carineb

A friend of mine who only uses Fiverr as a buyer asked me yesterday what's happening to sellers on Fiverr because this is the 2nd time in a few days that he's been contacted outside of Fiverr by sellers. They explained that they want to stop working on Fiverr. 1 seller is TRS (+900 reviews), the other one is Level 2 (+500 reviews). My friend never gave his email address. He assumes they took it from the contact page of the website he asked them to work on. One of the sellers offers to invoice him only when the work is finished. The other suggests to place the order on another freelance platform. I wonder if these are 2 exceptions, or the start of a new trend 🤔

I also noticed that one of my clients only answered 2 questions. I wonder what bothered him about the 3rd question...

I've also had several 5/5 ratings but 4/5 and 4.3/5 in a single week, when I hadn't had a rating below 5 for 3 years! I've noticed that my clients' ratings are a mix of the new and old systems. Do all your clients answer the new questionnaire?

Your freelancer is a scammer. You've been scammed. Fiverr won't do anything... Move on. Check if your site has been archived by archive.org If so, ask a freelancer to redo it for you. From now on, keep your site files, change your passwords... and don't trust anyone.

You've been very naive! Do you leave your house keys with the locksmith who installed the lock on your front door? Check with your hosting company to see if they have a backup. The lesson to remember: always change your passwords once the freelancer's work is done!

Where and when?

They don't want to move away from stars. Gig ratings are stars! Remove the text under the colors. Mix the colors and ask someone to sort them. You'll be surprised at the results... Why would pink be worth 2 and not 5 or 1? Why is yellow worth 4 and not 3? In fact, for me, yellow is worth 3. Why is that? Because in all color scales, the place of the colors is always the same, and yellow is always in the middle between orange and light green. To help users understand things at a glance and improve UX, you need to use scales that are commonly used and that everyone understands without text or explanations. The star or numbered color scale system is used (and perfectly understood) all over the world. Do a google search on "color wheel". Number each color on the wheel in order and you'll better understand the subject of color order... I'd have plenty more to say on this point but I'll stop here so as not to pollute this post with this topic when there are 10 other topics in your excellent post.

You deserve 5 stars and a bonus but I really don't agree with the idea of colors. Colors have different meanings in different countries, cultures and religions. A color that's positive in your country may mean something very different in another. I'll just mention red, which is commonly used to represent something negative in my country, whereas red represents something extremely positive in Asia! The questions asked to clients are used to assign star ratings to sellers. So clients have to assign stars, not anything else. Arbitrarily deciding that a face is worth a certain number of stars is neither honest nor TRANSPARENT! If Fiverr assigns a number of stars instead of the client, it looks like review manipulation! I understand that Fiverr wants the ratings to be more heterogeneous to make it easier for clients to choose. It's a very good idea, but the way it's done is really BAD!

I completely agree with you, but sometimes there are power struggles within companies between sales, marketing, design, management... In this company, surveys often helped us to get everyone on the same page.

Many people don't even know what "value for money" means. A long time ago, I worked for a market research company. I had to conduct face-to-face surveys with people to gather their opinions on a new product. There were 5 papers (with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 stars) on the table between the respondent and me. The last question of the survey was about "value for money." It was a real eye-opener! Here are some verbatim responses: "Oh, it's cheap." The respondent put their hand on 1 or 2 stars! "Oh, I would never buy at this price. Too expensive" The respondent put their hand on 5 stars. Many people thought I was asking them to rate the price level as follows: Not cheap at all - cheap - justified price - a little expensive - very expensive. However, the question was very well formulated and there was no ambiguity. After 10 people, I stopped to have the question modified. I think we are exactly in the same situation.

I don't mind receiving a 4 if MY CLIENT thinks that I've done something well but could have done better. In fact, in both cases I mentioned earlier, neither of my two clients even chose to rate me 4! They selected a very happy face because they are very satisfied, and it's Fiverr that arbitrarily decided to give me 4. It seems like review manipulation 🙄 A score of 4 out of 5 means 80%. Did I do 80% of the job? No. I did 100% of the job, and my two clients were 100% satisfied. There's something fishy going on. If Fiverr wants to be consistent, they should stop asking for reviews from clients and instead assign the number of stars they want by analyzing our work, message communications... and whatever they want with their AI! 🤣

Yes, the "where you can improve" messaging changes if buyers click the 4-star happy face. (I posted screenshots several days ago.) My client told me that he thought he was being asked to select what was very good (and not what needed improvement). There are many more issues than just the concept of "value for money".

