Should Sellers Warn Buyers about their Requests?

[ivicamilaric]

I recently came across a weird situation and I’m not really sure what was the best course of action - a buyer was looking for a way to “hide” her view count on YouTube. Now, as someone who works with that service, I know you can’t do that in any meaningful shape or form (also, this isn’t exactly expert-level knowledge). In spite of this, at that point, there was already something like 10 offers. So I sent an offer as well, saying something in the lines “you’re asking for impossible, someone will take your money for nothing”.

But then, I started thinking - was that the right thing to do? Maybe I was meddling in things that are none of my business (literally and metaphorically speaking). On one side, should I send those messages to people who wants spells to give their enemies athlete foot and stuff like that? Well, that’s similar to religion, so if you think you got something, you’re completely entitled to that feeling and to you it is as authentic as it gets. On the other hand, this is a tech thing, not religious sentiment. The buyer will not “feel” her view count disappearing, unlike her five bucks. Still, I’m on the fence about this one.

Do you ever do stuff like this and should anyone?

[miiila]

That´s a good question and a great post. Philosophy and ethics thread!

A hard question too, I think I side with the stoics on this one.

[emmaki]

If you feel strongly enough about something to think to warn them, do it. This isn’t philosophy. Alternatively, just let the idiots pay for their stupidity and we can deal with them in the forum using reality when they invariably come screaming about fraud.

NB: I’ve often warned people in BR requests that they’re being insane (in nicer words) and I got not a shred from it in response, so who knows. Waste of time. Let people make their own mistakes, whether you warn them or not is up to you.

[ivicamilaric]

Yeah, I think that there’s a big chance that by saying anything, you might end up being the weirdo, like “why is this person spoiling my fun here” (no matter how insane this request might be). However, in this case, the person (the wording of the request, in particular) seemed like someone who was genuinely uninformed about the “internets” so I felt that it would be a dick move on my end not to simply say “them computers can’t do that magic for you”. 😃

And I completely get that there will be no gratitude, sad as that might be.

[mariokluser]

No good deed stays unpunished.

I feel your pain, but sometimes it is better to let people fall flat on their face.

[ivicamilaric]

True, but at least I can still cringe while I watch them go down. 😃

[misscrystal]

On one side, should I send those messages to people who wants spells to give their enemies athlete foot and stuff like that

In a case of warning people about this kind of spell, yes it would be a public service, but why bother when they won’t listen.
What exactly would you say?

[emmaki]

“My good fellow, it is my regretful duty to inform you that you are being a colossal, albeit mistaken, dunderhead”

–an English gentleman c. 1880

[mariokluser]

Yes, sometimes it’s hard to resist to help. I don’t think that you did anything wrong by warning her though.

[zubairfb]

you did the right thing… but honestly i would prefer ignoring…

[silkroute]

I don’t warn people in the buyer requests section, but if someone has sent me a message, I do warn them if they are trying to break some rules of the universe like dividing by zero. I was talking with someone who didn’t want their autoresponder to send out an opt-in confirmation mail, which is actually against the autoresponder TOS. I told them. It’s up to them what they do with that information.

[catwriter]

I only warn them if they message me asking me to do this or that (and this or that happens to be impossible, illegal, or unethical).

[ladybugbusy]

Hi!

It was a nice thing to do, to spend one offer warning that person. I personally wouldn`t do it in the buyer requests page. I would only do that if that person send me a message asking me for something impossible or against Fiverr rules.
I believe in Karma, so if you do good deeds without expecting nothing in return you probably will receive that positive energy back and will sleep much better at night.

[ivicamilaric]

I might have taken a slight artistic liberty with that particular spell but I’m sure you could easily procure it in Fiverr’s magic and conjuring section. 🙂

[ivicamilaric]

Of course, in this regard, I have no dilemma about those scenarios. I offer a small range of YouTube promotional gigs and recently, one buyer inquired how much would it cost to send them one million views (if I could do that, I would already have my short celebrity documentary on E! channel by now 😃 ). Naturally, I had no reserve to tell them that I can’t do anything near the nearest ballpark of that request.

Anything other would be shooting you in the foot with a sawn-off shotgun.

[ivicamilaric]

In that case, I’m expecting my karma dividends on an annual basis! 😉

[smks15]

good! Thank you!

[lordtalix]

Yes, you should warn them, and you should seriously question whether you want to get involved with a buyer who wants something that lies in an ethical gray area. I deal mostly with legal work, so there are additional ethical and regulatory burdens on me, but I always try to point out to a client when they’re heading down a track that could get them in trouble.

I’ve also found that when it comes to clients that don’t know what they need, it actually creates a great deal of good will if you tell them at the start that, for instance, they could easily get what they’re looking for for free or that there’s a better and easier way to go about their task than hiring you.

[capitalquality]

I would be absolutely sure that someone else couldn’t do it through some technical means I didn’t know about before advising in your situation, but I did once tell a buyer on BR that the service they was asking for was available for free at a particular website, and I got a nice reply back from them thanking me.

[esthernyambura]

I usually ignore such requests and respond to requests that best matches my skills and the fun ones.
Yesterday I responded to a fun request which read
( I am looking for someone who will send me chocolate bars

[hackrie]

I have also come across some requests like this.

I personally thought at firs that it may be a good thing to warn them and tell them that they would be screwed over because what they were asking for was (pretty) impossible. But then I looked at it from a buyer’s perspective and then I decided that it would be better to let this one buyer to lose his money so that he (maybe) will leave a review on the sellers profile so that his (seller’s) statistics and reviews would prevent others form doing business with him(her).

[ivicamilaric]

Yeah, this is especially true for buyers who will end up doing themselves harm with the order - for example, a lot of people is asking for a huge number of comments, views and likes on their YouTube videos, hoping to boost their search rankings.

Now, the people of Google have been doing this for a bit longer than traffic sellers, so they can easily spot invalid activity and more often than not, suspend an account.

So basically, every day, plenty of buyers are looking to pay someone five bucks to have their YouTube channel suspended. 😃

[peterson5583]

haha , low what was that buyer thinking . cracks me up!

[sarah_yaseer]

Great Post