How to spot and avoid scammers [archived]

[vinegraphics]

The risks: getting suckered out of your money, giving up personal info to a scammer, and losing your faith in humanity.

How can you spot a fiverr scam? Many of them feature the same telltale signs:

An abundance of spelling and grammatical errors.

A typo here and there is forgivable, but when a gig is riddled with poor English,

it’s an indication a scammer owns that gig using automated translators—or the person behind the gig just doesn’t care about the gig and its potential buyers.

Either way, you probably want to stay clear.

Generic Gig photos.

Look for real photos instead of the typical product pics or photos found elsewhere on the web. It’s hard to believe the seller

actually has the item in question if he’s using PR photos.

If you see the same gig posted word for word in another account, that’s a huge red flag. You can search through the fiverr site.

Too good to be true.

The biggest telltale sign of a fiverr scammer is if the gig promises a ridiculously good result.

When you’re buying from sellers seemingly desperate to get sales, it’s hard to know what’s a true offer or just bait.

Know what your you want, if you have any doubt, pass on it.

Fiverr offers other common sense rules to avoid scams,

including only meeting in person for local listings, never wiring any money, and never giving out any personal or financial information.

When You’ve Found any gig to purchase: Vet the Seller and Know Your need.

The risks: wasting your time buying a fake gig or something other than what you’re expecting.

Let’s say you found what looks to be a legit gig—the photos are unique and the gig doesn’t look like typical fiverr scams.

Now it’s time to ask some questions and find out more about the seller and the gig.

Ask detailed questions about the gig you want to buy over multiple chats.

Look the seller up.Look criticallty at the sellers rating(cancellation,communication,refund etc)

Avoid Fiverr Scams

[fastcopywriter]

This is how a scam might begin:



"you are nice man sir give me a order as gift."



I know, it happened to me.

[peter_c]

Thanks for the info.

Ive just joined and browsing around to find this. Darn scammers, will they ever stop.

[vinegraphics]

Reply to @peter_c: Yeah you are welcome,just try as much as possible to make the very best of your stay over here at fiverr. Stay safe.

Reply to @fastcopywriter: Yes, truly when you see people like this you just smell foul from their tone. You just know that they are the lazy type and don’t have anything to offer. Its just advisable to stay clear of them.

Reply to @bigbadbilly: My statement on the issue of grammar is not racist in anyway. What i am trying to say is this, if i am from an English speaking country i should be able to write my description in good English, and not mess around with my work. If you cant write it why not give it to those who can. You should show some level of professionalism with your gig outlook.

[kreativa]

You described workers that try to make some penny online with little or no knowledge on their service, but I don’t think they will scam you but their product will be most likely low quality.



If scammers want to scam you - they will. They don’t last long but I’ve seen groups of sellers that organize them self and buy each other gigs, push them self up to Level 2 (seen a top rated as well) with 5 star feedback from the same people multiple times. And they buy each other gigs just to leave the rating, its hilarious this was Graphic designer to another designers and reverse.



Do a quick research if the offer is too good and check the feedback comments and who leaves them. 🙂

[bigbadbilly]

Reply to @vinegraphics: Ya… The Racist bit was a little overboard on my part. Sorry. LOL. But… My point(s) still stand. Not everyone here on Fiverr is from an English speaking Country. Their grammar alone does not mean they can’t provide their service. As a matter of point… their lack of English skills has nothing to do with their ability to complete a gig. And do it well. (Unless it’s a English translation gig or something. LOL).



I am the worst for bothering people to get someone to read their gigs and fix the grammar. But, truth is maybe they don’t know anyone who will do it? Or, like I said… maybe they’re checking out the Fiverr waters. Of all the “Red Flags” someones spelling or grammar isn’t one of them. I also stick to the fact that the “Perfect” sounding gigs are the ones you need to double check. Scammers don’t make mistakes with Grammar. They want everything to be perfect so they can scam you. (The good ones do at least).

[vivialee]

Buying Twitter Followers Here is a Scam

Don’t buy Twitter followers. The fiverr guy I used has disappeared and I have lost over half my “permanent” followers.

[topaz_muse]

Did you report the seller to Customer Service? That would be a great first step.

[edume]

vivialee - Yes! a majority of tweeter, Youtube, facebook, Linkedin, Pyramid SEO, really any seo, traffic to your website, these are all fake services. As much as someone tells you they can provide real services, they can’t. After a few months you’ll see your followers disappear suddenly. I’ve been saying this for a long time and we’ve tested many services on fiverr to see the result. Avoid these types of services on fiverr. Unfortunately, even outside of fiverr there are bad services. You need to get a referral from another friend or business that you can confirm that they had success with those services. Good luck.

