Buyer keeps requesting unlimited revisions, asking for things out of scope and impossible to do

[pycodeninja]

Hey guys,

I am a new seller and quickly trying to grow as a seller by offering gigs at lower price than others and offering great service. So far it's been going great but right now I'm dealing with a very annoying buyer who just wants free work. We discussed what the gig will include and I sent him a custom offer and delivered on that day, but he kept asking for other things which are out of scope and not marking my order as delivered, I was still helping him with those things because I want to be a nice seller but he kept taking advantage and asking for more things and today he put a revision request with no requirements, only said "You didn't help me to the job" meanwhile he was clearly happy with the job and just kept asking for other things.

I made the mistake of not selecting revisions, I thought it'd mean 0 revisions allowed, but apparently it means unlimited. I clearly explained to him that I have done what was asked and what exactly is it he wants me to do now? And he replied again with things way out of the scope, one of them being impossible. I had clearly told him what the gig would include and he accepted, now he's not even communicating properly, messages once or twice a day only, completely disregarding my messages and explanation and says some random stuff that he wants me to do as part of it, some being impossible. It's very clear he just wants free work and doesn't want to pay.

I really don't know what to do now. I stayed up at night doing this work for him and he's taking advantage of me. I feel very vulnerable and helpless now. I got taken advantage of and I'm stressed out. I will probably not get paid for my hard work and he will probably leave a very bad review too for no reason, because now Fiverr allows buyers to leave reviews on cancelled orders too.

Lesson learned: Set a limit on revisions, otherwise it's considered unlimited.

If anyone has any advice for me, please let me know. Thank you.

[abdheshkjha]

Sometimes it's very hard to deal with this. Some of the buyers keep sending revisions and ask for extra work that is outside the job scope and if we ask for the extra charges for the extra work, then the buyer asks for the cancellation.

[pycodeninja]

Thanks for your reply @abdheshkjha . As a very experienced seller, what advice would you give me to deal with this and avoid it in future. Because bad reviews and cancellations will drastically impact my gig rankings and conversions, being a new seller. And does Fiverr offer no protection to the seller? This is a bit scary, because being a programmer, it sucks to spend hours coding something for someone and they take advantage of you and cancel it.

[pycodeninja]

3 minutes ago, abdheshkjha said:

Sometimes it's very hard to deal with this. Some of the buyers keep sending revisions and ask for extra work that is outside the job scope and if we ask for the extra charges for the extra work, then the buyer asks for the cancellation.

 

Thanks for your reply @abdheshkjha . As a very experienced seller, what advice would you give me to deal with this and avoid it in future. Because bad reviews and cancellations will drastically impact my gig rankings and conversions, being a new seller. And does Fiverr offer no protection to the seller? This is a bit scary, because being a programmer, it sucks to spend hours coding something for someone and they take advantage of you and cancel it.

[abdheshkjha]

Before taking any orders, try to get as many details as you required from your buyer and let me know upfront what you will do. Also mentioned in the Offer is what you will provide.

This will keep you in safe hands and you will have the proof that you have provided everything within the job scope. In this way, Fiverr will also help you.

[pycodeninja]

Just now, abdheshkjha said:

Before taking any orders, try to get as many details as you required from your buyer and let me know upfront what you will do. Also mentioned in the Offer is what you will provide.

This will keep you in safe hands and you will have the proof that you have provided everything within the job scope. In this way, Fiverr will also help you.

Okay, I did both of these and reached out to Fiverr customer support and raised a ticket. Waiting on resolution. Hopefully they do something.

[smashradio]

3 hours ago, pycodeninja said:

 

I am a new seller and quickly trying to grow as a seller by offering gigs at lower price

Hey! I'm sorry you're experiencing this. 

So this was your first mistake. By lowering your price you're attracting bad buyers. 

In my experience, the cheaper the buyer, the more demanding they are. 

3 hours ago, pycodeninja said:

Hey guys,

I am a new seller and quickly trying to grow as a seller by offering gigs at lower price than others and offering great service. So far it's been going great but right now I'm dealing with a very annoying buyer who just wants free work. We discussed what the gig will include and I sent him a custom offer and delivered on that day, but he kept asking for other things which are out of scope and not marking my order as delivered, I was still helping him with those things because I want to be a nice seller but he kept taking advantage and asking for more things and today he put a revision request with no requirements, only said "You didn't help me to the job" meanwhile he was clearly happy with the job and just kept asking for other things.

