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

[sincere18]

Reply to @fonthaunt: but I think you can do that via a mutual cancellation, if the job is not a right fit for you.

[sincere18]

Reply to @sue_mcl: That’s an interesting notion. But if a seller is behind a bit and needs to catch up, shouldn’t they just be increasing their delivery times for their gig in general?



They wouldn’t have to use vacation mode if they were giving themselves enough time to complete their gigs. If they start to see their queue fill up they could just adjust their gig at that moment, then once they have an empty queu lower the delviery days back.



As a buyer if I came across someone who said come back later or tomorrow, I would just shop and go elsewhere. Why would I bother to go back? there are plenty of sellers out there.

[darkwingdave]

reply to @mintyone What do you recommend when you have for example a gig of X amount of words deliverable in X days. And the buyer places an order for 7 gigs. 7 times the amount of work in the amount of time for 1 gig.

[enlightenedpen]

Reply to @fonthaunt: That’s terrible. Fortunately, I haven’t had that happen yet. In this case, the “late” label definitely doesn’t sound appropriate.

[Guest mcromano]

Reply to @mintyone: Wow, really? Do you think your sellers aren’t people, with emergencies and things happening in their lives? I’m sorry, but for 5$ a pop, you can expect professionalism, a good product, but you can’t expect that person to put their life on hold if they have something important going on. Their life doesn’t revolve around your order, and it’s unfair of you to deem that “unacceptable”. Of course, if you’ve already told them you have a definite deadline, and they don’t let you know in time, you’re entitled to being angry, but in the case of a regular order, people should always put their life emergencies before one random order.

[sue_mcl]

Reply to @sincere18: It was probably more of an idea to save changing the gig up all the time, because floods like that tend to be sporadic… If I had a regular customer who I found out didn’t order a gig and went to someone else because I had adjusted my time out (when I would have realistically been caught up in half a day), I’d be a bit bummed…



I guess I’m just looking at it from the sellers perspective of why they are doing things - ie wanting to get as many orders as possible, but managing the eb and flow of that a little better, as its not like all orders come in a nice orderly fashion.

[sue_mcl]

Reply to @sincere18: And yes, if I seller is finding themselves constantly behind, then of course they should adjust their gig delivery times, I was more thinking for the surprise you have lots of orders today type situations, that tend to mainly cause issues for newer buyers before they work out how to manage their time better.

[mintyone]

Reply to @darkwingdave: You need to take this into consideration when creating your delivery times. How long will it take you to deliver if a buyer orders 15 gigs? 20?

[david388]

Hi @kashmiah!



To be fair, late deliveries are the responsibility of us as Sellers. But if you guys are trying to look at it from a systems standpoint to help reduce this problem, it could be helpful to have some kind of auto-reminders that get generated as the deadline approaches. Maybe something around 24 hours, or the day of, etc. This could serve as a reminder to the seller, and also encourage communication with the buyer before the order actually runs late.



I know that I’ve had a couple “nailbiter” moments where I suddenly realize a delivery is due in a few hours and have to work as hard as I can to get it done and polished in the nick of time. Having an automated reminder like that could help keep almost-due orders higher on a Seller’s radar.



Hope this helps - let me know if you have any other thoughts/questions!



David

https://www.fiverr.com/david388

[logoworld07]

HI there,

• There could be option of “Initial Deliver Option”.

[phoenix7813]

Noo… for the love of all that’s good, no more automated anything. Being almost exclusively a seller here on Fiverr I am usually in the corner of the sellers. But forgetting that you have an order coming up… sorry but that sounds like a you type problem.



One thing I’ve seen in this discussion is a bit of cloudiness on the purpose of something like this. If you are always worrying about late deliveries, again… that’s a you problem. Maybe adjust your delivery times etc. That is not something that needs to be messed with by Fiverr.



On the other hand as folks have mentioned sometimes things come up. Special circumstances and situations. You have the accident/illness/family emergency type situations. In those cases, I don’t know about other sellers but I will take care of myself first, then my customers. Of course, as long as I am able to type or at least talk, I would get a message out to them asap explaining things. Communication.



