Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[williambryan392]

2 hours ago, zerlina84 said:

I just ignore and reply like I didn’t notice the wrong name

I shouldn't but I allow it to annoy me, I reply saying I think you messaged the wrong person and I hope so and so can help you out

[antimadubstep]

20 hours ago, mandyzines said:

Did you have a bundle of orders that concluded without reviews and/or auto-completed prior to the drop off?

A few if I remember. But all started when I've updated my thumbnail (first time after 4 years) + increased 10$ on my gigs. Then I had 1 order cancellation (from CS -buyer place the order on the wrong gig-) so i thought I was safe. NOPE.
After 2 weeks I had to drop my rates again since i thought that was the main issue.
And now I'm here. Doing slightly better but definitely not as months like Jan, Dec or Nov.

Maybe I decided to update my gigs at the wrong time, but this is SO weird. Never happened to me until this new update

[newsmike]

17 hours ago, arianelaurent said:

Plus, the "sort by" function made no apparent sense to me (how can one of the best-selling gigs have around 20 reviews)... 

This has never functioned properly. For years you have been able to go to a vertical and select "sort by best selling" and get a random set of gigs, some brand new with 5 career sales next to people with 1k+.  It feels like the team who designed the UI was instructed to have a "best seller" filter, while the dev team who wrote the code were told to just rotate everyone randomly.  

Edited March 21 by newsmike

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, newsmike said:

For years you have been able to go to a vertical and select "sort by best selling" and get a random set of gigs, some brand new with 5 career sales next to people with 1k+.

I mean for writing it sort of works, because if you check based on the number of orders in queue, most of those gigs listed as best-selling do have quite a lot of work already purchased. But it's definitely not based on completed orders or at least it doesn't seem like it to me. And they do throw a level 1 or no level seller in there too, in between level 2, TRS and Pro sellers.

[newsmike]

41 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I mean for writing it sort of works, because if you check based on the number of orders in queue, most of those gigs listed as best-selling do have quite a lot of work already purchased. But it's definitely not based on completed orders or at least it doesn't seem like it to me. And they do throw a level 1 or no level seller in there too, in between level 2, TRS and Pro sellers.

Which is fine, unless you are calling it "best selling" Which should be total sales by dollar or by number of sales in descending order. No way someone with 5 sales could have 1000 in queue to show up next to those with 1K+.  It's just sloppy and/or misnamed.

Edited March 21 by newsmike

[rustyheart]

Just a small vent to add my laments to everyone else's, but like many others, I've had my success score tanked to a 4 (hiding me from search results) after only 5-star reviews and being close to the top of my (very small) niche. I had a buyer accidentally place an order some months ago and cancel immediately after with an apology--my only cancellation--which I requested the Fiverr support team to review and remove, if possible, since it's had a severely negative impact on my success score. They just sent me the copy-pasted form email twice in a row. 

It might have already been addressed in the thread somewhere, but what's stopping people from leaving cancelled orders on competing sellers' profiles to tank their scores? I've seen people with thousands of orders mention that a few cancellations utterly destroyed their success score. To me, it seems like Fiverr's response is going to always be "the seller deserved it" and they won't have any protections for this in place.  

It's more sad than amusing, but the fact that their response to my saying "you literally removed my gig from search results so I can't get enough new orders to improve my score" is "go advertise outside of Fiverr" is so wild to me. It's like publishing a book on Amazon and then after months of sales and progress, being told it's been removed from all algorithms (including if someone literally searches the name verbatim) and I have to go make a TikTok account to drive traffic through a direct link to the page, all because someone bought my book on accident once and returned it. 

Edited March 21 by rustyheart

[newsmike]

Since we're on page 50 of this rant, This image was created by a Japanese neurologist. It stays still when you are calm. It begins to move when you experience a slight amount of pressure. It moves like a carousel when under a great deal of stress. How are you doing?

 

 

 

[mandyzines]

19 hours ago, frank_d said:

I always bring up money as soon as possible to establish project fit but this latest wave of tire kickers think that them stating a budget is like being in a game show where they need to guess how much my service is.

20 hours ago, smashradio said:

But now, it's like everyone's itching to drag me into endless Zoom calls before they decide to buy anything.

The little that's come to my inbox has all been custom sample inquiries and no one wants to share what their budget is, or, in most cases, the scope of their project. I don't think they even listen to what I have posted. Whereas, prior to this month people would listen to what I had posted and place an order, which is why I thought RTO would be a detriment to me. 

20 hours ago, andywarburton said:

Oh and a quite a few enquiries where they have clearly just copied and pasted the same thing to a bunch of sellers

Yes!!! For me it's a plentiful copy/paste without the most important elements, then they get thrown off when I start asking questions!

