My account has been Flagged, then restricted and no one is willing to talk to me about it.

[gissmoyejah]

After reading almost every threat related to Flagged and restricted accounts were in every occasion the answer here in the forum seamed to be the same. Either contact customer support or my success manager I followed as instructed and did exactly that. And I have to say my experience was not optimal to say the least. 

First, some context on my situation. I have been a Loyal Fiverr Seller for the past 4 years. Selling 3000 successful orders and generating over 100k on Fiverr commissions for the company. I have been a freelancer for the entirety of my adult life, 12 years and counting. And after just a few months of working with this platform I decided to give it my all and work 100% through it, giving my pre existing clients 2 options. Either buy through the Fiverr platform or sadly we could not continue working together. 

My success in the platform has also attracted some malicious parties. That have been not only trying to hack several aspects of my life but also have impersonated me in several occasions. The most recurrent one happens on Facebook. Where there have been more than 5 occasions where I find accounts with my name and picture that don't belong to me. I'm quick at reporting them and they eventually get blocked but not long after another one appears. 

There was even one occasion where someone was scammed by these individuals and they found me on Fiverr (of course) and confronted me about the situation even when I had nothing to do with it. I explained everything to them and even offered to discount the amount scammed off my packages in a way to compensate their frustration. They did not wish to continue as the offers the scammers had were very inferior to what my packages were and even with the discount it scaped their budget. 

I have built a healthy set of clients that come back to work with me on a monthly basis. Some for over 2 years non stop now. These amazing clients are what I'm most worried about, since they cannot even contact me now and there is no way for me to explain to them what is going on and say proper goodbyes, more on why later on this post. 

Now the events that went down in the past 2 days. 

3 nights ago, after talking to a good friend about our lives and getting the question many people ask about how I'm able to be my own boss and travel the world at the same time, I caved and told her that the root of my success was Fiverr. Told her everything about how I found the platform and my incredible experience with it. She told me that she knew other similar platforms such as Upwork and Malt but never had success with them, I told her that I liked how Fiverr managed everything as gigs and compartmentalized everything through orders and we ended up creating an account for her. She has not been the only person I introduce to Fiverr and help make an account for it so I didn't give much thought to it. 

The very next day I see my account has been flagged, and after passing the initial crisis I came to the forum and read as much as I could about it. Then googled more on the topic and everywhere I read the same recommendation was given. "Explain the situation to your CSM or to customer support and hope they help" many users say there is no hope, but as the internet is, I thought it was the ones that could not do anything about it (as I am doing right now) but I was sure the support team and my CSM from my seller plus program would help me. At the end I have been all in with the platform and I didn't see why I wouldn't get some help clarifying the situation. 

The first communication I did was with my Customer Success Manager, Breanna (I may be tagging the wrong person and I apologise if I am @Breanna_CSM), I wrote an email about the situation, she has know I've had some malicious party impersonating me for a while and I thought there may be someone trying to access my account or something. Also as one of the main issues I read are about inconsistent location and I am a digital nomad I clarified all my travels within the past month (I have moved more than the usual this summer). 

I also booked the soonest call she had available (for next Monday) and awaited for some answer. My first actual surprise and the moment I realised the automated system worked against me came here. When as soon as I booked the call with the person that should be my PoC and my line of defence against these type of situations, my Premium Seller Plus membership was revoked and I was left without a CSM and now sent to the standard Seller Plus program. 

After 6 very long hours I got my first answer (and only answer so far from my CSM)    :

"Hi Gisbely, 

I'm sorry to hear about this. I reached out to the relevant team to get more clarification on your account. They let me know your account was flagged due to having multiple accounts. Unfortunately I don't have any influence in the status of your account as the team has already reviewed your account. Let me know if you have any other questions and I will try my best to help provide as much information as possible. 

Best, 
Breanna"

I replied to her that I don't own multiple accounts and if she didn't have the authority to remedy or study the case further if she could point me in the right direction and I'm still waiting for an answer. 

Here is where I started to feel no one would really help me or study my case in detail. The system flagged me so I must be in the wrong, end of story. 

I gather my strength after crying for an hour feeling all the work I have done for the past 4 years has been lost and decided to go the instance number 2. Customer Support. 

I wrote in detail the situation in a support ticket and I wish I had not done this. As all support did was get my account that was flagged and fully restrict it with what seemed to be an automated answer that did not address the questions I had and closed the case directly without any chance for me to ask any further questions (this is the first time this I have experienced this behavior from CS in my 4 years of experience they always leave the cases open in case you have further questions or more information to give, but after several attempts at communicating with them since this time it seems it is the way they handle this type of situations) 

I didn't lose all hope and tried again. 

