An update on the new option to review canceled orders

[donnovan86]

4 minutes ago, newsmike said:

So yay, angry mob got less transparency and continued sanitized reviews. 

I doubt that. I am certain they will come back with a less intrusive version of this. I think they want those people that cancel a lot of orders to finally be shown, and they want buyers to know more about a seller's cancellation history. So they can make a good decision and prevent wasted time. I saw lots of buyers on the forum complaining about wasted time, so I am sure Fiverr will bring this change to fruition. It will be in a different version for sure, but I don't think Fiverr is letting this go. It seems like a major change they want to do. The only worry for me is taht some maleficent sellers will creatae new accounts, mask as buyers and start damaging people's accounts. 

[newsmike]

12 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I doubt that. I am certain they will come back with a less intrusive version of this.

I hope so, like the private review maybe. But I suspect they buried it because of the yelling. They need to just implement something quiet in the background that collects data on the cancels and makes the algorithm reflect that, but most of all, not announce it.  That's where they went wrong. This way people can certainly sanitize a bad review with a cancellation, but it makes that seller invisible for 60 days if it was related to lateness, poor quality of product or service, etc.... an enhanced version of what we have now. 

"Just between us, why did you cancel that order?"

Edited June 22, 2023 by newsmike

[smashradio]

26 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Agree. They caved to people who want less transparency in the process. Very telling, but they did not want the noise, so they folded. Fiverr tried to to the correct thing, but decided the prison riot was not worth the time. So yay, angry mob got less transparency and continued sanitized reviews. 

12 minutes ago, newsmike said:

 

"Just between us, why did you cancel that order?"

That is exactly my thought as well. It will most likely be implemented quietly as a gig quality metric, just like they did with revisions for poor quality or partial deliveries. Do you remember all the frustrated sellers who came to the forum complaining that their gig was flagged for poor quality a while back? 

Keep an eye out for something like that, and we'll know. 

[smashradio]

22 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I doubt that. I am certain they will come back with a less intrusive version of this. I think they want those people that cancel a lot of orders to finally be shown, and they want buyers to know more about a seller's cancellation history. So they can make a good decision and prevent wasted time. I saw lots of buyers on the forum complaining about wasted time, so I am sure Fiverr will bring this change to fruition. It will be in a different version for sure, but I don't think Fiverr is letting this go. It seems like a major change they want to do. The only worry for me is taht some maleficent sellers will creatae new accounts, mask as buyers and start damaging people's accounts. 

The few people dumb enough to do that are already doing it. But I don't think there are many of them since it requires giving Fiverr money. It would still do that under the suggested changes since people get refunds as Fiverr credits. Given the number of sellers in the most popular categories where this might happen, it's not a feasible model for scammers/fraudsters to win the Fiverr game, especially not in the long term, given Fiverr's increased focus on quality. 

[catwriter]

22 minutes ago, newsmike said:

They need to just implement something quiet in the background that collects data on the cancels and makes the algorithm reflect that, but most of all, not announce it

That would not answer the complaints of buyers who have wasted time, cancelled an order, and can't leave an honest review that would be visible to everyone (so that other buyers like themselves get a warning).

[newsmike]

11 minutes ago, catwriter said:

That would not answer the complaints of buyers who have wasted time, cancelled an order, and can't leave an honest review that would be visible to everyone (so that other buyers like themselves get a warning).

True. I am assuming that we have lost that and won't get it back. The good news is that this reversal totally negates the "Fiverr only cares about buyers," argument. Fiverr has sided with, and protected poor quality sellers, allowing them to shield from visibility, complaints which buyers deserve to know about prior to ordering. This reversal is definitely anti buyer.

Edited June 22, 2023 by newsmike

[visualstudios]

Cancelation rate on display in gigs and profile, besides reviews. Leave the review system as is.

This is a very simple fix, will actually function in the spirit of the idea (distinguish between sellers with a lot of cancelations and those who don't) and won't impact seller levels, etc. I also foresee next to no backlash from the seller community on a feature like this.

Edited June 22, 2023 by visualstudios

[donnovan86]

36 minutes ago, newsmike said:

This way people can certainly sanitize a bad review with a cancellation, but it makes that seller invisible for 60 days if it was related to lateness, poor quality of product or service, etc.... an enhanced version of what we have now. 

