charlsmcfarlane

It’s a little frustrating, I know. It’s important to respect the buyer’s right to review your service how they see fit. There have been some inconsistencies since the recent changes to the review process, though. I have had a few reviews where buyers have left nothing but positive comments and tips and then purchased from me again – but their rating was 4.3. I’ve asked these buyers how I could have improved and they’ve told me that the service was perfect. So it seems that, for some buyers, their opinions aren’t being accurately reflected in the score, from how they interpret the questions. Either that, or they’re too shy to tell me the truth when I ask how it could have been better. Buyers are empowered to edit their reviews for a short time, if they have made a mistake, but I don’t dare mention it to them for fear of being accused of review manipulation, which can be more damaging than the occasional 4.3.

That’s an interesting suggestion. I might look into that.

I offer training sessions, which are by far my most successful gigs – maybe 80%+ of my orders. For almost as long as I've done it I've been collecting orders. Buyers place orders and then just stop responding completely, never scheduling a time to meet. For whatever reason, they seem quite content with Fiverr holding on to their money, and receiving nothing in return, indefinitely. I don't get it! It’s a lot better now the system automatically approves extension requests, so the orders don't go late, but it doesn't solve the problem of the orders just sitting there. Currently I have six of these orders worth hundreds of dollars, most of which have been sat there for a year or more. For whatever reason, no amount of messaging the customers seems to help – even when I can see they’ve been online. I’ve considered cancelling but I don’t want my Success Score, my place in the search rankings, or my Fiverr’s Choice badges to be affected by cancellations that are not my fault. So, what I’ve done so far is to just keep extending these orders until the buyer replies. Now, let’s say, one day they do and I can complete the orders – I'll then have a ridiculously long delivery time, which looks bad but is, again, not my fault. There needs to be a clear system or policy in place to resolve these issues where the seller is not penalised for cancellations, slow deliveries, getting in touch with support etc.

The Success Score has treated me pretty well since it was introduced. It was originally described as a way of providing more transparency about how sellers are evaluated by the Fiverr system. This post outlines an issue that could seriously affect my profile and I would love a transparent and clear answer, if possible. Among other things, I offer training sessions. They are by far my most successful gigs. For some reason, every now and then, a buyer will order and then just stop responding completely, never scheduling a time to meet. For whatever reason, they seem quite content with Fiverr holding on to their money, and receiving nothing in return, indefinitely 🤷🏻‍♂️. It’s a lot better now the system automatically approves extension requests. This ensures that the order never goes late, but I’m in this weird position now where I have hundreds of dollars worth of orders just sitting there, going nowhere. Some of these orders were placed more than a year ago – see below. I’d love to actually schedule and deliver these sessions but for whatever reason, no amount of messaging the customers seems to help – even when I can see they’ve been online. Some of them even manually accept the extension requests but still won't answer my messages. I’ve considered cancelling them as I don’t offer the services at those prices any more and I don’t like my list being filled up with orders that aren’t going anywhere. However, I don’t want my Success Score, my place in the search rankings, or my Fiverr’s Choice badges to be affected by cancellations that are not my fault. I've heard that Customer Support can cancel orders without affecting the Success Score, but then I've also heard that contacting Customer Support is perceived negatively by the Success Score as well, so I don't know what to do with that either. So, what I’ve done so far is to just keep extending these orders until the buyer replies. Now, let’s say, one day they do and I can complete the orders – I don’t want my Success Score, my place in the search rankings, or my Fiverr’s Choice badges to be affected by a ridiculously long delivery time, which is again, not my fault. Furthermore, I keep hearing that Fiverr will automatically cancel orders after a certain time and, if true, I’m back at the same concern – I don’t want my Success Score, my place in the search rankings, or my Fiverr’s Choice badges to be affected by cancellations that are not at all my fault. The gigs in question have near-perfect public ratings and 9s and 10s on the individual gig Success Scores, so I’m certain this isn’t anything to do with customers being unhappy. Importantly, as these are my most popular gigs, and therefore have the biggest impact on my success score, I’m very concerned about making the wrong choice here. I have a 9 out of 10 Success Score, so these heavily weighted gigs possibly could push me down to an 8 or lower. Then my Top Rated status will be at risk too. In a previous, similar situation I contacted support and they suggested that they can reach out to the customer for me, which they did, countless times, with no results either. So, I’m not particularly convinced of the efficacy of that approach. Also, again, if the Success Score punishes me for contacting support, I don't really want to do that either. I’m in this annoying position of analysis paralysis now where there is not enough information available on how the Success Score works to make an informed decision. And potentially doing nothing is just as bad. Basically I need more information. So, that’s a detailed account of the issue. What should I do? Perhaps even someone from the Fiverr team can offer me some advice, based on how the Success Score actually works? Thanks

