Tips for dealing with toxic clients.

[finndev478]

Should I cancel my order with a bad client?

Never be afraid to cancel an order on Fiverr (or as a freelancer in general) !
Some "clients" are psychopaths and try to pressure the seller into giving them cheap labour.
It is VERY important to know your rights as a seller.
You should never slave away, but have the courage to cancel your order at anytime.

One tactic of "toxic" clients is to intimidate the seller. For example by using phrases like "I could replace you with another seller"". (a very red flag)
Another tactic these people use is trying to get you off the Fiverr platform. They will constantly message you, push you to do more work and will be hard in negotiating. They are not going to pay you a fair price. What they look for is free or very cheap work.

Make sure to end on good terms:

• Be nice, no matter what
• Explain yourself
• Be professional
• Be honest (not too honest)
• Don't be intimidated
• Do NOT feel guilt

Why should you feel guilty you may ask. If you have never been in this position, it might be difficult to understand. But these clients build a relationship with their sellers.
The seller will feel responsible for their project.

Remember this: IT'S NOT YOUR PROJECT

It is 100% their responsibility to treat and pay their workers right, to have manageable deadlines and well thought out project structures. If their project and management sucks, then this will reflect on the project workers aswell.

Stay safe everyone. If you have trouble with a client, you can always ask for advice in my dm's, ask in the forums or contact the Fiverr CS.
Finn

Image by Michael Dziedzic (from Unsplash)

 

[katakatica]

2 hours ago, finndev478 said:

Why should you feel guilty you may ask. If you have never been in this position, it might be difficult to understand. But these clients build a relationship with their sellers.

Thank you so much. Best advice evers.

 

Jokes aside, this IS actually solid advice. Honestly, it's hard not to feel guilty. Sometimes stuff happens and you're just not the right fit and yes, sometimes clients are a++holes. It's hard for me to remove my sensitive heart from situations like this but... it helps in the end.  

In the end, as a freelance writer I just provide a service. That's all.

Am I perfectly polite and sweet as sugar? Sure. But things can still go wrong and sometimes that's out of my control.

Toxic people exist everywhere unfortunately and knowing how not to get caught up in their net is... important for sanity-reasons. 

[tharinduslaksha]

Also, Never Give Unlimited Revisions

[mehzabinahona]

Thank you so much for sharing us ideas. It's a helpful post for seller. I would greatly appreciate some advice from your post.

• No obligation, you can cancel if you want. Because Sellers are not like be Slave.
• When a buyer  replace me with another seller then I should cancel my order
• Their strategy is so bad cause they are trying to get me off from the Fiverr platform.
• They want me to work as a slave cause their price is so cheap but load of work is high

So, at least I say that they are no client Rather they are TOXIC CLIENT

[sunboatrecords]

Here is my golden advice to everybody:

When that disrespectful message that crosses the line comes, get up from that chair immediately.

Do not respond!

Then calm down, do something else. When you feel ready, respond to them with a single, well-worded message. Do not chat.

[vickieito]

19 hours ago, finndev478 said:

Some "clients" are psychopaths

16 hours ago, katakatica said:

sometimes clients are a++holes.

So this week, I was that client. I don't consider myself toxic, but I am picky. Picky Vickie.

I care a lot about my projects and tend to be a perfectionist. 

I found your advice to sellers, dealing with picky buyers like me, golden. 

20 hours ago, finndev478 said:

know your rights as a seller. ...
never slave away ...

have the courage to cancel your order at anytime. ...

• Be nice, no matter what
• Explain yourself
• Be professional
• Be honest (not too honest)
• Don't be intimidated
• Do NOT feel guilt

Ultimately, communication is key to a good working relationship. I like to take care of my sellers but sometimes they won't let me know there are problems.

If it ends up being more work than anticipated, I want to know right away (as in 5 hours into a project not 10-15 hours later). That way I can compensate them for the extra work, renegotiate terms, or agree that the project sucks and cancel so it doesn't hurt their stats. If I'm asking for things that are unreasonable, I'd like to know. 

The worse thing that can happen is for sellers to be too scared to tell me there are issues and they wait until the very last day (or just silently suffer). This not only hurts them as a seller, it hurts me as a buyer, too. I can't improve as a buyer if I don't get feedback from my sellers on how the projects are going.

[brynrichmond]

3 hours ago, vickieito said:

So this week, I was that client. I don't consider myself toxic, but I am picky. Picky Vickie.

I care a lot about my projects and tend to be a perfectionist. 

I found your advice to sellers, dealing with picky buyers like me, golden. 

Ultimately, communication is key to a good working relationship. I like to take care of my sellers but sometimes they won't let me know there are problems.

If it ends up being more work than anticipated, I want to know right away (as in 5 hours into a project not 10-15 hours later). That way I can compensate them for the extra work, renegotiate terms, or agree that the project sucks and cancel so it doesn't hurt their stats. If I'm asking for things that are unreasonable, I'd like to know. 

The worse thing that can happen is for sellers to be too scared to tell me there are issues and they wait until the very last day (or just silently suffer). This not only hurts them as a seller, it hurts me as a buyer, too. I can't improve as a buyer if I don't get feedback from my sellers on how the projects are going.

