Help! Who opened the flood gates? The SPAM!

[miiila]

Hi. It would be nice if you could forward this to the people who have to do with spam, response rate, registration process.

Spam has been getting awful since months already, but now it's reached a new high (low, really).

This morning, I spent over half an hour just reacting to spam. I just scrolled a bit to count over 30 spam messages within the last 60 minutes, I gave up trying to scroll and count for the last 24 hours. If it goes on like this, I may well spend over a whole hour now daily just to react to *spam*.

I pretty much can't type a single message to an actual customer, or even react to a spam message or two, without hearing the "Ping!" of a new spam message coming in, once, twice, thrice.

The spam / Response Rate system may have worked somewhat well in the past, but, please, rethink it. It's putting an undue strain on sellers, not only having to spend so much time on spam, but additionally being penalized over the Response Rate (with the potential of losing their seller level, too) if from dozens of spam messages daily, somehow one didn't get reacted to in the exact right way.

The sense of the Response Rate is that sellers reply to customers in a timely manner, not to spammers, scammers, and beggars (yes, quite a few of the newer batches of spam right out ask not for a job (misreading Gigs for Buyer Requests), but beg for money), right? I do, always, even though now it's getting increasingly hard to spot that 1 actual potential buyer message in the sea of spam you wake up to and have to wade through, reacting in the exactly right manner.

There must be a better solution, really. At the least, please tell support to simply reset the Response Rate of sellers who have proven to be reliable, when it gets affected by a spam message - one of hundreds they need to spend their time on which should be used for communication with actual customers, on their orders, etc. I think it's unfair of Fiverr to penalize its sellers for spam that Fiverr lets through to them, and moreover, it simply doesn't make sense.

And please, rethink the registration process.

What are all those people who don't even understand enough English to understand what a Gig is, doing in my inbox, asking me to give them work, while being glaringly and utterly not qualified to do said job, and what are those people begging for money doing there? That needs to be handled on registration. Tell them what a Gig is, tell them that Fiverr is a business, not a begging site, tell them to not message other sellers for jobs, make them fill out a multiple choice quiz, limit the number of sellers who may register for the translation category, I don't know, but something needs to be done. This is way out of hand now. 

Among today's first batch of spam, there was even one that read: "I am a footballer looking for a team pls". 

Edited May 25, 2023 by miiila

[leannelrivers]

If Fiverr can't or won't sufficiently deal with the spam problem, they should ditch the response rate. No decent freelancer will take longer than a day to respond to clients unless HEAVEN FORBID, we take a HOLIDAY (Fiverr staff told me to be available during my holidays to protect my rank and rating... yeah), and if we miss a message, we likely lose the potential job, and it goes to another freelancer. That's on us. 

I hope they sort this out, your frustration is palpable. 

[miiila]

Thanks, I'm honestly exhausted by this.

 

Addendum, as I can't add to my OP:

It would also be good if there could be timestamps added that would show when we clicked Spam, Report, Block buttons and Fiverr shouldn't delete the spammer's message/s when they deal with spam, as that then leaves our reply to "nothing", but doesn't show that we replied within 24 hours, because the time when the spammer sent their spam message doesn't show, so we can't prove that we did reply within the time limit. 

On top of the system being really unfair and outdated, seeing the current amounts of spam – the system may work fine if you only get one handful of spam daily, but it's not at all fine with the amount of spam I'm getting these days, and I'm surely not the only one – it also is buggy sometimes. I know I've had cases where I could prove with a screenshot that I did, in fact, reply to user x123, but I really don't have the time or inclination of wasting what little time I have with taking thousands of screenshots monthly, both on desktop and mobile, and sifting through them to check any time my response rate drops due to some spam that I maybe even reacted to. And I'm absolutely sure that there already were instances where I did push the Spam button, on time, but somehow Fiverr didn't register it, and without being able to take a screenshot that shows when I pushed the Spam button, there's no way to prove it. There are bugs, lag, and things. 

