Buyer wants work that's offered as an extra but didn't select it while ordering, then ignored my offer request - now unresponsive and my order is due tonight (and it's my first order in months since my impressions/clicks dropped after reaching Level One!)

[agervaisdesign]

Apologies in advance because I have a few questions/issues here, so I wound up writing a lot!

I have a buyer who wanted work done that's available as an extra on one of my gigs but they didn't select it while placing the order, then when I said how that part's only available as an extra and that I'd need to charge more for it and sent the extra as an offer, they ignored it but told me that they'll pay for any extra work. They haven't replied since yesterday, and I already have most of the work done but they were so unclear in their description of what they want that I don't know exactly how it should look. Just for context, the gig was for cartoon art and two of the extras on the gig are for animation in two different styles that I usually work in, and the description gives examples of the various things the drawings can be used for like iconography in games or apps, or prints for shirts/merch, or even logos - literally anything you could want a drawing for, it could even be a gift or something. Just adding that because I wanted to point out that this was just a list of things the drawings can potentially be used for, not specific to what the gig is for. This buyer wanted to use one as a logo on their merch but they also want it to be animated (I have another gig specifically for designing logos and one for animating people's existing logos, but this still technically works), but when they placed the order they didn't select that option for the extra, nor were they clear on which style they wanted, and in the order requirements they just said that they wanted an animated character based on the photos they provided, so even with their photo references it wasn't much info to work with because it wasn't really descriptive at all and didn't meet the required info I need to get started. Regardless of that, the order still started automatically even though the required info was vague at best (usually it asks if I have enough info before, then if I do the order timer starts, this time it started on its own). 

The work I have finished is pretty close to what they want, even the extra/add-on for the animated part, but I'm not sure how they want the drawings arranged or how they should move in the animation. I also don't want to deliver the animation, even as-is, because that'll just tell them I'm willing to work for free (I've had more than enough buyers try doing that in the past). I've never ordered on here so I went on my gig page on the preview option and chose order, and it shows you the extras on a separate page - it literally couldn't be any clearer. On top of that, my gig description mentions how the animation options are OPTIONS not included in the gig, and none of my package descriptions mention it at all (again, because they're extras). I'm debating whether or not I should send the drawing (or logo, I guess) on their own since the delivery date will be around 4am tomorrow on my time and they don't seem to be responding, and because of how unclear they were I honestly have no idea what they want the final product to look like. There's a character and another element/drawing, and I don't know exactly how they want them arranged, so I'm debating whether or not I should just send each as a separate file so they can arrange it however, or just send it how I think they want it to look and hope for the best. I'm guessing they're still going to wind up using the revision button quite a bit because they did say they want it animated, but that doesn't change the fact that it was beyond the scope of how they ordered it, especially since they ignored it when I sent the extra on the order page. 

Thanks for any advice or info, this is a bit frustrating, especially because the only reason I made this gig and set its pricing so low is because my gig impressions have dropped from the thousands to the low hundreds over the past few months, my gig clicks which ranged between the upper-hundreds to about a thousand or two went down to SIX clicks on my best performing gig and 0-2 clicks on the others, and I haven't had a single order since around May (this was around when they started pushing their promotion services more, not sure if that has anything to do with it but it's still shocking to go from at least 1-3k views on most gigs for like a year and a half to only getting 0-200 for MONTHS). I haven't really had this problem with buyers in the past, I've definitely had my share of difficult buyers, but none who've done this, so I'm a bit confused but I'd like to avoid cancelling since it took me a while to reach level one and my impressions/clicks and orders have both dropped dramatically pretty much since I reached level one, and I don't want to ruin my first order in months. 

 

Also slightly unrelated, but is there anything I can do about copyright infringement on other people's gigs? Because of the issue with my impressions/clicks dropping I was reading old threads on here and most said to see what other people in your gigs' categories are doing well, so I was going through the search expecting a mix of new sellers being promoted to help them establish their pages and old sellers with better work/more reviews, but instead I just saw a mess of copyright violations and I lost count of how many were using images and footage from various tv shows/movies as their own work, and how many of those gigs were using the same images/video and even descriptions between them (i.e. duplicate gigs between multiple sellers). I tried reporting about 20 of them to CS but they didn't really help and just told me I can report them on the gig pages (I had already done that), but that was weeks ago and all of them are still up and being promoted on the search. It's not even subtle either, they're all big name productions that anyone could recognize, and it's just a bit ridiculous because I think that's part of why my numbers have dropped so much since they take up most of the search no matter how you try to narrow it down and they're being promoted more than so many legitimate sellers and their gigs on here, yet customer support just gave me another copy/paste response instead of doing anything to help. I'm guessing I should make a separate post for this last paragraph (sorry again if my writing is a bit excessive!), but it somewhat relates to the issues I've had on here and is definitely affecting other sellers, so for now I'll leave it on here. 

[vickieito]

Hi @agervaisdesign - on the copyright infringement... I just click on the flag to report these gigs to Fiverr and Fiverr shuts most of those gigs down pretty quickly after you report them. They are cracking down hard on violators these days.

[agervaisdesign]

Oh, and for the reference pics they sent it was just their singer (I'm guessing the person ordering) but the thing with animation is it's kind of hard to animate something based off one photo. If you have reference footage that's a huge help, or at the very least describe how you want it to look/move.

That's what I mean by it being vague at best, I have pretty much no idea exactly what they want so I'm not sure if I should cancel because they want something that's only available as an extra but won't pay for the extra, or because they provided basically no info on what they want, or because overall they kinda seem like they're trying to get free work, OR if I should just deliver the drawings on their own and hope for the best.

