Important Update: Some canceled orders now qualify for buyer reviews

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, lalumiere said:

Well... Sellers are being penalised even for sleeping at night (response time),

You have 24 hours to reply, I think you are a bit too harsh.

2 minutes ago, lalumiere said:

Happy people are not on Fiverr...

I mean, I am happy, I am not a huge fan of this change, but I don't know how much it will affect me, if at all. It will start weeding out some of the bad sellers though, which is a plus. I've been here for a decade at this point and there have always been people that just set up a gig to deliver random stuff and earn money. Then they block the buyer and try to find other people to scam. By the time Fiverr finds out about them, they already made thousands upon thousands. So in some ways, this measure is a good thing. The downside is that it will affect genuine sellers due to things beyond our control, like buyers ordering without consent. 

I have Seller Plus but didn't include Request to Order until now, but I might at least for some gigs.

[donnovan86]

1 minute ago, hightlink said:

Than don't defend them, I think after a decade of work on fiverr we have the right to give a honest feedback.

There are some very specific situations when buyers can leave a review. From what I saw, lateness and a lack of responsiveness are the main things that Fiverr wants to tackle here. 

I will see how this affects me, I assume I should be the most affected, because people with a very low price tend to attract demanding buyers... So yeah, that's why I said time to increase prices 🙂  But even so, you can't be fully protected, because there will always be people that want more than what they paid.

[lalumiere]

9 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

You have 24 hours to reply, I think you are a bit too harsh.

I mean, I am happy, I am not a huge fan of this change, but I don't know how much it will affect me, if at all. It will start weeding out some of the bad sellers though, which is a plus. I've been here for a decade at this point and there have always been people that just set up a gig to deliver random stuff and earn money. Then they block the buyer and try to find other people to scam. By the time Fiverr finds out about them, they already made thousands upon thousands. So in some ways, this measure is a good thing. The downside is that it will affect genuine sellers due to things beyond our control, like buyers ordering without consent. 

I have Seller Plus but didn't include Request to Order until now, but I might at least for some gigs.

You have 24 hours to respond in order to keep you response RATE. But your response TIME is going down every hour you don't respond. I reached out to the support about it - they were "very kind" to say that that's just how it is, Fiverr doesn't consider the time difference and that I just should keep up with responding... So no, I'm not being too harsh.

[donnovan86]

17 minutes ago, lalumiere said:

So no, I'm not being too harsh.

I mean.. I sleep 7-8 hours a night and I always kept the 1 hour response time. I guess it depends on how many messages you receive. Regardless, I think every responsible seller enters Fiverr once a day to see if they have any messages, not to mention they even send you an email. If you reply pretty fast and within a day for everything it should be fine. Even with Spam, I ended up just saying Hi and marking as Spam. It doesn't affect the response rate nor do you have to deal with spammers. 

I can see how someone that doesn't work solely on Fiverr might have a slightly higher response time but honestly as a buyer, I wouldn't have an issue unless the response time is a day or more. Then you know the person takes at least a day to respond. There are people that expect immediate replies, but those are usually the persons you want to stay away from. I had a person send me 20 messages within the span of 5 minutes, I was delivering something and their last message is that I was not worthy, that level 2 badge requires people to reply immediately. So yeah, there are many different people you can deal with as a seller. 

[skydesigner]

Relax, people. We all know this is extremely unfair; however, it will have the same effect on everyone.⭐😿

Lets make calculation:

• 50% of canceled orders will most likely be negative reviewed 
• If you have 10% cancelations of 100 orders that is approximate 5 negative reviews
  
  The best way to avoid receiving negative reviews is to offer a money-back guarantee. However, this approach can have negative effects on various aspects of your work, including revenue and potential abuse of services, among others.

 

I still hope that Fiverr will reconsider this update.

[ahunyady]

4.2? (!?)

Fiverr is expecting this to be a complete disaster. Prepare for the onslaught of fake buyers who’ll try to hold sellers hostage. If a buyer cancels an order, they should not have the right to leave feedback because they did not see the order through to completion. Cancellations already carry an extreme penalty for sellers, even for orders made in error.

Edited June 15, 2023 by ahunyady

[oskars25]

13 minutes ago, skydesigner said:

Relax, people. We all know this is extremely unfair; however, it will have the same effect on everyone.⭐😿

Lets make calculation:

• 50% of canceled orders will most likely be negative reviewed 
• If you have 10% cancelations of 100 orders that is approximate 5 negative reviews
  
  The best way to avoid receiving negative reviews is to offer a money-back guarantee. However, this approach can have negative effects on various aspects of your work, including revenue and potential abuse of services, among others.

