Account Flagged for Feedback Boosting Violation

[mpb0707]

Hello all, I've been dealing with a strange and concerning issue in which my account has been repeatedly hit by false "Feedback Boosting Violations" since June of 2023. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this.

To introduce myself, I am a Level 2 seller who has been providing proofreading services here on Fiverr since 2013. I've completed over 4,600 orders over the last 10 years and currently have just shy of 2,000 reviews.

I received the first of these warnings on June 16th. The message is always the same: "Our rating and Seller leveling system are a fundamental part in building and maintaining a trusted marketplace. Your account has been flagged for purchasing or selling with the intent to falsely increase ratings and/or levels."

After contacting the folks at Customer Support and politely asking them to review the situation, they "forwarded my inquiry to the relevent team", determined that the warning was issued by mistake, and removed it from my account.

This same process repeated on June 21st and September 28th. Both of those warnings were evaluated and determined to be mistakes. In all three circumstances, the Customer Support reps were very friendly and apologetic for the error.

On October 4th, I received a 4th warning with the same "Feedback Boosting Violation" notice. As always, I reached out to Customer Support and explained the situation as well as my history with this issue. But this time, they informed me that the warning was "found to be valid by the relevant team and will remain unchanged." I politely asked if a second review could be conducted, which the rep did escalate for me. Unfortunately, the review came back once again saying that the warning would remain on my account as "the order in question violates our Terms of Service regarding abusing our product tools to boost your account’s reviews and ratings."

I inquired about the order in question, but was told: "While I wish I could provide you with your requested information but unfortunately,  details of the account review are done by the relevant team and are proprietary to Fiverr, which is the reason it cannot be shared with the users."

I even offered to provide all my deliverables to Customer Service from the prior week, which include Track Changes, showing that actual work was completed on my end. However, when I asked them to forward this info to the relevant team, they responded by saying: "As this decision has been taken by the relevant team so we as customer service cannot make any difference or make any influence over their decision since they are final."

Pretty much, I seem to have hit a dead end in terms of receiving assistance from the Customer Service team. (Though it does seem to be out of their hands.) I'm curious if anyone else has dealt with these repeated warnings being given in error and if there is any remedy beyond what I have already tried. It goes without saying that I have never engaged in any conduct that could be deemed as trying to falsely increase my ratings.

My main concern is that if this happened to me 4 times in the last 4 months, the chances that it may happen again are quite high, which would lead to the suspension of my account. Any advice is appreciated!

[lacroix88]

Hi, this happened to me too, but some things are different.

I received 2 similar violations, after many emails and days I was told which buyer according to them I would have used to boost my reviews, obviously  it's absolutely false but they never fixed this.

 

You should check the warning  here  , https://www.fiverr.com/support_tickets/account-and-security/account-issue/got-warning 

[mpb0707]

Thanks for your response! Sorry to hear that the same situation happened to you. I hope that your account is still in good standing.

Maybe I can try to contact support via email and see if they will at least let me know which buyer they think I am working with to "boost my reviews". 

[michmikaia]

51 minutes ago, mpb0707 said:

Thanks for your response! Sorry to hear that the same situation happened to you. I hope that your account is still in good standing.

Maybe I can try to contact support via email and see if they will at least let me know which buyer they think I am working with to "boost my reviews". 

Hi.

I have seen someone who claimed about the same issue recently. This person get the same warning. And after seeing his profile, he got repeated review quite with the same buyer and with the same review. Kind of copy paste review. I notice also something quite similar on your review. And I think that's the reason why Fiverr pretended it as a review manipulation.

Apart from talking to the CS and explain to them the real situation, I would suggest you if possible to gather all the tasks from one buyer as one offer or create a milestone offers. Just to avoid this kind of issue in the future.

[mpb0707]

@michmikaia Thanks for your response. This certainly makes sense in my case as I work with a lot of repeat buyers, some of whom definitely do seem to leave the same standard review for my services when I complete a gig. I appreciate the insight here, as this could be something that triggered the automated system to flag my account.

[mpb0707]

Hello all, I wanted to share my recent experience in case anyone is going through something similar. I know that while I was going through this situation, I found a lot of useful information here on the forum that helped me deal with the issue. It’s a bit of a long read, but I hope you find some value in this post.

I'm been a seller here on Fiverr for close to 10 years. Since June of 2023, my account has been repeatedly hit by false “Feedback Boosting Violations”.

I received the first of these warnings on June 16th. The message is as follows: 

Quote

“Our rating and seller leveling system are a fundamental part in building and maintaining a trusted marketplace. Your account has been flagged for purchasing or selling with the intent to falsely increase ratings and/or levels.”

After contacting the folks at Customer Support and politely asking them to review the situation, they “forwarded my inquiry to the relevant team”. Ultimately, the team determined that the warning was issued by mistake and removed it from my account.