I'm sort of torn because I don't want to cancel and have it affect my seller stats, but I don't want them to get mad and leave a bad review out of spite, but I also kind of don't care about any of that since my overall experience on here has been pretty bad (like the sheer amount of scammy buyers, or buyers who try to try using the revise button to get free work, or the fact that my impressions and clicks dropped significantly once I reached level one even though they were in the thousands for each for over a year before then, or the fact that my best performing gig got deleted for a few days for "offering services that go against our community standards" even though I checked them and the ToS several times and found no instance of that and CS took days to help and only sent copied/pasted responses that weren't even related to what I was asking before they finally fixed it, OR the fact that they're promoting fake gigs that use copyrighted material over legitimate sellers and won't take them down despite being notified several times that those are using copyrighted material). Sorry for a bit of a rant, hoping I don't sound too bitter but overall that's pretty much been my experience on here, so I don't know if I should cancel this one or take a chance on getting a bad review since based on my numbers the past few months my seller level probably doesn't matter as much as I thought. 

[vickieito]

I had an experience of a buyer who was non-responsive (and it did end up as a cancelation, but Fiverr paid me for the partial work that I did and canceled it so it didn't affect my stats):

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/282216-24-hrs-until-delivery-and-no-contact-from-the-buyer-also-unable-to-deliver/

 

[vickieito]

You might want to consider the cancelation option, especially if the buyer is asking for something out of scope and you don't have enough information to complete the project.

[agervaisdesign]

Just now, vickieito said:

Hi @agervaisdesign - on the copyright infringement... I just click on the flag to report these gigs to Fiverr and Fiverr shuts most of those gigs down pretty quickly after you report them. They are cracking down hard on violators these days.

Hi, that's good to hear! That doesn't seem to be the case in the animation/video section though, if you go in the 2D animation category/its sub-categories you'll see what I mean. I reported all of them on their gig pages and sent the links to CS weeks ago and they still haven't done anything.

In the animation category they took up whole pages, even a lot of the ones I didn't recognize from shows/movies turned out to be stolen after doing reverse image search. Hope they fix it soon because it kind of ruins things for sellers, and buyers too cus they'll either get scammed or they'll recognize it as stolen work and just not use Fiverr anymore. 

[agervaisdesign]

1 minute ago, vickieito said:

You might want to consider the cancelation option, especially if the buyer is asking for something out of scope and you don't have enough information to complete the project.

I think I'll try that, thanks for the quick responses btw!

I'm kind of glad because it wasn't too much work but kind of bummed because of the issue with my impressions and clicks, this has been my first order in a few months now. I'll give it a few more hours in case they do wind up replying but at this point I feel like it's not worth it since they've been pretty unclear and unprofessional, and they're kind of giving me that scammy buyer vibe

[vickieito]

1 minute ago, agervaisdesign said:

I think I'll try that, thanks for the quick responses btw!

I'm kind of glad because it wasn't too much work but kind of bummed because of the issue with my impressions and clicks, this has been my first order in a few months now. I'll give it a few more hours in case they do wind up replying but at this point I feel like it's not worth it since they've been pretty unclear and unprofessional, and they're kind of giving me that scammy buyer vibe

And as long as you can show that the buyer is unresponsive and you are doing everything on your end, customer is usually good about canceling so it doesn't affect your stats. They can do that for cancelations (but not for late deliveries....so try to avoid that if possible).

[vickieito]

7 minutes ago, agervaisdesign said:

Hope they fix it soon because it kind of ruins things for sellers, and buyers too cus they'll either get scammed or they'll recognize it as stolen work and just not use Fiverr anymore. 

I hope so too! The forum has been flooded with new sellers who had their accounts shut down after they tried publishing their first gig and there are also a lot of sellers complaining that Fiverr shut down their accounts for "low quality." Many of these complaints are due to copyright issues. Fiverr also just recently updated their Intellectual Property policy so they are taking things very seriously here. The fact that they are shutting down so many new accounts is encouraging, because it means that their staff is actually looking at the gigs and getting rid of violators early on.

[agervaisdesign]

I've seen some of those and a lot of them were blatantly against the ToS so it seems like they just didn't read any of that LOL It's still good they're taking it more seriously though, but I just had one of my gigs removed without warning or explanation (my best performing one at that) while I was in the middle of editing (not sure if you read that part) it got fixed but I'm guessing a lot of them might also be removed due to mistakes/bugs like mine was. That part was really frustrating since it was just a few days after I tried to get the obvious fakes removed, and instead of taking those down they took mine down, especially because the only reason I was editing it was because of the issue with my impressions and clicks dropping so much. I sent all of them to their copyright owners since most that I saw were from big name productions, like Disney (who's notoriously very friendly about copyright issues) and Studio Ghibli to name a few, but it's been weeks and they're still lingering on my recently viewed gigs, and when I go on the search it's still the same.

I just messaged CS again, earlier I was asking about extending my delivery time but also mentioned how the buyer ignored the extras on the order page/when I sent it again. I feel kind of bad because I wound up writing a lot and I know they're not always the best at responding to more than one thing (kind of why I posted here and wound up writing a lot, because it kind of is a lot so my bad lol). If I have to I'll send screenshots of the messages since they really aren't clear at all and I've been replying pretty quickly while the buyer's been taking hours to reply, and I haven't heard from them since yesterday, I hope just telling them what's going on will be enough especially if they're able to go onto the order page and see how little the buyer wrote in the required info section. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but I've been working through here for about two years now and I don't have time to work for free, nor should anyone else.