19 hours ago, arianelaurent said:

Argh, am in the same boat too!!

 Videos also don't seem to be showing up... 

Is that still happening and what browser are you using? All of my gigs have videos so that would...not be at all beneficial.

2 hours ago, antimadubstep said:

Maybe I decided to update my gigs at the wrong time, but this is SO weird. Never happened to me until this new update

I've had a gig drop off the face of Fiverr for a long while after heavy editing, then never rebound when reverted back. But, then again, there are so many other moving parts to not know how they might be affecting things.  

33 minutes ago, newsmike said:

How are you doing?

When it's in my peripheral vision it's moving very quickly but the more I center on it I can make it stop entirely. That's a trippy, neat little doohickey. 

Edited March 21 by mandyzines

[arianelaurent]

Just now, mandyzines said:

Is that still happening and what browser are you using? All of my gigs have videos so that would...not be at all beneficial.

Chrome! Apologies for my bad phrasing, I meant that the people on the first pages don't seem to have videos (i.e., unlike before when it was clear (I felt) that having a video dramatically increased one's search visibility).  

[fahimeh22]

This is very sad that though I have 98-98% five-star ratings, the success score is only 4. Client satisfaction has a strong negative impact and order cancelation has a negative impact though all of the canceled orders were mutually cancelation and the CS recovered the OCR to 100% instantly. For these two things, I lost my level two and am now a level 0 seller. Though still I am getting 5-star ratings, the success score hasn't increased yet.
What about your opinion?

[catwriter]

11 hours ago, williambryan392 said:

I reply saying I think you messaged the wrong person

I do that, too, and yet they keep trying to convince me that they didn't make a mistake...

[designwithcalm]

1 hour ago, fahimeh22 said:

This is very sad that though I have 98-98% five-star ratings, the success score is only 4. Client satisfaction has a strong negative impact and order cancelation has a negative impact though all of the canceled orders were mutually cancelation and the CS recovered the OCR to 100% instantly. For these two things, I lost my level two and am now a level 0 seller. Though still I am getting 5-star ratings, the success score hasn't increased yet.
What about your opinion?

Exactly the same cut-paste story here. 

[cucinavivace]

2 hours ago, fahimeh22 said:

This is very sad that though I have 98-98% five-star ratings, the success score is only 4. Client satisfaction has a strong negative impact and order cancelation has a negative impact though all of the canceled orders were mutually cancelation and the CS recovered the OCR to 100% instantly. For these two things, I lost my level two and am now a level 0 seller. Though still I am getting 5-star ratings, the success score hasn't increased yet.
What about your opinion?

I have 100% 5 star ratings and 0 cancellations and went from a Level 2 to a Level 0 with a SS of 3. 

Which is to say, you're not being picked on. It only takes a couple bad private ratings for them to say negative customer satisfaction. As far as everyone's opinion, there are 50 pages on this thread of people saying the same thing. I believe we are nearly unanimous in our opinion that it sucks.

Edited March 21 by cucinavivace

[Alex.M]

3 minutes ago, cucinavivace said:

I have 100% 5 star ratings and 0 cancellations and went from a Level 2 to a Level 0 with a SS of 3. 

I have a hunch that you also need a relatively constant high number of sales for a higher success score... just a thought. 

[cucinavivace]

16 minutes ago, Alex.M said:

I have a hunch that you also need a relatively constant high number of sales for a higher success score... just a thought. 

Yes. I've said a few times now that I really believe part of Fiverr's intent here is to send the message that we can devote ourselves to this full time or FO. And we know from a few experiences mentioned (including my own) that pausing gigs tanks your SS score pretty quickly, which I think is from lack of order activity and not necessarily the pause itself.

Although I will say that since it's tax season I had three previous clients approach me this week asking where my tax filing gig was. So I got those three as custom offers and one more from Fiverr directly once the gig was active again (which was necessary to write the custom offers). I just noticed my score went up to 4 with those additional four 5 star ratings.

I don't know if that means I was right on the line so it only took four and might take 50 more to go up another point, or if only a handful are necessary. But I just noticed so it had to have happened today and those four are the only activity since this happened.

Edited March 21 by cucinavivace

[dereck_s]

8 hours ago, Alex.M said:

I have a hunch that you also need a relatively constant high number of sales for a higher success score... just a thought. 

So my account is old and has like 1000ish orders so IDK if that means anything to how the rating are calculated. Since the new system went live I've completed about 15 orders (all 5 star super happy folks) and none of my metrics have changed. 

On a side note I had my SM look into my cancellations and I even had an excel sheet with every cancellation and how it was white listed (CS ID#'s for example). After 3 days they determined that Cancellations were not a negative impact on my account but the second they removed it (it was STRONG NEGATIVE IMPACT) a regular negative impact (Effective communication) item appeared and my Success Score stayed at 4.