This second time They alleged that I have more than one Fiverr account as there are more than one Fiverr connected to my Payoneer and closed the case. This is simply not true and I have all my payoneer invoices to prove it. 

I tried a third time and the answer was again completely different. This time they say that users may only have one active account to buy and sell, and I do. I only have one account. The only reason a different account may be linked to me due to me helping a friend get introduced tot he platform.

I'm now only recurring to the forum with the hope that someone with the authority to review my case reads this. 

If you are reading this and know anyone that can give a proper review to my case, please help me out by sharing this thread with them.

 

Attached I leave my profile and stats. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 27 by gissmoyejah

[rawque_gulia]

41 minutes ago, gissmoyejah said:

with what seemed to be an automated answer that did not address the questions I had and closed the case directly without any chance for me to ask any further questions

It's really unfortunate to hear this and seeing an account being banned like this -- especially when you're an experienced and professional seller with years of reputation on the platform. I hope there's a way I could assist but on the forum, we are all sellers like you. You have far more experience than me, of course, in terms of working years, so can not think of any way to assist in this matter (as an another seller).

One thing I would like to mention: In these flag and violation cases, Fiverr often sends automated responses from a username like "Fiverr Support Team" and closes the ticket. This is due to many low-quality sellers spamming customer support with multiple tickets after being banned or flagged.

But you can get a human response by replying to the same ticket. Creating a new ticket may keep you in a loop of automated responses, so instead, reply to the same ticket that was marked as solved. This will keep the ticket open this time and increase the chances of a real person attending your query.

Wishing you the best of luck and I truly hope you're able to resolve the issue with your account!

-------------------

@Kesha Sorry for the ping -- but could you by any chance take a look at this and help the seller get someone (a real person) from the customer support team to attend to her query?

Edited June 26 by rawque_gulia

[gissmoyejah]

Hi @rawque_gulia thank you so much for your support! This is the part of fiverr I love the most. I have met the most amazing people thanks to it. 

I would love to reply to the tickets but they are not left open for replies. They are getting closed immediately like they don’t want to get any replies from me asking anything else 😞

My only hope (and the reason for this thread) is that someone with the authority to review my case and call me or contact me will. All I want is a human to give me an actual answer. The very least I can get from this situation is learn what I did wrong as I don’t know what it was. I lost my entire source of income and no one is telling me why. 

Sorry for the rant. Thanks for your support!

[gissmoyejah]

To all the Fiverr Family. 

Hello all! 

The first thing I want to say is thank you! To whomever was involved in the situation. I will be eternally grateful even when I'm not sure who to thank. 

I want to leave an update to my case here for anyone reading this now or in the future. After following all protocols and finding out what was really going on I was able to send any necessary information and after 3 very hard days for me the situation seems to be resolving. 

Currently, my account has been back to flagged (from disabled) and according to my latest communication I just need to wait 24 hours as things get activated on my account again and my status is set to what it was before.

To anyone reading this now or in the future in a similar situation I would focus on 2 things. 

1.⁠ ⁠Trust the process but be diligent about it. 

There is protocols that the Fiverr platform has in place to deal with these type of Issues and after dealing with people impersonating me I'm more thankful than not that the platform is actively protecting us and itself. Having said this it is your responsibility as a Seller to dig and dive deep to find out what is really going on and provide any information that may support your case. Read every response you get carefully to understand what is really affecting your account so you can know what info you can provide. If you are not sure, then provide as much transparency as you can. And over all things show your willingness to cooperate with the process. 

2.⁠ ⁠Trust support when they say it escapes their hand. It really does.

Take a deep breath after the initial crisis. The system takes actions and there is a specialized team that reviews the situation and it seems to be isolated from support. 

The support team did provide as much information as It was available to them and thanks to this is how I was able to understand better my case and what Information I could show them to support my case. 

To the entire Fiverr Team. Thanks for allowing me to be part of this family. I will continue working hard to become a better member every day!

If there is any further information or important updates needed I will keep them in this thread. 

Until then. 

I wish you all the best!

Giss Moyejah

[rawque_gulia]

12 hours ago, gissmoyejah said:

I just need to wait 24 hours as things get activated on my account again and my status is set to what it was before.

Omg, great! A very big congratulations! I am really happy to see your account back in action. All the very best with everything! 🏆✨

[gissmoyejah]

Everything is back to normal!

Just wanted to let you know you have a Fiverr Customer Support team by your side!

This will be my last formal update on this thread. See you guys! If you need any help in the future, just let me know.

Thank you for the support  @rawque_gulia  @iftekhar_hasnai   @vovkaslovesnyy  @michmikaia  @smartdezigns  @syedraiyan  @vickiespencer  @mdshohelahamed