donnovan86

You have 24 hours to reply, I think you are a bit too harsh. I mean, I am happy, I am not a huge fan of this change, but I don't know how much it will affect me, if at all. It will start weeding out some of the bad sellers though, which is a plus. I've been here for a decade at this point and there have always been people that just set up a gig to deliver random stuff and earn money. Then they block the buyer and try to find other people to scam. By the time Fiverr finds out about them, they already made thousands upon thousands. So in some ways, this measure is a good thing. The downside is that it will affect genuine sellers due to things beyond our control, like buyers ordering without consent. I have Seller Plus but didn't include Request to Order until now, but I might at least for some gigs.

I am the wrong person to ask because I love working here, and I've been relying on Fiverr for a decade. That being said, this year was the worst I had due to their focus on first time buyers and private reviews. I still enjoy working here and I generally don't have a lot of cancellations. But it still feels unsafe to know that you can use your hard work randomly via a cancellation and also receive a bad review for it.

Happy people don't come to the forum to talk about this, they continue working. In some fields it can get very expensive, true. That being said, you can ask for any price you feel comfortable with, that covers taxes and the Fiverr cut. I am in my 10th year on the platform and my base price has always been $5. But with this new measure I see a lot of abuse coming in, so I think it's finally time to increase prices.

There's an official announcement on the forum too, it was published yesterday. Any buyer that ordered at least once on the platform is able to leave a review if the order is canceled. I am not sure if they can leave a review if they disliked the work quality, but I am pretty sure they can, if they cancel.

And that was the problem. I assume the buyer felt offended regarding what you said. Honestly, I dealt with such buyers in the past, it's better to just move on. You can block after the transaction is over. But leaving them a very bad review (considering the way they behaved) invited bascklash and it's much better to avoid stuff like that.

There is a Seller Plus feature named Request to Order where people need to contact you first. Fiverr doesn't have experts in every field and they specifically don't tackle the service quality. So even if you worked hard to please the buyer that doesn't mean you met their expectations. They can't also force a buyer to be ok with something they dislike. You have the Seller Plus Request to Order feature where people can't order unless they talk with you first.

So you can continue and eventually the customer will leave a review, but you get paid. If you cancel, you may want to cancel now. Starting with Monday I think, Fiverr has a new review policy where buyers that cancel orders can also leave a review on that order. Yes, buyers can now leave a review on canceled orders too, so might as well not cancel. But since this comes into effect next week, you can still cancel and not get penalized. Either way, it's a bad situation because you either get paid and receive a bad review, or you cancel and lose the money. And if you cancel next week, the client might also be able to leave a bad review.

That's the thing, Fiverr expects people to have a great buyer satisfaction rate. If your satisfaction rate is rather low, then obviously they push you back in search and leave others that make buyers happy take the orders. It's normal for any marketplace. So yeah, improving your services and avoiding any bad private review is important. I am dealing with a similar issue, in my case for example I have only great reviews over the past 4 months+, yet some buyers left less than stellar private reviews, even if on the surface, publicly, everything is 5 stars. So yeah, it is what it is, you never know what people can leave privately, all you can do is your best and focus on helping clients. Eventually things will get back to normal.

It's even worse for writing. People just need a computer and even if they barely know English, they consider themselves an expert in writing.

Not necessarily. But I do assume most cancellations will lead to bad reviews, yes.

Writing is 100% one of those fields, a lot of people leave only a few details and then all of a sudden once you deliver they remember you need to add x/y/z free of charge because they forgot. I understand it can happen sometimes, but for some people it becomes a pattern. And if they dislike they cancel, which is a problem for the seller based on this new thing.

True, because I just had a buyer just send me an order yesterday without talking to me first, and with little info. Now upon delivery he outright wants to cancel instead of saying what's wrong.

This measure is clearly meant to purge people that deliver late and which are unresponsive. I can only assume many buyers complained about this recently and Fiverr is taking action. There's nothing wrong with that, the only thing that's problematic comes from potential abuse. But I am sure Fiverr's team will remove reviews that are clearly outside of the rules. We will see.

