request a revision with almost every order in order to give themselves more time to assess my work. (I believe they outsource to me and have to get client feedback elsewhere.) I have never seen it from a buyer's side, so I do not know if there are listed reasons why revision occurs.

One of the buttons the buyer can press is “I need more time to review the work”.

[gongor32]

On 8/2/2022 at 7:47 PM, frank_d said:

Once when a delivery is made and they request for a revision, and then once again when a cancellation is initiated.

 

My gig for example averagely requested of around 2,3 revisions because of the nature work and mostly clients forgotten to specify sort of details or gotten new idea to add. 
I really hope fiverr doesn't count the revision into some sort of metrics. 😑

Edited August 3, 2022 by gongor32

[donnovan86]

6 hours ago, gongor32 said:

I really hope fiverr doesn't count the revision into some sort of metrics. 😑

I don't see why. Fiverr mostly focuses on the customer satisfaction rate, so if the customer is satisfied at the end, I don't see why X revisions would matter. After all, there are so many types of gigs, so it wouldn't make sense to do so.

[quiffledesign]

Hopefully Fiverr begin to actually take a stance on plagiarised work. I'm in the logo animation sector were there are literally thousands of gigs that have just blatantly stolen work and use it on their gig page. 

Just searching logo animation, the first page has a bunch of accounts that have clearly stolen work to use in their gig video. It's completely absurd. 

[vickieito]

On 8/2/2022 at 9:47 PM, melanielm said:

I wonder if there would be some designation of why a person requests the revision taken into account. ...

I have never seen it from a buyer's side, so I do not know if there are listed reasons why revision occurs.

On 8/2/2022 at 9:49 PM, frank_d said:

One of the buttons the buyer can press is “I need more time to review the work”.

@melanielm, here's what buyers see when they get a delivery:

If buyers click, "I'm not ready yet," they can select the following reasons:

(@katakatica, this is where @uk1000 mentioned as the spot for buyers to report "low quality")

 

If buyers select "I still need revisions," they need to explain why:

On 8/4/2022 at 7:39 AM, gongor32 said:

I really hope fiverr doesn't count the revision into some sort of metrics. 😑

@gongor32, I agree with @donnovan86 - as long as the buyer is happy, and they are only asking for revisions, it shouldn't.

However, if a buyer were to select any other reason besides "I still need revisions," it would.

The other reasons (partial deliveries, bad quality, and empty deliveries) will all be taken very seriously by Fiverr and may result in a warning to the seller.

@smashradio, the only other place where I know Fiverr is tracking "low quality" is in the 3 reviews buyers are asked to leave after each order. I'll keep my eyes out for any other signs of "housekeeping" that may pop up on the buyer's side.

 

Edited August 4, 2022 by vickieito

[filipdevaere]

@vickieito

And how long does it take until the buyer cannot give anymore the private feedback?

[vickieito]

Just now, filipdevaere said:

@vickieito

And how long does it take until the buyer cannot give anymore the private feedback?

@filipdevaere, I've always completed the private reviews right at the 24-hour mark. I think (someone check me if I'm wrong) that if you opt to "skip," you won't be able to leave a private review (and Fiverr won't send any other reminders to do it). But maybe @moikchap or @gina_riley2 can tell you. It gets confusing when you are closing multiple orders with multiple sellers. There are too many reminders going on. I do know there are several reminders for the public review, and I'm reminded every time to leave a public review when I visit the order page.

As a buyer, I can see a seller's review of me before I leave my private review. This usually happens when both parties do their reviews as soon as they are notified.

If you decide, as a seller, to leave a negative review, wait at least 24 hours from the time of delivery before leaving a review. You have 10 days from the time of delivery to leave a review. Otherwise, your review could affect the buyer's private review. 

[filipdevaere]

@vickieito

Thanks for this information. It is indeed dangerous that the buyer can see already the seller's review. 

[moikchap]

I either complete or skip my reviews immediately. I have no orders in Awaiting Review to get an idea of timeframe.
If I end up with a "not ideal" delivery, I'll leave it and check the Awaiting Review intermittently to see how long it goes.