I made the mistake of not selecting revisions, I thought it'd mean 0 revisions allowed, but apparently it means unlimited. I clearly explained to him that I have done what was asked and what exactly is it he wants me to do now? And he replied again with things way out of the scope, one of them being impossible. I had clearly told him what the gig would include and he accepted, now he's not even communicating properly, messages once or twice a day only, completely disregarding my messages and explanation and says some random stuff that he wants me to do as part of it, some being impossible. It's very clear he just wants free work and doesn't want to pay.

I really don't know what to do now. I stayed up at night doing this work for him and he's taking advantage of me. I feel very vulnerable and helpless now. I got taken advantage of and I'm stressed out. I will probably not get paid for my hard work and he will probably leave a very bad review too for no reason, because now Fiverr allows buyers to leave reviews on cancelled orders too.

Lesson learned: Set a limit on revisions, otherwise it's considered unlimited.

If anyone has any advice for me, please let me know. Thank you.

A revision is a small change to the work within the agreed-upon scope. Just say no. If you've delivered as described, the buyer cannot ask you to do additional work for free. They can ask you to change what you have already done. 

When these buyers come along, I simply say, "I'd be happy to do that, but it's outside the scope of the original order. It will be another 25$". (In a more business-like manner, of course). 

Don't let a buyer take advantage of you like this. 

And yes, a good lesson learned! Remember that if I ask for one song, you deliver one song, and I come demanding a whole album for free, that's not a revision. 

[pycodeninja]

34 minutes ago, smashradio said:

Hey! I'm sorry you're experiencing this. 

So this was your first mistake. By lowering your price you're attracting bad buyers. 

In my experience, the cheaper the buyer, the more demanding they are. 

A revision is a small change to the work within the agreed-upon scope. Just say no. If you've delivered as described, the buyer cannot ask you to do additional work for free. They can ask you to change what you have already done. 

When these buyers come along, I simply say, "I'd be happy to do that, but it's outside the scope of the original order. It will be another 25$". (In a more business-like manner, of course). 

Don't let a buyer take advantage of you like this. 

And yes, a good lesson learned! Remember that if I ask for one song, you deliver one song, and I come demanding a whole album for free, that's not a revision. 

Thanks for your reply. Noted. He's asked for another revision now to do something completely unrelated to the gig offer, which is also impossible to do. The buyer is clueless about lots of things. I let him know that I can't offer anything else as this was not part of the deal, and I've already delivered what I was supposed to. But he's ignoring me. The revision is still open and it shows late delivery, even though my first delivery contained everything and was submitted way before the deadline. Now my only hope is that Fiverr Support team helps me. 

[pycodeninja]

UPDATE: I've had my ticket open with Fiverr Customer Support for 29 hours now, no reply. I really don't know what to do or expect. The buyer doesn't reply and doesn't give all the requirements he expects from me to, just keeps saying new things once I do what he asked. Last few days have been extremely frustrating due to this. At this point I'd be okay with just having the order cancelled and taking the loss, as long as it doesn't affect my completion rate.

[pycodeninja]

FINAL UPDATE: I cancelled the order, and took $70 loss, and Customer Support finally responded to my request of adjusting my completion rate, with a semi automated reply which felt like they didn't even read my message and just said "We can't adjust the rate due to buyer not being satisfied". I responded again, explained everything again, with screenshots proving that we agreed beforehand what was included and what was not included, and the buyer asked for exactly the things we had decided were not included, completely out of scope and impossible stuff. But they still didn't accept my request to adjust completion rate.

At this point, it is what it is, there is nothing I can do, and this just shows that the buyer can cancel any order for asking for revisions which are completely unrelated to the gig offer, out of scope and impossible to do, and Fiverr will support them and cancel and not even adjust your completion rate. Worst experience...

[vickieito]

4 hours ago, pycodeninja said:

"We can't adjust the rate due to buyer not being satisfied".

So that's how Fiverr is going to classify it ... as a buyer satisfaction case (not as a buyer misusing the revision request).

This tells me that Fiverr wants sellers to do everything they can to close the order (and not cancel).  There's not much benefit to canceling if the buyer gets a refund and can leave a review (a potentially negative one). If you're going to get a negative review, might as well get paid for it. However, this could become a long, drawn-out nightmare if neither side backs down.