Again, this is not something Fiverr needs to get involved with. Something Fiverr should get involved with is something that has been mentioned several times here. Buyers not submitting all the required information/files/etc for a job or not being responsive through the completion of the job.



I strongly feel we should have some function on the seller side that allows us to confirm whether or not the buyer has actually submitted the information. I mentioned before that a buyer can start your job clock simply by replying “I’ll get this to you soon”. Any message they send starts the clock. It could still be days before they submit the information.



So put in a button on the seller side that confirms we have received the required info and the gig clock doesn’t start until we click that. Fiverr definitely seems to be slanted towards the buyers and that makes sense. But I do not think this would be a big inconvenience for them. They are supposed to have that information ready when they order.



Another thing that might help as far as unresponsive buyers is the nudge function. We have that available if the buyer has not submitted any information at all but to help out with late deliveries and gigs that depend heavily on buyer input, perhaps we could have a nudge function that pauses the gig clock.



Let’s say I submit my 4 rough drafts of a logo design or ask a pronunciation question on a voice over. I cannot continue to work until I get a response to those questions. So I submit my question or draft then click nudge and my clock is paused until the buyer responds.



Possible for sellers to abuse this function to stop the clock? Of course. But I suspect if a seller pauses their clock for no good reason the buyer might have something to say about that in the feedback.

[sincere18]

Reply to @phoenix7813: That is interesting about the part the the clock starts if a buyer simply sends a note saying 'I’ll get you the info soon"…that is an issue. Though in one way, even when some buyers do submit information, not all of the buyers are skilled in buying so they may give the materials, answer questions, but not truly give the seller what they need to do the job and the sellers still has questions they have to go back for.



On that end, I think also perhaps there needs to be more of a format for how the sellers ask for information and a very clear list of ALL the info needed, as though you were asking a buyer who never bought something before. For example, take a logo, someone mentioned in another forum that they were delivered a logo they hated and felt the logo designer didn’t do a good job. I ask what info and direction they gave to the designer, and then I though, well, no wonder, that is hardly anything to go on. So that kind of thing happens too.

[strongestate]

Reply to @saraswatimaha: I like this idea too and have considered it before myself, but sometimes orders could sit out in la-la land waiting to be approved or denied and that’s not fair to sellers trying to get work done.

[strongestate]

Reply to @sue_mcl: You bring up a great point. I was overbooked and used the vacation mode with the “I’m overbooked” drop-down option only to discover to the public it said I was on vacation for two days. I prefer the implication of being overbooked as opposed to being at the beach… adds to a seller’s positive social proof.

[sue_mcl]

Reply to @sincere18:

On that end, I think also perhaps there needs to be more of a format for how the sellers ask for information and a very clear list of ALL the info needed, as though you were asking a buyer who never bought something before. For example, take a logo, someone mentioned in another forum that they were delivered a logo they hated and felt the logo designer didn’t do a good job. I ask what info and direction they gave to the designer, and then I though, well, no wonder, that is hardly anything to go on. So that kind of thing happens too.



I VERY much agree with this, some kind of checklist (that sellers can adjust to their own needs but at least has a start point) would be SO helpful!

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[emasonwrites]

Reply to @strongestate: Agreed! I know that it shows on the individual gigs that you’re overbooked, if you choose that option, but on your profile, it just says “I’m on vacation,” with like a little sun next to it. I get messages from buyers that say stuff like, “I hope you’re enjoying your vacation! Did you just stay at home or did you get to go abroad? Just wondering when you’ll be back,” etc., etc. I know I don’t have to explain to them that I’m not actually on vacation, but I’d prefer looking like I’m in high demand rather than that I’m sitting on a beach somewhere!

[emasonwrites]

Reply to @darkwingdave: Not to bag on buyers at all, but I feel like only a small percentage of mine look at how long I’ve set the gig for before buying. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just true, based on how often they ask “Is this really going to take X days?” I’ve put a stipulation in all of my gig descriptions that my goal is to deliver in about half of the gig’s duration, and that the protracted timeline is only for large orders.



The point being: until we have a better solution for dealing with gig multiples, you can probably extend your gig’s delivery time to accommodate the occasional larger order and just explain to the buyers who notice that you actually plan to deliver in a much shorter timeline, and that the full gig duration is just to give yourself enough time to do larger orders.