Edited March 22 by dereck_s

[kerlvision]

Hi, 

 

All is good regarding the level system, especially for the new starters.

However, I don't understand why the earnings measure is set up like this. 

Why should I wait for my earnings to be cleared out for it to be considered in the level system? 
 

Within 15 days of clearing I could get level up get more buyers due to trust in buyers and bring more money to Fiverr and myself, but for some unknown reason, clearing needed to be waited for the level to go up.

Please consider this point. 

[johnparsons01]

1 hour ago, kerlvision said:

Hi, 

 

All is good regarding the level system, especially for the new starters.

However, I don't understand why the earnings measure is set up like this. 

Why should I wait for my earnings to be cleared out for it to be considered in the level system? 
 

Within 15 days of clearing I could get level up get more buyers due to trust in buyers and bring more money to Fiverr and myself, but for some unknown reason, clearing needed to be waited for the level to go up.

Please consider this point. 

I think the only big change is when one reached TRS. Trust on the part of buyers I think will be impacted more by your consistent delivery of quality and the feedback you get. This will in turn increase the orders you get and number of clients which also affect ascending through the levels. I don't think the earning barriers alone are that high to promote a seller to the next level.

[emmaki]

Of course, TRS used to be $20,000 until Fiverr inexplicably watered it down as they embiggened the Pro marketplace. 

Now why would they do that? 

[vickiespencer]

4 hours ago, emmaki said:

embiggened

I like that word.

[alexanderlapko]

18 hours ago, fahimeh22 said:

This is very sad that though I have 98-98% five-star ratings, the success score is only 4. Client satisfaction has a strong negative impact and order cancelation has a negative impact though all of the canceled orders were mutually cancelation and the CS recovered the OCR to 100% instantly. For these two things, I lost my level two and am now a level 0 seller. Though still I am getting 5-star ratings, the success score hasn't increased yet.
What about your opinion?

Similar situation! Only I have never had any cancellations, and always have positive reviews! But the system does not take this into account, as the comments of many here show.

[alexanderlapko]

8 hours ago, dereck_s said:

So my account is old and has like 1000ish orders so IDK if that means anything to how the rating are calculated. Since the new system went live I've completed about 15 orders (all 5 star super happy folks) and none of my metrics have changed. 

On a side note I had my SM look into my cancellations and I even had an excel sheet with every cancellation and how it was white listed (CS ID#'s for example). After 3 days they determined that Cancellations were not a negative impact on my account but the second they removed it (it was STRONG NEGATIVE IMPACT) a regular negative impact (Effective communication) item appeared and my Success Score stayed at 4.

Same problems. I have never had cancellations and only the best reviews from customers, but the system does not take this into account and sent me from the second level to the very beginning. Despite this, Success Score said that I have a problem with such things as Effective communication and Conflict-free orders
although, as I already said, I never had any problems with this. The support does not answer questions about why this happened, but only says what is written in the Success Score itself. I hope they solve this problem, because it turns out that many sellers simply do not have their entire success story taken into account due to the new level system.

[ch6k0r]

I think there should be a change in the success score where it's gradually applied, we didn't know nothing about these metrics even if they existed in the background, most of us thought we were doing fine since we worked on the old simple metrics (response time, delivery on time, order completion...) let alone the reviews and tips were our only indicator that we did great in an order.
Instead what we have now is a punishment for 2+ years of data that we didn't know about, we were given a month to fix it? and we are compared to others? double kill.

I really hope someone reads this thread.

[smashradio]

On 3/20/2024 at 8:50 PM, frank_d said:

Same here. Once I point them towards my paid consultation they stop needing a call.

I always bring up money as soon as possible to establish project fit but this latest wave of tire kickers think that them stating a budget is like being in a game show where they need to guess how much my service is.

Yup. I have paid consultations as well. If they're asking for an actual consultation, i.e. want real advice or ideas, I'd point them towards my paid consultations too, but it just feels a bit wrong to ask them to pay to inform me about their project.  Perhaps I'm too gentle? 🤣

[smashradio]

On 3/20/2024 at 9:56 PM, uk1000 said:

Could that send potentially confidential stuff from the buyer to those companies?

This is why I approach the use of AI with extreme caution. It's a significant issue, and I'd wager that AI firms receive vast amounts of confidential material daily because people don't want to do the legwork themselves.

I get it. AI is a cool tool. I use it for brainstorming or when I hit a roadblock myself.

But I steer clear of any automated processes. The stakes are too high, and I care too much about my clients' confidentiality, so I cannot justify feeding their info into an AI owned by a foreign company with a voracious appetite for data.