Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[priyank_mod]

37 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Is it just me who is finding it easy to get 5 star reviews in this new system? I mean, I was really worried about it before but apart from turning on RTO, I haven't really changed anything about how I work.... the inbox hasn't exactly been singing and I've just spent a bit more time vetting prospects. 

I'm just asking because while everyone - including me! - has been rabbling about all the bad points of the new system, nobody's really shared if their experience is ultimately unchanged. 

Anyone? 

I may also want to brag a bit. 

My experience has been largely unchanged too, so far (thou my sample size of completed orders is quite small ie less than 10).

Also, since we vet our buyers meticulously - our probability of finding trigger-happy buyers who don't care about/pay attention to chosen emojis, is on relatively lower side!! 👀

[carineb]

54 minutes ago, emmaki said:

I'm just asking because while everyone - including me! - has been rabbling about all the bad points of the new system, nobody's really shared if their experience is ultimately unchanged. 

I've also had several 5/5 ratings but 4/5 and 4.3/5 in a single week, when I hadn't had a rating below 5 for 3 years!
I've noticed that my clients' ratings are a mix of the new and old systems.
Do all your clients answer the new questionnaire?

Edited February 26 by carineb

[carineb]

I also noticed that one of my clients only answered 2 questions. I wonder what bothered him about the 3rd question...

 

Edited February 26 by carineb

[emmaki]

Yes, they've all been with the new questionnaire and they all pretty much look like this.

It's really just a whole lot of extra clicking for buyers who just want to get it over with....

[danno1950]

2 hours ago, emmaki said:

Is it just me who is finding it easy to get 5 star reviews in this new system? I mean, I was really worried about it before but apart from turning on RTO, I haven't really changed anything about how I work.... the inbox hasn't exactly been singing and I've just spent a bit more time vetting prospects. 

I'm just asking because while everyone - including me! - has been rabbling about all the bad points of the new system, nobody's really shared if their experience is ultimately unchanged. 

Same here - I've gotten several 5 star reviews since this new system was deployed. I already had RTO turned on for all my gigs, so my experience just hasn't changed. I think RTO has afforded me the mechanism to pre-screen buyers, which I do by asking an extensive set of questions to define their project. I've declined several opportunities that experience has taught me looked like they could lead to a troublesome outcome. It just miminized the potential for low reviews.

Edited February 26 by danno1950

[donnovan86]

It depends on the buyer, obviously. Some buyers will not question the value for money and rate everything 5 stars. Others will also check every box, which sometimes might lower your score. And there are also those that randomly press stars to get it over with. Aside from a few minor exceptions, I've had a similar experience to you guys. 

[emmaki]

It's probably just because we're all veteran sellers who pay our Seller Plus racket protection money so Fiverr treats us differently. Also, because we've also been on the platform since prehistory. /s

But yes, RTO and buyer vetting definitely seems the way to go under the new system. But to be honest, buyer vetting has been an essential Fiverr skill for quite a while now. I just wonder if this is going to really change how the "I can do it all" sellers work.

There are enough buyers who don't pay a lot of attention or are easily manipulated to go around, even at the Pro level. A human who understands how these sellers operate will see through the act with a quick review of the orders, but AI? I wouldn't risk it - the false positive rate would shoot up astronomically. 

Like, there was that story earlier today on the forum of that seller who worked in "an office" with what sounded like it might be lots of other Fiverr's in the same industry. It was terrible what happened to the OP, of course, and I'm glad he got out of that situation, but I've also been wondering all day how common that setup is and how they even get it to work (I can think of an obvious one involving phones). 

And as staff said on that thread, there wasn't really much they can do about it. 

 

[charlsmcfarlane]

4 hours ago, emmaki said:

Is it just me who is finding it easy to get 5 star reviews in this new system? I mean, I was really worried about it before but apart from turning on RTO, I haven't really changed anything about how I work.... the inbox hasn't exactly been singing and I've just spent a bit more time vetting prospects. 

