cucinavivace

Confirmed. I went back to the buyers. No negative feedback. And yes, of course people could lie. But why would they lie and leave tips and come back to pay me again? It's BS.

Well, now I know Fiverr is making things up. I restarted this gig three weeks ago as a test. There was one order on it from before I froze everything. So, five orders from four buyers since restarting with a perfect score on the one gig. Two of the buyers have come to me before and I moved them over to this one with custom offers. Two are new. All of them left me 5 stars and good tips on every order. All of them have come back to me in the inbox and are chatting with me. All of them have made a point of telling me how much they appreciate me and will use me again. Then out of the blue this morning with no new orders I have "customer satisfaction" negative impact. If there are dozens of orders, fine. Maybe someone fell through the cracks and wasn't comfortable telling me they were unhappy and left some negative private feedback. But I think I can keep track of how four buyers who are all still talking to me feel, and dissatisfied buyers do not leave tips and come back to you in the inbox and tell you how wonderful you are after the fact. All of these people have. There is no customer dissatisfaction here and I don't believe any of these people put anything negative in their private feedback, especially not days or weeks later. All with tips. All with 5 stars. All in my inbox right now telling me I rock. I don't think so.

Amazon and all the rest do the same thing. Here are the "sponsored" ones and here are the search results sorted by relevance. It always ends up with someone who's near the top anyway also showing in the paid list, which I suppose is not a coincidence and in a way is the whole point. If they took that guy near the top out of the regular search because he was right above it in the paid search, we'd all yell and scream that many people skim right by the paid listings (I know I do).

Right. But there has always been the option to call CS to have a review manually changed (under certain circumstances) for 30 days. I don't know that it's locked to that timeframe, but I doubt whatever the timeframe is Fiverr is not bothering to program "seller has also left a review - buyer review locked - count rating in score." They're just going to say it's 14 days or 30 days to release ratings into scores for all cases. The actual review editing period is possibly irrelevant compared to the potential allowed review editing period across the board, because Fiverr is lazy. That's an assumption on my part, of course, but that's just speculating as to why the point is the point and is probably not very important. The point is seeing "this rating will be factored into your score in the coming weeks," however briefly they had it publicly, says to me they actually mean weeks. So it's doubtful you'd see any score change right away on a burst of good ratings.

Just FYI on the many ratings/no score change conversation, I think I mentioned this a number of pages ago and I don't know if it ever made it into the documentation, but at one point early on in this process after I got a review the system also gave me the message "this rating will be factored into your score in the coming weeks." I don't think they actually count the public ratings in your gig score until after the "BS timeframe where buyer gets to change their mind" period. So that's at least two weeks, and I think it's 30 days on some of the technical categories. I'm not clear on if it's the automatic period or the period they have to contact support to manually get a review changed (which in the past was 30 days, who knows now), but it appears that it's intentionally not right away.

I'm convinced, as mentioned above, the private ratings actually have more influence than public ones. I did the math on a pretty thorough review of all my orders, and in my case there is no way more than 3% of my buyers had any reason to leave anything truly negative in a private rating. And so I think reasonably far fewer than that actually did. In those cases, I think they were folks who didn't like what I told them about the tax code itself, not how I personally performed (people get pretty irate when you tell them they're breaking the law), and in one case a communication issue because his English was horrible and I don't speak Romanian (at all). Still, my perfect 5.0 and 100% on all metrics public score translated to a Success Score of 4 and dropped me from level 2 to level 0 when the new system kicked in. I have since graduated to level 1 (whoopee) with a Success Score of 6, but I'm guessing I'll be waiting at least until next tax season when the volume is better to get up to a 7. In short, I'm convinced one bad private rating probably drags down as many as 50 public ones.

