Top Sellers aren\'t Always Legit Sellers

[ctackett7945]

When I log into Fiverr to look up items I get nervous, I am overcome with anxiety, and I see things I want but can’t trust that the seller is actually legit.

I’ve had a couple of great sellers. They stated what they offered and almost always completed their orders as agreed.

However, there is a darker side to Fiverr that is more common then the brighter side. There are sellers who are highly ranked that use “Bait and Switch” tactics and fraud to ensnare their buyers and then abuse Fiverr’s poor policies to work against buyers.

Have you ever submitted a gig and went to beds? You woke up excited to see if someone had made you any offers? You see 30 offers! Wow! You look at the offers to see which gig had the best deal, you start to sort them and you notice that there are a few really awesome deals! They offer you the moon and the stars for a bit more then your budget stated, but that’s what you expected! You click the button to start the order and pay… then all of a sudden you get an email from the seller telling you that what they offered you isn’t what they are going to provide you.

That’s the “Bait and Switch”… you get the inbox message stating that this is what they “could” offer you and you should have messaged them to discuss payments prior to accepting their gig. This is when your excitement turns into heck. You now have to deal with trying to get your money back. You can try to cancel but the seller denies it. They want more money… what they do now is try to tie you up into Fiverr’s policy that you have to give the seller the benefit of the doubt. So you have to wait days. Then when you follow up and try to contact the Customer Service, you have to wait days for them to respond. This process can take weeks.

If in that time the seller sends you something that wasn’t even what you agreed on, the Customer Service, depending on who gets the ticket, gets to tell you if you should be satisfied or not. They tend to side with the seller as they bring in more money then the buyers spending, or they request that you keep working with the seller to try to get them to complete the gig.

It’s a dreadful process and most of the sellers lie about their country of origin so they can get more United States customers. It’s a broken system and that’s my experience so far.

[emmaki]

Why not just message sellers before hiring them? It’s a very quick and easy way to discover whether they’re legit or a dribbler who is going to cause you grief.

[misscrystal]

Why not stick to only top rated sellers that you have found through the search function? You can read a lot of feedback on them, message them, and develop a feel for ones that are legitimate and talented.

[ctackett7945]

Half of those reviews tend to be fake. I’ve seen auto responses that seem to be computer generated on a lot of them. It’s easy to fake, what you do is a seller and a secondary account work together and rig the ratings. It’s not monitored or validated. Go through some of the top sellers and you might see several of them have the same person spamming positive responses.

[ctackett7945]

That defeats the purpose of the sellers putting together a proposal and reply to the buyer. I do that as well, actually, I do really deep research on sellers now because you cannot believe they are legit. The scammers get to the point where they create fake identities on Fiverr. I have found one that I have researched and even went as far as validating their credentials that they claimed that they had, and the person doesn’t even exist.

They are a top seller on Fiverr, and they are actually a team of Nigerian sellers who pretend to be 1 person. Sometimes the scammers are so good at what they do, that they really cross their T’s and dot their i’s.

[writer99025]

They are not fake, they are called “repeat customers”. Jeez.

[eoinfinnegan]

Three of my clients make up around 20% of my orders, does that mean that I am a scammer or does that mean that my clients are happy with my work?
Initially, clients tend to leave great personal reviews. When a regular client gets to 5 completed reviews they tend not to leave a comment, just the rating, and so the automatic “Outstanding experience” that Fiverr puts when people don’t leave a comment and just give the 5 stars appears.

[misscrystal]

I have noticed this but not in top rated sellers. I’ve seen it in number 2 sellers. Top rated sellers are scrutinized well. When I have noticed it is when there are over 100 reviews in a row from the same buyer for months and months with few others.

[eoinfinnegan]

I find it difficult to believe that you are shocked or even mildly surprised that there are scammers on the internet. They are everywhere, every freelance site and every possible industry. You need to be diligent and check people’s claims, you need to contact them and assess what they are doing. If you come across someone who seems to have broken the rules then report them to CS and move on.
Unfortunately the Buyer Request section is overflowing with incompetents who cannot get sales and will offer ANYTHING just to get a sale and then realize they cannot do it etc.

PS. If you are interested in getting married, I suggest you do not just take the one that makes the most interesting proposal - you should probably check them out a bit first.

[eoinfinnegan]

I havent seen that extent of reviews but I do know that some people ask buyers to split big orders as many people give this as a way of avoiding being screwed by a buyer.

I had the option of giving a buyer a custom offer for 100 texts but as they are new we have split it into 4 orders which will be done sequentially over the next 4 weeks instead. Perhaps some sellers take it to the extreme, I could theoretically asked that buyer to split it into 100 orders although it would be ridiculously irritating for us both.

[emdad13]

I am the newest man here and I don’t know anything- Oh God !

[ctackett7945]

Yeah, that must be it. I’ve seen reviews of 5 stars and responses of random text in boxes. That must be what it is. “Repeat Customers.”

[misscrystal]

Welcome! It’s not that hard to learn what to do. Put a few hours into it and you will be fine.

[emmaki]

Well I don’t know, just don’t buy here if you hate it so much.