Whistleblower: A Serious Issue for Sellers – Please Read and Help

[sberazer]

Whistleblower: A Serious Issue for Sellers – Please Read and Help

Hey fellow sellers,

I’m posting this as a plea for help and as a whistleblower about a situation that, quite frankly, shouldn’t be allowed to happen on Fiverr. What I’m going through is not just an issue of client dissatisfaction—it’s a clear case of market manipulation, and I believe this could impact any seller on this platform.

Here’s the situation:
I received an order from a buyer who also happens to be a seller offering similar services. This buyer knows how the process works inside and out and took advantage of it. We delivered a custom package, making over 25 revisions to accommodate his highly specific requests. We’re an established studio with a long history on Fiverr, and we know the quality of our work. In fact, we’ve recently completed another project in the same category, receiving a glowing review, with the buyer even writing an essay praising the quality.

Despite all this, this particular buyer claimed the work was unusable, and even after we complied with every revision request, he kept moving the goalposts. It became clear his intention was not to get a quality product but to harm us as sellers. He’s currently using the panels we created for him on his Twitch page—the same ones he called "unusable." This is clearly not about the quality or design of our work. He’s trying to damage our reputation.

Here’s where it gets even more troubling:
When I contacted Fiverr’s customer support and spent time explaining the situation in detail, I was told, essentially, that there was no way to confirm the order or prevent this buyer from causing more damage. No solutions were offered. How is it possible that a competitor can place an order, refuse to accept delivery, ask for a refund, leave a damaging review, and get away with it—all without any consequences?

Fiverr’s current system allows this to happen, and I’m shocked there seems to be no mechanism in place to prevent this kind of abuse. How can sellers protect themselves when the platform itself doesn’t seem to be able to or isn't interested in doing so?

If anyone here works for Fiverr or has been in a similar situation, please reach out. This isn’t just about one bad buyer—this is a systemic issue that puts all sellers at risk. We need help, and we need Fiverr to take these situations seriously.

Thanks for reading, and any advice or support would be deeply appreciated.

[priyank_mod]

I religiously avoid and refuse to work with anyone who is also a SELLER on the platform. 

Most like such sellers either work as middlemen (place orders on behalf of their own regular buyer) or to get free work/samples to start their own gig or to damage our stats. 

[michmikaia]

24 minutes ago, priyank_mod said:

I religiously avoid and refuse to work with anyone who is also a SELLER on the platform.

If the seller selling the same services as me, like the OP's case, then I do too.

[priyank_mod]

9 minutes ago, michmikaia said:

If the seller selling the same services as me, like the OP's case, then I do too.

I have trust issues with sellers from all categories because like OP said - they know the system.🙈

But if I'm familiar with someone through forum like few of us are, then I'm open to work with them. 

 

[dereck_s]

1 hour ago, sberazer said:

Whistleblower: A Serious Issue for Sellers – Please Read and Help

Hey fellow sellers,

I’m posting this as a plea for help and as a whistleblower about a situation that, quite frankly, shouldn’t be allowed to happen on Fiverr. What I’m going through is not just an issue of client dissatisfaction—it’s a clear case of market manipulation, and I believe this could impact any seller on this platform.

Here’s the situation:
I received an order from a buyer who also happens to be a seller offering similar services. This buyer knows how the process works inside and out and took advantage of it. We delivered a custom package, making over 25 revisions to accommodate his highly specific requests. We’re an established studio with a long history on Fiverr, and we know the quality of our work. In fact, we’ve recently completed another project in the same category, receiving a glowing review, with the buyer even writing an essay praising the quality.

Are you listed as an agency? If you're a studio (multiple people) passing yourself off and being compared to individual sellers then I'd say you're a seller using your knowledge to take advantage of a system. All the problems you're having with the buyer I'd honestly say you do the same thing and quoting you "quite frankly, shouldn’t be allowed to happen on Fiverr". Having an entire studio behind you gives you a very clear advantage that if not listed is abuse and taking advantage of a system.

Edited 15 hours ago by dereck_s

[sberazer]

1 hour ago, priyank_mod said:

I religiously avoid and refuse to work with anyone who is also a SELLER on the platform. 

Most like such sellers either work as middlemen (place orders on behalf of their own regular buyer) or to get free work/samples to start their own gig or to damage our stats. 

Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize he was also a seller on the platform until the number of revisions became absurd. That’s when we started looking into his account and saw that he regularly leaves 1- and 2-star reviews on many orders, with generic complaints about the quality or saying he could have gotten the work done for cheaper.

This buyer clearly has a pattern of damaging other sellers’ reputations intentionally, and the fact that Fiverr allows this kind of behavior sets a very negative tone for those of us trying to provide the best quality work we can. It forces sellers like us to be overly cautious and, moving forward, we’ll likely only accept orders from buyers who we are 100% certain are genuine.

