New Rating System is Punishing Sellers

[principalmike]

The new ratings system is a joke. As usual, Fiverr are making it harder for Sellers, especially the 'Value for Money' nonsense. Most people will not (and are not) leave 5-stars for this because human nature will always say. "It could have been cheaper". As a result, our ratings will drop, and many sellers will drop their prices, resulting in a race to the bottom. And how does this even help Fiverr? Their income will also drop as a result. Whoever came up with this idea should be sacked! Absolute joke.

[dianeofmusgrave]

9 hours ago, alliemadison12 said:

Same here!! I've had 2 cancellations in 2 years on a certain gig, both of which were accidental orders that weren't even activated and it explicitly states that these orders would not have an impact. It's got to be a bug. Please contact support to raise the issue!   If this particular metric is so clearly flawed and we can actually prove it, I can only imagine how some of the more subjective categories may be messed up. 

I did contact them and was told they checked and there has been no mistake so I don't know what to say honestly. Customer support has always been extremely limited in what they can do to help you. I think they must be running around in the background fielding a bunch of complaints from people. I don't think one or two people matter much to anyone. If we are lucky then enough people will complain but I don't think Fiverr cares about the individual much.  I will never survive on Fiverr with things the way they are. I have about 15 canceled orders because I teach and people buy a package of say four lessons sometimes they disappear halfway through the package or I have had some who have placed orders by mistake or I have had people place orders thinking the technology can do something it doesn't. With all of those I went through customer service and was assured there would be no impact but apparently it does now. I have never had bad blood or arguments of any kind. It's a little crazy that I can be sitting with over hundred 5 perfect stars but number 6 success score. 

[narubi]

20 hours ago, provoiceworks said:

Communication is a factor weighing in on my metrics....

I don't need to communicate if I have all the information. It's like fiverr expects us to have full conversation with clients bout their order, their day, their feelings, their dogs feeling....like come on!

Time is money, I don't need to waste time communicating if I have the info I need and can get to work.

Ha Ha Ha you said it Perfectly.
I have the same issue even though I am super talkative with my clients. I chatted with 8 out of 10 about how they are and about their feelings. we even share our emotions and give our consolation sometime..... but still, I am lacking in communication in this system.

[mytivile]

I'm with you 100% the new review system is very bad. IMO 

Edited February 28 by mytivile

[eclixo]

On 2/13/2024 at 5:36 PM, emmaki said:

I still think the best way to handle this would be to clear the system and have everyone start from scratch. Leave the old reviews (remove the ratings) and get rid of levels. Fiverr has enough tiered marketplaces (regular, pro, enterprise, certified) for different groups of sellers / buyer segmentation so far as seller badges are concerned. 

Have an interim period of idk 2-3 months for the dust to settle and give sellers time to collect new reviews. Will they all still be 5 star reviews? Yes, probably. Is this a well-thought out review system? No! But it has the benefit of being fair and simple while giving the system a much-needed reboot away from gamification and bolted-on AI daily performance reviews. 

It seems the only way to solve the 5-star review issue is with a transparently confusing system designed to knock reviews down a notch or two and some little white lies. But just as my solution only solves the problem I don't like, Fiverr's solution only solves the problem it doesn't like while being a terrible new feature for all of its users. 

Here's a post from Reddit today. I bet that seller is full of the joys of spring...

The whole system Fiverr has constructed makes zero consideration for user error on that front. But tbf that's probably asking a bit much. If only buyers would get a "did you forget to finish your review?" email to go with the mountains of other emails they get. Of course, such a feature would be wide open to abuse by sellers with an army of sadly, but conveniently, recently deceased grannies behind them.

And there you have the crux of it: Fiverr really is punishing its entire userbase for the behavior of its worst sellers. Because it saves them time and money and they know they can get away with it - for now. If I had to choose a word, I would choose "brazen" over "transparent". 

There is another simple solution, instead of putting emojies or stupid colors, simple use stars and let people know that its not a feedback but a rating mechanism.

Edited February 28 by eclixo

[lalitsdmittal]

I got a direct order from a client, His requirements were different from the order he made. I told him about this and he said he ordered by mistake, he wanted to order the premium package and asked to cancel the order to reorder again.

So we cancel the order, but he never order back. I told the fiverr support about this, so they removed this cancellation from my stats. But the score dropped 1 point down.

[Alex.M]

On 2/14/2024 at 5:55 PM, russflex said:

They will put 5 stars for Quality of Delivery but then 4 stars for Seller Communication or Value of Money. It's ridiculous. 

they are not doing that on purpose , the system is confusing for them 

 

  

1 hour ago, eclixo said:

instead of putting emojies or stupid colors,

completely agree ... the emojis are stupid

  

6 hours ago, mytivile said:

I'm with you 100% the new review system is very bad. IMO 

It wouldn't be bad with some changes, we discussed on a different thread about this.

