Important Update: Some canceled orders now qualify for buyer reviews

[awoapp]

I'm sorry about that, but it's a ridiculous decision to put it in the most common sense. Fiverr policies are all about protecting buyers anyway. As long as the buyers don't like the delivery, they can request unlimited revisions, threaten you with order cancellation and try to make additional requests free of charge. Even if you deliver the order perfectly, they make review with one star just because you do not do they additional requests free of charge. In the face of this, all the fiverr support team does is sit and watch and take no action. It's like they want us to be slaves to buyers. And  buyers use these privileges to the fullest and exploit sellers. When will the Fiverr team take a decision that is beneficial for us sellers?

 

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by awoapp

[visualstudios]

Just now, smashradio said:

But that holds true outside of the platform as well, simply because I hate spending time arguing. 

Outside the platform I don't need to spend time arguing. They pay upfront. They can argue all by themselves if they want, after they paid me.

[visualstudios]

3 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I assume the buyer places their order and the seller doesn't reply at all, then eventually the order becomes late/very late.

Then the reason for order cancelation / review is it being late, unresponsiveness is irrelevant.

The fact that they say "late order" and "unresponsiveness" are two different reasons, clearly means that something can be canceled and reviewed due to "unresponsiveness" without being late. What does that mean, exactly. Don't respond to a buyer message within X hours = unresponsive and grounds for cancelation and review? If so, what's X? This must be clear.

Edited June 14, 2023 by visualstudios

[awoapp]

I have it, the support team clearly patronized the buyer. I will open a detailed topic about this in the forum soon and share all the details. The support team does not protect the seller, the buyer gives me 1 star even though I did everything I promised. I'm explaining this to the support team, but they continue to protect the buyer.

[takiskoroneos]

6 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

 

Here's what Noah, a success manager from Fiverr told me. 

 

"Some additional clarification to help provide more context around these changes. This option is not available to all buyers. If the buyer is also a seller, the option is not available. This is to discourage bad competition. If a buyer is brand new to Fiverr, they will not have the option. This option will be available for experienced buyers.

Additionally, If there is no delivery in the order, it will not be possible for a buyer to leave a review on it if it is cancelled unless the seller is unresponsive or the order becomes “very late”. Very late would be 24 hours after the order has already gone late."

Another important point is that a first time buyer refers to a buyer who is making their first purchase on Fiverr not a buyer making their first purchase with you.

So that raises another question, who qualifies as an experienced buyer?

I've had a pretty bad experience in the past with a buyer that already had a few reviews from sellers but no more than 5.

[donnovan86]

9 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

The fact that they say "late order" and "unresponsiveness" are two different reasons, clearly means that something can be canceled and reviewed due to "unresponsiveness" without being late. What does that mean, exactly. Don't respond to a buyer message within X hours = unresponsive and grounds for cancelation and review? If so, what's X? This must be clear.

From what I read, it seems that if the seller doesn't reply at all, and the order becomes late or very late, that qualifies as not being responsive. Which I think is clear from their side.

That being said, there will always be people that try to manipulate things in order to bend the rules to do their own bidding. Still, if anything this shows me I need to raise my prices, just to stay away from random buyers. 

[hightlink]

Sellers who do quality work won't stick around to get abused by bad buyers => Quality buyers who are willing to spend a lot will also choose a different platform where they can get a quality service. Fiverr will go back to have alot of gigs that are $5. Greed is allways bad for your business. 

Edited June 14, 2023 by hightlink

[newsmike]

10 minutes ago, hightlink said:

Sellers who do quality work won't stick around to get abused by bad buyers => Quality buyers who are willing to spend a lot will also choose a different platform where they can get a quality service. Fiverr will go back to have alot of gigs that are $5. Greed is allways bad for your business. 

1. Sellers only get abused if they allow it. Weakness and an inability to say NO is the usual reason.

2. Quality buyers will will remain because the weaker, inexperienced noobs are gone, meaning a better chance of dealing with a PRO. This in no way sends great buyers away.

3. Purging sellers who get their orders cancelled is not greed, it is Quality Control. 

My God, purging sellers who can't even complete orders successfully and "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling."

Edited June 14, 2023 by newsmike

[vickiespencer]

2 hours ago, bad_robot said:

Great, it's time to focus on Upwork with their new tasty 10% commission.

