Warning: abusing the delivery button

[technase]

I am a level two seller on Fiverr and I've been working on this platform for almost three years without issues until now. A client initially satisfied with my work on his website returned for a new website, and despite additional requests during development, I completed the work and delivered it. He happily accept the delivery.  
Yesterday, three weeks post-delivery acceptance, he requested additional work. Despite completing it out of courtesy, the client faced an issue: he couldn't see the main menu on his website due to excessive browser zoom (instead of the main menu at the top, all he could see was a menu drawer like you see on a mobile version of the website). I explained the solution – to zoom out slightly – but he struggled to grasp this, consistently blaming me for an incomplete website despite earlier acceptance. To make sure there was no issue in the website I shared the link with more than 20 of my friends and asked them to send me screenshots. And as expected everything was working fine but the client kept calling me fraud and was very rude and unprofessional. 
I contacted Fiverr support to ask for assistance regarding the behavior of the client, but my request went unanswered. Today, I received a warning from Fiverr, and it is highly likely that the same client reported me. I find it unjust that Fiverr provides significant leverage to buyers, potentially enabling them to intimidate sellers in doing free work. This situation worries me about refusing additional unpaid work from clients because as far as I know there are three strikes and its out. 

What would you suggest I do in this scenario?

[donnovan86]

31 minutes ago, technase said:

What would you suggest I do in this scenario?

 

Right now there's nothing you can do.

An option is to send the work ahead of the delivery, so have a much longer delivery time. Send it before the delivery and if you see the person abusing the system, asking for work and so on, just refund and then block them. This way, you prevent any possible warning, although you will be losing all the money for that order.

Another thing you can do is to also send stuff ahead of the delivery, make any changes or stuff that they want, and only when they say it's ok, mark the order as delivered. 

All these things rely on the idea that you go for a longer deadline and you deliver well ahead of time. If the client marks stuff as complete without checking, when they do eventually check and stuff doesn't work.. that becomes an issue and you saw how it ended. Anyway, these are a few ideas I had, hopefully they will help you.

[technase]

Thank you for your suggestion. I think option 1 is a good idea, especially when you notice red flags, as I did in this particular order. Canceling the order is more convenient than dealing with stress and receiving warnings. 

As a practice, I always share the completed work three to five days prior to the actual delivery date. This allows me enough time if the client needs anything changed. And I did the same with this order. I shared screenshots of all the pages with the client and he asked for minor changes, made the requested changes, shared the revised screenshots, and he was satisfied with it, and then I delivered the order which he accepted.

I also talked with Fiverr support, and they said I got a warning because I abused the Delivery button. They mentioned I didn't add screenshots of the finished work when delivering an order. I've completed almost 100 orders, and I usually don't add screenshots because most of my clients are returning clients, and attaching the same website again and again doesn't make sense. I only include screenshots of very specific work because it's also featured in the gig pictures.

I'm not sure if not including screenshots in the delivery violates the Terms of Service and results in a warning. Do you have any information on this ?

 

Edited January 7 by technase

[donnovan86]

53 minutes ago, technase said:

I'm not sure if not including screenshots in the delivery violates the Terms of Service and results in a warning. Do you have any information on this ?

 

Obviously it depends on the niche. As a writer, I don't need to add screenshots because the work is there, in the attachment. But when you don't have the work in the attachment, having screenshots showing it was done according to the customer guidelines should help. So yeah, learn from this and include screenshots when you are dealing with new clients. I assume older clients don't care, but clearly new ones do. And as I said, delivering ahead of time and having a longer delivery time will help you too. That way you can see if the customer is problematic and handle the order accordingly. Or if they have anything to modify, you can learn and change accordingly.

[wayne_mt]

On 1/6/2024 at 3:28 PM, technase said:

three weeks post-delivery acceptance, he requested additional work. Despite completing it out of courtesy,

After the order was completed how did you deliver the first free revision? The additional work, was it posted in the client message inbox and not an order? Also, how would it work in your niche, to offer a revision request extra. For example, how can a client can purchase a gig at any time to make changes to there original order?

[stinekoch]

I am in a similar situation and unfortunately, Fiverr doesn't help. I also made a post about it a couple of days ago 😅