[donnovan86]

5 hours ago, vickieito said:

I think (someone check me if I'm wrong) that if you opt to "skip," you won't be able to leave a private review (and Fiverr won't send any other reminders to do it).

I think you are right because I have a lot of people just marking as complete, especially regulars because they get annoyed with so many review requests.

[theratypist]

Well smash monsieur, I'm surprised you aren't joining in.... Here's your broom, you go handle room at the back. No one has swept that in years.

[smashradio]

1 hour ago, theratypist said:

Well smash monsieur, I'm surprised you aren't joining in.... Here's your broom, you go handle room at the back. No one has swept that in years.

Dearest mademoiselle. As I'm sure you're aware, I'm too fine of a monsieur to do housekeeping. I leave that up to the sirs and madams. Us in the upper class of monsieur and mademoiselle may relax while others take care of the back room. Besides, I fear we need more than a broom for this task. A bulldozer would be preferable. 

14 hours ago, vickieito said:

@smashradio, the only other place where I know Fiverr is tracking "low quality" is in the 3 reviews buyers are asked to leave after each order. I'll keep my eyes out for any other signs of "housekeeping" that may pop up on the buyer's side.

I think those are the three main ones, yes. And I would be surprised if they don't all count in some way here. 

12 hours ago, vickieito said:

If you decide, as a seller, to leave a negative review, wait at least 24 hours from the time of delivery before leaving a review. You have 10 days from the time of delivery to leave a review. Otherwise, your review could affect the buyer's private review. 

I rarely have anything negative to say about my buyers. But when I do, I always wait until the last possible second. It's not fair that they can read our reviews before impacting our profile so much, yet we don't get the chance to read their review before we post our own, public one. Oh lord. I just complained about something not being fair. Time to re-grow that beard, put on my boots, and fire up that grill. My manhood is at stake. 

[smashradio]

As an update to my original post about Fiverr's housekeeping, I also noticed that more and more sellers are coming to the forum after having their gigs/profiles declined by Fiverr. I can only imagine this is yet another step in the right direction.

I know Fiverr is working to require skill tests for more gigs, but we could be watching a more manual selection process going on here. Of course, this might be a coincidence, but I don't believe so. 

As @vickiespencerpointed out in her response to one of the sellers who just got declined, it might also be a simple case of copy/paste gig descriptions or images. That has been very common on Fiverr, and I wouldn't be surprised if Fiverr is implementing some form of automatic checks for duplicated/stolen content. 

[arif_afridi]

On 8/2/2022 at 3:12 AM, smashradio said:

Just today I've come across multiple (three or four) topics about people having their profiles put under review for being flagged with "low-quality deliveries". 

At the first couple of posts, I thought little of it. I just thought the Trust and Safety team got a new coffee maker in the office and were celebrating. 

But then another showed up. And another. 

Now I'm beginning to think that Fiverr is actually doing some much needed housekeeping. I'm by no means taking sides when it comes to the individuals being put under review. That's not my place nor my desire. 

But we have talked about this for quite a while now, and I do remember @frank_d saying something about upcoming changes that would address some of the issues on Fiverr. 

Might this be it – or part of it? We used to get the odd post from sellers who got their account suspended, sure, but 3-4 in a day with the exact same message?

Fiverr giving 100% priority to buyers . Even fiverr didn't send me any warning and restricted my level 2 seller account without hearing me. Even i don't know which buyer report my account or Gig because no buyer complaint me directly nor i received any negative feedback.

Sellers on fiverr must unite against this and Fiverr must give chance to seller to explain the issue before restricting his/her account because getting Level 2 seller badge consume much our energy and Fiverr just with 1 click close our account. This is totally unjustice :(

[vickieito]

On 8/5/2022 at 10:19 AM, filipdevaere said:

@vickieito

And how long does it take until the buyer cannot give anymore the private feedback?

@filipdevaere, I have to change my answer that I gave to you...it looks like buyers have 14 days to leave private feedback, so no matter when you post your public review of the buyer, the buyer will always have a chance to see it before making their private review:

 

[filipdevaere]

@vickieito

14 days is long......

[smashradio]

6 hours ago, filipdevaere said:

@vickieito

14 days is long......

Is it? If I want to review a shop on Google one year after making the purchase, I can. 14 days isn't very long.