Got scammed once, your fault. Got scammed twice, my fault

[royjuiten]

So, as all sellers do, I met a lot scammers myself. Once you have some experience, you will know how to tell them from the others, but this post is for the guys who are just starting out on fiverr.

When I first started using fiverr and got some gigs done for my translations gig, I met a guy on the buyer requests who wanted me to translate a website into Korean. He told me that he was willing to pay the 100 dollars, but he wanted me to submit a sample before he actually ordered. I did the sample, and guess what? He disappeared.

Let me give you another example. One guy showed up for my transcribe gig, and he asked me to transcribe a 30 minute audio. I told him that I would, but he told me that he didn’t have funds, and that he would pay after a day. I transcribed and gave the file to me, and guess what? He was gone.

You want one more? I made a website for a guy, costed me 20 bucks, and I was going to get 50. Said that he wanted to go by direct paypal. Never heard from him again.

See something familiar? The guys never ordered a gig. In that case, Fiverr cannot help you, since they didn’t order. (Which means, they never paid). Don’t trust guys because they have their account verified, or because they have an old account. From what I have seen, you can buy 3 of these accounts at a dollar. Don’t trust people because they have a picture, because those can be found easily on google, and what if it is the scammer’s real picture? You can’t find him, and he knows it.

So, the answer in not being scammed is just to not provide anything until they paid. Worried that they might leave a bad feedback, or do something that would ruin your reputation as a seller? Don’t, and just report the case to Fiverr. That will help you a lot in the long run.

[emmaki]

Good post, but I think it would be better in tips for sellers rather than the ranting pot (not to mention more visible!).

[theratypist]

Noted and moved! Haha Hi Emma 🙂

[bigyellowcircle]

I think giving away free work has a place, especially as a sample. The key is to know how much free work is too much to give away. Instead of transcribing 30 minutes of audio you should have given him 2-3 minutes and delivered the rest after an order was placed.

We have given away quite a few articles for free simply because there are a shocking number of sellers on Fiverr that deliver spun content, outsourced articles that make no sense, or articles that are encoded differently to look ‘unique’ – scams.

When buyers purchase content from top rated sellers with thousands of 5-star feedback and it turns out the content is unusable and a waste of money, I can understand their desire to test someone else out. They want to make sure they are not getting ripped off twice in a row.

Evaluating potential buyers carefully and limiting the amount of free work that you will provide can result in long-term buyer trust. I wouldn’t give away content for free to every single request but there are times when I feel like it is worth the risk.

[eoinfinnegan]

I don’t do free samples any more but when I did I made sure that the sample could not be used on it’s own. If someone wants a sample for a big job, ask them for the full document. Then, choose a section to translate that is halfway through the document (and tell them that is what you are doing). If they have ANY problem with that then they are most likely trying to scam. A sample is just that, a sample - it does not need to be any use to them except to show them that you can do what they need.
I saw a buyer request recently which was demanding people do a sample first. I can’t remember how it was worded but it sounded like they had a document of about 5000 words and were trying to get 10 people to do a free sample of 500 words each. All sounds reasonable, but it sounded like they would send a different 500 words to each seller, they would then get the work done for free.
Don’t do any work for people unless they have placed an order. Try asking a buyer to pay, accept the order and wait for the money to clear (because you are short on money or whatever BS your seller told you) before you start working on it and see how quickly they will tell you where to go.

[sujit1717]

Happened with me too. Now I sent files with watermark. There are few scammers here but it does not motivate me to stop trusting everybody. Fiverr is like a real life. Sometimes you meet crooks…Many times you meet some awesome people that you can have long lasting relationships…

[markp]

If people ask for samples I send them a quick response message that is politely worded explaining I do not provide samples and why they should place an order. Many of them do not reply. Some try the “Lets see if you can answer this question first” AKA This is all I really want and do not want to place an order… I get the occasional person who goes kim jong un on me and threatens annihilation if I do not give them what they want. Many people are genuinely looking to place an order though and are new to fiverr and are not really sure so a polite reply does convert into orders.

[royjuiten]

For me, I don’t think it’s worth the risk, but that’s just my personal opinion. Do you have any cases where the buyers actually bought the article to you after you gave them a sample? Just curious…

[emmaki]

goes kim jong un on me

That made me chuckle! Speaking of fat Korean dictators, he was telling his countrymen last week–having put on at least 10st from what I could see–that everyone would have to subsist on twigs and plant roots.

