donnovan86

I mean, based on the info shared by Fiverr, you need to have a success score of 9 and 4.7 to be a top rated seller. Unless Fiverr's team says otherwise, you should be able to keep your TRS.

It depends. I still think that not a single revision is the issue, instead multiple revisions and deliveries. From one of the links provided by Kesha I saw that multiple deliveries seem to be the issue. Which are obviously caused by revisions.

I don't think you want to leave subjective stuff like that in the hands of AI. The more reasonable thing would be to not factor in revisions and extensions into the success score, because those are very subjective. A lot of buyers will ask for a revision request even for a comma, while some will ask for a revision request because they dislike the entire project. That's a MASSIVE difference, yet the seller is penalized either way.

Or ignored. Aside from potential bugs that might be in the system, there's also the fact that they rely on older data as well as newer data. So even if you have a good general score, that doesn't mean everyone left you great private reviews. In fact, many happy customers don't leave private reviews or even public reviews, at least in my case. So the importance of bad private reviews becomes a lot higher. I know because it's happening to me right now.

Same here man, I had only ideal reviews for months and despite that my success manager told me I had a low buyer satisfaction rate. I did have 3-4 people over the span of 8 months that didn't review their order (aside from regulars that never review orders anyway). And from them, 2 came back for more. So either buyers leave private reviews randomly, or some people leave great reviews out of courtesy and they are unhappy. But if they are unhappy, why wouldn't they say something? To be honest, I have more than half a dozen paused services that haven't been active for years, I was curious about their success score, but I assume activating those will only lower the success score, am I right?

It's clear that the main focus behind this review and leveling systems is to lower scores and not have everyone with 5 stars and level 2. Most of the active marketplace has that score/level, so it's difficult for buyers to pick someone. I can say for a fact that I tried to find some designers, only to find myself quitting because some of their sample designs were stolen from online sources, and almost everyone had the same rating. So I get why they made the change. Ever since I saw this leveling system in January I was against it and I immediately told them it's unfair towards older sellers. However, I don't think they will change that much. They will definitely not scrap the system entirely, but I do hope they will address some of the bugs reported here, like customer support-canceled orders being taken into account for the succes score. It's unfortunate that now we will have to deal with even more metrics, and it's particularly annoying to be penalized for revisions and extensions. Many times, those things are outside of our control, and they come from incomplete requirements, for example. I am curious about these webinars they are holding the next few days and next week as well. Hopefully they cover some of the questions that were repeated so many times. Ideally, they should make a new topic on the forum where they gather questions, and all the most common/popular ones are answered. A lot of so called "logo designers" use AI or logo generators, and they have no design talent. I was looking for a logo and some designs for a project and I ended up getting only AI generated stuff. So I can tell you for a fact, as a client, I didn't get a handmade design, and I worked with 3 different sellers, different pricepoints either. At the end of the day, I had to use AI myself and try to figure things out, so yeah.. Similar thing to when I wanted a website designer years ago, he had an average pricepoint, I didn't go with the cheapest option. He made me wait for over a month, on the last day we agreed I would have the website he said he couldn't do it due to personal issues, but he wants me to pay for the work and a 5 star review for his efforts. Even if I got nothing in return. That's why I hope the new system will flush out bad sellers like this. I am not a frequent buyer on the platform, but the dozen or so experiences that I had were mostly negative.

That means your customer might have left a less than positive private review. It's the only thing that makes sense. And when compared with other sellers, if the review was negative, that might have an impact on the success score.

It might depend on the project. If a person just tries to use a piece of software and don't do anything to the output then sure, you can just use the software yourself and pay less. However, if it requires human adjustments, then that person can charge whatever they want. And of course, you can respectfully decline their price and move on. Like the others said, there's tons of talent out there.

Generally you get the best profit and results by having your own website. And clearly since there's no control over how these platform evolves, that's the best thing to do anyway. I am sure after these changes, a lot of people will/should consider creating their own website to sell their services.

Not to mention people can buy up to 20x your gig package. But you get only 1x the deadline. This is an issue that has been present on Fiverr for years and years, I've always talked about it, but it was never solved. Why not have a way to lock gig packages, or allow only a specific amount of multiples to be purchased...

