Buyer is Blackmailing Me Posting Negative Review - What To Do?

[karistinadavid]

Hi.

I’m unfortunate to have deal with a Refund Junkie.

He ordered 7 Gigs and I finished the work in time and asked him to check if any revision is required.

He said it’s great and no revision is required.I asked him so should I deliver the order ? He said Yes.

When I delivered the order, he marked the orders as complete at once but didn’t post any review.I sent him a message and requested him to give a 5 star review.

Yesterday I checked that he posted a 2.5 star review with bad comment.

I was shocked.When I asked him why did he do so ? He said that your order wasn’t up to the mark.

I said that I had asked you to check the order and let me know if you need any revision but that you said that it’s fine and now you are saying that order isn’t up to the mark.he kept silent.

Then I requested him very politely that please change this review because due to this review my rating has fallen from 100% to 96%.

He said okay I’ll remove the review but you will have to refund me.

So all this was planned to get refund of 7 Gigs.

I had 100% rating before this shit and was only 5 Orders away from reaching direct to Level 2 ( I sold all these Gigs within 29 Days till today).

Now what to do ?

I tried to contact Customer Support by signing up for Customer Support but they said you have already an account with this email address whereas I don’t have any.Well, then I went for “Forget Password”, they told me that a password recovery email has been sent to your email address but till date I’ve not received any email address.I tried 2-3 times but still no response.

Now what options I’m left with ?

How to deal with such refund Junkies ?

Can Fiverr manually check our discussion and remove this review from my profile ?

Is there any Fiverr representative here ?

[Guest celticmoon]

Write directly to support@fiverr.com and explain that you are unable to file a report through the normal route because when you tried to file one, you were told you already had a CS account, even though you didn’t, but thinking it was a password issue, you asked to create a new one but have never gotten an email. You can also try sending the details of your bad customer issue directly at that address, but from reading about other seller’s problems, I can already tell you what CS will say: they can’t remove negative reviews without the buyer’s permission (!!!). However, if you take screenshots of your communications with this guy, especially that he didn’t ask for revisions, that he’d accepted delivery and is now trying to extort you for free work, CS might help you.

The awful truth is that I suspect they’ll suggest you go ahead and cancel the order, and this jerk will get his money back AND your work, but since buyers aren’t allowed to review cancelled orders, the negative review should be removed. You may have to bug CS to get rid of it. Unfortunately, Fiverr does NOT stand by sellers very often when things like this happen, leaving dishonest buyers to manipulate free work out of sellers.

Also, if you use the forum search engine in the upper right corner, you’ll find this issue is not unique to you, and has been discussed many times. It’s always a good idea to try the search engine first before posting a new topic, since it’s rarely “new”.

[jtengle]

celticmoon said: Unfortunately, Fiverr does NOT stand by sellers very often when things like this happen, leaving dishonest buyers to manipulate free work out of sellers.

 

First off, I'm sorry this happened to you. But @celticmoon is right. Hopefully you have better luck with this. Buyers like this piss me off. I just had to deal with a couple myself. I refunded them just so I wouldn't have to go through the hassle of dealing with customer support.

 

[stop_it_man]

I want to suggest something. I know we can’t use buyer names in the forum, but from now on, when I read posts about these crooks, I am going to start messaging the original poster and asking for the name of the buyer. Then I will pm the buyer in question and confront them. I think if more sellers would start rallying around our colleagues in this way, perhaps it would cull the herd of bad buyers a bit. If nothing else, it would be a good way to blow off a little steam. I’m going to start with this particular situation and I invite my fellow sellers to join me.

[dukanu]

Great point stop_it_man.

I will do that too.

[steveblackfoot]

I agree stop_it_man something really needs to be done about this kind of thing.

[mrproofreading]

Reply to @stop_it_man: Send me the name if you get it!

[karistinadavid]

This man is constantly blackmailing me by posting same copy-pasted review on all his orders and Fiverr is silent ?



Now he has posted same copy-pasted review on another order.

I submitted “Ticket” to CS tow days ago but no response yet

[jtengle]

Reply to @karistinadavid: customer support routinely takes a week or more to respond. The first response you get will likely be a copy paste answer from someone who didn’t bother to read what you wrote. Don’t give up. If they fail to respond in a satisfactory way, keep after it until someone finally switches off the auto pilot and talks to you like a person.