[markp]

He reminds me of Mr. Creosote in Monty python. Do you know he suffers from grout, while his fellow countrymen just suffer. They are so underfed and malnourished the whole county could pass off as hobbits

[samainsy]

I got scammed by a *********. Gave him email marketing lists for $10 and when I delivered them he cancelled. He keeps his money I get nothing.

[emmaki]

Given that either you agreed to the cancellation or Customer Service cancelled it, you’re missing out some important details. Also, you’re breaking forum rules with the old name ‘n’ shame. I am sympathetic if you’ve been genuinely ripped off, but details plz.

EDIT: besides, you’re selling email lists that you’re not using despite having “collected” them. Plz dude. Nobody gives away their email lists unless they’re shit on toast. “Got a load of emails. Used them for email marketing. Got about 5 word documents with about 60k emails on each of them. Not used them all. All ones I’ve used work well and get replies. $10 per list.”

Nice sales pitch. I love the illumination and contrast of not using them at all but the ones you have used. Very artistic and post-modern. 5/5 /s

[Guest bidhan77]

Yes I got

[Guest bidhan77]

Tips

[chrisforleo]

WE are all correct here.

But there is an increasing number of scammers and Fiverr should take actions and be responsible as well as we are. Let me explain.

It is very common now a day for buyers to sign up with several accounts, make orders; most of them with free promos or free gigs provided by their “friends”. Then these new buyers will move forward and order from you . After working your ass off…yes most of us really work our ass off to deliver the best work and not just an automated arbitrage job. We decide then to turn over the job we patiently execute. Then hour later the buyers turns back with cancellation request because he feels the job was not what he or she wanted.

So it is a situation of declining and accepting a bad review or accepting the cancellation and move forward. And buyers know we hate bad reviews!!

Fiverr should be responsible of :

1. Flag buyers with 1 order 1 cancellation ratio.
   2.Flag buyers as they do with workers…Let us see the bad reviews on buyers too so we can understand who we are about to be working for.
2. There has to be a better algorithm for rating us workers. Because we loose algorithm rating everytime we cancel a job…before working for it or after working on it. The more cancellation we have the less we are put on the front pages.
3. Every time a new buyer cancelled they should not have their funds available until 30 days later…you will be amazed on how cancellation rate will go down …to the point of no cancellations at all…Buyer and worker will decide like human to resolve the issue before cancelling an already delivered Job.
4. Revisions doesn’t matter because buyers don’t care about that …they want their money back after receiving the gig…simple as that .
5. I f we are level 2 or top level workers then Fiverr should have a guaranteed of payment to us regardless…ain’t Fiverr monitoring our deliveries, actions and reviews ?

There is som much more to it…there is som much more Fiverr can do to avoid us been scammed and also buyers been scammed but as it is for now…the main interest is protecting the money and not buyers or sellers.

Just my 2 cents.
Chris Forleo

[robintan]

actually i think they need more staff to checking on cancelation, they sure can be the judge who did the mistake in here, sometimes is just pure miss communication, sometimes is just some people who want to get $100 result with $5., but also the staff need to gave both a win win solution for example if due to seller mistake like the design or something far bellow their portfolio, the seller should re-work it or if its due to buyer who didnt gave the information correctlly the seller can re-work for him with extra cost.
something like that should do

well but we cant see them from 1 point of view, as the sentimental growth from seller to bad buyer, that also happenning on buyer to bad / scam seller, can you imagine after you wasting your time for couple of days, then what you get is something u really cant accept.

beside of that, i saw many old and big seller kind of feel like “what can you get with just $5” but they never see from another point of view where for some country $5 is quite big , and that way of thinking will reduce their performance in total due to lack of interest just for $5 and might deliver their worst result ever, and when the buyer complaint, that when the war begin .

well i believe outside from lack of staff, fiverr also have too many buyer while less on seller makes the seller think "today buyer is a not a king anymore"
believe me, it doesnt matter how bad the buyer is, buyer is always a king

fyi : im selling a service and product too in my country, also a buy for fiverr and freelancer too

[techmachine]

Yes, Unfortunately, there are a few buyers who do not possess the skills to do business and do not understand that there is nothing to gain from fraud and leeching out from others! I am new on fiverr but i have faced similar situations on other free lancing fiverr like networks. Fiverr mostly supports the buyer but i think if we have a good case and present it to the fiverr support team, we can surely get some action taken against the buyer as per fiverr TOS