The tricky part with this is short messages can be seen on push notifications, using the Fiverr app, without marking the message as seen/read. The concerns around rule breaking and manipulation are easily addressed if Fiverr can see a full audit trail with deleted messages and all versions of edited messages.

Totally agree. I’d love to complete the order but the buyer has gone silent. Either I extend or cancel. Not sure fiverr is happy with either.

I've had customers go quiet and sit with pending orders. Then, when I've extended the orders it starts to fill up a lot of space. (See attached) It would be great if the system would either summarise multiple line items together or have the option to collapse down the extras and resolutions. For example, in the attached image, the nine delivery extensions could be collapsed into one that just reads "x9" instead of it saying "x1" nine times. Thanks

The only way I can see this working is if you had the option to forfeit your ability to review the buyer in order to see their review. I think Fiverr would still rather you just leave a review though.

With the benefit of hindsight, I agree. If anything, my prices have either stayed the same or increased in the last few months and I’ve not seen much impact on my “Value of Delivery”. I do still think those that react to poorer scores by dropping prices could find themselves spiralling to lower price points, as I originally feared. (Which, if I’m not mistaken, is the point you are making?) However, someone delivering a quality service who is fortunate enough to have access to great clients, shouldn’t need to do that. So, really, I'm still concerned that this metric can result in a ‘race to the bottom’ but only for people that react in a certain way. I’m happy to have been proven wrong 😉 However, I’m also still of the opinion that the question is flawed because it is impacted by two important variables: quality and price. I think this makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to actually make sense of the score, because a 3 star rating could mean “great price but bad quality” or “great quality but bad price” or “average price and average quality” etc, etc. Having a single output for a question with multiple inputs seems very broken to me.

I have noticed that this seems to be true. I’ve seen a hit on “Value of Delivery” (I think everyone has), but it’s been a small impact, really. Almost every review I’ve had has been between 4.7 and 5 stars, so that’s ok. I am lucky enough to work with a lot of buyers who are willing to pay for quality, rather than worrying about the cost. It seems counterintuitive at first, but charging more seems to improve this metric (unless the service being delivered is rubbish, of course)

I was a little skeptical about the availability feature but recently switched it on for 5 days and within 10 minutes of becoming available again, my gigs had jumped back up to their prior positions and the Fiverr’s Choice badges had been restored. I’d still prefer an option to extend delivery times by the amount of time I’m taking off, rather than make the gigs disappear completely though.

If it’s taking into account a specific time frame, for example the last 24 months, then changes can happen at any time. Let’s say you had a negative private review 24 months ago. As soon as you hit 24 months and one day, that negative review isn’t impacting you any more, so your score would seem to inexplicably increase. I have no idea if this is how it works, I’m just guessing at what could cause movement like this with no orders. Unfortunately, I think you’re right. However, even if you could be certain that customers completely understand it, it’s still a flawed metric. Asking for buyers to rate the price (a variable) and the quality (another variable) in one question means that any ratings left by a buyer are ambiguous at best (misleading at worst). Not to mention that buyers agreed the price when they started, so the price shouldn’t be a factor — only the quality of delivery.

Agreed. However, it is very easy for Fiverr to address this concern and still implement this functionality: 1. Show an “edited” or “message deleted” tag. 2. Allow Fiverr support to see the different versions of the messages and any that have been deleted.

I don’t put much stock in the “last seen…” labels. I often get order messages and open the order within seconds and it then says the buyer was last seen three hours ago or something. Either, as you suggest, there’s a massive delay in the message notification coming through or maybe the “last seen…” counter takes some time to update.