Need Feedback: How Can We Help You with Late Deliveries?

[sincere18]

Reply to @vainpaper: I think it’s also a buyers responsibility as well. If they buy something for a 3 days turnaround and it’s the type of job that requires proofs, why are they not getting back to the sellers in time? Don’t they factor that into their own schedule when buying a gig?

[sue_mcl]

I have been on both sides of this as a seller and a buyer, so this is my 15 or maybe 50 cents 😉



Firstly as a buyer, it is SOOOOOOO frustrating when you have ordered something that has a 3 or maybe even 4 day delivery time (or more) and at the time you order it, you think well I would love it earlier, but I don’t want to pay $10 or $20 extra for quicker, so I’ll suck it up and wait out the 3 days, only to get a message at 2 days 23 hours, that the seller wants to cancel, so you will no longer get your order. Worse is when you order the 24 hours express as you need it urgently and then at the last minute find you won’t get it and have to start again.



Yes I totally understand that life happens and that there are many reasons why a seller may not be able to delivery (more on that below) but it seems to come up all the time in the forums as a huge gripe and generally makes fiverr an unfriendly place to do business. Hobby maybe, but not business. Yes fiverr is cheap and you get what you pay for, but why is there SO much emphasis on sellers to provide quality product, great customer service etc, if when something goes wrong, the buyers are expected to just go oh well, that is my tough shyte (or have another forum member tell then that they should have read the TOS - if you don’t like it, tough). It certainly doesn’t inspire you to want to source a freelancer on fiverr again, which could mean that you miss out on connecting with a great buyer, who will deliver on time as many (maybe even most) do.



On the flip side, as a seller, I recently experienced a situation where life did get in the way, just on the same day as I got 11 orders in one day, including 3 large custom orders from people I had been dealing with for a while, plus 3 modification requests which required complete re-dos and it totally threw me, as I had 24 hour delivery on my gig at that time and I had personal stuff going on too.



Up until then, I had only got a few orders each day (and was super excited each time I got one) so everything was managable, but this craziness just threw everything out, I got massively stressed and for a couple of hours, wanted to just cancel all the gigs and give everyone their money back and go and give up on fiverr and go cry somewhere for a while. Especially when everything that could go wrong did go wrong with the very first gig I had to do (including my computer crashing three times) which meant that order, and every single order that first one was due became late. Once I got myself together, I actually contacted the first guy and offered him a full refund (for a $70 gig which hurt - but I couldn’t face re-doing four hours of work at that moment). I told him I would deliver his custom gig 2 days late, which he agreed to - but he didn’t take the refund which was very kind of him - just so I only had 1 upset person, not 10 to deal with. Seeing those big red late messages (as well as the ridiculous messages) just stressed me out even more.



I have since learnt from the fiasco and taken a day on “vacation” here and there to catch up if I need to and changed my gig time to 3 days with 24 hrs as a paid extra to reduce the stress of lots of 24 hour deliveries at once, but in the early days, I was all about trying to do my best (which meant spending far longer on each job than I probably should) and doing it fast, as I wanted to impress my customers so I could get good reviews to enable me to be able to have 3 days delivery and still get lots of work, I just wasn’t ready for a heap of orders to hit me at once.



OK so for my ideas on how to fix it…



Firstly, I think there should be some sort of queue stopper, so that each seller can set their maximum queue based on their output and include custom orders in it. Ideally, it would be flexible, say for me for example, I would like that since my gig is a 3 day delivery, that for extra fast deliveries, I can only take them if I have less than say 6 orders due in the next 24 hours.



Perhaps, sellers can only have say more than 10 (or whatever number is fair for that category) in their queue at once, until they have a proven history of delivering on time, without last minute cancellations and extensions? Is there a way also, to show which buyers have a high rate of last minute cancellations - not the ones done within the first say 12 hours, but the ones that are done within 6 hours of the expected delivery time.



Secondly, I think there should be a mutual extension option for sellers to request, but it should be limited, so it is not constantly abused. ie, if a seller has a history of using that on more than say 5% of their orders, they cannot use it, otherwise the poor buyers are going to probably be no better off than they are at the moment with frustrations over waiting for days for something and then not getting it. I also think it should be time limited, ie max of 24 hours, or again, sellers are going to get shafted waiting, when they could have just picked someone else who has a history of delivering on time.



Perhaps there could be a rating for sellers for on time delivery (although that would probably get abused by people doing faux deliveries as it is now, just so they could maintain 100% on time).



I definitely think that an extension request would be really helpful, just hard to figure out a way where it won’t get abused.



Also, if someone requests a modification, can that not come up with big red late messages, just re-set the timer to say 24 hours to provide the requested modification?