True, but what I think Fiverr tries to achieve here is a way to publicly inform potential buyers. You can't do that if a person is penalized in the background. And I am sure Fiverr also wants to stop that sanitation process from certain sellers. I had buyers come my way saying that sellers refunded as soon as they requested a revision, since the seller was afraid of a bad review most likely. I think this issue is affecting a lot of buyers to the point where Fiverr wanted to do something about it. 

I have no idea when a new version of this change will come, but I still think they want to keep things public. Although I guess your idea can also be a welcome change, albeit a background one. 

[visualstudios]

Just now, donnovan86 said:

True, but what I think Fiverr tries to achieve here is a way to publicly inform potential buyers.

Cancelation % on display. So simple. 

[newsmike]

6 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Cancelation % on display. So simple. 

[donnovan86]

11 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Cancelation % on display. So simple. 

I am not sure if I remember this correctly, but I know when I started Fiverr was showing the cancellation rate on the profile page anyway.

I think that should be fine, but I also believe that Fiverr wants to allow buyers to share the reason why the order was canceled. So that's why I think this will come back in another version.. But only time can tell.

[danno1950]

On 6/21/2023 at 5:33 PM, smashradio said:

What caught me off guard about this update was the lack of consultation with veteran sellers before its implementation.

As far as I know (and I might be wrong), none of us were brought into the conversation before you chose to roll it out.

I agree! Fiverr implementing new features like this, but doing it unilaterally, doesn't make me feel like seller input is very valued.

[donnovan86]

12 hours ago, smashradio said:

The few people dumb enough to do that are already doing it. But I don't think there are many of them since it requires giving Fiverr money.

There are quite a lot of them since I had multiple buyers saying this to me. Plus I saw even more on the forum. There will always be sellers trying to game the system so even if they are implementing this cancellation thing, those that try to game the system will find a new way to do so. 

[uk1000]

14 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

The private thing and going behind our back with sellers not having any idea what their buyer satisfaction rate is.. and gigs randomly going out of search for a short or long time randomly. That gives way less control over our business. I understand if someone had a very bad review, obviously you expect that to happen. But in my case in the last 5 months almost I barely had a bad review,  and while asking my SM they said that my buyer satisfaction rate can be improved.. it is ascending but still, I would prefer to have a number, graph..

They probably don't want to show the private review scores / buyer satisfaction rate because then it wouldn't be private. Though if there were enough reviews over enough days then you probably couldn't tell which buyers caused the change in buyer satisfaction rate (so it would stay private enough).

So maybe they could show the buyer satisfaction rate but only under certain conditions (eg. where the number of reviews in the time period meets a certain minimum and there's review(s) outside the window too so that any change in satisfaction rate won't obviously be from last buyer review). They might also be able to make it a bit more private by adding a small random change in it each day (so you could see the rough score but not the actual score). eg. the actual buyer satisfaction rate for the time period +/- a 10% (or whatever the best % would be) random amount.

Edited June 23, 2023 by uk1000

[donnovan86]

30 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

They probably don't want to show the private review scores / buyer satisfaction rate because then it wouldn't be private. Though if there were enough reviews over enough days then you probably couldn't tell which buyers caused the change in buyer satisfaction rate (so it would stay private enough).

 

What I want is a graph showing the timeline it covers and the current satisfaction rate score (which basically adds up everything and shows it in a nice graph). It's anonymous, it doesn't show any customer review, and it still offers a seller some insight into how they are doing. Right now I have to message my success manager whenever I want to know this, when they could just have a graph or maybe just a score (and a legend for interpreting that score). I am sure a lot of people would pay for Seller Plus just to have that...

[catwriter]

16 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

I am not sure if I remember this correctly, but I know when I started Fiverr was showing the cancellation rate on the profile page anyway.

 

It did, if it was 10% or higher.

But they later removed it, so I'm guessing they had their reasons.

