negative aspects of fiverr for sellers (response rate!)

[jameschutton]

This is not much more than a bit of a rant due to the exasperating fiverr 'response rating'. First of all I've been on Fiverr about 3 years as a freelance illustrator and reached the 'top seller status', and it's been a pretty good platform for finding work, many of which have been interesting gigs. The huge downside of using Fiverr (for me) is the expectations of the response time to messages. Fiverr customer support will always tell you that you need to respond within 24 hours to message (which I do, and I assume most sellers would do). But it's not the case that you won't be marked down if you don't respond within maybe 1 or 2 hours of receiving a message- but how is this possible when it's an international platform and (at least in my case) most messages come in at 2 or 3 in the morning? Is it the expectation that you are supposed to stay awake for 24 hours a day on the off chance you receive a message (often just spam btw)? I know there is the option to mark yourself as unavailable, but I am available! I want people to be able to message me, it's just not always possible to respond in 1 hour. It seems if you're not doing this your response rate can slip from 100% down to 83% without warning.

All my reviews from buyers have been 5 star and nobody (not a single person) has had an issue with the response time. In fact, most have said thanks for the fast response (even if it is several hours later!). So my issue is, why does Fiverr make an issue out of something which for most buyers seems to be a non-issue? Does anyone have an explanation for this? Or how do you deal with the response rate if, like me, it is stressful for you? Anyway, rant over I suppose. Just needed to get that off my chest!

[mariashtelle1]

12 minutes ago, jameschutton said:

seems if you're not doing this your response rate can slip from 100% down to 83% without warning

Response rate and response time are different metrics 

response rate: you have 24 hours to respond on a first message from your first even client before it will affect your response rate. That’s the one that is counted in a percentage. 
Fiverr put 24 hours precisely for people around the globe to be able to respond. Even if someone messages you at your 10pm you still will have the whole working day till your next day 10pm to respond. 
 

response time is the one that calculate how much time takes to respond. And it doesn’t affect any statistics. I also get messages mostly at my night and just reply in the morning. It is an average also so if you got a message during your day and responded within second and anothe message at night and responded within a couple of hours, your response rate still can average out to 1 hour 

[jameschutton]

I don't know about that! Maybe you're right, but I always respond within 24 hours or marked the message as spam (if it is that) and in this case Fiverr tells me there is no need to respond. But then there will be a drop in response rate at some point which I always assumed was down to the response time ( or some kind of glitch). I have messaged customer support about this in the past and when I have explained they've revised the response rate back to 100% without really explaining why it fell in the first place

[mariashtelle1]

1 minute ago, jameschutton said:

or marked the message as spam (if it is that) and in this case Fiverr tells me there is no need to respond.

This 👆 it shouldn’t affect you but sometimes the system has glitches and counts marked as spam messages towards your response rate. 
I always just wrote “no” or something else short and only after that mark message as spam 

[jameschutton]

Ah, that's useful to know, thanks. 

[samasing]

I totally understand this issue and I’ve the same issue. I’ve never taken more than 24hrs to reply. Even if the messages come around 2-3 am; I get up and reply. 
But in January, I had Covid for about two weeks and I wasn’t able to reply within the first hour. But somehow I did within few hours. This made my response rate go down to 92%. Now I’m stuck there and don’t know how to improve the situation.