 

2 hours ago, zeecreations said:

Your competitor has halved the commission and charging 10% only now, and you come up with this?

 

2 hours ago, simo_messek said:

Am literally opening an account over there right now!

I know there was an Upwork seller who recently posted on the Fiverr Forum that they were quitting Upwork because immediately after the U lowered the commission from 20% to 10%, they added in other seller fees that amounted to the sellers paying far more than the 10% Upwork was supposedly saving them.  

So perhaps moving to Upwork is not such an advantageous move after all.

@imagination7413 do you remember where that post was? 

[freddysaint]

There is certain services where delivery can be measured and certain standards but lot of freelance services are unique and lot of clients "tricky"
Imagine ordering service "voice over actor" 
the communication is great, delivery on time but his voice dosnt fit the video. Client asks for revision. The tone changes but the voice is still the same. Client asks for his money back "unsatisfactory delivery" followed by negative review.
I understand that there are so many sellers who are incredibly talented and professional but 1/10 clients will be tricky, especially in certain service categories.
So as one of you guys mentioned before the cancelation was the only safety net the sellers had 

[hightlink]

17 minutes ago, newsmike said:

1. Sellers only get abused if they allow it. Weakness and an inability to say NO is the usual reason.

2. Quality buyers will will remain because the weaker, inexperienced noobs are gone, meaning a better chance of dealing with a PRO. This in no way sends great buyers away.

3. Purging sellers who get their orders cancelled is not greed, it is Quality Control. 

My God, purging sellers who can't even complete orders successfully and "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling."

I disagree, it's clear that Fiverr cares more about the buyers. There must be a balance in order for everybody to have a good experience. 

 

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, hightlink said:

There must be a balance in order for everybody to have a good experience. 

This measure is clearly meant to purge people that deliver late and which are unresponsive. I can only assume many buyers complained about this recently and Fiverr is taking action. There's nothing wrong with that, the only thing that's problematic comes from potential abuse. But I am sure Fiverr's team will remove reviews that are clearly outside of the rules. We will see.

 

[saadatique]

3 hours ago, newsmike said:

Good move. An important first step in removing poor quality sellers from the platform. 

What If the order is cancelled by fiverr support, will this allow the buyer to post the review as well? For instance, I have an active order that is in revision for around 20 days, and that's only because the buyer isn't responding and hasn't been online for the last 2 weeks or so. 

What should I be doing in that situation? 

Edited June 14, 2023 by saadatique
Fixing Spelling issues.

[hightlink]

13 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

This measure is clearly meant to purge people that deliver late and which are unresponsive. I can only assume many buyers complained about this recently and Fiverr is taking action. There's nothing wrong with that, the only thing that's problematic comes from potential abuse. But I am sure Fiverr's team will remove reviews that are clearly outside of the rules. We will see.

 

Let me tell you about one of my experiences.

I sell a youtube outro graphic design service, in the gig description is stated in bold letters "This gig will get you a IMAGE to use in your video editing! I will NOT do a video outro!" + all the samples in my portfolio are images. There is no video on my gig!

I recived a message from someone who wanted to buy the service, I take my time with it to understand how she wants the outro to look and I mention a few times in the conversation "outro image", she also sent me a sample that she liked, also a image.

I take about 2h to do the job, I deliver the design and I get the response "I thought it was a video, I need a video". I explained that I mentioned in the conversation that it's a image (also sent her screenshots) + it's mentioned in the gig description + even the sample she provided was a photo.

In the end she requested a refound.

How is that fare? I have 566 reviews on that gig, everybody knew that it was a image and not a video,

And there is no way to ask fiverr to remove the review because "the buyer has the right to share his/her experience" 

In this case, tell me how this will help the buyers or the potential buyers who might read that review?

Edited June 14, 2023 by hightlink

[visualstudios]

21 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

This measure is clearly meant to purge people that deliver late and which are unresponsive.

They could easily accomplish that by making the rule "Orders that are canceled due to being late and/or sellers being unresponsive can get reviewed". They didn't do that. So no, that's not what the measure "clearly" is aimed at.

Oh, and btw, if that's what they did, you would have nobody complaining here. No serious seller is gonna have issues with late deliveries / orders where the seller ghosts getting canceled and buyers leaving a review. It's the rest of the rule that is the problem - namely that a buyer can cancel for "not liking it", and leave a review. That is obviously highly exploitable.