[smashradio]

20 hours ago, newsmike said:

True. I am assuming that we have lost that and won't get it back. The good news is that this reversal totally negates the "Fiverr only cares about buyers," argument. Fiverr has sided with, and protected poor quality sellers, allowing them to shield from visibility, complaints which buyers deserve to know about prior to ordering. This reversal is definitely anti buyer.

It's anti buyer, but also anti-professional. Great sellers who manage to avoid cancellations for late deliveries or for leaving their buyers in the lurch would have benefited from this change. Subpar sellers would have faced even stiffer competition from genuine professionals. It all comes down to us sharing space with amateurs. By reverting its decision, Fiverr is effectively fostering mediocrity. 

20 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

 think this issue is affecting a lot of buyers to the point where Fiverr wanted to do something about it. 

A solution would be to never show those sellers to potential buyers in the first place. Tank their gig quality rate and get them off the platform. Problem solved. 

8 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

There are quite a lot of them since I had multiple buyers saying this to me. Plus I saw even more on the forum. There will always be sellers trying to game the system so even if they are implementing this cancellation thing, those that try to game the system will find a new way to do so. 

Yes, but then again, you do work in the extreme value-end of Fiverr with 5 - 10USD-gigs. In my experience, both sellers and buyers in that section of the marketplace will be less professional (not to put your work into question, but that's just my experience, generally speaking). 

-- 

Displaying the cancellation rate on a user's profile seems reasonable at first glance. But if you think about it, Fiverr shouldn't highlight why their sellers are bad. Instead, Fiverr should focus on only promoting great sellers. Smashing (pardon the pun) up a badge screaming "This buyer cancels a lot of orders" makes no sense from a marketing standpoint. Hiding that seller entirely makes much more sense, if those cancellations came from being consistently late, trying to sanitize reviews, or leaving their buyers hanging, which was the original idea behind the review change, to begin with. 

Personally, I think a much better solution is a similar one to how the misuse of the delivery button or low gig quality is measured via the revision button, asking the buyer why they needed a revision. 

 

 

 

[donnovan86]

20 minutes ago, smashradio said:

A solution would be to never show those sellers to potential buyers in the first place. Tank their gig quality rate and get them off the platform. Problem solved. 

8 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

Yes, but they eventually come back if they try to manipulate the system with fake reviews, as you can see there are a lot of sellers on the forum complaining that they got a warning or even ended up banned due to fake reviews... 

21 minutes ago, smashradio said:

Instead, Fiverr should focus on only promoting great sellers.

I think the reason why Fiverr is doing this is because many buyers want to leave a review when someone cancels orders and loses their time. They feel entitled to that, because that seller cost them quite a lot of money due to the time constraints. So I think that's why Fiverr wants to make cancellations public. 

I don't have a problem with that, since I always work very hard with a buyer and if we decide to cancel, it's usually mutual so the chances of having a very bad review from those cancellations should be low. But then again every person is unpredictable, there were times when I bent over backwards to help someone and they left me the worst possible review.

24 minutes ago, smashradio said:

Yes, but then again, you do work in the extreme value-end of Fiverr with 5 - 10USD-gigs. In my experience, both sellers and buyers in that section of the marketplace will be less professional (not to put your work into question, but that's just my experience, generally speaking). 

 

Well, the issue is that being a non-US resident hurts me a lot as a writer. A lot of people from the US that outsource charge more than me and people buy from them because they are US residents. It affects writers quite a bit, no matter what degree I have, if I don't have that US residency to show on Fiverr, a higher price deters people and it pushes them to US sellers. That being said, I saw quite a lot of sellers that are seemingly from the US, but they clearly use VPN, based on their timezone and other details. It is what it is, I've been here for a decade and I always kept the same price, but only this year I've started to see a huge drop in orders, impressions, revenue, you name it. 

But, we need to adapt. I like the platform and I've always adapted to changes. For me the biggest problem is this hidden buyer satisfaction rate, for months I've relied on regulars and I have no idea what buyer satisfaction rate I have, it doesn't appear anywhere. I don't expect them to release private review info, but having a graph, a score, whatever it is that shows our current buyer satisfaction rate and some tips to improve it would help a lot. If this is indeed the way you rank people, why not offer a transparent way to see your results and learn how to increase the BSR? Right now the only way to learn anything about that is to talk with the success manager. I will be honest, I don't feel ok emailing my success manager even once a month asking the same thing over and over. If they can see the BSR, then why not make it a Seller Plus feature so we can see it too... 