I'm just asking because while everyone - including me! - has been rabbling about all the bad points of the new system, nobody's really shared if their experience is ultimately unchanged. 

Anyone? 

I may also want to brag a bit. 

My reviews are largely unchanged. I’ve had a couple 4s for “value for money”. I also had another review that was a 3.2 or something, overall. However, that one just went badly and I don’t think has anything to do with the new review system.

I’ve had almost as many 5 star reviews as normal. It feels like instead of 99/100 reviews being 5 stars, it’s more like 9/10 are 5 star reviews now. It’s harder but certainly doesn’t feel like the end of the world.

Weirdly, I think charging more is helping the value for money score, as it seems to attract more buyers for whom cost is less important than quality.

[umair_malik_1]

Since this new "value-for-money" option came, almost every client has given a 4.7 rating and they have put emojis there to confuse buyers, I don't know why emojis they for kids maybe.

[williambryan392]

10 hours ago, carineb said:

also noticed that one of my clients only answered 2 questions. I wonder what bothered him about the 3rd question...

I've seen this before, but after refreshing the page it fully populates for me.

I've also seen a variant of the value for money metric, so they are testing new ways by the looks of it.

10 hours ago, virgoca said:

Today is up to 8/10, with no orders or interactions with any buyer since then. 

You might not have had orders or interactions, but your competition has, so if their position has dropped, yours has in turn increased.

11 hours ago, emmaki said:

Is it just me who is finding it easy to get 5 star reviews in this new system?

I don't want to jinx it, but so far I've had 2 orders with less than 5 stars. One buyer was definitely confused and messaged me about it to apologise. Obviously over time I expect more to come.

I do think we are making a big assumption that a change in your level will dramatically change your Fiverr income. I'm not saying it won't, we just don't know, and a lot of people always said that being trs vs. level 2 didn't make a huge difference. So far we're seeing changes in levels and ratings. I'm not sure if people have also now seen a change in revenue/sales/messages.

[duashahid345]

I'm honestly so tired and drained right now....

So first I went to the CS regarding the order cancellations issue, where I got a "Strong negative impact" on my main gig. I had 41 cancellations, and 978 completed orders (as of 27-02-24). Out of those 41 cancellations, 20 were due to varying reasons (like duplicate orders, orders by mistake, scam orders, wrong payment method etc). And all of them were under Fiverr's policy of NOT impacting my stats, and some were reverted by CS. I made a whole case with individual order numbers and relevant ticket numbers (basically doing the job of CS for them to understand it clearly). Each time I got templated responses.

Now, the new issue is, I had 7 gigs that were previously being evaluated, with varying scores. Those gigs had reviews in small quantities, but yes they had a history, thats why they were being evaluated. Now, as of 21-02-24, only 3 gigs of mine are being evaluated, and the others just have a "-". This seems like a mistake, or glitch (or maybe their evaluation first hand was a mistake?) I seriously dont know. I had again written to them about this, considering I was already fed up from the cancellation replies, I simply said to them, Forget about it. Focus on this new thing. And without addressing whether THIS was a bug or THAT was a mistake, they simply say they have done all they could. Whereas clearly that wasn't the case.

 

Where else am I supposed to go now? What should I do? I'm seriously clueless at this point...

[purpledog32]

I decided to take the time to watch the recent webinar on Fiverr's new level system. I wish I hadn't...now I'm even more disgusted. It seems Fiverr's goal with the new system is to push freelancers who don't bring in the big bucks...OUT. If they can get rid of the small money makers and focus on the big money makers...that means more money in Fiverr's pocket. 

As of today, I've dropped another success level. I'm not sure what caused the drop. It's hard to figure out with Fiverr's new "transparent" level system(?), Should I hang around until my success score slowly sinks to the bottom? Ten years of hard work and great reviews means absolutely nothing. Why even bother with reviews if they don't mean anything?

