Abysmal customer support

[a_zukovs]

For context - I am a quality assurance engineer in my day job, doing test automation for 8h a day for the last 5 years. I came here to provide the exact same service as a side gig.

Created my profile and worked on creating a gig - to be specific, doing test automation using Java/Selenium in basic tier, and higher tier being work on complete projects from scratch. It's important to note, that there are multiple gigs already there that are talking about exactly the same service, what I posted was nothing new.

However, my gig was denied. The problem is, there were no specifics provided whatsoever. Apparently my gig was "prohibited by our Community Standards". Which doesn't make any sense, but fine, contacted customer support to create a ticket. You can probably already guess that customer support just falls back on "Community Standards" and nothing can be done, but I'm welcome to create a new gig.

I responded asking for specifics, why my gig was denied when others providing the exact same service is apparently OK. Got completely ghosted, ticket remains open without any response for 2 days.

Fine, I figured then I will just create a new one instead and I suppose I can try to check what others write in description, maybe I've used some prohibited terms or something... Except... My seller profile has been denied as well? Without any information whatsoever? So even the customer support flat out lied that I can create a new gig, because I've been denied from doing that.

How is this kind of practice in any way acceptable? Denying gigs and whole seller profiles without any information, completely ghosting on support tickets and flat out providing false information even when a response is given. 

[a_zukovs]

I will update this topic as well, since the situation has changed since I posted it.

So, originally the only response was that "This Gig was denied and is not eligible to be restored. However, you're welcome to create a new Gig that is in line with our guidelines.".

4 days later I got a response where "I've made sure to investigate the situation and can see that your gig X is denied because you are offering prohibited services", which is saying the exact same thing as the first response, even though I kept asking for clarification. After providing 3 examples of other gigs with the same service I'm proposing they decided to approve my gig anyway. A whole week later. And even then it took an additional day of back and forth with the customer support to get my seller profile approved as well, otherwise I couldn't do anything with my gigs.

They never bothered to answer what was it that caused a gig and the whole seller profile to be denied in the first place. They contradict each other where one person says my gig can't be approved and I should make a new gig, which turned to be completely false in both points. And it took 4 different persons (at least judging by responses to ticket, I assume each person has their own account) to actually look at what happened and fix the situation.

I don't know where could I escalate this to, but this kind of customer support is horrendous. 

[alexamolander]

I really feel with you. You are not alone. I have similar experiences and I have colleagues who have been treated the same way by Fiverr. 
Denied to become a seller even, for a brand new account. Verified, all information correct, professional past and experience, only to be met by the wall of copy pasted answers and refusing to state why the account is banned. It seems they are free to do as they want. 

I do wonder if this goes higher up, I doubt the management at Fiverr are aware that support and daily moderating have been hijacked by incompetent and ill willed fools, because that is the best way to describe Fiverr support. Trying to reason with these power abusing tools is really the closest I've come to a living out a kafka novel. Speaking out about it is probably only going to make it worse but I think it is important that we make our voices heard so that maybe there will be a change in the future.

[a_zukovs]

Well, at least in my experience so far, more often than not these kinds of interactions is never really what anyone wants. Instead, it's a problem that arises higher up with unreasonable workload and expectations form management causes people to get rid of tickets as fast as they possibly can, so they don't get fired. 

The customer support personnel itself is rarely at fault, I don't blame them here either. I have no idea who would I need to talk to otherwise anyway.

[alexamolander]

5 hours ago, a_zukovs said:

The customer support personnel itself is rarely at fault, I don't blame them here either. I have no idea who would I need to talk to otherwise anyway.

You might as well talk to a wall. All they do is copy paste some standard lorem ipsum text, mark the ticket as solved. If you keep asking they will tell you to stop asking, basically telling you to shut up, if you persist, they will mess with you, remove you from search results etc. 

I would definitely say that they are at fault. I am sure there is a policy where they are expected to solve the tickets fast, but this is their job, this is what they get paid for. There is no excuse for how Fiverr support is acting. 

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, alexamolander said:

All they do is copy paste some standard lorem ipsum text, mark the ticket as solved. If you keep asking they will tell you to stop asking, basically telling you to shut up, if you persist, they will mess with you, remove you from search results etc. 

I started working on Fiverr 10 years ago and I never had my ticket marked as solved or anything like that. All my issues were solved. It also matters the issue at hand, if you are at fault, etc. Fiverr support doesn't have control over the algorithm so they can't remove you from search.