[Guest celticmoon]

Reply to @stop_it_man: The problem with confronting the buyer is that there is no contact link for buyers. We can only communicate with our own buyers, or if the buyer also happens to be a seller.



I totally understand why everyone feels this way. But unfortunately, identifying one bad buyer does about 5 minutes worth of good, because even if kicked off the site, there are more bad buyers right behind him and too many times they just come back under a new name, anyway. It ends up being a study in frustration.



I still like the idea of doing a search on a buyer you don’t know or are getting bad vibes from (google search: site.fiverr.com sellernickname) to read how this person does reviews. If you see nothing but thumb’s down/3 or less stars/negative comments, you’ll know that he’ll probably do the same to you.

[regency85]

Reply to @celticmoon: Hey Celtic! 🙂



> …doing a search on a buyer… (google search: …) to read how this person does reviews



Great idea! 😃



> …they just come back under a new name



But doesn’t Fiverr identify them and delete their new account, because they will almost always be using the same Paypal (or other payment service) account?

[karistinadavid]

No more wait, I’ve finally cancelled the orders, so much sick of Customer Support. :-L

[karistinadavid]

Reply to @celticmoon:

Very good idea, I’ll do the same now.

[jtengle]

Reply to @karistinadavid: That’s probably for the best. I’m sorry you lost time and money on this. I always do whatever I have to do to avoid the customer support nightmare.

[ryuken]

I hope fiverr support develops a system which negates such threats and make the rating of such buyers invisible rendering its effect as null.

[kumar310]

Same thing happend to me but Customer support helped me and removed all negetive reviews.

[stop_it_man]

Reply to @celticmoon: Yes, you’re absolutely right. I should have checked that before I posted. This underscores yet again the many advantages buyers have over sellers. I also noticed, however, that the buyer in question is also a seller. I’m just ornery enough to consider spending $5 to make a purchase just so I can leave him a rating that addresses what he did to @karistinadavid. Hmmm…

[surfdude001]

A little tip for the future: I only ask that they give me a great rating if I deserved it, at the end of every order before marking it complete. I also inform them that it reflects my standings on Fiverr directly and that I am happy to make any revisions. Avoid further initial contact with a client, after a transaction is marked as complete.



I wish you the best in this problematic client! I know how hard it is, in a situation like this.

[karistinadavid]

Thanks to you guys, you spent your precious time in trying to help me.

Again thanks.

[nickih]

Reply to @celticmoon: Actually, you can contact users/buyers who have never purchased from you or contacted you beforehand (provided their account isn’t restricted or disabled and there’s no privacy setting relating to their account that prevents them from being contacted), although the method isn’t quite so obvious as clicking a “contact user” link.



Simply type into your address bar: fiverr.com/conversations/username



The Fiverr system generates a new conversation/message page with that user, though you may have never been in contact before. So, for example, if my username was ilovespinach, you would type: fiverr.com/conversations/ilovespinach



That may help @stop_it_man and @mrproofreading with their endeavor! 😉

[Guest celticmoon]

Reply to @nickih: Thanks, @nickih~ I’ve never tried that, but I have wondered if a message would go through, as long as I had the buyer’s name and set up the url right.

Now I know for sure, thanks~!

[misscrystal]

I think they should list the number of refunds a buyer has gotten in his profile to show if they are habitual “I want refund” buyers.

[regency85]

Reply to @misscrystal: Hey!



This is a MUCH better idea, than the usual “rant” about showing Buyer ARS ratings.



Rate-Of-Refunding is probably the most reliable indicator, of a problem buyer…!

[headdiva101]

I agree with @misscrystal this will help out big-time.

Also I think if we don’t ask for a review fiver sends a message and say please leave review. I had someone leave me a bad review that i done business with over a year ago. and of course it was for a 5.00 order :-(( i messaged them and said why you never told me you had a problem. they told me: Well fiver kept asking me for a review. Felt like you could of done better. lol … but then they end up ordering from me the next day and wanting another gig I ended up canceling their order because I don’t think their communication was great with me. I just responded i am a problem solver and not a problem maker.

[ishara94]

Reply to @bachas85: This is correct. Never ask for a feedback, specially even if you ask for a feedback, never mention you need a 5 star feedback.