[sincere18]

Well, it is also important to know that it is against the rules of Twitter to buy followers, so technically any gig you find is going to be scam to a certain extent. And also buy buying followers you run the risk of getting your own Twitter account shut down.

[fonthaunt]

Reply to @nopirosyadi: You would have to be able to get 500 real people from all over the world to go and click the buyer’s page if what you are saying is true. Plus you say you can get them to do it within 24 hours. Sorry, but I flat out don’t believe you can do that. If you get paid $5 to do it, you give each of those 500 people their share of the money? Come on, be serious. If you aren’t using a bot, you explain how you do it without one.

[magneticman]

I advise you to stay away from sellers have no guarantee in these services

I sell Twitter followers and the surest retrieve any drop for 60 days

[tsweezey]

There are services that can identify “fake” twitter followers. Some are even free. It’ll become evident pretty quickly that none of these services provide any real followers.

[therealsiri]

Don’t hire a Virtual Assistant on fiverr until you understand how they work. Also, make sure that you’re able to communicate with them well. You want to pick somebody that you can work well with and that can understand your project or business. The success of building your virtual team has a lot to do with communication and understanding.



There’s a bunch of videos on YouTube for tips on hiring a Virtual Assistant. Check’em out.



Fiverr has awesome and not-so-awesome VA’s… don’t let price determine the quality, but leverage out the low cost entry to try out a few before making any long-term or large commitment.



A few tips from me…

-start small, but go fast

-work with a dedicated team and not just an individual

-use screen share videos to communicate tasks or have a task liaison that can do it for you



If you have any questions - feel free to ask or post’em here

[belengarcia]

The title of this post is wrong: “Buying Twitter Followers Here is a Scam” should be “Buying Twitter Followers is a Scam”. It’s a scam here on Fiverr, and anywhere else. It’s not a Fiverr thing, it’s a “buying followers” thing.

[sameerthewriter]

I have seen buyers giving positive feedback to those services and saying that their followers haven’t dropped since months. I am not sure, this is what I saw. If I had money to buy Twitter followers, I would have definitely tried it once.

So sorry for what happened to you.

[cashlebrun]

Plagiarism is rampant on this site, so if you must use it, do a shutterstock and google search first on their stock images. Chances are that’s where your final design is coming from.

[theratypist]

Tineye is also useful 🙂

[mariamughal]

I downloaded a music file from a site that “showed themselves of providing non copyright stuff” but later on I found out that they were lying 😦

[alw1nl]

Same with article writers, I did test orders from 30 writers for my project, only 5 were reasonable and 2 were usable, but not outstanding. Even among top rated writers there is a LOT of rubbish, if not most of them. I noticed that MOST buyers give high ratings and days later they realize they bought rubbish. Which makes the rating system basically useless.

[contentcruise]

I agree with you, but you can still get original, non-plagiarized article if so desired and willing to pay the price.

[glitchfool]

Not to mention the vast loads of rule breaking among many sellers on this site. I found a top rated seller logo designer that basically rips designs off of a logo website and sells them to his customers (many reviews accounted for this). I found it amazing that he was permitted to be a TRS while sporting this sort of behavior. It really burns those of us that do things the right way and offer original content. It also denigrates the title of TRS and the legitimacy of Fiverr as a trustworthy marketplace.

[alw1nl]

To find good sellers on Fiverr is a skill itself I learned and it takes a while before you understand how to stop wasting money on rubbish.

[fastcopywriter]

That is not true, if my clients don’t like my work they will demand modifications immediately or refunds. Nobody reviews without seeing the work first.

Where any of those writers you hired TRS? Did you hire the right writer? If it’s article writers, some might suck writing about science while others do better writing about money, career, etc. All writers are not created equal, but a TRS is someone that gets the job done consistently and was chosen by Fiverr editors to be TRS. Fiverr puts their reputation on the line when they choose a TRS.

[fastcopywriter]

Bah, I see a lot of jealousy on this thread. Everyone is a crook, TRS’s are crooks, logo designers are crooks. Bunch of BS if you ask me. It’s just like when people hate the rich, hate Wall Street, hate the #1 realtor, hate Ms. Universe, hate top athletes, etc.

Now if I hire someone to create a gig image for me, it’s possible he might use stock photography. That’s not plagiarism, art directors use stock all the time. If a graphic designer needs a dragon, he rarely draws it from scratch but looks for dragon pictures, finds the right ones, and then uses that for inspiration.

Even if a logo designer uses a logo generator, he needs to have skills to fix that logo when his clients demand changes, and someone with no graphic design skills cannot do that.