Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[carineb]

33 minutes ago, emmaki said:

I'm for the changes, even if it might cost me 0.3 stars because of silly metrics like value for money.

We are not talking about 0.3, but 1.0

The 1st client was super happy with my work! He gave me a tip...

The 2nd clent wrote "Excellent, as usual"

Edited February 23 by carineb

[emmaki]

I was thinking more of when it's all 5 stars except VFM, which gives 4.7, doesn't it?

I just delivered an order to a client who disappeared as soon as I sent the "pre-delivery check" file. They said they were happy. So maybe I'll be barking angrily in here about how rubbish this platform is soon, since it's not like I'll be able to do anything else about it... 

Doesn't the "where you can improve" messaging change really subtly if buyers click the 4-star happy face? I can't remember who posted the screenshots now, but someone did. The whole thing is terribly designed.

Edited February 23 by emmaki

[nadiappp]

Unpopular opinion alert: In the past we complained that 4 stars was not a bad rating in the real world, while it was a disaster on Fiverr. Well, now our wishes came true.

[emmaki]

It's not the 4 stars that is the problem. It's Fiverr's lack of transparency and bad design that is. 

If Fiverr would implement "real world" 5-star review systems, things would be a bit calmer. As it is, we have a system that is deliberately meant to inflict lower ratings on sellers to make the marketplace less 5-starry. Doesn't matter if it's Google Reviews, Yelp, Etsy, UW, Amazon, Ebay.... there would be uproar there too.

Toothless uproar, but uproar nevertheless. Our wishes never came into the equation - most of us just want Fiverr to hire some people and finally get rid of the sellers that drag us all down with them, rather than rely on a broken and badly designed AI system to tear the entire marketplace down at once.

I would say not an unpopular opinion, just an uninformed one, but I realize you were probably meme-ing. 

[carineb]

3 minutes ago, emmaki said:

I was thinking more of when it's all 5 stars except VFM, which gives 4.7, doesn't it?

I just delivered an order to a client who disappeared as soon as I sent the "pre-delivery check" file. They said they were happy. So maybe I'll be barking angrily in here about how rubbish this platform is soon, since it's not like I'll be able to do anything else about it... 

Doesn't the "where you can improve" messaging change really subtly if buyers click the 4-star happy face? I can't remember who posted the screenshots now, but someone did. The whole thing is terribly designed.

Yes, the "where you can improve" messaging changes if buyers click the 4-star happy face. (I posted screenshots several days ago.)

My client told me that he thought he was being asked to select what was very good (and not what needed improvement). There are many more issues than just the concept of "value for money".

[emmaki]

Hopefully Fiverr will change that eventually. There are still review rings out there. It's still not going to be that hard for certain groups of sellers to game the system and get great reivews. And, if you think about it, as everyone slowly gets worse reviews, it might even be easier to fake reviews by using a variety of "realistic" scores over, say, a package of 10, rather than having 10x "wow great work love it" style reviews.

Although tbf the reviews will probably still be "wow great work love it". Too lazy to even fire up the 'GPT to write a novella about the perfect service of the provider...

[nadiappp]

3 minutes ago, emmaki said:

It's not the 4 stars that is the problem. It's Fiverr's lack of transparency and bad design that is. 

If Fiverr would implement "real world" 5-star review systems, things would be a bit calmer. As it is, we have a system that is deliberately meant to inflict lower ratings on sellers to make the marketplace less 5-starry. Doesn't matter if it's Google Reviews, Yelp, Etsy, UW, Amazon, Ebay.... there would be uproar there too.

Toothless uproar, but uproar nevertheless. Our wishes never came into the equation - most of us just want Fiverr to hire some people and finally get rid of the sellers that drag us all down with them, rather than rely on a broken and badly designed AI system to tear the entire marketplace down at once.

I would say not an unpopular opinion, just an uninformed one, but I realize you were probably meme-ing. 

Yes, you are right. I am aware of the unfairness of the scale, designed to trick buyers to give a rating they themselves do not wish to give. That's also the reason for the introduction of "value of money" category. I read the transcript of the second-last webinar where it seemed that their data about value of money is totally at odds with the real-world (albeit short in time) experience by the sellers.

[mdmamunrassel]

1 hour ago, thebrownie said:

Thank you frank, check out my feedback on the new system

Feedback on the New Level System: Concerns About High-Priced Gigs and Deadline Flexibility etc.

It's true that the new level system is worrying and frustrating for every seller but does Fiverr ever listen to the seller or notice the issues raised.

[emmaki]

4 minutes ago, nadiappp said:

I read the transcript of the second-last webinar where it seemed that their data about value of money is totally at odds with the real-world (albeit short in time) experience by the sellers.

That's really another issue: Fiverr has a ton of private review data and God knows what else that it hasn't shared with this update that is probably informing their new review/leveling system. I mean, I can get why they're not telling us everything, but them telling everyone how transparent everything is was, to my mind, incredibly patronizing. 

memo to staff reading this: next time, focus on "honesty with limits". Things will probably go better.

