Shocking cancellation experience, seller's point of view is completely ignored by Customer Service!!!

[leomusicdesign]

hello everybody,

 

I just had a shocking experience with Fiverr's Customer Support handling a cancellation request.

I'm currently the second best rated PRO pianist in Fiverr, Top Seller, I'm working hard to keep dignified fares and high quality deliveries trying to stay away from this shameful war on prices going on here (completely neglected by Fiverr). My prices are the double or more of all the other top pianists and I still get gigs, just 5 stars reviews.

'Till last Friday.

Some days ago a client sent me a misleading reference link and unclear requirements. To make sure we were on the same page I mentioned I would have enhance the piano of his house track as we did other times.

First delivery, he didn't mean a piano, he already has piano (of such quality that I thought it was the demo to be enhanced)

In the ref. track there are just piano and low backing pads. Out of my kindness I sent the pads too. He doesn't want the pads.

After messages and waste of time it turned out he wanted a lead synth as in some parts of another reference which he did included in the requirements as a second link but never mentioned in the conversations. Neither he mentioned the words synth or lead.

I try to explain to him that his current piano will conflict with another leading sound and that he would need to fix something first, with a long, not due, explanation of the issues of his current, amateur arrangement. He insists and I deliver the synths, 5 different sounds, lots of different lines one after the other for him to edit and use where he wants as I don't see they will fit.

He's not capable to mount them right in his project session or edit them, so he wants me to do it and add pauses in between the lines. I do that too. He doesn't like the synth, of course, there's no place for that synth in his arrangement. Again I try to explain why and what we should do first but he wouldn't listen not realising that in the reference where the synth shows up there's no leading piano. He wouldn't listen.

By the way he never apologised or offered extra payments for the extra deliveries even if I mentioned to him that his communication wasn't right and that I already didi a lot of not due, extra work.

I start loosing my patience and I tell him that if he doesn't trust me a bit after 5 orders together, is better if we go separate ways. He gets all upset saying I'm bulshitting him and making up excuse because I'm not able to provide what he wants, I don't know nothing about electronic music (I've just arranged a song for Gorgon City and many others in these years) and he contacts the customer support. I feet kind of relieved assuming they would handle the situation and explain something to him. 

Sure.

Inexplicably he doesn't reject the delivery so the order is marked as completed. I would have negotiate a partial refund, as we had to do another time. That time it was still in a reasonable range, this time it would have been completely unfair because all the troubles came from his lack of communication, but still. Anyway the order is complete so he gives me a 1 star review and I do the same.

This is already upsetting enough but the incredible, worst part, is that after two days, without having being contacted by anybody I just receive a notification that the order has been cancelled by CS, the earned money (220$) sent back to the client while the bad review is still visible!

So after working like 4 or 5 time what was due, I got the worst than one can get and nobody asked for my point of view. I'm writing and insisting with the customer support like crazy because this cannot be acceptable by any means. After the usual generic answers and corporate lingo they actually started mentioning things about the order, the first answers made obvious they had no idea what happened, then they started mentioning things here and there in our messages but as I write this they couldn't tell me what exactly I didn't deliver yet, and it looks like they only consider the first delivery, which was a piano and not the lead synth the client had in his mind but never requested. AT some point (message attached) they even said "we can cancel any order if the buyer feels like they did not receive what they paid for". That blowed my mind. It can't be true! so the client has no responsibility at all about what he communicates and how he behaves?! 

I'm so disgusted, shocked and humiliated about how Fiverr and the client treated me. They make you feel you are just their milking cows, you're not part of the team or a valuable asset to be valued and protected, they just want the buyers to keep buying and if they're upset they'll just refund them with your money!

This guy even had another similar issue with another seller before, his rating is 4.3, which is very low for a client, I only had 5 stars at that point, but they preferred to take completely his side without even checking on me!

Isn't all this scary!? What kind of working environment are they building here? 

 

Hope somebody will find this useful, best wishes and good luck to everybody.

Leo

Edited April 24 by leomusicdesign
grammar and other details

[smashradio]

3 minutes ago, leomusicdesign said:

I would have negotiate a partial refund, ( as we had to do another time...! )

Hey name brother! (I'm Leo, too!)

This right there ^ should be your indication that working with this seller was not a good idea in the first place. I have a rule: if a buyer is difficult to work with for any reason, even if they leave a five-star review, I'll never work with them again. If I have to offer a refund, I'll never work with them again. If we have to cancel an order, I'll never work with them again. 

If you already had to offer this buyer a partial refund, that should have told you to stay away from them in the future. 

If support said they could cancel the order based on the buyer not feeling as if they got what they paid for, the support representative should re-read their own terms: 

"Orders are not eligible to be canceled based on the quality of service/materials delivered by the Seller if the service was rendered as described in the Gig Page. "

The following is from Fiverr's payment terms: Payment Terms (fiverr.com)

 

 

[leomusicdesign]

I hope somebody from Fiverr will read thist... dear agents and managers, it's a tedious work, but you have all the tools to verify that my story is true, do something about these policies and this case! make amend!

[leomusicdesign]

thanks Leo!

 

You're so right, thanks for the input,

so far I've always found a way to make even the most stubborn or dishonest buyers come to reason, but that came to an end, I'm so tired of that!

[leomusicdesign]

//UPDATE//

after insisting with the CS (a bit like a crazy person) they've finally looked into it again and decided to refund me.

They didn't give further explanations or apology to me, this message (and the money) is all I got.