Suspicious inquiry

[minordetails]

I received an inquiry with a .pdf document regarding potential research on a Jewish genealogy project.  All the messaging seems fine.  The questions all fit with what I do. The user profile is form 2019 and from India. The profile is a buyer so feedbacks are all 5 and I think the feedback count is 5 with 2 different users repeating.  I could not find a way to see what feedback the buyer left for others. 

[imagination7413]

Fiverr URLs are always fiverr.com/username so you can finds the Seller profiles that the Buyer used with some copy/paste and  URL editing, then looking for the Buyer's username on that Seller's profile page. (When I'm investigating a Buyer's reviews I usually use an incognito window.) If the Seller has a lot of reviews, it can be trickier, but if you sort the reviews by date rather than relevance they can be easier to find, as long as the review is not over a year old.

[minordetails]

10 minutes ago, imagination7413 said:

Fiverr URLs are always fiverr.com/username so you can finds the Seller profiles that the Buyer used with some copy/paste and  URL editing, then looking for the Buyer's username on that Seller's profile page. (When I'm investigating a Buyer's reviews I usually use an incognito window.) If the Seller has a lot of reviews, it can be trickier, but if you sort the reviews by date rather than relevance they can be easier to find, as long as the review is not over a year old.

Thanks. And, I  know how to do the profile and could not think that through.  Well, I did it, and the feedback left is ok, but they are two years old and the person I am dealing with seems to be in their 90's. Something still feels off but I cannot think of a reason to not accept the order.  It is less than $100.

[uk1000]

I don't know if you've done it already but you could also do a google search for the buyer's username on fiverr.com (eg. site:fiverr.com buyer_user_name). In the past it didn't give sellers an option to review the buyer so for any where it didn't those seller names won't show up on the buyer's profile (or for any where the seller decided not to review the buyer) but the buyer's username should still show on the seller's pages (profile and gig) for those older orders if the buyer reviewed those orders (and if the seller and gig still exists and Google has crawled it).

If you have seller plus then you might also be able to see the average rating they give etc. in the inbox.

Edited April 22, 2023 by uk1000

[minordetails]

1 hour ago, uk1000 said:

I don't know if you've done it already but you could also do a google search for the buyer's username on fiverr.com (eg. site:fiverr.com buyer_user_name). In the past it didn't give sellers an option to review the buyer so for any where it didn't those seller names won't show up on the buyer's profile (or for any where the seller decided not to review the buyer) but the buyer's username should still show on the seller's pages (profile and gig) for those older orders if the buyer reviewed those orders (and if the seller and gig still exists and Google has crawled it).

If you have seller plus then you might also be able to see the average rating they give etc. in the inbox.

I ended up accepting the order. I saw what they received and what they gave.  I documented the custom order well.  The buyer did prefer to speak outside of the order as they do not get notifications within the order which seems fine to me unless it is not in compliance.  I am not sure where to find that in the rules. 

[uk1000]

48 minutes ago, minordetails said:

The buyer did prefer to speak outside of the order as they do not get notifications within the order which seems fine to me unless it is not in compliance.  I am not sure where to find that in the rules. 

It says on the inbox if you have an have an order with the buyer and it seems to prefer you to talk on the order page (based on that inbox message) but it still allows you to talk in the inbox.

Though it's usually better if conversations about an order are done on the order page so you can more easily find them again if you need to reference/change that order in future.

The TOS (https://www.fiverr.com/terms_of_service) says:

Quote

Any necessary exchange of personal information required to continue a service may be exchanged within the Order Page.

So as long as it's not anything that has to be done on the order page (mentioned on the TOS) then it should be okay to talk about it though the inbox. Deliveries should still be done through the order page obviously. If he asks for files through the inbox then those might not be as protected as the ones through the order page (eg. watermarks etc).  If eg. he wanted to give you contact info to put on something like a business card then someone could get in trouble for exchanging that in the inbox (where it might be flagged more easily) but it would be okay on the order page if it was required for the order.

Edit: actually if he gave any personal info through the inbox to conduct genealogy research for for the order (or maybe if you gave personal genealogy related info through the inbox to the buyer after you researched it) maybe that could be risky Fiverr rule-wise (eg. see quote above about personal info needing to be exchanged on the order page). You could check with CS if you think it's necessary.

Edited April 22, 2023 by uk1000