Edited June 14, 2023 by visualstudios

[hightlink]

1 minute ago, visualstudios said:

They could easily accomplish that by making the rule "Orders that are canceled due to being late and/or sellers being unresponsive can get reviewed". They didn't do that. So no, that's not what the measure "clearly" is aimed at.

Exactly, a few years back if you failed to deliver on time and the order got cancelled, there was a 1 star review added automatically "Seller failed to deliver on time". But it was a fare review!

[donnovan86]

7 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

That is obviously highly exploitable.

True, because I just had a buyer just send me an order yesterday without talking to me first, and with little info. Now upon delivery he outright wants to cancel instead of saying what's wrong. 

[visualstudios]

5 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Now upon delivery he outright wants to cancel instead of saying what's wrong. 

Exactly. And since you delivered, under the new rules, it's not one of the exceptions. He would be entitled to a cancelation (yes, you can refuse, but since you can't force the order to close, eventually it would be canceled, you can't make him accept), and he would be allowed to leave a review. That doesn't make any sense.

But hey, in this particular case, you could theoretically have done something - refuse to start working until he sent you all the information, and agreed to everything, and don't deliver until you had that in writing. The issue is, even if you did that, he could give you all the info, and just say "This is not what I wanted" after you delivered. Doesn't matter if he's lying. Fiverr wouldn't check. CS would never say "yes, you delivered according to what was agreed, so buyer can't cancel". They have never done that. They never will. So the client, according to the new rules, would still be able to cancel and leave the review. Whereas before he would still be able to cancel, sure, but at least you wouldn't be further penalised.

Edited June 14, 2023 by visualstudios

[bobipineman]

After cancelling a order recently just because I knew the client was one of those who a) can't be satisfied/ B)was very rude/c) it was a 5 buck gig so it wasn't worth it/ just to avoid 1 star review I got a bad taste in my mouth
Next time I shall be more careful... because I will get 1 star anyway 
This update may be nearly universally reviled(and for good reason why punish the seller more when they already have the short stick) but this always nice to analyze at what possibility this update could do
-this will discourage cancelling a ''tricky'' buyer(they will be 1 star rated anyway) on the seller part. This will probably cause more angry buyer as they got a service they didn't like(unless they are the one to cancel) this will affect fiverr reputation
-As some said smart seller will be more carefull and even paranoid when they deal with their client. Bad buyer may struggle more to find willing freelancer therefore they will go to other platform 
^And those are just theory and speculation like how this will increase buyer confidence. (it already exist ton of metric to identify potential scammer yet this doesn't stop them, and some buyer simply just don't read/pay attention to anything)

TL:DR poor or inexistant protection for the seller may make them flee the platform when they have better condition. Which will will pluke fiverr of it main source of revenue

[imagination7413]

4 hours ago, vickiespencer said:

 @imagination7413 do you remember where that post was? 

This one?

https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/300818-fiverr-40-some-thoughts-on-the-current-state-of-things/?do=findComment&comment=1924954 

[vickiespencer]

36 minutes ago, imagination7413 said:

This one?

That one is good, but the one I remember was more detailed. Thanks for finding this one. 

[motion_5]

This is the most stupid feature I have seen on any marketplace (no other marketplace has that kind of a stupid thing, though). We should start a petition.

[freddysaint]

Imagine just taking pis.s out of this feature. Basically  ordering some funny voiceover, downloading, pressing cancel saying it wasnt what you  expected and even then leaving 1 star review 😄
As a seller being above 90% cancel rate means you can have 1out of 10 orders canceled for whatever reason but now that option is gone .So even if client is rude, abusive etc you dont have any safety whatsoever 😄 good luck to everyone

[santanudatta94]

Great best time to move to a different platform

[nadinpen]

This is frustrating as I have faced many situations with different clients when they are just unpredictable with their behavior even if all the work is made in a timeless manner and due to their requirements they didn't ask for any revisions but just straight forward want to cancel an order just because "they don't like it". So now this gives a buyer even more power to just ruin the seller's profile without even receiving money for the seller's time and work. 

This should be reversed as it put the seller even in a more stressful position as we are at the moment when rating is everything and manipulating it become even easier.