Lastly, it would be really great if we could offer the client some kind of compensation or partial refund for lateness - such as if they order a 24 hour extra fast gig and it is late - refund just the extra fast fee, not the gig fee. For my $70 custom order above I would have loved to at least give him 25% or 50% off or something to make up for the delay - I offered extra free VO work, but he didn’t need it.



Thanks for getting to the end if you did 🙂

[sue_mcl]

Oh and with the queue thing - a way to determine orders/vs gigs, for example, if one customer orders 20 gigs, that seems to count as one order, which is obviously way more work that 1 gig, and can often be the cause of seller delivery stress.

[mrproofreading]

Reply to @sincere18: Sadly, no, some don’t. Last night, a customer ordered my gig, “submitted the information”, and then said she’ll send the content over tomorrow. This is on a three day turnaround gig, realistically leaving me with less than 48 hours to complete the order.

[sue_mcl]

Reply to @mrproofreading: Perhaps that could be something for the new improved system, a message to the buyers not to start the order until they have everything ready… like a giant button that says do you have everything you need for the seller to complete this order ready now? If they click no, then they can’t start the timer and continue until they are ready… I think some people just don’t know or think about the consequences of it…

[abidagfx]

it should be like this… when buyer have to say about modification in work he should also have a Drop down “Allow Seller Days to do the modification” Drop Down 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,



this option can be used when they will see order is late already and they asking for modifications.



Drop Down menu text also can be



1." too many modi? give seller more time"

or



2. "Seller is overbooked? give him some more time.



Or



Your order is lill late due to modi. give him some more time.

[sincere18]

Reply to @sue_mcl: These are all excellent points and I think your suggestions on how to fix it are right on target. I really like the idea of having some kind of cap that a seller can set for one day deliveries. Sellers can cancel, though I think the money desparation sinks in, and that’s part of what drives a few factors of things on Fiverr. The only downside is that for a buyer, you would not know until you actually decide to buy.



Though I do not understand the modification part. Is this after the job is done? Or does the job come with revises stated clearly in the ad?

[vainpaper]

Reply to @sincere18: They frequently rush me to complete the proof but then let the order sit for many days before finalizing their changes. Often I am forced to deliver since I don’t want the penalties but they’re not done reviewing the work. It’s risky.

[mrproofreading]

Reply to @sue_mcl:

sue_mcl said: I think some people just don’t know or think about the consequences of it…

I agree. I’m sure if they -knew- the consequences, they wouldn’t do so.

[catsquirrel]

Reply to @fonthaunt:

(Piping in as a buyer, here…)



This would be a great idea!



Even when “mods” aren’t involved, there are times when a seller needs more time: suddenly swamped with orders, the light isn’t right for their photo gig, computer problem, site glitch, flu bug, electricity failure because of massive storm, and so on.



Once I’ve found a seller who is reliable and good at what he or she does, I like to continue to buy from that person. My projects are generally not time sensitive, so I wouldn’t be opposed to giving the seller more time, to get more time-sensitive orders in to other clients. It would be very neat to be able to “extend the deadline” from the buyer’s side, so the seller wouldn’t need to worry so much.



I’m probably not expressing this well, but (based on some of the threads in the forum) it seems that sometimes a seller would like to request an “extension”, but has the unenviable choice of cancelling an order or risking the potential wrath of a possibly-psychotically unreasonable buyer.



“Too long, didn’t read” version: It’d be good to have some way for a buyer to approve an extended deadline.

[catsquirrel]

Reply to @sincere18:

For the record, there does seem to be an automated message that goes out to the buyer if the info-request is not completed. Or, at least, I receive one an hour or so after I order some graphic design gigs. The problem is that it is also after I’ve already provided the information in the manner it was requested.

[regerar]

Being able to create a deadline extension with the client would be a fantastic feature! Many of the gigs I do are full-length audio books, which can take weeks to deliver, which falls well beyond my 8-day delivery period (for shorter works). Granted, most clients understand this, so they just leave gigs in a state of everlasting lateness, but I would love the ability to simply extend the deadline.

[sincere18]

Reply to @regerar: Mabybe you could have 2 different gigs, one for short works and one for longer works where you can give a longer time frame.

[Guest itsyourthing]

Reply to @sincere18:

sincere18 said: But when someone orders a gig and they do not then complete the info needed for a seller to start within a day let's say, maybe Fiverr could create some kind of automated message that goes out to the buyer if they do not complete the order/info request within one day, stating if your information is not submitted the time frame of your gig deliverability be extended a day do you accept, and let them choose yes or decline and cancel the gig, or maybe just get strict and cancel the gig automatically....or something to that effect.

