cheftychefty

It looks like you're just trying to create drama. So, I will take my leave from the forum for the next few weeks. I hope you have a good weekend. You and Vibronx can downvote my stuff as much as you'd like. 🤷‍♂️

Huh? Not only did I tell Vickie that I hoped she wouldn't have to go through the headaches a lot of us are facing, I said at the end of my rant that I apologize for sounding angry and explained why I'm so stressed. Forums are a place for opinion and conversation. It doesn't matter what someone's social status is. We are all allowed to disagree with one another. I don't have to agree with Vickie in fear of who they are lol. I've seen much worse said on here in the past two days.

That's exactly what I don't understand. I keep seeing all of you with actual flags on your accounts saying you are flagged... So how the hell am I actually flagged when I have zero marks or reprimands.

That's easy for you to say so calmly because your livelihood and everything you've worked for isn't on the line and I hope you nor anyone else will have to be in this position. I haven't slept in 38 hours. Imagine that you woke up tomorrow and you went from $5k+ a month to zero. You wouldn't be in here asking everyone to relax and wait for Kesha to give us some answers in the coming weeks. I've attached three images of my account. I don't have any ToS strikes against me. I have two devices connected to my account. My work PC and my cellphone which are both registered in the same state, obviously as shown. Nobody has ever used my account. I have 2-factor authenticating so nobody can even hijack it if they tried without my cellphone. It's literally a part of the very same ToS that any user in violation will receive a warning(with explanation) and have 30 days to stay positive to correct their account. How can I just randomly be flagged and told I am permanently restricted for two things I've never done. What the hell is location inconsistences? So I'm not allowed to travel outside of California? lol. I've never once violated ToS and in the event that I did, where was the warning and mark on my account to work toward correcting it? "After careful review, your account has been flagged due to activities indicating a connection to violations of our Terms of Service or location inconsistencies. Consequently, your participation in Fiverr's level system is permanently restricted. Please be advised that this was reviewed multiple times and the decision is final." I think what really happened is they tested their update on a small batch of test accounts and then hit "run" and the algorithm auto-flagged thousands of reputable profiles based on an unrealistic criteria and now fiverr doesn't know how to fix it. Instead we are all being gaslit to think we've done something wrong without an understanding or apology lol. There is no way this new process goes live and the forum becomes flooded by users who are now soft and/or hard banned from fiverr and its "working as intended". I'm sorry, just no. And I'm sorry for being so angry but this is literally my only form of income for myself and my family and I've always taken steps to be professional on fiverr. Like, this is all I have dude. This is it lol.

Any of you with a bad success score and no answers should reach out to customer support. I have zero flags on my account or TOS warnings yet the response from the support team says that I "violated TOS or Location Inconsistencies" and due to that I am permanently restricted from using the platform after 6 years, no warnings, and thousands of dollars made in revenue. Something's not right. I'm a dude that lives in the USA lol. I travel once in a while to visit family or friends who also live in the USA. Make it make sense. I have zero popups or notifications on my account that says my account is flagged. I have seen plenty of people posting on here that their account is flagged and it literally says ON their profile they are flagged but mine does not. Again, I have zero warnings or flags but somehow I'm shadow banned? from using the platform?? You guys could be too and you don't even know it... 🤷‍♂️

Please do because I just got this message response in a ticket after askeing about my status. I've quite literally been one of the most honest people on this platform and I travel AMERICA a lot but i have never left the country and there shouldn't be a single reason I'm flagged. I also have zero TOS warnings on my account.