[pycodeninja]

2 hours ago, vickieito said:

So that's how Fiverr is going to classify it ... as a buyer satisfaction case (not as a buyer misusing the revision request).

This tells me that Fiverr wants sellers to do everything they can to close the order (and not cancel).  There's not much benefit to canceling if the buyer gets a refund and can leave a review (a potentially negative one). If you're going to get a negative review, might as well get paid for it. However, this could become a long, drawn-out nightmare if neither side backs down.

Yeah it's pretty unfortunate that the sellers can do nothing but hope they won't get buyers like this again. My completion rate dropped from 100 to 88%, it's gonna take me a much longer time to level up to level 1 now, even though the rest of the requirements are complete.

[miiila]

Hi. Don't give up, you do sound like someone who could be successful here. 

As long as you want to leverage lower prices to get orders over your competition, though, the likelihood of getting clueless, or pretending to be clueless, buyers, is greater, and too many of those could damage your profile. It's definitely a good idea to try setting yourself apart by other means than lower price, like "more unique" (really unique will be difficult or might not last long, as people will copy whatever can be copied) gigs.

You want customers who are ready to pay at least somewhat fair prices, to make this sustainable, so keep that in mind for your strategy. Those customers also tend to be fair in other regards, like paying for additional work vs. labeling and demanding it to be done as revisions. 

As you've already seen, there are different kinds of customers here (sellers, too), and my advice would be to focus on the kind you want. It's a real bonus to have a base of more or less regular customers, too. To focus on and favour such customers will benefit you in different ways, so factor that in as well, you probably don't want too many overly troublesome people among your regulars.

Welcome to the forum! 🙂

[pycodeninja]

4 minutes ago, miiila said:

Hi. Don't give up, you do sound like someone who could be successful here. 

As long as you want to leverage lower prices to get orders over your competition, though, the likelihood of getting clueless, or pretending to be clueless, buyers, is greater, and too many of those could damage your profile. It's definitely a good idea to try setting yourself apart by other means than lower price, like "more unique" (really unique will be difficult or might not last long, as people will copy whatever can be copied) gigs.

You want customers who are ready to pay at least somewhat fair prices, to make this sustainable, so keep that in mind for your strategy. Those customers also tend to be fair in other regards, like paying for additional work vs. labeling and demanding it to be done as revisions. 

As you've already seen, there are different kinds of customers here (sellers, too), and my advice would be to focus on the kind you want. It's a real bonus to have a base of more or less regular customers, too. To focus on and favour such customers will benefit you in different ways, so factor that in as well, you probably don't want too many overly troublesome people among your regulars.

Welcome to the forum! 🙂

Hey miiila, thanks so much for the kind words and advice. Really appreciate it 🙂

I will surely take note and follow them!

[arch_daniel_h]

Hi pycodeninja,  sorry to here you had this experience. 
Unfortunately rather than provide a solution or tip I come here to pile up on the issue. 
Part as a frustration relieve and part hope someone reads this forum and doesn't go trough the same situation. 

Something quite similar happened to me. As a new seller i work hard to get every buyer I cant get and in this case I felt in the hands of a really unfair buyer. Feels almost as he was a scammer. I made a costume offer (which he accepted) and clearly stated what the scope of work was and since it was a really small gig only one revision was included. He went to ask for further revisions and asked for changes out of scope. (He accepted they were out scope!!!!) I told him I was happy to help with further changes at an additional fee and send him an extra offer. After that he left the chat completely unattended for several days (before that he was replying within minutes to every message I sent him). After that he “accepted” the order and went on and left a one-star review mainly arguing poor communication (after I explained him and he agreed what he was requesting was out of scope!!!)

The most frustrating part is that after a long exchange with costumer support explaining all of this in detail and telling I’m able to provide proof they have replied to me twice that there is nothing they can do. That his review is his opinion and isn’t violating any of the terms of service. I understand the review per se isn’t violating any terms of service. But, honestly is fiverr so flawed a buyer can easily get away with this conduct? Request or demand work out of scope (admit it is out of scope) essentially for free and if the seller doesn’t budget to his demands leave a one-star review completely ruining a new seller profile?! If so, it’s quite easy for scammer or advantageous buyers to get free work out of sellers nothing stops them from asking for free work. Not even for the seller requesting to cancel the order is a solution. You could get a bad review anyway, affect your completion rate, not get paid for the already delivered work and for the scammer essentially getting free work.