I know this is an old post, but just since you got some pushback to clarify, those are not free in the US either. I switched to Payoneer for the direct deposit (the only reason I have a Payoneer account) so I only had to pay $1 for the withdrawals. When I use PayPal for the withdrawal I get charged 2.9% + $.30 just like any other "goods and services" payment. Frankly, this is the kind of nickel and dime stuff that annoys me about this platform. They can't figure out ACH direct deposit or eat any fees at all to get us paid after charging that much upfront? On top of everything else, that's just greedy. And it's not like it's difficult or expensive to save us that headache and show a little goodwill. I pay my own sales people every month through PayPal and Venmo because PayPal and Venmo have to handle my 1099s and I have zero ongoing record keeping headaches on their payments. I upload a single spreadsheet to PayPal. The payments go to all my people's PayPal or Venmo accounts instantly. I get charged 2% to a maximum of $14, which means for anything over $700 it's under 2%. So if I pay someone $700, it's $14. If I pay someone $10,000, it's $14. If I only pay someone $200, then it's $4. The average for the whole year usually comes out just over 1%. If I didn't do it I'd have to raise my commission rate from 20% to 25% because nobody in the financial industry is accepting a net 16% commission after withdrawal fees because I'm too lazy to figure out how to pay them properly, or too greedy to eat the cost myself to use PayPal for my own convenience. That's the overall problem with Fiverr - short term, forest-for-the-trees mentality that's too busy grabbing for extra pennies to see the big picture that's best for everyone to create a "professional environment." I mean if you're going to take the easy way out, that's the easy way. Alternatively, if you're serious about being a platform for professionals, figure out how to pay them directly and properly. This middle ground, hobbled-together, multiple third party payment methods with no free option get your money is baby stuff. Well, that was far more typing and a much bigger deal than I planned to make of this. It was supposed to just be the first paragraph, but there you have it. I am uncontrollably annoyed by the stupid little things. Oops. 😄

Sorry, is this a quote from Fiverr or did you write this?

I stopped paying attention to whether or not it said waiting for a reply because I figure even if they don't flag it the timing of my reply still might count in my "average response time." Mine's under an hour from instant replies in longer conversations. Now it's just habit. They used to have it in our stats, so I assumed it mattered there. But either way I figure it can't hurt for marketing. My nearest competitor's average reply time is 4 hours and I've had a couple buyers mention they picked me because they hoped they wouldn't have to wait long (like they just wanted an answer on depreciation while they were in the middle of doing their taxes or something). I figured it's worth keeping it up.

Hahahahaha. I am so tired of finding new ways to say "Thank you!" and "My pleasure." so I have the last word in every conversation. I think it makes me look like some kind of narcissist in some of those chats. "Thank you!" "Oh and thank you too." "It's been great." "My pleasure." "Ok see you next time." "Ok." " 🙂 " " 🙂 " I had one lady who did pretty much that for a long time, so I finally had to tell her "We can do this all day if you want, but Fiverr dings my reply rating if I don't reply last. So, I'm gonna have the last word no matter how long this goes! 😄 " She laughed but then she said "You seriously have to reply to every single message, even just a final thank you or these smilies? That's ridiculous." Yes. Yes it is.

I didn't want to offer it as anything definitive, but since all this started if I have a delivered order waiting for acceptance or feedback, I get no more inbox inquiries. I can get three or four people a day sending me messages via inbox proving I'm visible, and the minute I deliver an order it all stops. My last order the guy didn't even accept the delivery, no feedback. I haven't had an inquiry since then. Six days. The guy just kept chatting with me via inbox after delivery, since that order page is such a pain in the rear to message on. He was happy enough, but never indicated that by accepting delivery and rating. So, here I sit. Now mind you, I am a lowly level 1 at this point. Perhaps if I were level 2 again it wouldn't. I have no idea. But it's happened exactly this way on every order since the new system went in. If a delivery or feedback is pending, zippo.

Well that explains it then. Thanks!

No disrespect intended, but that all seems very far afield from the post on "somehow one 5 star rating and one with no rating, but from a client she's sure did not leave negative private feedback, total two orders, equals a gig score of 6," which was all I guessed at possible reasons for. All you're saying is true and you've said it many times in this thread, but I don't see the connection to her situation or how I responded to it.