[eclixo]

5 hours ago, lalitsdmittal said:

I got a direct order from a client, His requirements were different from the order he made. I told him about this and he said he ordered by mistake, he wanted to order the premium package and asked to cancel the order to reorder again.

So we cancel the order, but he never order back. I told the fiverr support about this, so they removed this cancellation from my stats. But the score dropped 1 point down.

They were doing this all the time, they kept us in dark by fixing our stats but the impact on gig was always there. That's why the success score is so low for many top rated and 2nd level sellers

[phanduy]

1 more great review (even tipped) with 4 stars rating, amazing!!!!!

[carineb]

26 minutes ago, phanduy said:

1 more great review (even tipped) with 4 stars rating, amazing!!!!!

The more I see this kind of reviews, the less I feel like I belong here.
I can't help but think of those childish smileys and the junky with red stars in their eyes!
It's exceptional... but not in a good way!!!

I think the best thing to do is for Fiverr to stop asking for client reviews and for Fiverr AI to assign ratings arbitrarily. It wouldn't be any more ridiculous!

[lalitsdmittal]

7 hours ago, eclixo said:

They were doing this all the time, they kept us in dark by fixing our stats but the impact on gig was always there. That's why the success score is so low for many top rated and 2nd level sellers

I agree.

[bleszen]

 

Even though Fiverr changed from "Value of Money" to "Value of Delivery," buyers still perceive this option as a review for the Fiverr service rather than the seller's service. Consequently, I've received numerous negative ratings under the new rating system, and I'm not sure why Fiverr doesn't offer the option to review the seller and Fiverr service separately.

 

[bigdaddykoehn]

I'm not happy with the new rating system at all. I've received all five star ratings (minus one person that rated me a 5 overall, but a 4 for recommend to s friend), but that isn't good enough. It's very confusing. 

Edited March 14 by bigdaddykoehn
Clarity

[bigdaddykoehn]

On 2/28/2024 at 3:06 AM, lalitsdmittal said:

I got a direct order from a client, His requirements were different from the order he made. I told him about this and he said he ordered by mistake, he wanted to order the premium package and asked to cancel the order to reorder again.

So we cancel the order, but he never order back. I told the fiverr support about this, so they removed this cancellation from my stats. But the score dropped 1 point down.

Wow. I didn't realize that these still affected these new stats. Fiverr always promised that they'd be removed. I have to cancel about 15% of my orders due to scammers trying to get me to do something totally unrelated. Fiverr is broken. 

[dade_tilellit]

On 2/28/2024 at 9:06 AM, lalitsdmittal said:

I got a direct order from a client, His requirements were different from the order he made. I told him about this and he said he ordered by mistake, he wanted to order the premium package and asked to cancel the order to reorder again.

So we cancel the order, but he never order back. I told the fiverr support about this, so they removed this cancellation from my stats. But the score dropped 1 point down.

Welcome to my world, all my ratings screwed because after years in Fiverr 1 client was completely mistaken and we gently agree to cancel the order (I dont want their money for actually not doing anything other than wasting my time).

I mostly have returning clients. They are extremely grateful to work with me and even recommend me to friends. All 5 starts, etc. But hey... success score: 6 🤣

I'm not that affected because in my case Fiverr is for side jobs, but this is hilarious at best.

But hey, is their platform, and they can screw it as much and long they want to I guess. Good luck everyone!

[dereck_s]

On 2/13/2024 at 3:18 AM, milos_siena said:

Not sure where all this is going, but it surely gives injustice to a lot of sellers. Ok even before a buyer not thinking much could give you 3-4 stars,  just to sign off the feature. But this value-for-money thing can have long-term consequences - a buyer accepted the order,  so did the price,  and now he has the option to judge whether it was pricy. Nowadays I get complaints from de-ranked people, and I can't even find what was the cause. And to my opinion, the "rehabilitation" period lasts too long. 

I absolutely agree. You get 100 happy customers and everything is going great and then randomly you get one buyer who says they're happy but then leaves a bad review instead of asking for changes and you're down for weeks over 1 buyer.

Whatever happened to a warning or a chance to defend myself? I'm just screwed for weeks because BigDfan1984 says I should be and I have no say or protection? This makes me think of buyers as the enemy! As something I need to be concerned about and protect myself from. There's no Malice here on my end. I'm always polite, I always overdeliver, I offer design support for life, and I would never make a buyer pay for a design he didn't tell me he liked. 