[smashradio]

13 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Yes, but they eventually come back if they try to manipulate the system with fake reviews, as you can see there are a lot of sellers on the forum complaining that they got a warning or even ended up banned due to fake reviews... 

There will always be some who try. 

13 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I think the reason why Fiverr is doing this is because many buyers want to leave a review when someone cancels orders and loses their time. They feel entitled to that, because that seller cost them quite a lot of money due to the time constraints. So I think that's why Fiverr wants to make cancellations public. 

I don't have a problem with that, since I always work very hard with a buyer and if we decide to cancel, it's usually mutual so the chances of having a very bad review from those cancellations should be low. But then again every person is unpredictable, there were times when I bent over backwards to help someone and they left me the worst possible review.

And I agree with you. I welcomed this change and was sad to see Fiverr caving, but it wasn't unexpected. The mob mentality was strong on this one.

But didn't Fiverr used to do this? I remember seeing "Cancelled order. Seller failed to deliver on time" as a review all the time. 

13 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Well, the issue is that being a non-US resident hurts me a lot as a writer. A lot of people from the US that outsource charge more than me and people buy from them because they are US residents. It affects writers quite a bit, no matter what degree I have, if I don't have that US residency to show on Fiverr, a higher price deters people and it pushes them to US sellers. That being said, I saw quite a lot of sellers that are seemingly from the US, but they clearly use VPN, based on their timezone and other details. It is what it is, I've been here for a decade and I always kept the same price, but only this year I've started to see a huge drop in orders, impressions, revenue, you name it. 

But, we need to adapt. I like the platform and I've always adapted to changes. For me the biggest problem is this hidden buyer satisfaction rate, for months I've relied on regulars and I have no idea what buyer satisfaction rate I have, it doesn't appear anywhere. I don't expect them to release private review info, but having a graph, a score, whatever it is that shows our current buyer satisfaction rate and some tips to improve it would help a lot. If this is indeed the way you rank people, why not offer a transparent way to see your results and learn how to increase the BSR? Right now the only way to learn anything about that is to talk with the success manager. I will be honest, I don't feel ok emailing my success manager even once a month asking the same thing over and over. If they can see the BSR, then why not make it a Seller Plus feature so we can see it too... 

I wasn't critiquing your strategy. I was simply making the point that there are more amateurs and bad buyers in the lower-price end of things. 

I get many jobs in Norwegian, even though my profile flag is Spain. Perhaps I'd receive more if it didn't, but I can certainly see how this is a problem. 

I agree we need more transparency, but it's difficult to show you a live graph without revealing who could have left negative reviews, so it would have to be an average over the past 60 or 90 days with a delay or something. It's a tough nut to crack, because revealing too much could seriously harm the promise of anonymity.

Fiverr does tell you how to increase the BSR, though: be honest, fantastic, quick, helpful, polite, over-deliver, keep buyers updated, ensure you're on the same page as your buyers before starting work, etc. Basically, give them an excellent and professional experience with as little friction as possible and make sure the delivery is of high quality. That's been my strategy all along, and it has worked. When my BSR dipped after my son was born (for obvious reasons) I had to work it back up again, and I did so by focusing even more on these things, taking a course in support to broaden my communication skills, and analyzing how I could make the experience even better for my buyers. I researched typical pain points for clients in my niches and identified areas I could "smooth out" for my buyers. Worked like a charm.

One problem with revealing too much is that it can help people manipulate the algorithm. Imagine if Google told SEO experts all their secrets. Look at what happened back in the old days when people realized that spamming a single page with keywords would get them to the top of the results overnight.  

Edited June 23, 2023 by smashradio

[donnovan86]

8 minutes ago, smashradio said:

One problem with revealing too much is that it can help people manipulate the algorithm.

I don't want to know exactly what Fiverr uses to rank sellers. What I want is the BSR score to be shown. So I can see it and understand if I made any progress or not. The current system of emailing my success manager where she tells me that there is a slight increase, slight decrease or whatever doesn't really work for me as I much prefer to see numbers. And I don't see a downside from the BSR score being shown solely to you if you have Seller Plus, for example. 