 

I still hope that Fiverr will reconsider this update.

Money back guarantee ? 😄 😄 😄

If they cancel order, they get money back. So this doesnt even make sense hahah

[donnovan86]

8 minutes ago, oskars25 said:

If they cancel order, they get money back

And they can review you too!

[trombonhero]

25 minutes ago, ahunyady said:

If a buyer cancels an order, they should not have the right to leave feedback because they did not see the order through to completion.

It seems that the option to leave ratings and reviews on a canceled order won’t be available without sufficient communication (between the buyer and the seller) and on orders without deliveries - fiverr help.

[freddysaint]

Time to work harder guys 😄 

[anabellamadeo]

23 hours ago, Shiran.M said:

In order to create a more accurate review system and to increase transparency and trust on our platform, starting next week, buyers who cancel an order will also be able to leave a review and share their experiences. 

This applies to cancellations of orders in which a delivery was received and/or orders that involve lateness or unresponsiveness. Of course, this option won’t be available for orders made by mistake.

Following this change, we will decrease the rating score threshold for all levels from 4.7 to 4.2 in order to help sellers maintain their rating levels.

We encourage our sellers community to use this feedback as an opportunity to improve your services and address any issues that may have led to cancellations. As always, you will be able to add a public response to the review on your Gig page.

We believe that this update will yield long-term benefits for both buyers and sellers, especially those who provide quality user experiences.

Click here to learn more about this upcoming change.
The Fiverr team
 

Hello Shiran.M! I was just about to contact the Support Team about this new feature. I don't mean to rant about it, I just need someone to take note about the potential risk this measure represents for us sellers.

We all work for the 5 star rating, of course. Nobody wants to offer a mediocre service and get mediocre reviews! We give our very best, we cater to our buyer's every requirement, we bend over backwards to make them happy, and even then we can never know up until the order is finished whether their reviews will reflect that. Believe me, some people will go on and on about how they're super happy with you and your work throughout the order, only to leave a 3 or 4 star review just because "I was having a bad day" or "the experience has been excellent but if I leave you 5 stars you'll think there isn't room for improvement". Yes, these are taken from real life.

Like I said, we put all our effort into give our very best, that's why ew avoid cancellations like it's the pest -getting orders cancelled means: a) all the time and energy put into that order will not get compensated, b) the buyer gets the deliverables anyway and can use them for free, c) we get less exposure of our gigs in the upcoming months, d) we get less orders, therefore we make less money. 

Cancellations endanger our performance and our income directly. We'll try everything to please an unpleasable buyer before getting the order cancelled, but if they still want to cancel, if they're going to walk away with our money and our work, at least they can't leave a bad review. I mean, that person would've obviously left a bad review because they were unsatisfied -in my experience the main cause for buyer insatisfaction is the buyer not knowing what they want, therefore not liking anything I present them, even if done according to their exact requests. And the more I work to please them, the more I risk to be working for nothing after all if they decide to cancel anyway.

So now I'm wondering -what's the point of having buyers rating/reviewing cancelled orders? Does anyone think sellers deserve even more "punishment" after getting orders cancelled? And more importantly -how will UNRESPONSIVENESS be measured? And what will happen when the one not responding is the buyer themselves?

(I don't know about you but I can already see lots of new fake profiles being created only to troll 5-star buyers, make them work for free, walk away with their work and leave 1-star reviews to ruin them. A fast and effective way to get rid of competitors, right?)

Anyway, I needed to let somebody on Fiverr know about the huge negative impact this measure would have on us sellers, of which you surely are aware since you're decreasing the rating score threshold of as much as half a star. Can anything be done to prevent this from becoming a reality? 

Thank you!

Anabella

[nicks_voice]

It seems like the majority of people are against this change, and I hope Fiverr sees this.

If the team still decides to implement this, I’d hope the reviews posted have a “Cancelled order” tag on them to provide some context. 

[donnovan86]

2 minutes ago, anabellamadeo said:

So now I'm wondering -what's the point of having buyers rating/reviewing cancelled orders?

Some people are not responsive and they end up delivering random stuff, buyers are unhappy and they don't come back to the platform. Sellers can easily cancel the order to avoid any repercussions, it's like the order never happened. And even the cancellation penalty goes away after a month or two. 

So yeah, I am certain that Fiverr wants to penalize sellers that barely respond and which try to manipulate the system to avoid getting a bad review. I think that's the whole point.

[donnovan86]

1 minute ago, nicks_voice said:

If the team still decides to implement this,

It's already going to be implemented starting next week, as they said. 