Seeing all that, again, please, please devise a system that won't unduly punish (established) sellers who always reply to actual (potential) customers on time, on top of letting them deal with those masses of spam. It really doesn't make any sense. 💚

[leannelrivers]

10 minutes ago, miiila said:

but I really don't have the time or inclination of wasting what little time I have with taking thousands of screenshots monthly

It's unacceptable that you and many others must spend so much time dealing with spam messages. And then to have to prove your innocence when the site bugs out. It stinks. 

[miiila]

I just got a message that might be the clue as to the recent dramatic surge in my spam messages amount... ChatGPT... respectively, people who don't know what they are doing, using it...

-_-

Might also explain, why the spam suddenly isn't from just one to three specific countries, as all the time before, but from quite a few more, and also includes spam in different languages or even scripts in some cases, whereas before, it almost exclusively was in English, or, well, in something vaguely reminding of English, at least, like "hy", "hlo", "helloe", or "hellow"...

I added this to my current support ticket, and asked support to add it as info to the technical ticket they created for me, because my inbox, inbox message counter, pink dot, discrepancy between inbox window and message box, and everything linked to it, doesn't work properly (my personal theory is that it's simply all the spam, my reaction, and the processing and updating of everything being too much for it all to work smoothly...).

I also asked support to please forward the spam issue to people who deal with spam, response rate, and registration. I'm really, really glad that I eventually got and activated that "Request to Order" feature now (even though I know I'm missing out on good orders...), because, else, I'd not have to only deal with spam and dropping response rate all the time, but also with cancelling orders from people who think they are paying me to give them translation jobs (yes, there are people among them who do order, I got several such orders that I had to cancel, one of them even for a $50 gig, and the last two or three such cancellations got me to finally give in and activate Request to Order).

 

PS

As I see, when looking at my screenshot, still, nobody has found the time to change the coding that changes our "English" etc., to "english", so that we language people won't look really stupid to customers who know about capitalization of countries, language names, and such. I know I've, once more, asked for that somewhere in an official feedback form or such a while ago. As it doesn't appear to have been considered or acted upon, let me add it here as another Site Request:

Please tell the relevant people or team that this is a very bad look anyway, and even more so for all Fiverr sellers who work in the language field. 💐

Edited May 25, 2023 by miiila

[smashradio]

I'm sick and tired of the spam, too. And if it affects our response rate, we have to spend time reaching out to support to fix it, only to get a canned explanation of how the response rate system is supposed to work, meaning we have to respond to that, digging for a proper response from support. 

Meh. 

[leannelrivers]

12 hours ago, miiila said:

"English" etc., to "english"

Good point. Can I please offer British voice over and not british voice over?

 

12 hours ago, miiila said:

"Request to Order"

I'm glad you have this at least. 

[jenniferrwaddle]

On 5/25/2023 at 5:51 AM, leannelrivers said:

If Fiverr can't or won't sufficiently deal with the spam problem, they should ditch the response rate. No decent freelancer will take longer than a day to respond to clients unless HEAVEN FORBID, we take a HOLIDAY (Fiverr staff told me to be available during my holidays to protect my rank and rating... yeah), and if we miss a message, we likely lose the potential job, and it goes to another freelancer. That's on us. 

I hope they sort this out, your frustration is palpable. 

I've been a seller on Fiverr for many years and the spam messages continue to falsely affect my response rate. I've reached out consistently, and still, nothing changes. As of now, it shows my response rate is 71% even though I check Fiverr daily and respond to every legitimate client. The level status means nothing to me as it fluctuates due to the influx of spam. I'll continue to provide stellar work delivered on time without any expectation of change in this area. Sad, but true!

[theblogletters]

On 5/25/2023 at 9:19 PM, miiila said:

Hi. It would be nice if you could forward this to the people who have to do with spam, response rate, registration process.

Spam has been getting awful since months already, but now it's reached a new high (low, really).

This morning, I spent over half an hour just reacting to spam. I just scrolled a bit to count over 30 spam messages within the last 60 minutes, I gave up trying to scroll and count for the last 24 hours. If it goes on like this, I may well spend over a whole hour now daily just to react to *spam*.