The thing is cancellation does affect the seller's completion rate even when mutually agreed (unless cancelled during requirements stage or if the buyer re-orders within 14 days of the cancellation). The only time Fiverr customer support might override the completion rate hit is if the cancellation was due to fraud or a genuine buyer misunderstanding but that is still putting faith in Fiverr customer support taking the side of the buyer.

if a seller has already done multiple revisions and has communicated to try and clarify what is wrong with the delivery has put in lots of effort to try to meet the buyer's expectations but the buyer still sends a cancellation request the buyer is put in an awkward position where either:

- They accept the cancellation and lose the revenue even after all the additional time put into the project AND get marked negatively on the completion rate

OR

- They reject the cancellation and insist on working with the client to revise the work. If unlimited revisions were offered then the order might sit in the seller's queue indefinitely if the buyer keeps submitting revision requests or the buyer might become even more awkward/unhelpful/unresponsive and not want to work with the seller.  The seller also risk being given a negative review if the order is eventually completed which will also affect the seller's stats (although at least they get the revenue for the work done and can respond to the buyer's review publicly if it is unreasonable).

 

[vickieito]

Hi @brynrichmond, Welcome to the forum!

It's always nice to see a new poster on the forum who adds value to the the discussion! You touched on a lot of great points, so I thought I'd share some links with you.😊

39 minutes ago, brynrichmond said:

The thing is cancellation does affect the seller's completion rate even when mutually agreed

Actually, there are many reasons for cancelations, but they fall into two categories. If it's the seller's fault, it will hurt the seller's stats, unless I as buyer request that it not affect the seller's stats. I did this earlier this month when the seller couldn't deliver due to flooding in her area. Both her and Fiverr CS confirmed to me that the cancelation didn't affect her stats.

If it's a buyer-related cancelation, Fiverr CS will usually cancel this so it doesn't hurt the seller's statistics. I've canceled orders many times this way as a seller. As long as I could show that it was the fault of the buyer, Fiverr had no issues canceling the projects for me so it wouldn't affect my seller stats.

Examples of buyer-related cancelations include buyers who disappeared on me (at the end of the thread I got paid for the work I did, so that was nice):

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

Or buyers who don't accept an order even though the seller delivered everything in the order requirements (I like how @newsmike responds in this case):

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/282473-yesterday-buyer-opened-a-dispute-and-i-declined-3-days-gone-but-order-is-not-marked-as-complete/?do=findComment&comment=1783095

And if buyers cancel themselves with the reason "ordered by mistake," that also will not affect seller stats, if done right (see link to @imagination7413's comments):

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/281909-does-it-affects-sellers-profile-rating-when-buyer-wants-to-cancel-the-order/#comment-1779001

 

50 minutes ago, brynrichmond said:

if a seller has already done multiple revisions and has communicated to try and clarify what is wrong with the delivery has put in lots of effort to try to meet the buyer's expectations but the buyer still sends a cancellation request the buyer is put in an awkward position where either:

- They accept the cancellation ... OR  ...They reject the cancellation and ...The seller also risk being given a negative review

The negative review is a concern for me because it's the private negative review that hurts sellers the most. Buyers can leave 3 reviews on each order (2 private and 1 public). And as a buyer, if my seller leaves me a bad review (which I can see before I post my own private review of the seller), I could leave bad private review in retaliation. A private negative review causes a huge drop in impressions for the seller and it can take months to recover.

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/288420-hidden-private-feedback-is-the-worst-idea/

Buyers can also leave private reviews on orders that they cancel themselves:

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/289957-fiverr-team-kindly-hear-my-story/?do=findComment&comment=1830147

[finndev478]

On 9/26/2022 at 4:38 PM, katakatica said:

Thank you so much. Best advice evers.

 

Jokes aside, this IS actually solid advice. Honestly, it's hard not to feel guilty. Sometimes stuff happens and you're just not the right fit and yes, sometimes clients are a++holes. It's hard for me to remove my sensitive heart from situations like this but... it helps in the end.  

In the end, as a freelance writer I just provide a service. That's all.

Am I perfectly polite and sweet as sugar? Sure. But things can still go wrong and sometimes that's out of my control.

Toxic people exist everywhere unfortunately and knowing how not to get caught up in their net is... important for sanity-reasons. 

Thanks Kata, I am glad you like the advice. I think you get it right. It is very important to keep an emotional distance, it is only professional and being too emotional will hurt your business in the long run. But, these toxic people will exactly do this: Make you emotionally involved. Idk if they do that on purpose, but what I have experience is exactly this schema. 

Best of luck to you. 🙂

[finndev478]

14 hours ago, vickieito said:

So this week, I was that client. I don't consider myself toxic, but I am picky. Picky Vickie.

I care a lot about my projects and tend to be a perfectionist. 

I found your advice to sellers, dealing with picky buyers like me, golden. 

Ultimately, communication is key to a good working relationship. I like to take care of my sellers but sometimes they won't let me know there are problems.

If it ends up being more work than anticipated, I want to know right away (as in 5 hours into a project not 10-15 hours later). That way I can compensate them for the extra work, renegotiate terms, or agree that the project sucks and cancel so it doesn't hurt their stats. If I'm asking for things that are unreasonable, I'd like to know. 

The worse thing that can happen is for sellers to be too scared to tell me there are issues and they wait until the very last day (or just silently suffer). This not only hurts them as a seller, it hurts me as a buyer, too. I can't improve as a buyer if I don't get feedback from my sellers on how the projects are going.

I dont think you were that client. Being picky and knowing what you want and insist on your requirements is not being toxic. Not at all. I love clients with high requirements and expectations in quality. It helps me grow and improve while working and there is nothing wrong with that! 

But I 100% agree with you that communication is key. And also being able to communicate difficulties and challenges. Many times seller and buyer can come to an agreement that makes both parties happy. 

My post was about really toxic clients. I wouldnt even consider them clients, but a kind of scammer. They do pay, but they are very very exhausting and put alot of unreasonable pressure on the seller. And I experienced this first hand. It is a tactic of scamming and trying to get the most out of the project. But in an unreasonable way.