I keep waiting around hoping Fiverr will make improvements to their level system. I SHOULD NOT be a Level 1 seller. It's an insult to ALL Fiverr sellers that have mysteriously dropped in level status with no logical explanation. 

 

[hamzakhan578]

3 hours ago, duashahid345 said:

I'm honestly so tired and drained right now....

So first I went to the CS regarding the order cancellations issue, where I got a "Strong negative impact" on my main gig. I had 41 cancellations, and 978 completed orders (as of 27-02-24). Out of those 41 cancellations, 20 were due to varying reasons (like duplicate orders, orders by mistake, scam orders, wrong payment method etc). And all of them were under Fiverr's policy of NOT impacting my stats, and some were reverted by CS. I made a whole case with individual order numbers and relevant ticket numbers (basically doing the job of CS for them to understand it clearly). Each time I got templated responses.

Now, the new issue is, I had 7 gigs that were previously being evaluated, with varying scores. Those gigs had reviews in small quantities, but yes they had a history, thats why they were being evaluated. Now, as of 21-02-24, only 3 gigs of mine are being evaluated, and the others just have a "-". This seems like a mistake, or glitch (or maybe their evaluation first hand was a mistake?) I seriously dont know. I had again written to them about this, considering I was already fed up from the cancellation replies, I simply said to them, Forget about it. Focus on this new thing. And without addressing whether THIS was a bug or THAT was a mistake, they simply say they have done all they could. Whereas clearly that wasn't the case.

 

Where else am I supposed to go now? What should I do? I'm seriously clueless at this point...

Same here, my only gig with 9 success score now showing '-'. while other 5 gigs with 4 success score in which 2 gig also show '-'. 

[kingpirux]

3 hours ago, purpledog32 said:

I decided to take the time to watch the recent webinar on Fiverr's new level system. I wish I hadn't...now I'm even more disgusted. It seems Fiverr's goal with the new system is to push freelancers who don't bring in the big bucks...OUT. If they can get rid of the small money makers and focus on the big money makers...that means more money in Fiverr's pocket. 

As of today, I've dropped another success level. I'm not sure what caused the drop. It's hard to figure out with Fiverr's new "transparent" level system(?), Should I hang around until my success score slowly sinks to the bottom? Ten years of hard work and great reviews means absolutely nothing. Why even bother with reviews if they don't mean anything?

I keep waiting around hoping Fiverr will make improvements to their level system. I SHOULD NOT be a Level 1 seller. It's an insult to ALL Fiverr sellers that have mysteriously dropped in level status with no logical explanation. 

 

i have like two weeks of no work, an my score is bouncing from 8 to 7 and back to 8... the only thing that changed seems that they removed the client satisfaction from the equation, but still, the score doesn't make any sense about the information you have from your gigs. so still useless and

this is theory

if the AI is taking only the last 2 years of information, that means that if you just stop woring for the next month the score will keep bouncing because is removing the oldest from the equation, basically, if you know that you had a bad time 2 years ago, then your score will go down incoherently for the buyers but at least you know whats going on, Fiverr is a dumb AI.

[emmaki]

Doesn't it place more weighting on more recent orders though? Like the 60 day timeframe or whatever. 

Honestly, I think Fiverr should stop having webinars and responding to questions and just make a nice, simple infographic that explains how each of the new things works and includes all the important information that they are prepared to share about how XYZ works and post that everywhere. 

All we have now is the world's worst game of Chinese whispers. 

 

Edited February 27 by emmaki
and it's also impossible for me to AI this information because of the acres of seller yelling about it. 😠

[dejanpetrovik]

My experience with the new Levels system on Fiverr seems at odds with my positive seller history. As a Level 2 Seller for 6 years with over 400 positive 5-star reviews, I received a Success Score bellow Fiverr Standards. Unfortunately, this has resulted in NO LEVEL profile, my gigs being hidden from search results, and I've consistently received the same automated response from the Fiverr Support Team when seeking clarification and help in resolving other gig category related issues.