I received another warning in June, and then a third in September. I went through the same process in both cases. Both of those warnings were evaluated and also determined to be mistakes. In all three circumstances, the Customer Support reps were very friendly and apologetic for the error.

In early October, I received a fourth warning with the same “Feedback Boosting Violation” notice. As always, I reached out to Customer Support and explained the situation as well as my history with this issue. But this time, they informed me that the warning was “found to be valid by the relevant team and will remain unchanged.” I asked if a second review could be conducted. Unfortunately, the rep came back once again saying that the warning would remain on my account as “the order in question violates our Terms of Service regarding abusing our product tools to boost your account’s reviews and ratings.”

I inquired about the order in question, but was told: 

Quote

“While I wish I could provide you with your requested information but unfortunately,  details of the account review are done by the relevant team and are proprietary to Fiverr, which is the reason it cannot be shared with the users.”

I even offered to provide all my deliverables to Customer Service from the prior week, showing that actual work was completed on my end. However, when I asked them to forward this info to the relevant team, they responded by saying: 

Quote

“This decision has been taken by the relevant team so we as customer service cannot make any difference or make any influence over their decision since they are final.”

At this point, I was quite concerned that I could be hit with another one of these false warnings and my account could be suspended out of nowhere. I had a few sleepless nights during which I wondered about my future on the platform. I wrote about my situation on the forum and heard back from a couple sellers who experienced similar problems. Some users suggested that repeat buyers leaving the same review for multiple orders in a row may have triggered Fiverr’s automatic flagging process.

Ultimately, I decided to reach out to Customer Support again. This time on a new ticket. Once again, I politely explained my situation and my history with the false warnings. But instead of asking the team to remove the warning, I asked them for more information on the violation. Specifically, I asked if it was possible that a repeat buyer leaving an identical review on multiple orders may have triggered the warning.

The response was disappointing and seemed to ignore my core question: 

Quote

“After checking this further with our relevant team, they made a decision that the warning will remain on it after all. That being the case here, just make sure to follow our guidelines from now on and you will be all set. Keep in mind that we can't change this decision as it was made by our relevant team.”

Around this time, I also reached out to one of the moderators here on the forum to explain my situation and see if they could put me in touch with someone from the mysterious “relevant team”. The moderator said they would look into it, but would need some time to gather the details.

For a couple days, I continued to search for solutions to my situation, which seemed hopeless. I came across the YouTube channel of Joel Young, a top-rated seller here on Fiverr. In one of his videos, he spoke about receiving warnings on Fiverr and how the most important thing is to clarify why you received the violation by speaking with Customer Support. After all, you can’t learn from a mistake if you don’t know what your mistake was.

While I was certain that the warning was issued in error by some sort of automated system (as all of my orders were legitimate and I had never asked a buyer to leave a review), I figured that it would be worth trying this approach.

So, I reached out to Customer Support again and asked: 

Quote

“Would it be possible to get clarification on what led me to receive this warning? Was there a certain order that was flagged? Anything that I wrote in a message? Is there a certain client I should avoid working with? I just want to ensure that I understand why the warning was issued. Thank you!”

Again, I received a cookie-cutter response: 

Quote

“I understand that you would like further clarification of the reason that caused you to receive this warning. Upon checking this I see that your account was flagged for purchasing or selling with the intent to falsely increase ratings and/or levels. Although I am not able to provide many details I would like to mention that all reviews on Fiverr, must come from legitimate sales and user experiences.”

I pushed back once again: 

Quote

“I’m just a bit confused over the fact that I cannot receive any additional details on which order triggered the warning. If one of my reviews was not from a legitimate sale, please let me know which one it was. I can provide proof of my work for every order I have ever completed here on Fiverr. Thank you!”

Finally, the Customer Support rep let me know which of my orders led to my account being flagged. Apparently, the review on that order “violates our Terms of Service regarding abusing our product tools to boost your account’s reviews and ratings. All reviews must come from legitimate sales, therefore this warning will remain.”

I was glad to finally have some clarity on the situation after several days of being in the dark. So, I went to look at the order in question to see if maybe something about the review looked suspicious. It ended up being an order from a repeat client who purchases my services once every month or so. But the most interesting part was that this buyer doesn’t leave reviews. And, in fact, the buyer did not leave a review on the flagged order!

So, after finding out that the warning was issued for a fake review on an order that didn’t have a review, I reached out to Customer Support once again: 

Quote

“Thank you so much for providing info on the order in question. I really appreciate that as it gives me more information about the situation. Upon looking into Order ###, I see that it is from a repeat client who I have been working with for many years. Furthermore, the client did not leave a review for Order ###. I would appreciate some clarity on how this order violates the ToS regarding my account’s reviews and ratings if the client in question did not leave a review. Thank you again for your time.”

