How To Avoid That Clients Take Advantage Of You

[mariokluser]

The following is mainly focused on sellers who have writing gigs of any kind. It is probably of use for sellers in other categories as well.

I’m tired b.t.w., so don’t mind typo’s that may occur here and there.

It happens that you help your client to get his order requirements together and then you make a custom offer. For example: the client don’t know how to extract the text from his website that he wants you to work on. For some extra payment you can then do it for him. This is a very common scenario.

It also happens that you first want to have a look at the text of the client, he sends it to you and then you make a custom offer based on that text.

Here is the danger:

It is very likely that you agree with the client that he doesn’t have to send you the text again. If you have bad luck with the client, it can happen that he now demands work what you didn’t agreed on, but as the documentation isn’t in the order it will be a little bit tricky when it comes to a dispute. Worst case: the client now sends you a file that is altered and has a higher word count.

So, how to avoid that to a certain extend?

1, Create a PDF of the text file you agreed on for this custom offer.

2. Send it to the buyer and tell him that he must send this to you in the order requirements as confirmation.

3. Edit the gig where the custom offer is based on in a way that providing the order requirements is a must. State in the description of the requirement that ‘If you received a confirmation file please attach it here. If the file has been altered in any way, I’m sorry but I have to cancel the order.’

If you handle it this way it is easier for CS to trace the whole thing and see that you are on the right side.

Also: if word counts are part of your business, it will happen that direct orders will be done and some clients will find it very convenient to send you a document with a higher word count than they pay for. Therefore it is a good thing to state in your gig description that you will cancel the order if the word count of the document exceeds the one they are paying for.

Actually it’s a pity that measure like this are necessary, but from experience I can tell that they helped me a lot so far. The good clients don’t mind the extra step and find it a rather professional approach.

OK, good night.

[misscrystal]

good night and good recommendations.

[freelancemm]

I’ve had plenty of evidence on some of my disputes but 99% of the time they always side with the buyer, even more so if they’re a high volume buyer as they bring the money in.

[designer_pro2]

Great recommendations.
Some buyers giving details and replying in inbox instead of order section.

[dielfa]

Unfortunately, you can’t do anything about the ones that order right away without any chat. You get a free increase in your cancellation rate for nothing!

Also, one of my customer deleted his account from Fiverr [Fiverr error: Account no longer available]. It added to my cancelled order.

I got 2 cancelled orders for nothing!

[mariokluser]

It’s of course not a solution for every dispute that may come, but it helps. Especially if you are more expensive than everybody else buyers will tend to contact you first for a custom offer. I just finished one and it worked fine. The client also payed double by giving me a tip that was the same amount as the original price of the order.

[mariokluser]

Alas, you are right and of course it is not a solution for everything.
Once I had a dispute with all the and I contacted CS. I told them in my first message that if this would have any negative influence on my account I would delete it immediately. They chose my side.

[iprotayyib]

nice answers it will help

[trangajeewa]

Thanks

[oluwatobio]

Thanks Mariokluser, this is a good information so that I can protect myself to a great extent.

[miiila]

Oh, this here:

"1, Create a PDF of the text file you agreed on for this custom offer.

2. Send it to the buyer and tell him that he must send this to you in the order requirements as confirmation"

actually might be worth a try to solve the ‘Waiting for info from Buyer’ point, when they take your offer but don´t understand that they have to fulfill the requirements, before the clock starts ticking - one could send a PDF of whatever they attached to their Buyer’s Request, or if they didn´t attach anything, make a PDF from the text of their request for them to send and to get the order running.

Good tip in any case, the PDF, thanks!

[videolabs]

I hate when minimum value order buyers are trying to take advantage of me for being kind and always providing little extra… I always find the right way to explain to them and reject them if possible.

When a client with a big order is asking for something, I never ask for more - I just ask for a tip on the end if he likes the results. It always works and better than expected.

[omolaja90]

thanks for the info and God bless you richly

[roxita]

Recently I accorded a price with the buyer a translation with a number of words. She counted them. I didn’t see the doc. She placed the order and, to my surprise, she had mistaken words with character, so the doc was huge.
I wrote her telling her that the price was more than thrice the initial price but she didn’t reply. I asked her to cancel the order to give the money back and never knew anything more about her.
In my stats doesn’t appear that order cancellation, so there is that…

[mariokluser]

If she gave you the character count in stead of the word count it actually means the file was much smaller and the miscalculation was in your favor.

[roxita]

Yes, I rephrase. She published in the Buyer Request section she needed a translation of 11952 Characters (2000 words aprox) but the document had 11952 words. A huge difference.
Sorry for the bad explanation 😉

[dezignersafia]

Yes , same problem with me

[annaishere]

Thanks!

[html_man]

great discussion.

[authoreva]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Mario! This is very valuable information. 🙂 As a writer here on fiverr, I can certainly vouch for what you’re saying.

[logokings123]

Thanks for you nice info.

[ladybugbusy]

I do translations to Portuguese and sometimes clients do that to me. Sometimes I am not translating documents but in special platforms and it is difficult to do the word count.
If the time I spent translating exceeds the normal time I then spend some time counting the words and if the number of words exceeds what we have agreed I send the buyer an extra offer.

[psychicbunny]

As long as you have proof or evidence while exchanging messages as well and show it to Fiverr support they are cool with it

[gabmamites]

Unfortunately, you can’t do anything about the ones that order right away without any chat. You get a free increase in your cancellation rate for nothing!

Also, one of my customer deleted his account from Fiverr [Fiverr error: Account no longer available]. It added to my cancelled order.

I got 2 cancelled orders for nothing!

ooohhh!! deleted account can also affect cancellation of orders? wtf. Fiverr should fix this one.