[dejanpetrovik]

4 hours ago, purpledog32 said:

I decided to take the time to watch the recent webinar on Fiverr's new level system. I wish I hadn't...now I'm even more disgusted. It seems Fiverr's goal with the new system is to push freelancers who don't bring in the big bucks...OUT. If they can get rid of the small money makers and focus on the big money makers...that means more money in Fiverr's pocket. 

As of today, I've dropped another success level. I'm not sure what caused the drop. It's hard to figure out with Fiverr's new "transparent" level system(?), Should I hang around until my success score slowly sinks to the bottom? Ten years of hard work and great reviews means absolutely nothing. Why even bother with reviews if they don't mean anything?

I keep waiting around hoping Fiverr will make improvements to their level system. I SHOULD NOT be a Level 1 seller. It's an insult to ALL Fiverr sellers that have mysteriously dropped in level status with no logical explanation. 

 

A part of my first ticket regarding this: 

...I can understand the whole "performance metric" thing they have going on, but my main concern is WHEN was decided that I'm "Low Performance." All I have received is 5 star reviews from most of my clients from 556 orders completed. Before, I could learn from client reviews and improve my service based on that. Now, it's like they're hiding the feedback details, and it seem imposible for me to get better.

It's tough to adjust and show improvement when I barely get any orders for the past 6 months and now my gigs are completely removed from the search page as if they don't exist...  and I've consistently received the same automated response from the Fiverr Support Team for completely different issues.

[dejanpetrovik]

6 hours ago, williambryan392 said:

I've seen this before, but after refreshing the page it fully populates for me.

I've also seen a variant of the value for money metric, so they are testing new ways by the looks of it.

You might not have had orders or interactions, but your competition has, so if their position has dropped, yours has in turn increased.

I don't want to jinx it, but so far I've had 2 orders with less than 5 stars. One buyer was definitely confused and messaged me about it to apologise. Obviously over time I expect more to come.

I do think we are making a big assumption that a change in your level will dramatically change your Fiverr income. I'm not saying it won't, we just don't know, and a lot of people always said that being trs vs. level 2 didn't make a huge difference. So far we're seeing changes in levels and ratings. I'm not sure if people have also now seen a change in revenue/sales/messages.

I have experience change in Fiverr income and engagement with clients in general in the past few months...right now my gigs are not showing in the search results as if they do not exist. I am currently NO LEVEL with 556 orders completed and (except several orders) most 5 star reviews.

[dejanpetrovik]

On 2/22/2024 at 4:05 PM, leonormiserol said:

Thank you very much Frank.
My concern is because I still can't understand how I have a gig marked as "Order cancellations Negative impact".
My queries to support do not bear fruit because they give me automatic responses that do not help.
Taking into account that I only canceled 1 order last year and one more in 2022.
So 2 orders in 2 years. It should be noted that they were low amounts.

They say that they compare and classify taking into account other sellers of the same level, but there is something wrong here. My cancellation rate is negligible. This is something I would like to know, since I still think it is a mistake.

I have been on Fiverr for 10 years, I always stayed at level 2. I never had any warnings with my account. Now I am level 0.

Thanks for this new thread.

Same here, suddenly NO LEVEL. This is one of the messages I wrote to CS - While I understand that the Success Score considers gig activities and time (as per the webinar), I believe directly comparing my services to other freelancers in my niche might not be entirely fair. I specialize in custom-made materials, crafting each project from scratch, which the system might interpret as lower performance because this approach naturally requires more time than services offering pre-made content, re-selling the same content over and over again.

[visualstudios]

I've had 2 4 star reviews that the clients apologised for, and then changed to 5 star reviews. They were "mistakes". Before the new system, I never had "mistake reviews" in over 600 orders. Take that as you will.

[Alex.M]

20 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

I've had 2 4 star reviews that the clients apologised for, and then changed to 5 star reviews. They were "mistakes". Before the new system, I never had "mistake reviews" in over 600 orders. Take that as you will.