I'd venture to guess it doesn't have as much impact on someone with over 19,000 reviews as it does on someone with a few hundred. 🙂 On that gig she mentioned, she's at 50%.

They don't like it when buyers leave no review. I do not have proof, but I have a feeling based on what I'm seeing with general inquiry volume and certain other behaviors that "no review" = "poor client satisfaction" to them in the new math. It might not be as bad as a negative private rating, but it doesn't surprise me really that one 5 and one 0-feedback would be the same as a 5 and a 3 (which might get the gig a score of 6). And just because there's been some terminology mixing and resulting confusion in other posts, your gig has a gig score. You have an overall Success Score.

The gig score doesn't change. Your success score (which is more than your gig scores averaged) changes regardless of your gig scores if you're inactive. That may require complete inactivity as in the case of the person I responded to, which was the case with me as well. That's all I talked about, being completely inactive with all gigs paused.

Not trying to convince you to. Just giving you a fact. What you do with it is completely up to you. 🙂

Just FYI, if you pause your gigs your score will continue to go down. I paused mine for three or four weeks and my score went from 6 to 3. CS confirmed it was due to inactivity. You'll come back to things being worse with a longer time to climb back up.

I'll tell ya what annoys me even more than this stupid success score; that they watered down the requirements to advance otherwise. It took me forever to get to Level 2 with 50 orders (and then another forever to get the 100 orders and $5,000 for TRS like literally a week before they did this). Now somebody who's been on Fiverr for a few months, blows off 10% of their inbox inquiries, and does only 20 orders with a 4.6 rating can be a level 2, but I can't with this: What kind of BS is that? 20 orders at 4.6 should not be Level 2 material while Fiverr crows they're interested in upping quality and the old requirement was 50 at 4.8. I'm starting to think they're just mad at anybody who can maintain a 5.0. LOL

I've had a little movement. I was a level 2, got dropped down to a level 0 with a success score of 3 at the change, then a couple weeks later (still during the grace period) went up to a level 1 with a success score of 5. A week later I went up to a success score of 6. So I'm waiting now for one more success score point to get me back to level 2.

I'm ok with it to a certain point. I'm not so fine with it being 20% on a $50 order and 20% on a $1,000 order when Fiverr doesn't have any additional overhead on the bigger order. I think it should be 20% up to a certain gig amount or up to a certain annual volume and then a lesser amount from there. But, whatever. I spend 20% of my budget on marketing anyway. They can have it. But that's why I will not be paying for Seller Plus or for Promoted Gigs or for anything else they try to nickel and dime us on that would give them over 20% in total. If they want to give me business for 20%, great. If it's more than 20% I can spend it to get the business elsewhere without the extra headaches of working on Fiverr.

Or that it costs money to process payments and provide systems and support and legal compliance around the globe, which is why other platforms charge you upfront to use them. I guess one can complain about 20% or complain about monthly fees, but it's hard to make an argument for complaining about both.

I often wonder if they're Fiverr plants or bots specifically testing us. I get a lot of "Can you help me with my homework by filling out these tax return schedules?" and "Can I give you my email address so we can communicate more freely?" Seems suspiciously blunt in the first sentence or two of the conversation on a platform where buyer anonymity is a benefit.

Normal System: A train leaves San Diego at 1:00 pm travelling at 52 mph. A second train leaves the same city in the same direction at 4:00 pm travelling at 130 mph. At what time will the second train catch up to the first train? Me: 6:00 PM. Normal System: Correct. Fiverr: If Mary has two poodles and forgets to brush her teeth in the morning, what time will she have lunch? Me: What? Fiverr: Incorrect. The answer is Poor Value For Money, because Mary lives next to Bill, who owns a blue house. Your score is 2.

Also, I just got dinged on "effective communication" for withdrawing an offer because the buyer insisted I write a new one with a higher price. I've delivered gigs in three languages on this platform at 5.0 on every metric and if a buyer likes me well enough to insist he pay more, I do not communicate well. Lord save us from this new math.