You're absolutely correct about defeating the entire deadline system by making it easy for sellers to extend. The idea to not accept/remind/cancel gigs that don't have the instructions followed is great. But as usual, I have to say the first priority is making sure the functionality of requiring instructions actually works properly! That setting on all of my gigs had either changed to 'not required' or it was wrongly showing me that it had been changed - either way, not good!

[Guest itsyourthing]

Reply to @sincere18:

sincere18 said: If they know they have several orders coming in, whether 10 separate $5 gigs or one gig with 10 gig quantity, would that also take you the 8 days or whatever?

That's historically been Fiverr's reason for not automatically extending based on order multiples, but the problem with that is that for many sellers (especially newer ones) it can cost potential orders for the turnaround on a single gig to be 7 days, just in case they get multiples or loads of single orders. What happens with 10 orders of 10 multiples? The reality is that any seller can get a dozen orders per hour or one per week (or longer). Automatic extension on multiple orders could help equalize the feast or famine.

[Guest itsyourthing]

@kashmiah, It would be far more effective to look at seller’s functional priorities based on what they add or stress in their gig descriptions and the most common complaints and suggestions on the forum, then have actual developers look at the ‘list’ and come up with the best ways to implement changes that will satisfy the majority of site users - without causing other issues.



Asking for feedback is fine, but with this type of platform you’re literally soliciting as much information that’s impractical (or downright silly) as you are that’s potentially actionable.



Separate the wheat from the chaff and then ask the miller how to make flour.

[Guest itsyourthing]

Reply to @kjblynx: Absolutely!

[carrieblogger]

I would still love to see a revamped, more helpful to-do list. Instead of simply having the days until something is due, it would be great to have it count down the hours as well. I understand that this applies more before the order is due than after, but it would help with keeping track of soon to be late orders without having to click into each order individually.



On that line, though now completely unrelated to the question at hand, I wish that it would say the name of the gig that they’ve ordered where it currently says ‘You need to deliver your order’.

[sue_mcl]

Reply to @sincere18: the modification thing is in regards to the timeframe on modifications - currently, if someone asks for a modification after the date it was originally due, you go into the order and get a big red LATE sign. It is hard for sellers and buyers to know expectations on modification delivery timeframes. If I have a really busy day and get two or three buyers with big jobs request modifications, it is often hard to fit them in and deliver my current work too. It would be great to have a timeframe choice on that - ie 12 hours, 24 hours, two days etc, depending on the request of the modification, rather than have a giant late message. Sometimes the modifications are more of a client issue than something I have done wrong for example.

[dukanu]

Deadline extension is a good idea. But I hate when buyer ask for many modification requests and the time is count-down again. If I have a free day or I do my sleep schedule it may end up with a late order delivery.



All the best,



dukanu

[lakmallala]

good

[sincere18]

Reply to @sue_mcl: But is a modification included in the delivery time? I guess I generally don’t buy things that need to be revised. But if I was buying something like a logo, where they were going to show me a version and then I would get to ask for revisions, I would think all of that would happen prier the deadline date, that that time frame is worked into the schedule to begin with.

[kreativa]

Finally!



We love the following ideas:

1. Extension request + extension per modification. Fiverr is not primary job to many users, right now I am on work and a customer requested a modification (third) , I don’t have the software to work and fix things from my job and order will expire before I get back home.
   
   
2. Negative review from the system. I understand this is for protection for fiverr buyers in order a seller is passive or inactive and got order. But instead I think is mostly fair to just cancel the order and re-fund.
   
   
   
3. Confirming the order. In order to protect fiverr and the buyers from inactive sellers, this is a good option to give the sellers to confirm the order (not accept/deny) in 1-2 days after submission and the counter shall start working only than when the order is confirmed. If order is not confirmed, a buyer won’t wait for the average order time to get the money back. Win-win.
   
   
   
   Just our two cents,
   
   Keep it up!
   
   
   
   Kreativa.

[sue_mcl]

Reply to @sincere18: Yeah I guess, but as a voiceover artist, I am often dealing with third party sellers, where I may deliver on time and they are happy, but they will then send it to their client (who may be in another time zone) and hours or often a day or more later, the client will ask for changes (often because the third party seller didn’t give me the clients instructions, more their idea on how it should be, which is incredibly frustrating, but a story for another thread haha)

[isaacroot]

My thoughts on 2 features that i would like implemented:

1. Extension request. (I have had buyers order before gathering materials or adding on extras and custom work).
   
   
2. Modification extension. The clock should not resume ticking where it left off when a customer requests a modification. I should have an extra day or at lease 12 hours to work on a modification. sometimes i deliver 8 hours before the deadline on a 24 hour gig, but during the night they request a modification and then it becomes close to being late. (Many buyers misuse the modification button also.)
   
   
   
   Thanks,
   
   Isaac