Horrible Experience, refund policy

[ogaburan]

Greetings Fiverrverse,

I am very new to fiver, just had my first horrible botched attempt ordering some art worth 15$. When the other side just canceled the order after i requested a revision (that was included in the gig). I am no quitter tho, and would give it another shot, for something worth 40$. Now that i got used to the interface & process more.

But before i do i have two questions:

1. I did get my money back, but only to the fiver wallet/account whatever its called. Which is fine, but if the new order also fails i will most likely abandon the site. 😦 SO my question is, what is Fiver’s actual refund policy, and how would I be getting the money out of the local “wallet/account”. Is there even such an option? (short of contacting my bank)

2. I was unable to leave a feedback about the seller who basically bailed on me… I would like others to know he is not serious, and he provides only partially on whats described in his gig. I did get a refund, so not much harm done. Just wasted time i guess.
   Was wondering if there IS an option to leave feedback and i just missed it.
   If not, i really think such an option would be helpful.
   An option to leave feedback if seller cancels the deal (and not buyer), to warn others who might be waiting on delivery from someone who only does certain gigs and not what he says he does on his page.

Hopeful of quick response,
Oga,
Cheers

[misscrystal]

This has been asked many times. I am always surprised when I see it. When buyers get their money back they are “made whole” in legal terms as if they never made the purchase and since they are back in the same position they started from with their money they cannot leave feedback. This would also cause a lot of abuse to the feedback system if everyone could go around leaving bad feedback at no cost.

Why not just leave it behind you and move on? I wouldn’t want to waste even more time on this one seller if it happened to me.

The money stays with fiverr and can’t be returned to you. It is in the terms of service.

[ogaburan]

I fully understate what you are saying.

But, Its about the quality of service and false advertising. If someone says he does something. You contact him, he confirms he can deliver… only to say he cannot after a few days.

If it happens once, or twice… maybe the order was too complex or ect…
Yet if the service provider is just lazy/incompetent/does not work well with buyers/does not care for instructions OR does not actually do revisions despite saying so (as i suspect my case was). People should know, that said service provider is a serial “cancelist” and perhaps choose someone with a better track record.

It seems (to me at least, and its from a new customer viewpoint), that fiverr has falsely very positive feedback on almost all services. While all the “back-dealings” are hidden. That means more competent reliable service providers are pushed aside by those who false advertise and fail to deliver.

What I am saying is that a simple “% of orders cancelled by seller”, would help costumers make a more informed decision.

It should take affect after several transactions. If its something ridiculously low, no one will care. If its high, people will know there might be a problem here…

It can also aid the service provider, if many people misunderstand what he provides, perhaps he will revise his advertise to more accurately represent what he is offering.

On another note, now that I am more informed:
I was not “made whole” by this “refund” as the money was not refunded to me, rather to the store. Furthermore, and more aggravating, I cannot use that refund if i want to order something MORE EXPENSIVE. As the wallet must be 100% of what I buy next.

I find this horrible and unnecessary payment practice.

[ogaburan]

Also, maybe people are “asking this many times” because the service is lacking?

[misscrystal]

You could have left negative feedback if you didn’t get a refund so that is always an option next time.

[ogaburan]

Now you are just ignoring what I am saying…

[misscrystal]

🙂

[ogaburan]

I honestly do not know, contacting Customer Support for something that petty seems too much. If indeed he is not that horrible. Leaving a feedback after cancellation seems like a good compromise. They can delete it after a few days anyway…

[mgjohn78]

Being able to freely use refunded credits would be a much better system, that’s my opinion as both a buyer and a seller. Being able to withdraw refunded credits without having to open a support ticket would also be nice but i suppose that could also result in more buyers abusing the system.

To reduce revision issues i would like to get more space or a separate section on gig pages for revision polices. Atm were stuck using the description field for this and its limited to 1200 characters. Personally after allot of tweaking i got my revision policy down to 128 characters.

[firanc]

ogaburan, the “Refunds” section of the ToS (link at bottom of page, labeled “Legal”) says that refund to the actual payment source is possible, but requires Customer Service team review. It also indicates that only a limited number of them are allowed:

• Funds from order cancellations are refunded to the buyer’s balance as credit and are available for future purchases on Fiverr.

(That one, everyone knows.)

• Deposit refunds, when available from the payment provider, can be performed by our Customer Support team. To prevent fraud and abuse, we limit the total amount of times users can request a payment provider refund from their account which is subject to review by our Customer Support team. Such refunds may be subject to an additional fee. If any processing fees were added at the time of purchase to create a new order, the processing fees from that payment will be refunded along with your deposit.

I suspect it’s a case of “you can probably get them to actually refund your money in a way you can use it for non-Fiverr purchases, but they may close your account for it.”

[firanc]

I’m not sure how it would be “abusing the system” to allow buyers to retrieve the money that didn’t result in a purchase. How would someone abuse that?

[mgjohn78]

Guessing the reason why refunds to payment providers are limited is because of buyers who order with the intent of using any means available to get sellers to cancel in order to get work done for free.
Sadly we live in a worlds where there are scammers on both sides of the fence and the bad behavior by a few affects many.

[fonthaunt]

Just to address a couple of things here, a high cancellation rate will prevent a seller from being promoted to higher levels. If they are already high level they can lose it. So, if it is an ongoing issue the seller will eventually be penalized.

There are some simple ways to deal with the Fiverr credits on more expensive gigs. Most any experienced seller will be happy to give you two custom quotes if you want to use up your credit. If you have $20 of credit and the gig is $25, you can get a custom offer for $20 followed by a custom offer for $5. You use your credit and pay the balance.

It’s not perfect and my guess is that Fiverr staff (which I am not) will eventually be able to adjust the payment system for credit use. In the meantime, the custom offer solution is frequently used. Good luck.