[oskars25]

9 minutes ago, freddysaint said:

Time to work harder guys 😄 

And put chain on neck from fiverr to be taking all crap and not bark

[anabellamadeo]

1 minute ago, donnovan86 said:

Sellers can easily cancel the order to avoid any repercussions, it's like the order never happened. And even the cancellation penalty goes away after a month or two. 

Well no, it doesn't work like that!!! I mean, it would in the case of sellers who don't care about their reviews or their overall performance, but those wouldn't not last much on the platform anyway and don't represent the vast majority of sellers.

[trombonhero]

16 minutes ago, anabellamadeo said:

I can already see lots of new fake profiles being created only to troll 5-star buyers

What about implementing an ID verification process for buyers?
We can ask this question during the upcoming virtual event “What do Buyers Want” (Jun 21) 🤞

Edited June 15, 2023 by trombonhero

[anabellamadeo]

1 minute ago, trombonhero said:

What about implementing an ID verification process for buyers?
We can ask this question during the upcoming virtual event “What do Buyers Want” (Jun 21) 🤞

Yesssss! That should've been implemented years ago! Not even Fiverr Business clients get properly verified.

[donnovan86]

7 minutes ago, anabellamadeo said:

it would in the case of sellers who don't care about their reviews or their overall performance

Well it does work like that because if you cancel, in 2 months it will be counted out of your stats. Maybe 3 months if we talk about the buyer satisfaction rate. Some sellers prefer to do that instead of getting a bad review that stays there forever. Now they can't escape it.

And yes, Fiverr wants to purge this type of people faster. Also, a TON of people have 4.9 reviews on the platform, maybe 4.6+ is the norm. This way Fiverr will actually have much better, more accurate stats.. 

[oskars25]

One thing i like from this, there are no more 4.3 4.7  stars. Now its 1.2.3.4.5 this should be from begining

[nicks_voice]

It’s unfortunate. I don’t usually come here to complain, I’m busy with orders and am very happy with the outlet I’m provided here, but this update definitely took me by surprise.

While it is very buyer-centric, this still creates a lot of new problems for buyers too which in turn affects Fiverr.

 

1)  More sellers rejecting cancellations - it’ll be the same outcome anyway, except if you don’t cancel, you still receive your money. I can see this being a super bad experience on the Buyers end.

 

2) Buyer ratings tank - any buyers who cancel will most likely be receiving a bad review from the seller too, making it difficult for them to order from sellers who do their due-dilligence. I had one bad experience purchasing from a seller on eBay, I gave them a negative review and they replied with the same, haven’t shopped there since, I can see how the same would apply here. 

 

3) Picky sellers - some paranoid folk will definitely start turning their gig to request-only mode / question buyers a lot more and accept less briefs- drop in sales for them (and in turn, Fiverr).

 

Theoretically, I don’t really see a benefit for anyone here, this update was made to combat a very specific group of bad actors who don’t deliver what they advertise. There’s definitely ways to handle this (reporting, private reviews, data from fiverrs end etc…) that can be used to suspend these specific individuals rather than a platform-wide change.

 

For me it’s not about the honest reviews, I have plenty of less-than-stellar reviews, it’s about providing scammers and bad actors no risk for cancelling orders just to get the work for free.

I do very good on this platform, and I’m super thankful for it, but I want to see it improve, and the only way to do that is with feedback from those who use it. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by nicks_voice

[nicks_voice]

10 minutes ago, anabellamadeo said:

Yesssss! That should've been implemented years ago! Not even Fiverr Business clients get properly verified.

With the rise in AI sellers in the voice over category not mentioning they’re using AI, this absolutely needs to be applied on the seller end too. Verify if you’re the actual person selling your work.

[trombonhero]

3 minutes ago, anabellamadeo said:

Yesssss! That should've been implemented years ago! Not even Fiverr Business clients get properly verified.

🤔 … It could be requested during the second purchase on the platform (to speed up the process for first time buyers, who also won’t be able to leave a review on cancelled orders).

🤔 …. It could be requested within a certain period of time (in the meantime a buyer can purchase services but won’t be able to leave a review on cancelled orders).

…. 💡

[nunulka]

Ok even if the order is cancelled, not just I dont get paid but also get punished by 1 star. "Very nice"

[oskars25]

2 minutes ago, nunulka said:

Ok even if the order is cancelled, not just I dont get paid but also get punished by 1 star. "Very nice"

Dont forget you wasted your time + that time you used electricity and more to even work, so you went in minus + free wortk. Even voluntary work is better than this you atleast dont get punished