Edited February 23 by emmaki

[carineb]

18 minutes ago, nadiappp said:

Unpopular opinion alert: In the past we complained that 4 stars was not a bad rating in the real world, while it was a disaster on Fiverr. Well, now our wishes came true.

I don't mind receiving a 4 if MY CLIENT thinks that I've done something well but could have done better.

In fact, in both cases I mentioned earlier, neither of my two clients even chose to rate me 4! They selected a very happy face because they are very satisfied, and it's Fiverr that arbitrarily decided to give me 4. It seems like review manipulation 🙄

A score of 4 out of 5 means 80%. Did I do 80% of the job? No. I did 100% of the job, and my two clients were 100% satisfied.

There's something fishy going on. If Fiverr wants to be consistent, they should stop asking for reviews from clients and instead assign the number of stars they want by analyzing our work, message communications... and whatever they want with their AI! 🤣

[priyank_mod]

17 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Although tbf the reviews will probably still be "wow great work love it". Too lazy to even fire up the 'GPT to write a novella about the perfect service of the provider...

I received a couple of such reviews duly packed in "double quotes" last year and I still get my facepalm moment🫠,  every time I notice or recall them!! 

[nadiappp]

2 minutes ago, carineb said:

In fact, in both cases I mentioned earlier, neither of my two clients even chose to rate me 4! They selected a very happy face because they are very satisfied, and it's Fiverr that arbitrarily decided to give me 4. It seems like review manipulation 🙄

That's interference in buyer's evaluation, steering the buyer to give a lower rating than intended. Not fair.

[emmaki]

10 minutes ago, priyank_mod said:

I received a couple of such reviews duly packed in "double quotes" last year

It's nice that ChatGPT helps  to highlight other people's incompetence, even though they have amazing tools that help them to try and appear competent, isn't it?

My pet hate is AI briefs and answers to requirements. Luckily, one of Fiverr's AI innovations this year (I think for Pro buyers only) is AI assisted briefs 😒

Edited February 23 by emmaki

[emmaki]

Dayum Donny, put your prices up! 

[visualstudios]

Just now, emmaki said:

Dayum Donny, put your prices up! 

Imagine paying for promoted gigs for $5 gigs lmao.

[visualstudios]

1 minute ago, dereck_s said:

And then getting 3-4 stars for "Value for Money".

If you don't value yourself, then who will?

[carineb]

19 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I just had a client that was very happy and left 5 stars for the other criteria but a single star when it comes to value for money. And he said he will be coming back for me in a private message. Yet I have a 3.7 star review on a $5 gig from promoted gigs (which means I have to pay Fiverr for the gig as well), 1000 words so I over delivered because he wanted to add a bit of a personal touch. 

Many people don't even know what "value for money" means.

A long time ago, I worked for a market research company. I had to conduct face-to-face surveys with people to gather their opinions on a new product.

There were 5 papers (with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 stars) on the table between the respondent and me.

The last question of the survey was about "value for money." It was a real eye-opener!

Here are some verbatim responses:

"Oh, it's cheap." The respondent put their hand on 1 or 2 stars!
"Oh, I would never buy at this price. Too expensive" The respondent put their hand on 5 stars.
Many people thought I was asking them to rate the price level as follows:
Not cheap at all - cheap - justified price - a little expensive - very expensive.

However, the question was very well formulated and there was no ambiguity.
After 10 people, I stopped to have the question modified.

I think we are exactly in the same situation.

Edited February 23 by carineb

[emmaki]

2 minutes ago, carineb said:

"Oh, it's cheap." The respondent would put their hand on 1 or 2 stars!
"Oh, I would never buy at this price. Too expensive" The respondent would put their hand on 5 stars.
Many people thought I was asking them to rate the price level as follows:
Not cheap at all - cheap - justified price - a little expensive - very expensive.

That's crazy! 

If it were me, I would be grading it on a scale of 1 (way too expensive for what I got) ... and then I don't know about 5, because the obvious opposite (to me) is 5 (crazily underpriced). But wouldn't a better "5" be 5 (priced just right) since that's...well, perfect? 

Because looking at it from a biz POV, you'd want to know if your products were underpriced.

And now I'm going to stop overthinking this. 

[emmaki]

2 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

I don't think anyone was trolling you man

Let's face it, the ultimate troll in this whole conversation is Fiverr. 

Edited February 23 by emmaki
added le ebic troleface

[ahunyady]

22 hours ago, dianeofmusgrave said:

Revisions and "extended delivery" does not impact your success DIRECTLY but if it could have been avoided with better communication for example then it could affect it overall.

Value for money -  We need to show buyers the value they are getting so share processes to show how valuable the work being done. However they have said they have heard our concerns and are looking at it.

They are aware of cancellation issues and are working hard to resolve them.