From what I read, it seems that if the seller doesn't reply at all, and the order becomes late or very late, that qualifies as not being responsive. Which I think is clear from their side. That being said, there will always be people that try to manipulate things in order to bend the rules to do their own bidding. Still, if anything this shows me I need to raise my prices, just to stay away from random buyers.

I assume the buyer places their order and the seller doesn't reply at all, then eventually the order becomes late/very late.

Here's what Noah, a success manager from Fiverr told me. "Some additional clarification to help provide more context around these changes. This option is not available to all buyers. If the buyer is also a seller, the option is not available. This is to discourage bad competition. If a buyer is brand new to Fiverr, they will not have the option. This option will be available for experienced buyers. Additionally, If there is no delivery in the order, it will not be possible for a buyer to leave a review on it if it is cancelled unless the seller is unresponsive or the order becomes “very late”. Very late would be 24 hours after the order has already gone late." Another important point is that a first time buyer refers to a buyer who is making their first purchase on Fiverr not a buyer making their first purchase with you.

They clarified to meand it's buyers purchasing for the first time on Fiverr. So what I was afraid of. That being said, if a person also sells and buys on Fiverr, then they can't leave a bad review after canceling, so they can avoid abuse. So there is a good side and a bad side..

That was not available for years now. I guess they are bringing it back, and putting all the power in the buyer's hands.

I received a reply. Let me just paste it here. "Some additional clarification to help provide more context around these changes. This option is not available to all buyers. If the buyer is also a seller, the option is not available. This is to discourage bad competition. If a buyer is brand new to Fiverr, they will not have the option. This option will be available for experienced buyers. Additionally, If there is no delivery in the order, it will not be possible for a buyer to leave a review on it if it is cancelled unless the seller is unresponsive or the order becomes “very late”. Very late would be 24 hours after the order has already gone late." Another important point is that a first time buyer refers to a buyer who is making their first purchase on Fiverr not a buyer making their first purchase with you." So.. if the buyer is also a seller, they can't leave such a review. But yeah, only first time FIVERR buyers.. And also, they can't leave a review unless the order is very late or the seller is unresponsive. So if you reply, and you don't allow the order to become very late, you should be fine. I guess they want to remove or at least push back in search those unresponsive sellers.

I think that part is pretty obvious 🙂 This screenshot is from the Review section designated for buyers, and as you can see in the image above it specifically mentions (excluding first time buyers). I think as long as only someone that orders from you at least the second or third time can leave a review when you cancel, it's ok. More or less, because there can still be people which were great the first time, but then end up asking for refunds starting with the next order. There's always that risk, then again freelancing will always have its fair share of risks.

Well you can hire those people and let them know about your plan. Some writers accept this kind of approach. Same with developers. But if you won't do any work and just outsource their stuff to make a living off their backs, people will figure that out and step away. 🙂

@Shiran.M, can you please confirm one thing for us? In the article it says "Buyers (excluding first-time buyers) can leave a review for canceled orders within 14 days from cancellation if the case involved lateness, unresponsiveness, or an unsatisfactory delivery.". Does that mean if someone orders from you for the first time, and they cancel, they can't leave a review for a canceled order? I hope so, because otherwise you can have a random competitor sending an order, then asking for a refund and trashing you with a very bad review. Can you please confirm that only return clients can leave a review for a canceled order? I think that's the case, but many sellers are very confused about this in another forum topic regarding this change. So if you can let us know what that means (first time buyer for you or for the Fiverr platform), that would help us better understand this change.

So if they exclude first time buyers, then that means it only applies to repeat buyers. Also relevant, if the order is canceled by the buyer right after making it, that counts as an exclusion.

Buyers NEW TO YOU can't leave a review. So only return buyers can leave a review for the canceled order. If you worked with the person before and it was fine but the second order you have from them gets canceled, that's when they can review the canceled order. First time buyers can't do that.

If you read the article, you'll see that first time buyers can't leave a review. So only repeat buyers can leave a review on canceled orders. I am sure they know how this measure would bring lots of potential issues.