First, I want to say that I have been a supporter of this platform since 2018. I never thought I'd achieve the things that I have in those 6 years. With that out of the way, I received an email response to a Help Request I submitted on the day of the new Seller Dashboard. In my email I asked for some more insight as to why my level was so low and what this meant for my future on the platform(as a level 0 seller). I explained that this was my main source of income and for many years it's been a steady one. It's allowed me to meet so many great people and work on some wonderful projects. This was the response: "After careful review, your account has been flagged due to activities indicating a connection to violations of our Terms of Service or location inconsistencies. Consequently, your participation in Fiverr's level system is permanently restricted." Why?.... How..... They also write: "Please be advised that this was reviewed multiple times and the decision is final." First of all, I have never left the United States. So I'm not even sure what that location inconsistencies would entail. Secondly, I have been one of the most loyal people to this platform. Do you know how many people I have had ask me in private messages if I would contact them outside of fiverr for future selling matters and I've told them no? You can check the receipts. I've always told people "no, let's keep it on fiverr please. All orders need to come through here." When clients ask me to contact them I always tell them I have rules and that if I call them, they need to purchase an order first to ensure the work will be contained within fiverr and I will not discuss work outside of fiverr. If they agree to those rules we can discuss things over the phone or zoom. Nobody else in my household has fiverr. My account has zero TOS warnings. In 6 years I have had maybe 4 arguments with clients and my immediate response is to race to the help team and make them aware of the situation in case the client creates a bigger issue. I have always been honest and transparent and I have over 2 dozen customers who are repeat customers whom I speak with outside of fiverr now due to their loyalty and they ALWAYS come back through fiverr. I've never used a single competitor and I've always praised this system. I've tried encouraging friends who were laid off to give it a try as well as my brother who was going through tough times and I told him about how great his success could be if he just gave it some time. I refer to all of my customers as 'clients' so they feel like they're getting something a little more than just a logo or website design. I have made almost a quarter of a million dollars on this platform. Was this because I talked poorly about the update? Was this because I threatened to take my business elsewhere due to the harsh, new review process? Out of 2000 orders, you have just now decided I am permanently restricted from participating in fiverrs leveling system? I have done nothing wrong and all I've done was made this platform money. But I guess that's it then. Take care, Chefty

Kesha. I finally received a reply from customer service, after asking about the state of things days ago and they replied and gave me this message: "After careful review, your account has been flagged due to activities indicating a connection to violations of our Terms of Service or location inconsistencies. Consequently, your participation in Fiverr's level system is permanently restricted." WHAT I have literally lived in the same place my whole life. I've never even left America. location inconsistencies? I mean I've traveled to other states to visit family and have used the cellphone app but what does that even mean???? I'm quite literally freaking out right now and I don't feel good. What do you mean my 6 year old account is now permanently restricted. FLAGGED FOR WHAT.

What kind of services do you provide? id be curious to see a graph of the types of services provided by people who have a Success Score of 4 Versus those who have a success score of 10 while comparing that result with the age of account. They're treating every niche and service like its linear. It's upsetting that someone new can join fiverr tomorrow and in a month, if they somehow manage 10 orders with no bad Private Feedback, will have a better chance at success than those of us who have been here for years making fiverr money. They're just phasing us all out.

I saw a seller on a different post mention that fiverr *might be* relying on their Private Feedback as a metric because fiverr could be worried that sellers are rigging their reviews by giving their buyers a hard time or guilt tripping them. I don't know how accurate this is but don't you think it's only going to be worse now? Now that the whole platform knows how Private Feedback works, don't you think that's only going to become an extension of the above issue? Now sellers will just add "oh and after your order, you'll be asked to take a brief *private* survey regarding our work together. I look forward to your feedback." They're not implying that it needs to be filled out positively for them, but they are implying they know about it and then it genuinely no longer feels like Private Feedback. The reason these sellers never brought it up beforehand was because everyone was told that it was just a metric fiverr used and it didn't impact us or our work. You guys have quite literally just overcomplicated the system and created an even bigger mess. If the above is true, and some sellers have a history of tugging on peoples heartstrings, to get better ratings, then they're just going to do the same exact thing now that they know Private Feedback is a metric. That changes nothing and this new system only makes it harder for the honest sellers to stay relevant on this platform. I don't know if the PF section will just roll into a standard review now or if it will stay private... But all you've done was created an even more vigilant group of dishonest sellers who now have even more data on how to rig success while the rest of us who no longer have a career here will have to find work elsewhere. I feel like I'm in some weird episode of Black Mirror.

