donnovan86

Well this is not automated. I have been on Fiverr 10 years almost, lost the badge due to things beyond my control and even if I am eligible, I never got it back. It's a manual process, someone from Fiverr needs to see you as a must-have for the top rated badge. I will be honest, and please take this as honest feedback, you have 2 pretty bad reviews in the last few months, so that alone will not be appealing to anyone from Fiverr.

WHAT?

Yes, but why? Maybe he didn't like the result?

Thanks for inviting me to the conversation. Well, after checking the OP's profile, I did see he had some bad reviews within the last half year. So that might be a factor. Fiverr is harsher with TRS and Pro sellers, because you can easily get removed from these programs if you don't fit their criteria. The thing is, if they see bad reviews or they have buyer complaints, they can remove these titles. Remember that TRS are manually vetted, and they do check every TRS manually from time to time to see if they still fit. Also, there might also be the case that becoming a TRS requires you to charge at least $10 or $15 for your lowest gig package these days, which OP doesn't. So there can be a number of things. I get it that Fiverr wants to keep their criteria secret to prevent abuse, so I understand why the reply was generic. There were a few negative reviews over the past half a year or so, I think that might be the reason. Either that, or buyer complaints that led to them removing the badge. Or, which I think might be the main issue here, you have a lower buyer satisfaction rate than you should as a top rated seller. If that's the case, then they push you back in search. Apparently they also study every TRS manually to see their performance.

We are talking about reviews for canceled orders though. Hopefully they are more lenient here. If they stick with the standard procedure for regular reviews, I agree that would be pretty bad.

This is very subjective. The fact that you only see the bad parts shows you are very subjective. There are positives too. Obviously I am not a fan of cancellations penalizing sellers, but as far as I saw the situations are very specific. And as the Fiverr team said, you can go to customer support and they will look at things objectively. If you fulfill your work the way you promised in the gig description, then you should be fine since Fiverr has your back. We will have to wait and see. Honestly this should affect me the most because I tend to be a higher volume seller, which means the chances of dealing with bad buyers are much higher. But, as I said, for me it's a wait and see situation. I will certainly have to make some gig changes, that's for sure.

Every update would have good or bad parts. I think the sufficient communication is about the seller getting all the info he needs to work on the project. If he has the info and accepted it, then any cancellation would come from his side.

Yes, that's the thing a lot of people misunderstand. It's a service designed to help improve your business. It doesn't come with extra visibility...

I think it was a lack of contact 😄 They said: "Reviews for canceled orders will only be enabled in cases of late deliveries (24 hours or more) or lack of response to buyer inquiries (for 24 hours or more). Buyers will also be able to review canceled orders that include deliveries, but safeguards have been put in place to prevent abuse or misuse of this feature"

They cancel to maintain a high rating, while hiding their bad performance. The problem is Fiverr had a lot of complaints even on the forum from buyers that had delays and even projects destroyed by sellers that just canceled to protect themselves. They never delivered on the work, and buyers ended up missing deadlines and losing a lot more money. So I was expecting this type of measure sooner than later after seeing buyer complaints. Regarding the other platforms, it's very difficult to find work, there are always a lot of competitors on the same job. And even the gig-style things are not overly popular, based on what I saw. So yeah, I don't see them as a real alternative.

The point was that no seller would cancel voluntarily. Those people that want to avoid a bad review cancel voluntarily... Your case is a bit different and I would include that in the category of people that end up affected by this change. However, it should make sellers be wary when it comes to who they work with. You can go and cancel before sending a delivery, or maybe you send a pre-delivery to see what the buyer thinks about it.

Let me offer a more accurate reply. That number is your seller rating FOR THE PAST 2 MONTHS. Fiverr will show what rating you had in the past 2 months, and you don't want it to fall under 4.7, otherwise you can lose your level. However, Fiverr makes a change to the review system and canceled orders can now be reviewed. What that also means is the 4.7 bar is dropped to 4.2 stars. So as long as you stay around 4.2 stars or more, you should be fine and not lose your level. Hopefully this answers your question.

Once you apply, there's nothing else to do. Fiverr can take quite a while until they send a reply, be it YES or NO. Only a few people receive a positive answer, so keep that in mind. But yeah, they should contact you eventually.

On other platforms you apply for a job and rarely get one. Fiverr does the marketing for you and buyers come to you, way different. What about those that want to avoid a bad review?

You would be amazed... I constantly have sellers beginning me to send them work, even at 10% or for free and eventually they would get paid with future orders. I never outsource, but I can tell you for a fact there are a lot of desperate sellers here on the platform. And that's the target of unscrupulous buyers.

Buyer requests were a cesspool of "buyers" trying to lowball sellers. I've been here for 10 years and I never got an order via buyer requests, even if I applied to some. They never liked the "REALISTIC" offers, they just wanted low ball prices.

Fiverr ranks gigs based on the buyer satisfaction rate. You had a very bad review recently, so obviously they pushed you back or even removed from search to allow others the opportunity you had. Deliver great work to clients from now on, and you will recover. It will take months to do that though..

You can't limit people to 3 days only, sometimes they need a few more days to review, maybe the gig is complex, etc.

You would be amazed what kind of "buyers" are on the platform. I had someone order from me just so .. let's say insult me, I won't write what they said. True, that was in the early days but still. I had other person that wanted me to promote their website where they were selling fake passports and IDs. So yeah, it depends on the niche, but you will find some very shady buyers. Writing gigs will certainly attract that kind of people, but they are not the only ones..

Soon that won't be the case.

Exactly. What happens here is that legit sellers suffer from bad sellers that overpromise and underdeliver, then they throw buyers under the bus and either cancel and waste their time or even take the money and run. Since there were many forum posts from buyers and maybe even more complains to customer support, I can see why Fiverr did this. I am sure they didn't do this to anger sellers, obviously. Everyone has to gain, but then again there will also be unreasonable buyers that are hard to work with and which take advantage of people. If Fiverr has the seller's back in those situations, then hopefully it's ok.

A Fiverr representative said that buyers which also sell here won't be able to leave a review if the order is canceled.

Well as a professional freelancer you should know that yourself. You vet your buyers, see what they want and what you can offer them. Sometimes it's better to say NO instead of taking every order and dealing with "nutso" buyers.

That's the thing, a lot of people either harass buyers to get paid or they offer a cancellation to protect a high rating they have for their gigs. That leads to some buyers missing deadlines and losing way more money. So I am sure many buyers complained to Fiverr, and they are taking action. If you offer great service, there's nothing to worry. Of course there can be times when this might backfire even for the best sellers. But in the end, it will weed out a lot of bad sellers for sure. I am not sure when this new measure starts, most likely Monday or so, which means we are just a few days away from seeing cancellation reviews on the platform. Apparently these cancellations will have their own tag, so people know it's from canceled orders.

It's a manual process. If your gigs impress Fiverr staff, most likely. But keep in mind that there are people who work on the platform for close to 10 years and never became TRS even if they went way behind that $20k treshold.