Revisions and extended delivery may not be impacting success score directly today, but what’s to say they won’t change their minds next month or next year? If the scoring window is a rolling 60 days, changing rules isn’t as big of a deal, but when they retrospectively penalize us for actions they previously encouraged, how can we interpret that as anything but incompetent, insensitive, or outright malicious? When corporate leadership forces through a highly unpopular or misguided change, it is usually a sign of an impending change in leadership or a restructuring. That tension we feel is someone’s fingers on the ripcord of their golden parachute about to deploy.

Value for money—I’m considering including an itemized bill with deliveries so my clients can see that I make a lot less per hour than they do.

Reps have consistently said that mutual cancellations don’t affect our ratings. However, cancellations have also consistently affected our ratings. In the past, the effect could apparently be removed on a manual basis if CS was feeling honest or generous at the moment, but they wouldn’t do it automatically. Now that they’re allowing buyer feedback after cancellations, I can’t see them ever removing the effect of cancellations automatically. Maybe they’ll still do it manually if you complain enough. But as we know, they’re openly violating their own TOS at will now (for example, admitting they allow buyer cancellations for any reason even when the order was delivered on time and as described), so we can’t really trust that they are following any of their stated “policies” anymore—at least ones that protect sellers.

 

[ahunyady]

1 hour ago, carineb said:

Unfair, skewed... Yes! But it doesn't seem to bother anyone at Fiverr!

The most bizarre aspect of this review system is that the client never actually assigns stars. They just click on smileys, and somehow, it all magically converts into stars in the end!

Furthermore I wonder how and why Fiverr decided that a smiley with a big smile is worth 4 stars. Everywhere else, the small smile is worth 4 stars and the big smile is worth 5 stars. The smiley of the guy with red stars in his eyes after abusing illegal substances doesn't exist anywhere else in evaluation scales!

If Fiverr wants to transform smileys into stars, they must do it in a TRANSPARENT way. There are plenty of really cool designs for smileys with stars.

These are better than Fiverr’s system, but would have the same ultimate effect. The only transparent way to do it is to educate the buyer on what different ratings mean. 4.7 stars is the cutoff for “acceptability” (at the TRS level) so that needs to be communicated to the buyer at the time of leaving feedback. If they rate below 4.7 stars, then they’re saying that you, as seller, should be removed from the platform if you don’t start delivering better. The same for private feedback. It’s worded in a way that makes the buyer think they’re rating FIVERR not the seller. That’s the reason for such low recent private feedback.

Edited February 23 by ahunyady

[adanaik]

23 hours ago, dianeofmusgrave said:

I went to the webinar and made a few notes on what stood out to me

 

 Revisions and "extended delivery" does not impact your success DIRECTLY but if it could have been avoided with better communication for example then it could affect it overall.

 

They are taking from a wider timespan (we kind of knew this) rather than the old 60 days. (apparently, this is to help sellers but I am not too sure how) 

 

You should pause underperforming gigs and it MIGHT help. If a best-selling gig has a lower success score we should take that into consideration Take a wider look at things.

 

(Has anyone had success from deleting low-scoring gigs?)

Value for money -  We need to show buyers the value they are getting so share processes to show how valuable the work being done. However they have said they have heard our concerns and are looking at it.

They are aware of cancellation issues and are working hard to resolve them.

Location inconsistencies- Digital nomads are concerned of location inconsistency. They are looking for suspicious activity. If it is a mistake reach out to CS

 

It's all about being a positive experience for sellers

 

Remember our score is compared to other people in that category so even with no orders the metrics MIGHT change.

 

I recommend you go if you can even just to make yourself heard and ask questions to make them aware of our issues

 

and the CS will respond to your ticket:

""Thank you for reaching out to Fiverr Customer Support regarding the status of your account.

After careful review, your account has been flagged due to location inconsistencies or other activities indicating a connection to violations of our Terms of Service. Consequently, your participation in Fiverr's level system is permanently restricted.
However, you can still share your Gigs with potential buyers, and they can place orders with you.

Please be advised that this was reviewed multiple times and the decision is final. For more information on our policies and guidance on adherence, please refer to our Community Standards.""

[newsmike]

22 hours ago, dereck_s said:

I legit said to my computer screen like 3 times "WTF are you actually saying"! There was so much double speak and nonsense a lot of it didn't sound like anything understandable was actually said.

You have to remember your BS BINGO game card for each webinar.  I believe "Robust" and "Lean in" were the only 2 they missed this time.

[leonormiserol]

2 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

The customer just ended up thinking the rated me very well, I was talking and asking how else to help. He was just confused by the stars system. 

If your client tells you this, you can tell them to talk to support so they can fix the rating to one that they consider more honest.

[carineb]

16 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Because looking at it from a biz POV, you'd want to know if your products were underpriced.

I completely agree with you, but sometimes there are power struggles within companies between sales, marketing, design, management... In this company, surveys often helped us to get everyone on the same page.