In my opinion If you get a bad review (public or private) you should get a warning and the ability to have someone look it over to determine if it was justified. Get 2-3 warnings in a set amount of time then punish me.

[aminul_design]

following

[karyface1]

Fiverr will lose a lot of sellers, I'm pretty sure about it

[enekoviolin]

On 2/14/2024 at 9:06 PM, provoiceworks said:

I have been on here 10+ years. 8+ of them I was Top Rated Seller until 8 months ago when they rolled out new changes. Demoted to Lvl 2 for no reason and support couldn't give me any input on it either.

I am on a similar situation I went down to level 1 with a success score of 6. I have been active in fiverr since 2014, 10 years (with some stops), made 660 orders and I mantain a 4,9 rating all time (553 reviews).  My only hypotesis is that all-time reviews/orders and cancelled orders are taking into account. I have readed some sellers with similar problem or situation, is there something we can do to demonstrate our annoyance and displeasure with this level system and specially the success score metric? Did fiverr say something about all the injureds we were?

[smartdezigns]

3 minutes ago, enekoviolin said:

My only hypotesis is that all-time reviews/orders and cancelled orders are taking into account.

You forgot to mention Private Reviews which are also a part of success scores. 

[enekoviolin]

1 minute ago, smartdezigns said:

You forgot to mention Private Reviews which are also a part of success scores. 

Yes, you are right, but from 660 orders, 553 had a public review, which is a lot. And on the last two years nearly the 90% of the orders were publically reviewed with the next puntuations:

In 2024 24 orders, 0 cancelled, all the public reviews: 5,0
In 2023 77 orders, 3 cancelled, all the public reviews: 5,0 except two 4,7.

If the success score doesn't take the whole order history, doesn't make sense to me to have a 6 success score.

[smartdezigns]

Just now, enekoviolin said:

Yes, you are right, but from 660 orders, 553 had a public review, which is a lot. And on the last two years nearly the 90% of the orders were publically reviewed with the next puntuations

Don't focus only on public reviews. Private reviews have more weightage than the public reviews which is why you have very less success scores and the performance of your last 2 years are actually being measured in success scores. We, the sellers really don't know that what actually is being considered to measure the success scores. There are some other parameters too which we have no idea about them.

I have joined in the same month and year like you but everything is full yet i.e. 10 overall success score (not gig's), 100% response rate and 5% ratings etc. but I am still confused that how the gig's scores are being measured. Funny thing is that my 2nd best selling gig has 9 score but it has a client satisfaction = negative impact.. How strange it is.. 

 

[donnovan86]

28 minutes ago, smartdezigns said:

Funny thing is that my 2nd best selling gig has 9 score but it has a client satisfaction = negative impact.. How strange it is.. 

I have a gig with no negative reviews since its inception, success score of 9, when the new level system was implemented it had a negative impact for client satisfaction. It changed (without any orders since the last order was 2 months ago, and the one before than around 4-5 months ago) to strong negative impact. But there were no reviews or even private reviews, because the review window was long gone when this changed. Anyway.. I choose to just deliver the best work I can and not think about stuff that's not under my control. Because at this point.. it's not like it will make a difference.

[smartdezigns]

18 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I choose to just deliver the best work I can and not think about stuff that's not under my control. Because at this point.. it's not like it will make a difference.

I am doing the same like I am not focusing on how to improve each gig's score. Just letting Fiverr to play with it. These days, I am more focusing on delivering quality services same like you.. But still I wanted to know how is everything being measured in success scores. It's become a strong headache for me but have to let it go. 

[priyank_mod]

18 minutes ago, smartdezigns said:

But still I wanted to know how is everything being measured in success scores. It's become a strong headache for me but have to let it go. 

 

The natural and instinctive human urge to have the visibility and control over things can actually become a headache. Everyday when we look around, we see so many sellers turning up on the forum screaming... "I demand transparency from Fiverr!!" 🤦‍♂️ Alot of these demanding sellers are actually quite delusional about the power-equation between sellers & the platform. 🫠

 

But just picture this - Imagine they release a list of 150 data points that the success score is based on and each has variable weightage, and they are all interdependent too (when impact of one data point decreases, another one gains weightage and impact). And they all operate in unison with interdependent triggers. Once we know these data points - our mind, focus and energy will be ALL focused on managing them and their effect - plus throw in the stress of ongoing orders, whims of buyers, imminent private reviews and cancellations into the mix. It will actually drive us nutssss!!!! 😂

 

We will all get caught in 

 

 

So its better for our own good that we don't know how the success score works and can ONLY focus on what we have been doing since always - communicate well and deliver good work which meets/exceeds the brief. 😇