Petition to remove 'Response Rate' [ARCHIVED]

[misscrystal]

I would like to be able to take a day off at least once a week but I can’t due to this. I stay here 7 days a week responding to my inbox. Can’t we have a way to take a day off sometimes?

[jhenellefrancis]

I think its exactly how you described it. The seller has to be the last to respond at all times. Very silly. Not sure if this is true but i have had someone else tell me that. Along with a never ending conversation i personally had with another seller. She insisted to be the last to respond. It was quite silly but it proves my point that you assumption might be correct.

Earlier today i checked my response rate. It was 94%. The next time i logged on it said 80% (This was within the same day btw). I got a message shortly after which i promptly responded to and it immediately jumped to 90%… Not sure what thats all about.

BUT i dont think its something sellers have to worry about. From what i have been reading so far even top sellers have very low response rate. I saw one guy that had 27%.

[provoiceworks]

AMEN!!! One of our biggest issues with this site!

[sarabequette]

LOL @ “doing it now” response!

Priceless.

But, oh what a nightmare! I feel your pain and while this hasn’t happened to me (yet), I’m sure you’re not alone…

Since this is an old thread that this newbie 😛 is only just finding, has this feature been improved in any way since this discussion began?

[r3k0d3d]

Verdicts out, we don’t want it anymore Fiverr, get rid of Response Rate, or at least hire a coder that can fix it… 😛

[bettinawest]

It sounds so simple in the FAQ:
“It tracks the percentage of first responses sent within 24 hours over the last 30 days.
For example, if you received 10 new requests in your inbox in the last 30 days and replied to 9 of them within 24 hours of receiving each one, your response rate is 90%.
Note: if you reply to the last message more than 24 hours after receiving it, your response rate will still be 90%. We recommend that sellers reply even after 24 hours.”
“The Response Rate Indicator tracks your first response to a new request. After that first reply, the rest of the conversation isn’t tracked, although it is important to continue conversations with Buyers until a conclusion is reached.”

But my response rate indicator definately doesn´t work that way…
I´ve received 10 different messages, 7 of them have been answered in 1 hour and 3 of them within 2 hours (70 minutes…)
If the indicator was working properly, my response rate would be 100% according to the FAQ, but it´s 89%…

Nothing makes me more crazy than things that doesn´t work as they are supposed to… I wouldn´t mind the indicator so much if it at least had been working like they say that it should…

[bettinawest]

After a message to the customer support, it took 5 minutes and then my response rate shows 100%… TY CS! Hope it works now… 🙂

[Guest zen_graphics1]

Its giving me a headache when everything else is 100 and then the response rate is at 93% and that is not a very pretty sight

[qualitytimenow]

This feature is terrible for attracting new fiverr sellers and will hurt their bottom line.
If a buyer sees a 88% reply rate they think that the seller only replies to 88% of the emails they get and that is not true at all! Fiver does factor time for replies etc but the seller doesnt read what this rate really means so they think we don’t reply to 12 of 100 people and that is wrong! Pllllllllllllllllllllllllls remove this feature.

[swagatab]

I am new to fiverr as a seller (have used it as a buyer before) and have responded to 100% of the actual messages. I just ignored two messages which were spam and my response rate has dropped. This is obviously giving a wrong picture and needs to be removed.

[biglilfish]

The response rate tracking does not always work. I get messages that I can’t respond to (marked spam) and my rate goes down. I get glitchy messages that also do not track my response. Often the mobile version creates tracking issues, as well.

If it doesn’t work…

If it ANNOYS AND DETRACTS dedicated Sellers…

GET RID OF IT!!!

It is costing fiverr money when a Seller can not focus on sales and delivery.

[doodler]

Pretty please - take this stress making ‘response rate’ down. Anyone that’s selling on Fiverr and takes it seriously and professionally - responds to their messages as quickly as possible - myself included. Love Fiverr, but this is ridiculous. Get rid of it - please!!!

[litalmakeit]

Did you mark them as spam ?

[servicetier]

@bettinawest
I wasn’t as lucky. It’s more than a year since this petition was started by the OP, mind you.

Here’s part of my interaction with CS who, to their credit, responded lightning fast and were courteous:
Me: I was a buyer in that case, not a seller. She had basically spammed me offering further services. Should I really be penalized for that?
CS: Unfortunately, this feature is regulated by our system and not something we can manually adjust.

Essentially, actions I take as a buyer affect my ratings as a seller.

As a buyer, it should entirely be my call on whether to respond to a sales message.

