Stop spamming custom offers to other sellers!

[dtongsports]

I can’t tell you how many unsolicited custom offers I have to decline and report for spam lately. The marketing education and ethics of many Fiverr sellers lacks tremendously, but since we get punished for not responding to ALL of our messages, I get to waste my day and Lifetime replying/reporting these spam offers so I can keep the income streams coming in… UGH>!!!



It’s always sellers who have poor or no ratings and who just go through the ratings and feedback of other sellers and then spam all of those buyers/sellers their ‘custom offer’. It’s probably the most annoying thing lately here on Fiverr and I don’t see it going away but only getting worse… 😦



DTong (TRS)

[forcedlogic]

I am confused. How does Fiverr penalize you for not responding to custom offers? As long as they don’t place an order? I am assuming these are messages that have custom orders? Can’t you also remove custom orders from your profile, if I remember correctly.

[maddisont]

Reply to @forcedlogic: With the new Response Rate feature Fiverr added for sellers, if you don’t respond to messages, your response % will go down. The further down this % goes, the lower your Gigs will appear in search results.



I’m not sure if you can remove Custom Orders. If someone sends you a message, I believe there is always an option to send that person a Custom Offer. Even if it gets abused by spammers, it is a convenient feature for most legit buyers and sellers.

[doubleu]

Custom offer spam also gets tacked on to my To-Do list unless I go in and decline the offer.

[jhernandezc]

You can always reject the custom offer and then send a message like “Sorry username, I can’t help you”.



In that way, you avoid decrease the response rate.

[maddisont]

Reply to @kjblynx: Ooooh, I like that. [=

[tsweezey]

I don’t think that response percentage rates hurt you at all. It was my understanding this was a metric provided to sellers solely for their benefit/info (I think it’s silly though).



What does seem to count is how fast you respond in general. The only thing that changed here is that the response time is reset monthly rather than from the beginning of your account history.



Now, these unsolicited offers are indeed annoying, and that’s certainly a valid concern, but I’m not very worried about potential penalties as a result of not responding.

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @maddisont: What if you can’t respond because the spam had already been removed by Fiverr?

[dtongsports]

Reply to @jhernandezc: Why should I have to apologize for their spam?

[dtongsports]

Reply to @kjblynx: I say the same and do the same and the funny thing is they either plea and beg for me not to report or like today, this guy says ‘What do you mean?’ lol. SO…I reported that too. Haha!

[maddisont]

Reply to @fastcopywriter: I’m not sure, I’m sure the whole system is broken. I’ve responded to all of my messages since this response rating thing started, and I’m currently sitting at 67% responsiveness. At this point, there’s really no knowing what will affect it or not.

[tracy1]

Reply to @kjblynx: In my opinion, rather than keep sending custom offers, it’s better to promote through right channel, such as social media. Right? 😛

[timelyservices]

It is a terrible trend, i just reject and send a message because ignoring it has affected my response rating before now.

[misscrystal]

A WARNING TO ANYONE WHO SENDS A SPAM CUSTOM OFFER:
Your account will probably be banned. I have seen this happen every time.

[Guest evpassino]

Reply to @toutou123: I had this happen once. I did the first order because I was new and needed the orders, but once I realized she was reselling my work for double or triple my rate, I refused to do anything else at a discount.

[philtabest]

Reply to @fastcopywriter: My response rate is currently hanging at 75% and it’s mainly because I can’t respond to some messages. It doesn’t seem to minus the ones you physically can’t respond to.

There is also one case where someone one sending me argumentative messages about my apparent unreasonable pricing, which ended in me ignoring him. I tried the whole approach of responding saying, “This is getting us nowhere, I can’t and will not drop my prices and you clearly won’t buy at my prices.”. He still responded with a rather rude message.

Then there’s also the side, if you are a seller and a buyer. Who the hell ends the conversation when you buy something?

If Fiverr are going to implement this there should be an end conversation button that’s there regardless of whether the user has been deleted.

[dtongsports]

Just had another this morning. Reported him. Hope he likes his messaging disabled for awhile. 🙂

[holledolce]

My understanding from reading Fiverr’s info about response rate is that it only counts if you respond. That is so that if you do have a spammer who is reported and blocked before you have a chance to respond, your rate does not reflect negatively.

I have a few messages that I cannot respond to, and they have not affected my rate.

[dtongsports]

Reply to @evpassino: make sure you check out other gig sites too to make sure they aren’t trying to sell your services there and then buy from you here. Seen it a lot of some of the Fiverr knockoffs, including my gigs.

[thecreativeguys]

I personally never had this issue however I did have plenty spam messages!

[dtongsports]

Reply to @thecreativeguys: Do you order gigs? I guess you do (thank you! 🙂 ) but I guess it depends on how popular the gig you order from is. Usually it’s people who go through the list of popular/busy buyer ratings and just send them all custom offers to hope to land a few. Buyers probably don’t even care or pay attention but when they accidentally send it to a seller who just happened to purchase that gig they are spamming through, that’s when it’s an oopsie moment. I report them immediately, either through the messaging if they send a message with it, or to CS directly and let them handle it. It’s usually what gets them to stop or get banned because then Fiverr Support can see their messaging and see if they are sending multiple offers in a certain time period to people who never contacted them first. I like to keep Fiverr clean, but it is a bit of a hassle sometimes. 😦

[thecreativeguys]

Reply to @dtongsports: That’s for sure, especially for busier people like you! I get single letter messages, they just literally ruin my response time. For 1 week I had a 98% response rate, I gave up after that. Now, although I reply to every single message that comes my way on my time and not on the time IM SLEEPING I have a 5 hours response rate (???) I don’t know in why!!! and a 92% response rate!!! HU??



lol that’s what gets me thru.

[david388]

Reply to @dtongsports: totally agree with you on the hassle part! I pop in my autoresponse and click “report.” I feel like they’ve already interrupted my day so much that I don’t want to lose more ground by typing out a report about them. Hopefully the random in-message “report” button does something, although I’m skeptical…

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @philtabest: My own response rate has fallen to 94%, so I feel your pain. However, I don’t think this hurts your Fiverr rating. Orders are everything here, messages are optional. Fiverr doesn’t make money with those.



My view is you gotta push your buyers to place orders. I already saved the response, “Just place an order an provide instructions.” Sometimes I might add something else, but I rarely do. For some this may seem unfriedly (I do write “thank you” at the end of the sentence), but I’m looking for serious buyers, not chatters.

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @maddisont: Hopefully there won’t be any effect, Fiverr makes money from orders, not messages, and they know some of the messages we get are dubious. I think as long as we deliver on time, ahead of time, we’ll be OK.