This time, I received an outright rude response: 

Quote

“As we already explained, the warning will not be removed, after a careful review of your overall account and we are not able to provide any further information. This is our team's final decision and further inquiries about this will be met with the same response. Hope this was a bit more clear this time.”

At this point, I pretty much gave up on getting any additional clarity. It seemed as though the warning had been issued completely by mistake, but the Fiverr Customer Support team was not interested in helping to fix the situation. I decided that I would continue my business on the platform as usual until the inevitable time that I would wake up in the morning to another false warning that would shutter my account for good.

The next day, I woke up to an email from Customer Support. When I logged in to my account, there was a new support request active—one that I had not initiated. Instead of reading “Open” or “Solved”, the status read “Awaiting Your Response”.

I opened up this new support request and saw that it was from a Fiverr Customer Support Supervisor. He said that he heard I was concerned about the warning on my account and wanted to provide some additional details for me. He provided the basic outline of what “Feedback Boosting” means and how the warning system works on Fiverr. He was very polite, but still didn’t provide me with the information I was seeking.

Despite feeling exhausted from being told the same info various times by different reps, I responded with the following: 

Quote

“Thank you so much for reaching out. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me and outline this information. As you said, the "purpose of warnings is to educate and raise awareness of the do's and don'ts on our platform." So, I would like to understand the specifics of what actions I took to receive this warning. I was informed by Customer Support that Order ### caused my account to be flagged. My concerns are as follows: (1) For the order in question, the client did not leave a review for my services. (2) I rendered the services described in my gig and delivered the edited document with proof of my work in a Track Changes document. (3) At no point did I request the customer to leave me a review (positive or otherwise). Please let me know if I am mistaken about something about this situation. Thank you so much! Once again, I appreciate your time.”

I didn’t hear back for another full day, but to my surprise, the Supervisor wrote back explaining that he took the time to gather all the appropriate information from my account in order to write a message to the “relevant department” that explained my situation. As a result, they conducted a thorough evaluation of my account and removed the warning!

It was an incredible relief and I was beyond grateful for this Supervisor, who reached out to me unexpectedly and went above and beyond to make sure the situation was handled. It also seems like the Forum Moderator who I direct messaged may have let him know about what was going on with my account. In the end, the Fiverr team made sure that the error was corrected!

Ultimately, this situation left me with a few takeaways:

(1)    Most of the Fiverr Customer Support reps are incredibly polite and helpful. After all, they handled my first three false warnings immediately and apologized for any inconvenience. The Forum Moderator and the CS Supervisor both went out of their way to ensure that I received help for the fourth warning. So, despite the hiccups and one somewhat-rude rep, I am very satisfied with the outcome and appreciative of the work the team put in to help me.

(2)    Always remain calm and polite when reaching out to Customer Support. There were definitely a few times throughout the course of this saga that I wanted to throw my computer through the wall, but I always tried to keep things professional and succinct when writing to the support team.

(3)    If you really didn’t do anything to violate the ToS, then Fiverr will ultimately take the right steps to help you remove any false warnings.

(4)    It never hurts to ask for clarification about a warning (even if you have to ask multiple different people). After all, you can’t learn from a mistake if you don’t know what your mistake was.

TLDR: I’ve been receiving false warnings for “feedback boosting” (asking buyers to leave fake reviews). After going through a lot of hoops, the Fiverr CS team went above and beyond to help fix the situation.

[mpb0707]

UPDATE: Customer Support was able to assist and remove the false warning from my account.

 

[michmikaia]

Ultimately. I hope you feel relieved now

[mpb0707]

@michmikaia Thank you! I definitely do. 🙂

[rabihumakhan]

This is a great news. Congrats. I myself learned several new things from this post about how to reach out to cs and how to push them again and again to take the corrective measures if you did nothing wrong. 

 

I hope you feel relaxed now. 

[uk1000]

2 hours ago, mpb0707 said:

I was glad to finally have some clarity on the situation after several days of being in the dark. So, I went to look at the order in question to see if maybe something about the review looked suspicious. It ended up being an order from a repeat client who purchases my services once every month or so. But the most interesting part was that this buyer doesn’t leave reviews. And, in fact, the buyer did not leave a review on the flagged order!

Did you try to see if there anything else different about the order that might have made the system flag it? eg. did you deliver it in an unusually fast time after the order was made?

[mpb0707]

@rabihumakhan Thank you! Glad that my post helped to provide some info!

[mpb0707]

@uk1000 That's a great question. I did try to determine if there was anything about the order that may have triggered the flag, but I couldn't find anything out the ordinary. To make matters even more confusing, one of the false warnings I received at the end of June was issued while I had been on vacation for over a week and had not even received any orders. I hope Fiverr offers a bit more transparency on this process in the future.