[Guest amelialatham]

What I have found is that sometimes, you don’t even need a full extra day or two days. Sometimes, all you need is an extra couple of hours! Right now I have this situation where the work ended up being a lot heavier than thought for time-wise. And literally, I just need like 2 hours exra to finish the job. So what I would suggest would be, like many others have mentioned, a possibility to mutually extend the time. But that this can range from 1 hour extra on. I have had times where unexpected things just hapen, that might be out of my control (such as a power outtage) that really delays work, and this affects us as a seller directly.

[prashantborda]

Reply to @sabiansoldier: exactly! I believe this would be a win-win situation for both parties. if both of parties are ready then it will be fine 🙂

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[radugeorgescu]

How about having 2 deadlines.



1 estimated deadline which would be the existing deadline we all set.



2nd one would be an ultimate deadline past which will allow one buyer to cancel the order with no questions asked leaving a scar for late delivery.



A gig already has “estimated gig delivery X days” displayed so making that more visibile will reflect the average deadline for that gig, allowing one buyer to judge for himself if he/she wishes to use that gig or not based on what the seller states and based on what the gig’s average delivery time is. Hope that makes sense.



Another useful idea would be to have a freeze/reset deadline option which would have both parties accepting the request for it to apply.



For example: Buyer orders, submits information | Seller replies, asking for some extra information | Buyer needs more time to aquire that information or replies late due to unexpected personal problems. By now less than half the deadline set is left. | Seller would ask the buyer and petition for a “deadline freeze” which would have options like: add time or, freeze deadline for 6h 12h 1day 2days etc.



Now looking at how one could abuse these. Well no matter what will be implemented there will always be ways to abuse it but that also leaves way to improve as those abuses show.



Happy Gigging.

Radu.

[gordongekko]

Reply to @mintyone: No offense @mintyone, I understand your point of view if you are doing a signature - a relatively easy Gig - but there are some people here that actually do more complex jobs and sometimes you just need more time for a job to deliver better quality. In my case, I offer translation Gigs and even if I set the Gig to “500 words in 2 days” myself, some people will come up with a totally complex text and the research alone will take 2 days. Now I am in a tight spot to either a) deliver bad quality, just to be within the allotted time, b) cancel/reject the Gig or c) try to over-complicate with lots of rules and exceptions to the simple premise of delivering 500 words in 2 days.

[carriecreative]

It would be nice to have the option to extend the deadline. I recently had to cancel an order because although I initially finished the order in a timely fashion the buyer requested modifications shortly before the deadline. Since I didn’t want to risk being late we just agreed on a mutual cancellation.

It would be great to have the option of extending the deadline when certain circumstances arise.

[fonthaunt]

Reply to @sincere18: Actually, no. Buyers don’t have to accept a mutual cancellation, so if a seller has had a problem with a buyer before or the buyer just wants to make some trouble, they can order a $5 gig and sacrifice the funds to give a seller a poor rating. Competitive sellers can even do this to cause lowered ratings on other sellers and CS tends to put more weight on the side of the buying participant. If there was a decline button (even a limited time one that expired in say, 12 hours) it would give sellers with no harm to anyone.

[bdfoysol]

http://fiverr24.blogspot.com/favicon.icofiverr24.blogspot.com

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

Hey guys, We're thinking about working on new features related to late deliveries. Here's the question: If you are late/close to being l...

[nikkigirl2282]

My problem is people automatically leaving me negative feedback without contacting me first to give me a chance to correct what they aren’t happy with. A lot of people completely bypass the modification aspect and if they don’t like what they receive, they automatically leave a negative review. I would like to see a button added to all orders for sellers where we have an opportunity to “flag” orders where negative feedback is left without contacting the seller that automatically notifies someone at Fiverr to review the order and if they don’t see that a buyer has made an effort to contact the seller to correct whatever they don’t like about their order, then Fiverr automatically removes the feedback from the seller after reviewing the order. I don’t believe I should have negative feedback against me when I have made several attempts to contact the buyer and they don’t respond and just leave a negative review. Thanks.