Sellers using Bait & Switch: Is this encouraged?

[mephrog]

Dear Fiverr Forum,

Recently I've been looking to have some animated telegram stickers made. Naturally, I go to Fiverr, and I find this listing by user ******.

If you don't have time to take a look over the gig yourself, let me summarise how I went through this gig & why Fiverr should not allow this.

1. Packages: The Basic/Standard/Premium packages offer varying quantities of $15 animated stickers. Premium package attached.
2. Thumbnails:  After looking through the three thumbnails (one video two images) I can see they are of a quality that is sufficient for what I want.
3. Description: Pro graphic designer ✔️ animated crypto stickers ✔️ vector art ✔️.

So far, so good. I notice this block of text near the bottom: "Kindly Contact Me Before Initiating An Order To Avoid any Form Of Issues that May Arise In the Nearest Future and If Your request Is Out Of My package You are free to let Me Know then I can for you a custom Offer."

A request to contact the seller is not uncommon, so I open a conversation that goes (briefly) like this:

• Me: Can I see some more animated stickers you've done?
• Seller: Sure (I check them, they are of a good quality, so I am happy to proceed).
• Me: Are they all custom?
• Seller: Yes I make them custom, no problem.
• Me: Ok, let's do a trial of 2 animated stickers. Here are my characters (send references) and these are the animations I want (anim 1, anim 2).
• Seller: Here is a summary for what you want: Sticker 1 (character, anim, text) & Sticker 2 (character, anim, text), is that right?
• Me: Yes that's perfect
• Seller: "Okay, not a problem."

At this point in the exchange I feel confident in purchasing the basic package (attached). This package includes two animated stickers with colors in the illustration. I go ahead and buy this gig.

This is where the conflict starts

The seller proceeds to say "I thought we were still on the negotiating part", says that he writes for the buyer to contact the seller before an order to "avoid any misconceptions", and says I made a mistake.  I explain to him that I just want exactly what the gig offers and shows, and the stickers that he had sent me as reference before my purchase. He ignores my ~10 messages and immediately goes to cancel. I ask him how much he expects to charge but he does not respond to both my requests. I decline his refund request and open a ticket with Fiverr stating the case, and that this is clearly misrepresenting his gig. They send a boilerplate response of "you can resolve this in the resolution centre", so no help there.

The seller repeats a request to cancel, and at this point I go with it.

My question to you:
What is the point of having a gig where all 3 packages listed are not what you are actually selling? It seems the seller has used purposefully lower prices than what they will actually do work for to game the Fiverr search system and appear as a lower cost gig, but after the buyer does some due dilligence they do a bait & switch to upcharge them once they know they are interested. This is malicious practice, and should really be punished. If it isn't, I don't see why every seller doesn't use this tactic of listing stuff at $1. The hard bit is getting people in to the DMs 🤷‍♂️.

Thanks for reading!

[smashradio]

Bait and switch isn't allowed on Fiverr. This is laid out clearly in the community guidelines on misrepresentation: Integrity and Authenticity - Fiverr's Community Standards

If you get a boilerplate response from CS, it's probably automated. If so, try responding to the ticket again, as that will escalate it to a human in my experience. 

 

[emmaki]

I mean, if Fiverr can pull a 100% bait and switch on a group of sellers with SPP, it seems a bit rich to expect the sellers it (doesn't) vet to not follow their example. 

Perhaps I'm just being picky. I like the characterisation of "malicious practice" though, OP. I shall add it into my daily morning moan routine tomorrow (if I remember)!