I have at least 5 since the new rating system ... on the long run it's not much when you have 10k plus reviews but with a bit of bad luck and a few 1 star reviews you can easily get in trouble now.

[visualstudios]

2 minutes ago, Alex.M said:

on the long run it's not much when you have 10k plus reviews but with a bit of bad luck and a few 1 star reviews you can easily get in trouble now.

I don't have 10k reviews though. For low volume sellers, every review matters. 

In any case, it's clear buyers are leaving ratings by mistake. When that happens, it's a matter of contacting them and they'll fix them - the thing is, some buyers may not care to do so.

[huntertreat14]

Yesterday I did a job for someone and they left a review giving me great marks on my communication and other aspects of the job.

 

This morning I wake up and my General Score has gone up, but that gig is now showing NEGATIVE IMPACT due to Effective Communication....

[leonormiserol]

1 hour ago, emmaki said:

Doesn't it place more weighting on more recent orders though?

This is not like this. I only have 2 cancellations in 2 years. 1 in 2023 and another in 2022. And my gig is marked "Order Cancellation Negative Impact."
Or maybe it means that canceling an order from one capricious, rude customer is worth more than 200 other orders from satisfied customers.

[cucinavivace]

A new effect I have now discovered: If you take time off they'll tank your score too. So now you also have to be wed to Fiverr to level.

I think I'm out. I had a perfect 5.0 star rating overall and in every rating category for years, 100% on all performance metrics, a 1 hour response time, and was supposed to be a TRS as soon as I finished up the $10K earnings requirement. There was not one clue anybody was ever unhappy with my work. The new system bumped me down to a Level 1 with a Success Score of 6 citing poor customer satisfaction and poor communication. I tried to talk to support about it, and of course I can see from your own experiences you all know how that ended up. One rep actually said to me that apparently my buyers just aren't as happy with me as I thought. As I thought? With nothing but detailed compliments on every rating? 

Anyway, I decided to take a week to think about whether or not I wanted to stay, read what others were experiencing, see how things developed, and paused everything. Now my SS has shot down from a 6 to a 4. I see no way to succeed here without making Fiverr your full time job and just accepting whatever they decide to throw at you.

This is not just confusing or an inconvenient change. In my opinion, Fiverr has willfully violated our trust. Many of us have invested years of time and money focusing on certain performance criteria under the guarantee that we would level if we met their requirements, and then reap the algorithmic rewards of those higher levels. We can all see from many stories on the forum that's a long, hard-earned road. Private ratings were intentionally never part of that system. That was supposed to be for their own use, and rightfully so. We can't rate even the worst buyers unless they rate us first, and we have no response capability to private ratings to defend ourselves. Of course that data should be taken with a grain of salt, and always has been. By incorporating them now with no filtering or moderation, they have unleashed years of what they knew was predominantly negative data (why else make it private) with no recourse, knowing it could have no other effect than what we're seeing here. They weighted private ratings seemingly even more than public ones (how else can a few defeat dozens, if not hundreds, of positive public reviews) and took those promised rewards from us with no contrition. Now they insist we work even harder with no transparency on what our alleged issues are to get them back.

That probably sounds really angry. It's not. I'm just saying how I see it. This new system breaks a lot of promises. That says quite a lot about the trust factor of working on this platform, much more than it says about the levels themselves and what they're supposed to represent. At this point in my life, that is far more important to me than my level. I can't trust them. That's a point I think is getting lost in dwelling on how to defeat this new system or make it work for you. What do they change next, and what do I lose then? Now they want us to pay to get rudimentary statistics on buyers. Maybe they'll decide we have to pay monthly to be on here at all, or that TRS sellers only get 75%, or we have to wait a month to withdraw funds because they're going to give buyers more time to complain. I think I've decided I just can't risk it. This is how I make a living, and the facts are clear. This platform doesn't care about my living and will strip me of any earned achievements or recognition that allow me to succeed here with no notice when it suits them. There are other options.

Edited February 27 by cucinavivace