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Another post about the obsession with 5-star reviews on Fiverr


capitalquality

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Maybe what we need is that oft-discussed-in-rants feature - a way to review sellers not simply on delivery of orders. (Scary thought).

Maybe what we need is that oft-discussed-in-rants feature - a way to review sellers not simply on delivery of orders. (Scary thought).

Not sure what you mean. Do you mean that also cancelled orders will be reviewed by buyers?

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fiverr is great because you rarely have problems with sellers, because anything below a perfect review is so devastating for sellers that they will do anything perfectly until you are satisfied.

No wonder we get buyers who blackmail sellers for reviews! I hope you wrote to them to comment and point out the perpetuation of the problem with this.

I’m rather certain the people who write such articles to attract and cater to people who might want to use fiverr won’t be too interested in hearing that. I’m writing up something in German for such and other occasions though, on that and other topics.

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Maybe what we need is that oft-discussed-in-rants feature - a way to review sellers not simply on delivery of orders. (Scary thought).

Not sure what you mean. Do you mean that also cancelled orders will be reviewed by buyers?

Yep. With tweaks, obviously. Buyer could still rank on communication for example. I mention it as an option not because I believe it’s the right way to go (I’m not sure what I think on this subject at the moment. It needs consideration).

It is something that buyers rant about. It would go some way to resolving the cancellation to avoid bad review.

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I’m rather certain the people who write such articles to attract and cater to people who might want to use fiverr won’t be too interested in hearing that. I’m writing up something in German for such and other occasions though, on that and other topics.

Write an article yourself and sell it to a paper, give a slant from a seller’s view.

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Well Fiverr started with a thumbs up or thumbs down rating system with no middle rating. So that answers your question in regard to how we got here. Also many buyers consider a rating below a hundred as a train wreck. We start looking through the reviews to see what in the world happened? How did this provider get to 99%?

Bottom line, the customer should know what the ratings mean and how it affects the buyer. Ebay sellers can lose their ability to sell if their rating drops to 4.3. That is only 86%. Most buyers would consider that to be a good score.

I am one of those that has over 3000 orders and only a handful of negative reviews. I haven’t gamed the system. I’ve provided really great products and good customer service. I would hate for that to look negative.

I think every order should start out with Five Stars and the order should lose stars during the process by their performance of some aspect of their service. We show specific examples of what we deliver and we deliver alittle bit better than the examples. The customer can know exactly what they are getting before they order and they can rate accordingly.

Maybe Fiverr should show the cancellation rate publicly and the number of orders received. That way you could see if the prospective seller cancels a lot of orders. I’ve had 185 orders cancelled of the 3300 orders I’ve received.

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One solution would be to expose other existing metrics to the customer, such as completion & on-time percentages.

Yes, this is definitely an option. As a seller I would want more options to manage orders in that case. For example, the option to reject orders if cancellation rate was to show. All my cancellations are initiated by me because the buyer doesn’t read the gig description. If I can reject the order, I wouldn’t need to cancel.

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I suspect that many sellers now “deliver” before delivering and offer cancellations if they are unhappy rather than risk a negative.

I saw a post by a seller with over 1500 five star reviews and 0 negatives. He was asking how to deal with people who ask to cancel! I would never buy from someone like that, I would expect it to get to delivery day and be asked to cancel. If I was looking to scam someone, I would only go for someone like that as it is clear they cancel orders instead of taking negative reviews. It is completely impossible to get only 5 star reviews out of 1500 orders in graphic design, logos, writing and other subjective gigs without gaming the system (whether it is ok’d by ToS/CS or not, it is still messing with the system).

It is completely impossible to get only 5 star reviews out of 1500 orders in graphic design, logos, writing and other subjective gigs without gaming the system

I am one of those that has over 3000 orders and only a handful of negative reviews. I haven’t gamed the system.

Of course Landon, my issue is with those who have tonnes of reviews and nothing but 5 star ratings. It looks fake to me. Being a seller, I know that there are occasionally buyers who are impossible to deal with for one reason or another, make unreasonable demands etc. When there are at least a couple of negative reviews it shows that the seller is more likely to complete an order.

Public cancellation rates might be an idea but it would cause an outcry from those who get tonnes of cancellations from buyer errors.

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Well Fiverr started with a thumbs up or thumbs down rating system with no middle rating. So that answers your question in regard to how we got here. Also many buyers consider a rating below a hundred as a train wreck. We start looking through the reviews to see what in the world happened? How did this provider get to 99%?