Kesha said the exact opposite. So yeah, I will take that IT AFFECTS our gigs. No extensions for me, not that I use them anyway.

A digital marketer that's meant to give you views and sales won't be appealing if he has no reviews/orders. That means you're not able to generate exposure for yourself and grow your own business. How can you help others? So yeah, as a buyer, a digital marketer without reviews is not very appealing, to be honest.

Well since this new review system came, most of my non 5 star reviews came from repeat buyers, that either left those reviews unknowingly or didn't understand the review system. A lot of people also rush when leaving reviews so.. they can easily click on the wrong stuff without knowing. Especially with private reviews. Because it's private. That's the whole point. They won't tell you because if you have just 1-2 orders a month, you can easily pinpoint who left you that review. They want to offer buyers privacy. That's where I think the new leveling system is good, because if you check the success score for each gig, it shows you what was wrong. For my main gig, it says Client satisfaction has a negative impact. So clearly there were some bad private reviews there. So there is more transparency, although you can only imagine there will never be complete transparency. I think it's better than it was, at least now you see what clearly affects the gig and what strong points you have. Fiverr tracks all kinds of things and it seems those factor in to the overall score. Response time, how quick you deliver revisions, how many extensions you have, etc. Who knows how many other things they track. I can only imagine that in order to compare sellers and rank them properly, every simple thing counts. If you deliver a second late, if you have tons of revisions or extensions for your gigs, all those things will definitely lower the score.

Extensions were confirmed to affect your score, so I assume revisions will affect your score as well. The main issue here might also be from private reviews. If people leave you private reviews that are bad, that might be a problem, because newer reviews tend to have a lot more impact. So if someone newer leaves you a bad private review, that has a lot more weight. Another problem is that many satisfied customers don't leave a private review, but most if not all unhappy clients do. And that is going to be an issue most of the time.

Go to customer support, let them know the order number and ask for a refund. As @leonormiserol said, sellers are not allowed to ask for a specific review, nor they can force you to close orders. You can still receive a refund from customer support, even if the order is closed. Depending on the payment method, you can get a refund even after 6 months, it's happened before. Go to customer support, explain the situation and let them know you want a refund. You should have it in no time.

Well they gave you that title based on your ratings, and they are also removing it based on your ratings. I don't really see the issue. The fact they are tracking way more things is what leads to your demotion, most likely. The lack of transparency is the issue, but then again that's why Fiverr relies on private reviews, because that's the only clear way a buyer can be very honest and not be judged or even harassed by a seller. I have been a seller plus subscriber since the first 200 people and got a very good deal, so I've stayed with the program ever since. That's why I said it's a good alternative. I hope they analyze every TRS demotion case manually, because I can tell you for a fact, getting that title back is very hard, if not impossible in most cases. However, if data shows you had bad performance... it's hard to argue with that. I hope they solve the CS cancellations being taken into account and other things like that, so they won't be as damaging.

Everyone should be allowed to contest reviews. Having bias towards any seller category isn't exactly fair. The idea of having a mediation service is great, but I doubt it will ever happen. More people need to be hired, and even then, you would have bias from the mediator. They might go with the wrong side, even if you are right, just because they consider the buyer to be right in that situation. Even if you present evidence. It is misleading, but if the buyer has all the power, I doubt anything changes. Since buyers are the ones paying for services, Fiverr wants them to come back and order more. I think that's why they made these rather agressive changes to the platform, so they can remove those bad weeds and meksells, as you call them. There are many great ideas/suggestions in this topic, but I am pretty sure this is the final form for the leveling and review system, at least for a while. They might end up making some changes, like extending the demotion period so people have more time to recover. Realistically though, I think this is the system we will be dealing with going forward, at least for a couple of years. U*work also tracks people's previous performance for the past few years too, so I was expecting them to do the same. I did not expect Fiverr to go for the lifetime approach, because long term sellers are the ones affected the most here.