But this approach is problematic. I’m sure we’ll mistakenly judge some buyers as a potential threat and refuse their business, meaning that buyer loses our services, we lose their business, and ultimately, Fiverr loses money. The immediate damage is to us, but in the long run, this creates a much bigger issue for Fiverr itself. When sellers can’t trust the system to protect them, the entire marketplace suffers.

Thanks again for your insights. It’s a tough lesson learned, but hopefully, Fiverr can start addressing these types of problems for the sake of all sellers.

[sberazer]

27 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

Are you listed as an agency? If you're a studio (multiple people) passing yourself off and being compared to individual sellers then I'd say you're a seller using your knowledge to take advantage of a system. All the problems you're having with the buyer I'd honestly say you do the same thing and quoting you "quite frankly, shouldn’t be allowed to happen on Fiverr". Having an entire studio behind you gives you a very clear advantage that if not listed is abuse and taking advantage of a system.

That’s an interesting take, but I believe there’s a misunderstanding of the situation here. First of all, being a studio isn’t the same as manipulating the system or refusing to pay for delivered work. Fiverr originally catered to individual freelancers, but as the platform grew, so did the scope of projects and services, naturally leading to studios like ours forming. Fiverr later introduced the agency model—a system meant to allow teams of freelancers to work together under one umbrella. However, as many sellers who’ve been around long enough know, that system has its limitations, and it isn’t widely used.

By the time Fiverr introduced agencies, we were already an established studio on the platform. The structure they introduced required multiple Fiverr accounts to participate, and frankly, very few use it due to its shortcomings. That said, studios and teams working as sellers have become quite common and are in no way violating Fiverr's rules. We’ve built our reputation over years of work, with a clear and honest process.

Comparing that to a buyer who is deliberately abusing the system, withholding payments, and attempting to leave negative reviews for free work isn’t even in the same realm of discussion. What we are talking about here is someone who is manipulating Fiverr’s protections for buyers to harm sellers, regardless of whether they’re an individual or a studio.

Your response seems to conflate two entirely separate issues. The fact that we’re a studio does not make us immune to bad-faith buyers, and it certainly doesn’t make us abusers of the system. If anything, we’re trying to protect ourselves from those who are clearly exploiting it.

Thanks for the input, but this isn’t about studio vs. freelancer—it’s about making sure Fiverr remains a platform where both sellers and buyers act in good faith.

[dereck_s]

1 minute ago, sberazer said:

That’s an interesting take, but I believe there’s a misunderstanding of the situation here. First of all, being a studio isn’t the same as manipulating the system or refusing to pay for delivered work. Fiverr originally catered to individual freelancers, but as the platform grew, so did the scope of projects and services, naturally leading to studios like ours forming. Fiverr later introduced the agency model—a system meant to allow teams of freelancers to work together under one umbrella. However, as many sellers who’ve been around long enough know, that system has its limitations, and it isn’t widely used.

By the time Fiverr introduced agencies, we were already an established studio on the platform. The structure they introduced required multiple Fiverr accounts to participate, and frankly, very few use it due to its shortcomings. That said, studios and teams working as sellers have become quite common and are in no way violating Fiverr's rules. We’ve built our reputation over years of work, with a clear and honest process.

Comparing that to a buyer who is deliberately abusing the system, withholding payments, and attempting to leave negative reviews for free work isn’t even in the same realm of discussion. What we are talking about here is someone who is manipulating Fiverr’s protections for buyers to harm sellers, regardless of whether they’re an individual or a studio.

Your response seems to conflate two entirely separate issues. The fact that we’re a studio does not make us immune to bad-faith buyers, and it certainly doesn’t make us abusers of the system. If anything, we’re trying to protect ourselves from those who are clearly exploiting it.

Thanks for the input, but this isn’t about studio vs. freelancer—it’s about making sure Fiverr remains a platform where both sellers and buyers act in good faith.

The issue here is that a seller is taking advantage of the Fiverr system because he knows he can and he's "exploiting it". That's literally 1 for 1 what you're doing. In whatever field you're in you have a huge unfair advantage over an individual and unless I read the conditions incorrectly you not listing yourself is at best unethical and at worse against the terms on Fiverr itself. It's because of bad faith sellers like you that a lot of individual sellers on here suffer and struggle to get work or have to meet crazy standards because suddenly this "Individual" that's his competition can do the work of 10 people. In this new system we are directly rated against other sellers in our field.

You just haven't realized yet that you're the bad guy in all of this and I hope you'll forgive me if I don't lose much sleep for bad things happening to bad people.