For me the main problem right now is that I have a severe lack of impressions and clicks on my gigs. I had a small influx of buyers for a week, and then it stopped. I didn't have any bad reviews for many months now and I have no idea what's wrong. Seeing the BSR score would at least give me an idea of how things are evolving, if I am going upward or downward. As I said, publicly everything is ok, so I shouldn't be pushed to the back, but either buyers randomly leave those private reviews for me or they don't leave them at all and only those that have anything bad to say do. Ever since March, things have been very bad for me sales-wise, and if anything I improved my customer experience and even offer some freebies when compared to last year for example. 

14 minutes ago, smashradio said:

I agree we need more transparency, but it's difficult to show you a live graph without revealing who could have left negative reviews, so it would have to be an average over the past 60 or 90 days with a delay or something.

I don't believe that a score between 1 and 100 would be an issue here. It doesn't show anything private, but it would allow you to track your progress and see if your strategy is working or not. Right now I am in the dark and have no idea if what I am doing is right or wrong. I am not the type of person to send emails to my success manager often, I don't want to bother people like that, so I try to limit my interaction with them knowing they are quite busy. But the current way of emailing or talking with the success manager just to see if there's an increase or decrease in the BSR doesn't work for me. As I said, showing a score makes it very easy to track that and since it covers 3 months or up to 6 months, you can't know who left a bad private review or when. Voila, privacy protection, and also a way to help sellers understand what's going on. As you said, offering great customer service, improving your communication, all these things help a lot. But when you do that, offer freebies and for some reason the BSR isn't budging at all, that makes things very questionable. At least that's the situation I am dealing with. 

Thank you for your insights and great posts as always, and my apologies for these long replies. I love to write, what can I say 😄

[newsmike]

2 hours ago, smashradio said:

Fiverr shouldn't highlight why their sellers are bad. Instead, Fiverr should focus on only promoting great sellers. Smashing (pardon the pun) up a badge screaming "This buyer cancels a lot of orders" makes no sense from a marketing standpoint. Hiding that seller entirely makes much more sense, if those cancellations came from being consistently late, trying to sanitize reviews, or leaving their buyers hanging, which was the original idea behind the review change, to begin with. 

Good point. Instead of a disclaimer on the menu that says, "NOTE: The line cook working meat tonight overcooks the steaks 55% of the time," the better decision is to get them out of the kitchen and hire experienced cooks.  

[smashradio]

9 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Good point. Instead of a disclaimer on the menu that says, "NOTE: The line cook working meat tonight overcooks the steaks 55% of the time," the better decision is to get them out of the kitchen and hire experienced cooks.  

Exactly. No restaurant owner in their right mind would hang a sign like that, scare customers, and ruin their brand by intentionally telling people the food sucks when it makes more sense to just fire the cook. 

Fiverr is taking baby steps in that direction, but it seems they're too afraid to push the button. They hide behind the "we want to promote transparency" argument, instead of just saying "This is the line. Cross it, and you're out". Opening up for reviews due to cancellations would have been a positive step, but a baby step nonetheless. 

[newsmike]

2 hours ago, smashradio said:

Fiverr is taking baby steps in that direction,

Imagine Rolex meeting:  "Sir, the people who sell counterfeit Chinese Rolex's for $15 at the Rome Termini are angry as hell about the laser etched QC code of authenticity on the back we were prepared to launch, so we're going to abandon it so as to not ruin their business. 

Elon, please buy Fiverr

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by newsmike

[shahidfreelanc]

I think it is good for real seller and fiverr reputation also. Some time we face few bad customer but don’t worry fiverr have enough data from buyer and seller they know good enough what have to do.

[charlsmcfarlane]

I’m very appreciative that Fiverr have listened to the feedback. I personally think this is a bad move and should be completely canned.

But… if it must exist, the implementation needs to be a lot more measured and equitable. At the very least, sellers should be able to give feedback following a cancellation too. When the feedback can only flow in one direction, by design – it isn’t a fair system.

To reiterate though, the empathy and receptive nature of this post is reassuring.

Thank you.