We are not talking about 0.3, but 1.0 The 1st client was super happy with my work! He gave me a tip... The 2nd clent wrote "Excellent, as usual"

Unfair, skewed... Yes! But it doesn't seem to bother anyone at Fiverr! The most bizarre aspect of this review system is that the client never actually assigns stars. They just click on smileys, and somehow, it all magically converts into stars in the end! Furthermore I wonder how and why Fiverr decided that a smiley with a big smile is worth 4 stars. Everywhere else, the small smile is worth 4 stars and the big smile is worth 5 stars. The smiley of the guy with red stars in his eyes after abusing illegal substances doesn't exist anywhere else in evaluation scales! If Fiverr wants to transform smileys into stars, they must do it in a TRANSPARENT way. There are plenty of really cool designs for smileys with stars.

My first lesson on the Likert scale dates back over 25 years ago when I was studying marketing 😉 The responses absolutely do not adhere to what a Likert scale is! There are thousands of examples of Likert scales on the internet. You won't find any that don't have balanced responses that are antonyms (exact opposite)! Few examples: Strongly disagree - Disagree - Neither agree or disagree - Agree - Strongly agree Never - Almost never - Occasionally/Sometimes - Almost every time - Every time Very difficult - Difficult - Neutral - Easy - Very easy Very dissatisfied - Dissatisfied - Unsure - Satisfied - Very satisfied Fiverr claims transparency, fighting against fraud and honesty. Deciding to bias a satisfaction questionnaire and discreetly lowering "very good" from 5 to 4 stars without reducing the rating to maintain one's level goes against these values. For several days now, I've been wondering how to obtain 5 stars for my translation service into French. A translation is never "exceptional"! So, I'll likely end up with 4 stars for this service (which is my biggest gig). Consequently, I'll delete or pause it. Clients will then have plenty of options among all the Google translators claiming fluency in 10 languages! The empire of poor-quality work... 🤐

They should also think about changing the answers and putting "Good" between "Average" and "Very good"!!!!

A customer asked me if she should send me her revision requests before her vacations or if she could send them in mid-March. In the past, I would have pressured her to send me the revisions as soon as possible. But that's no longer the case! When she comes back from vacation, she won't be able to leave me a note. This allows me to avoid an irrational 4/5 for "Very good"! After the era when sellers chased reviews, here comes the era when we don't want reviews... I still haven't digested my two 4/5 and 4.3/5 reviews in less than a week. My last review below 5 was in January 2021...

No Fiverr member has commented on the answers to the 3 questions in the customer satisfaction questionnaire, which now jump directly from "Average" to "Very Good". I really don't understand why there's no nuance between average and very good! "Very Good" is now worth 4 stars, whereas "Very good" used to be worth 5 stars. The number of stars required to maintain our Level must be lowered accordingly! I notice that Fiverr has understood for the CS questionnaire that it is important to have a nuance between Average and Very Satisfied...

Are these active accounts (seller/buyer) or new accounts that were created on purpose?

I wonder how big the tsunami will be on March 15th when sellers who never visit the forum or check their dashboard discover the disaster!

"Very good" was worth 5 stars in the old system. "Very good" is now worth 4 stars in the new system.

I thought I was the only crazy one doing this. 😁

It's the same for almost all European languages! When Fiverr implemented language tests, I took all the tests for French because I thought Fiverr would promote those who had the best scores. Nothing happened that way and we still see those who claim to speak fluently in 10 languages. Unfortunately, there are still clients naive enough to believe them! The worst part is, Fiverr allows clients to be scammed...

I don't quite agree with you. I have over 800 reviews on Fiverr. I've never had a review that was bizarre or inconsistent with what the customer told me. But in the last few days, I've fallen into a new world... The problem is not the client. Clients haven't become stupid! This new review system makes their notes completely inconsistent with what they write and what they do (give a tip, or reorder, for example). The problem is the new review system.

Unfortunately, there are many of us in this situation! Fiverr really needs to look at the "value for money" issue. The fact that a client leaves a tip and scores 3/5 for value for money is proof that the client has not understood the question. And there are plenty more... I don't know how the expression "value for money" is understood in the English-speaking world, but in France we never use this expression in questionnaires, because for many people this expression means "price level" (which is not at all the case!). As soon as I saw this expression in the new satisfaction form, I said to myself that there would be problems of misunderstanding for French buyers. I didn't dare say anything until now on the forum because I thought that English-speaking people understood this expression in the right way, but there are lots of screenshots which show that this problem is not confined to my country and that it's the same everywhere!