[servicetier]

I just wanted to follow up and say what happened next. CS was very responsive and escalated the issue to someone who corrected the Response Rate and bumped it up from 91% to 100%.

What still perplexed me is the root cause, which has eluded all of us. Here’s my take:
In February, I had bought services from a seller who then sent me an unsolicited e-mail not related to the completed gig, offering more services, in April. I didn’t think it necessary to respond since I was a prospective buyer at that point, just like people don’t respond to every advertising message they get.
Keeping aside the discussion about whether my action or inaction in response to such a message as a buyer should or shouldn’t affect my Response Rate as a seller, let’s talk about the message in question.
It was sent on April 1 and I didn’t respond to it until April 5 after noticing a drop in my Response Rate. Since I was told that only ‘first’ messages are counted (which would have occurred in February), I think the only reason my score was affected is that the clock on what’s counted as ‘first’ resets every so often (30 days?). So, the ‘first’–in my opinion–isn’t the absolute first exchange of messages. It’s the first in whatever time period is used to evaluate the metric in question.
Essentially, the same seller could send me another marketing message in May and I either have to respond or mark it as spam (even though I don’t want to do either), or we’ll be doing the same dance again!

Kudos to CS for fixing it, for being courteous, and for trying to explain what happened.

[enginteymur]

My response rate is very low (20%) and I dont know, do I have to reply spam messages or some uninteresting messages? As I see, many people suffer from that problem. To keep my response rate, I have to reply when customer even says “you are welcome”. What’s the point of using that feature. Simply I didn’t like it.

[italianspeaker]

I agree with all of you. The tipycal chat on Fiverr is like that:
BUYER: Hi, give me info or quotes about your service… etc.
SELLER: Hi, this is what you want to know.
BUYER: Thanks.

Now, I usually don’t answer to all “thanks”, because I have no time and buyer is satisfied about the answer or conversation. If this affects my Response Rate, I don’t like it.

So, add me to the list of who wants this feature deleted. 🙂

But, of course, Fiverr rocks!

[kickgom]

A lot of glitches on this…i respond to everything and nothing seems to work

[fungirl77]

I feel like response time should be in appx hours or days. RATE should be how many of your first messages you respond to total in a percentage. Just my opinion.

Here’s the definition: 1.
a measure, quantity, or frequency, typically one measured against some other quantity or measure.
“the crime rate rose by 26 percent”

So, with this information it should be “Seller responds to 70% of messages” or whatever the number may be.

[godfather]

Remove it or fix it! It doesn’t matter what you do with a spam message…your response rate will fall! Why have an annoying thing like that too look at if it’s not going to work!!!

You should consider taking all of the things off the desk of whoever came up with this idea, put them in a pillow case, and give them a brief beating with it on their way out the door. (Just kidding of course…but NOT!)

Really! I’m here typing this message and not doing anything to improve my business.

FIX IT OR GET RID OF IT!!!

[lbkcreative]

Something similar happened to me! I was responding within 12 hours to every message and my rate kept dropping. I actually contacted support about it and they reset it to 100% for me. Of course, it dropped again :). The feature seems to cause more stress than it’s worth.

[adelinewinata]

I never missed any messages since I first got here, and there was no problem with my response rate. Then on one busy weekend, I had three new messages that I forgot to reply because I was really busy, and when I got online the day after my response rate fell to 67%! I understand that it would decrease, but I didn’t know it would go down that much! 😦
I’m not really sure if this is a glitch or not, but I do agree that it does distracts from focusing on open orders because the red lines really bothers me 😦

[vdaenterprises]

In my case that is EXACTLY what happens. I’ve received NOT A SINGLE e-mail which I haven’t responded to within at least 5 hours, yet my ressponse rate keeps going down for no reason. Yesterday I was at 100% (after demanding my RR be reset to 100), I received a message which I responded to within 1 hour and yet my RR is once again down to 67%…WTF!!!

[servicetier]

It has happened again!
A buyer responded to an offer made in Buyer Requests saying, basically, that he wanted to order my gig but didn’t have the money and said ‘Thanks, anyway’ (in broken English, so I’m paraphrasing). I didn’t think it required a response and now my Response Rate is at 86% instead of 100%.
Btw, after I saw that it had dropped, I responded with ‘You’re welcome’ but that shouldn’t have been necessary. It didn’t seem like the potential buyer wanted to engage further after the message they had sent.

[acingjacks23]

I agree that the response time should be removed, as of now anyways. I think its a good way for buyers to see if the sellers are a person who can get back fast or if they’ll have to wait. Right at the moment, it seems to be buggy and should be fixed. Otherwise I like the feature. 🙂