Bottom line, the customer should know what the ratings mean and how it affects the buyer. Ebay sellers can lose their ability to sell if their rating drops to 4.3. That is only 86%. Most buyers would consider that to be a good score.

I am one of those that has over 3000 orders and only a handful of negative reviews. I haven’t gamed the system. I’ve provided really great products and good customer service. I would hate for that to look negative.

I think every order should start out with Five Stars and the order should lose stars during the process by their performance of some aspect of their service. We show specific examples of what we deliver and we deliver alittle bit better than the examples. The customer can know exactly what they are getting before they order and they can rate accordingly.

Maybe Fiverr should show the cancellation rate publicly and the number of orders received. That way you could see if the prospective seller cancels a lot of orders. I’ve had 185 orders cancelled of the 3300 orders I’ve received.

Personally, I think the review system should be just left as it is. Yes, it’s a bit FUBAR… But so is Fiverr and any way of weighing real quality.

For instance, I’ve experimented with outsourcing both writing and video work on Fiverr. The only problem is that I’ve paid $5 and $20 for articles and in every case have had to rewrite them or edit them heavily before I dare send them on to end clients. In fact, I’ve been appalled in many cases. However, $5 is literally nothing for an article. This being the case, I don’t feel comfortable leaving a poor review, especially when some $5 sellers I’ve used provide basic material which is still better quality than that of a $10 or $20 seller.

Then there is the fact that many buyers simply don’t know how to assess the quality of the work which they take delivery of. i.e. There’s a guy blowing me out of the water price and review wise on one of my video gigs. However, I know that his gig is just reselling a template which I’m pretty sure the original creator of that template would be fuming about if they found out.

In short. You can only realistically think about making the review system fairer if you also implement some kind of Fiverr wide quality control and this simply isn’t possible. After all, how would Fiverr realistically measure the skill level of a Fiverr witch or shaman?

In either case, its not really the stars that count, it’s the comments people leave which new buyers tend to take more notice of.

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Fiverr used to have a thumbs up and thumbs down way of rating sellers and there was a huge outcry when they adopted the current 5 star system.

People basically want to know if it was a good experience or a bad one.

Breaking it down into a grading system, with 5 possible grades like in school seems like it’s not necessary to some people. If it’s not a good experience then the only thing left is that it was a bad experience.
If it’s somewhere in between then no review if the usual outcome.

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Fiverr used to have a thumbs up and thumbs down way of rating sellers and there was a huge outcry when they adopted the current 5 star system.

People basically want to know if it was a good experience or a bad one.

Breaking it down into a grading system, with 5 possible grades like in school seems like it’s not necessary to some people. If it’s not a good experience then the only thing left is that it was a bad experience.

If it’s somewhere in between then no review if the usual outcome.

Basically Fiverr’s 5-star review system introduced buyers to arbitrary reviews.

They feel like the seller deserves a 4.4 rating instead of a 5 one, but if you put a gun to their head they cannot tell you why.

I had a buyer telling me he never leaves perfect reviews as an academic, it’s a big no-no for him, and when I asked him why I missed the perfect score, he said “oh I am 100% satisfied with your delivery and your service, don’t take it personally”

@eoinfinnegan I have over 5.500 rated orders and only 5-6 are not 5 star reviews.

I too did not game the system in any way. I just work really hard for them, because I have invested heavily in the overall service I provide. (I can write a book on how I treat buyer’s initial messages, what I say when they place an order, how I treat any issues, what I say when I deliver, and of course, what I actually deliver)

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It is completely impossible to get only 5 star reviews out of 1500 orders in graphic design, logos, writing and other subjective gigs without gaming the system

I am one of those that has over 3000 orders and only a handful of negative reviews. I haven’t gamed the system.

Of course Landon, my issue is with those who have tonnes of reviews and nothing but 5 star ratings. It looks fake to me. Being a seller, I know that there are occasionally buyers who are impossible to deal with for one reason or another, make unreasonable demands etc. When there are at least a couple of negative reviews it shows that the seller is more likely to complete an order.

Public cancellation rates might be an idea but it would cause an outcry from those who get tonnes of cancellations from buyer errors.

my issue is with those who have tonnes of reviews and nothing but 5 star ratings. It looks fake to me. Being a seller, I know that there are occasionally buyers who are impossible to deal with for one reason or another, make unreasonable demands etc. When there are at least a couple of negative reviews it shows that the seller is more likely to complete an order.

Sorry for any confusion/offense inferred, it was not intended.