I pretty much can't type a single message to an actual customer, or even react to a spam message or two, without hearing the "Ping!" of a new spam message coming in, once, twice, thrice.

The spam / Response Rate system may have worked somewhat well in the past, but, please, rethink it. It's putting an undue strain on sellers, not only having to spend so much time on spam, but additionally being penalized over the Response Rate (with the potential of losing their seller level, too) if from dozens of spam messages daily, somehow one didn't get reacted to in the exact right way.

The sense of the Response Rate is that sellers reply to customers in a timely manner, not to spammers, scammers, and beggars (yes, quite a few of the newer batches of spam right out ask not for a job (misreading Gigs for Buyer Requests), but beg for money), right? I do, always, even though now it's getting increasingly hard to spot that 1 actual potential buyer message in the sea of spam you wake up to and have to wade through, reacting in the exactly right manner.

There must be a better solution, really. At the least, please tell support to simply reset the Response Rate of sellers who have proven to be reliable, when it gets affected by a spam message - one of hundreds they need to spend their time on which should be used for communication with actual customers, on their orders, etc. I think it's unfair of Fiverr to penalize its sellers for spam that Fiverr lets through to them, and moreover, it simply doesn't make sense.

And please, rethink the registration process.

What are all those people who don't even understand enough English to understand what a Gig is, doing in my inbox, asking me to give them work, while being glaringly and utterly not qualified to do said job, and what are those people begging for money doing there? That needs to be handled on registration. Tell them what a Gig is, tell them that Fiverr is a business, not a begging site, tell them to not message other sellers for jobs, make them fill out a multiple choice quiz, limit the number of sellers who may register for the translation category, I don't know, but something needs to be done. This is way out of hand now. 

Among today's first batch of spam, there was even one that read: "I am a footballer looking for a team pls". 

I have only been on Fiverr for a couple of days and am seriously considering cancelling my part in this process. I went through a detailed registration process with a 40-question test to get approved on Fiverr, which included spelling. Spam is bad news for anyone, but why oh why, cannot these people be screened at registration? Very frustrated.

[theblogletters]

On 5/26/2023 at 11:31 PM, jenniferrwaddle said:

I've been a seller on Fiverr for many years and the spam messages continue to falsely affect my response rate. I've reached out consistently, and still, nothing changes. As of now, it shows my response rate is 71% even though I check Fiverr daily and respond to every legitimate client. The level status means nothing to me as it fluctuates due to the influx of spam. I'll continue to provide stellar work delivered on time without any expectation of change in this area. Sad, but true!

 

I have only been on Fiverr for a couple of days and am seriously considering cancelling my part in this process. I went through a detailed registration process with a 40-question test to get approved on Fiverr, which included spelling. Spam is bad news for anyone, but why oh why, cannot these people be screened at registration? Very frustrated.

 

•  

[theblogletters]

On 5/26/2023 at 7:14 AM, smashradio said:

I'm sick and tired of the spam, too. And if it affects our response rate, we have to spend time reaching out to support to fix it, only to get a canned explanation of how the response rate system is supposed to work, meaning we have to respond to that, digging for a proper response from support. 

Meh. 

 

On 5/26/2023 at 7:14 AM, smashradio said:

I'm sick and tired of the spam, too. And if it affects our response rate, we have to spend time reaching out to support to fix it, only to get a canned explanation of how the response rate system is supposed to work, meaning we have to respond to that, digging for a proper response from support. 

Meh. 

 

1 minute ago, theblogletters said:

 

 

I have only been on Fiverr for a couple of days and am seriously considering cancelling my part in this process. I went through a detailed registration process with a 40-question test to get approved on Fiverr, which included spelling. Spam is bad news for anyone, but why oh why, cannot these people be screened at registration? Very frustrated.

 

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[samcaff]

Our amount of Spam messages has increased this year for sure!

[followthefundev]

I'm sad to hear this is such a problem. I often send out a lot of messages as I need a lot of people on my projects, and pretty much all of my messages get put into spam already. I assume this will only become more restricted