Why wouldn't it be ethical though? They offer a service, I pay for it and reap the benefits. Seems fine to me. Maybe you refer to that feature being taken away. The problem is that they are doing things retroactively. So a bad review from a dude that liked my work yet went to bed at 1 AM and left me a 1 star review accidentally is all of a sudden damaging my reputation, same with extensions being a problem, or revisions.. Those were not an issue in the past. Yet all of a sudden they are. I also get it why they are doing it. I tried to buy things on the platform as well and most sellers are level 2, with 5 stars or 4.9 stars at least. Try to buy something without spending a LOT of time going through sellers, and you also run into the problem of hiring someone that curates their reviews, cancels orders and so on. There were a lot of buyers complaining on the platform, so I see why they did this, it started with reviews for canceled orders, a new review system and the level system. Obviously some people get hit more, others less so. That being said, we are not dealing with the monthly evaluation, and if our stats are lowered a little, we are getting enough time to get back on track. I was fortunate to see this leveling system in January and I remember saying to people that were unhappy with the review system that this new level system would bring even more outrage. And behold, 20+ pages of people raging and being unhappy. I had a post limit for some reason, so I couldn't write or interact that much, or as much as I usually do. I just took a step back these past few days. In my case, I will just focus on my work and share my ideas during a meeting with someone from Fiverr, if I can. I hope any issues like CS-canceled orders damaging the success score get fixed, I assume they will. At the end of the day, considering the work put into this, I would be shocked to see Fiverr removing this leveling system. In some ways, it's better because it shows the stuff damaging our account or gig in the background. Until now, we had no idea, but now we know which gigs receive a bad private review, or at least we have an idea. I think I was the first asking for a public success score/buyer satisfaction rate score, so we can at least see where we stand. Because last year I was in the back of search results, without knowing what was wrong. I only had very good reviews, yet clearly some buyers left random reviews, maybe without even knowing that damages me in any way. I

I was TRS for years, lost it and that 7 day clearance was great. However, you can get that if you have a Seller Plus Premium subscription. In fact, many of the TRS benefits are there, aside from the badge and having 30 active gigs. Which unless you are an agency or outsource like crazy, you won't have anyway. So in my case, even if I've been a level 2 seller for years now once I lost my TRS badge, the Seller Plus thing really made me feel like a TRS. And the fact I have less sales has nothing to do with badges or my knowledge, it's AI hitting my category very hard..

In Fiverr's eyes, frequent extensions lower the client's experience and satisfaction. The idea is, don't use extensions 🙂

I mean, it's an option when necessary. But when the seller abuses extensions, obviously that comes with penalties. I guess that's the issue here. And this new system takes into account the buyer satisfaction via extensions, it was not an issue until then. And of course, the idea is to differentiate people that deliver on time and have no extensions of revisions from those that do. In general, this update with the levels and review changes have a single thing in common: they want to differentiate sellers more. Because right now, a lot of sellers have 5 stars and they are level 2, the majority of the active freelancers are like that. How on earth can I, as a buyer, to differentiate people that have pretty much the same ratings. Some of them are indeed very good and always deliver on time, there's little friction, others don't, but their buyers still leave 5 stars out of pity. However, those buyers leave a bad private review when asked, even if the public review was very positive. So just because publicly you see some things, that's not the whole picture. So I understand why they changed the system, my problem is that they cover orders since you created the account, so in my case if a person randomly left a bad review 10 years ago, that affects me. Not a ton, but it does.

You can't have transparency when private metrics are involved. And it's obviously not random. Something happened in the backend, private reviews, extensions as I said also play a role. Even if you talk with customer support, I doubt they will say what is the main reason.

Maybe that's why they canceled. If they expected thousands of followers and close to the delivery time you just offered 34...

Out of those orders, 4 of them had an extension. And extensions seem to be problematic for the buyer satisfaction, as far as Fiverr's team said. Most likely there was no communication between you and the buyer, just a delivery. That might be an issue.

Again a great point my friend. I guess it depends on the person, but in my case I have 4 gigs now, and it looks like this. So, with a bit of math, I assume my score is 9.25, right? It would be great if we could see those decimals though.