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my issue is with those who have tonnes of reviews and nothing but 5 star ratings. It looks fake to me. Being a seller, I know that there are occasionally buyers who are impossible to deal with for one reason or another, make unreasonable demands etc. When there are at least a couple of negative reviews it shows that the seller is more likely to complete an order.

Sorry for any confusion/offense inferred, it was not intended.

my issue is with those who have tonnes of reviews and nothing but 5 star ratings. It looks fake to me. Being a seller, I know that there are occasionally buyers who are impossible to deal with for one reason or another, make unreasonable demands etc. When there are at least a couple of negative reviews it shows that the seller is more likely to complete an order.

I’m wondering what kind of completion ratio would convince you that a seller with only 5 star reviews was gaming the system. Are you saying that sellers with mostly 5 star reviews give a lot of refunds to get bad reviews removed, back when that was allowed? You can’t mean that every seller with all 5 star reviews has gamed the system?

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my issue is with those who have tonnes of reviews and nothing but 5 star ratings. It looks fake to me. Being a seller, I know that there are occasionally buyers who are impossible to deal with for one reason or another, make unreasonable demands etc. When there are at least a couple of negative reviews it shows that the seller is more likely to complete an order.

I’m wondering what kind of completion ratio would convince you that a seller with only 5 star reviews was gaming the system. Are you saying that sellers with mostly 5 star reviews give a lot of refunds to get bad reviews removed, back when that was allowed? You can’t mean that every seller with all 5 star reviews has gamed the system?

This is the third time in this thread that I have said 0 negatives out of over a thousand looks odd.

Anyone with even a couple of negatives is less likely to have offered refunds for review removal.

I am being honest about my impression of sellers and other buyers may think differently, I don’t know, but I am aware that some buyers are not great and anyone who manages to avoid these over 1000 times is either incredibly lucky or something else is happening. I don’t know who has and who hasn’t gamed the system, I am just giving my impression as a buyer with the idea of showing a serious flaw in a system where the vast majority of reviews seem to be 5 stars and anything else is a total disaster.

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This is the third time in this thread that I have said 0 negatives out of over a thousand looks odd.

Anyone with even a couple of negatives is less likely to have offered refunds for review removal.

I am being honest about my impression of sellers and other buyers may think differently, I don’t know, but I am aware that some buyers are not great and anyone who manages to avoid these over 1000 times is either incredibly lucky or something else is happening. I don’t know who has and who hasn’t gamed the system, I am just giving my impression as a buyer with the idea of showing a serious flaw in a system where the vast majority of reviews seem to be 5 stars and anything else is a total disaster.

I assure you I have never gamed the system in any way. I know you weren’t talking about me but I’m sure there are a lot of others who have all positive reviews who haven’t done that too.

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I assure you I have never gamed the system in any way. I know you weren’t talking about me but I’m sure there are a lot of others who have all positive reviews who haven’t done that too.

Of course I wasn’t speaking about you or anyone in particular. My impression is my impression though and I shared it to highlight that I may not be the only one who thinks this way. To quote The Incredibles:

If everyone’s super, no-one is!

When it comes to TRS sellers I think it is a bit different as they have certain standards in service that must be maintained including a low cancellation rate which covers my concern about serial cancellations to avoid negative reviews.

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I’ve had bad reviews and at first, when I started on Fiverr, I received a bad review because a client asked for a Powerpoint file instead of a PSD, like literally and kept whining that I sent a file of an application that should be bought. I went and removed the complete gig instead of reporting it. Stupid me. But I did that so that the review couldn’t be seen on my profile. Dunno if it worked though, I can’t remember.

So, I was one of those sellers but now I couldn’t care less.

My suggestion is to add few more options when reviewing someone instead of just three that are?

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I think that buyers will always overrate the work of mediocre performers on Fiverr because ultimately the person they are rating as a human being, and it’s hard to be brutally honest with a person that their work is subpar. People who would leave two, three or four stars on a product on Amazon will come here and give five stars to fairly pitiful work if it seems that the seller put their heart into it.

Before I was a seller, I was a buyer with over 100 orders. I purchased plenty of bad work, but I never gave anything but five stars. I didn’t have the heart to do otherwise. Each time I found a bad illustrator, I simply chalked it up to experience and re-ordered from an illustrator who I had gotten good work from. In fact I never sent a job to just one illustrator. I always sent it to at least two, hoping that one of them would produce decent work.

The point is, I really don’t think there is much they can do about the rating system that throws average and super star performers into the same bucket, all with five stars.

Bob

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