This! First of all I love your name. Makes me sad about mine because I randomly blurted a word twice and used it upon signup because thought I would be able to change it later. I've been stuck with it for 6 years now 🤣 But, to your point... I did the math today and in the past 4, out of the 6 years, I've brought in $221,396.40 through fiverr. Then they take their 20% cut. That's almost a quarter of a million dollars and just like me, thousands of artists are now at a risk of losing their entire careers because some devs at the office were bored and wanted to try out some new ideas. I have had clients who would probably spit on me in public given the chance just because theyre that mean, rude, and unhinged. I've dealt with some really intense people and I've smiled through it and asked what I needed to do to get the product where they would be happy. I've literally had a customer once tell me she was really happy with the logo and then gave me a 1 star review and said she wished she hadn't ordered from me. like what? lol. I've had customers request a cancelation after I've spent days and weeks a project because they've said "You know, I honestly just don't know what I want and I was hoping this would help me figure it out but I'd like to cancel if you don't mind".... The list goes on about the type of people us sellers are faced with on a daily basis and we have to smile through it and do our best so we don't get our accounts flagged and risk demotion. lol we literally get bullied on here and just have to brush it off. I knew something was weird because this time last year I was doing 11k a month in sales but last month I barely did $1,500 and right now in February i have $500 in sales. I was going in circles trying to figure out if it was taxes... or too much Christmas shopping... But now that this has rolled it, it's apparent that they've been running it in the background for months and they're going to force us all to just leave. They'll be stuck with the AI users selling $5-$15 packages because none of us will trust this platform ever again.

What fiverr needs to do is use profits that they earn from their sellers and hire secret shoppers like most regular businesses do and use that as a metric. Pay the secret shoppers to buy a low tier order from us at random points throughout the year and make that have a strong mark against us versus the wave of people who are just clicking a score depending on how their day has gone. How do you regulate that because you can't buy one order from everybody? Easily. You only have the secret shoppers buy from the successful artists who are at the top or moving a lot of product. That way its a metric that checks in with them to ensure their quality of work because paying a shopper to check in on someone whose barely doing a few orders a week won't really matter. What's the salary of a fiverr staff member? I can imagine there is at least a dozen salaries that aren't needed at the office. I'm sure losing a few would be okay. Afterall that's how they're treating their sellers. I mean who really cares if this is how they make a living, right? Tell a few at the office that they have until march 14th to figure it out. I understand all of the profits are paying all of the people behind the screens but all of the hard work comes from the sellers making this platform as big as it is and now we are being punished. Does fiverr think this will make the platform stronger? What it's going to do is make all of the sellers who have made fiverr hundreds of thousands, find other avenues to make money and go elsewhere because it's now become to volatile here and it's not safe financially. A lot of people are upset that they only got Seller Level 2 and I'm over here wondering if I'll have a place to live by April 🤣 It's not funny but I don't know how else to feel so I just laugh at how unrealistic it was for me to assume fiverr would always be a healthy source of income. Prime example of not putting all of your eggs in one basket because that basket may get stomped on by the same person handing you the eggs.

Not to be rude... But that's a joke right? Let me just put it in perspective. I am a seller who typically did anywhere from 40-50 orders a month. Thats everything from logo design to web development. Due to my 6+ years on fiverr, all of my information is being held accountable under the new system. Because of this, I went from a Level 2 to a level 0. Fiverr's response to this is "take this next month to evaluate how you can work on bouncing back from this and recover." How... in the hell.... Do you bounce back. The ratio just isnt there man. I went from 50 orders a month to about 15. I am swimming upstream against 6 years of history on my account... with 15 orders? How? lol. Like how does anyone combat that. It will take me at least a year to counteract the damage that this new system has done. Like many other established artists on fiverr, my beginning was rocky. I wasn't sure I wanted to do this type of work so I treated it like a second job. For years I came and went as I built a client base. I was late on orders. Canceled orders. Wasn't the best at communicating... But with all of that said I still always maintained a 4.9-5 star rating with my clients because I never gave up on them. Skipping ahead to today. I have matured quite a bit in the 6 years. Over the past 3 or so years this has fed my family and paid all of our bills. It's my main job and I take it very seriously. I am now being held back due to things in the past, no matter how far i've come as a seller on this platform. I get emails all of the time from fiverr praising me for repeated customers and retention. Now im getting emails telling me I'm just not good enough lmao. Talk about unmotivating. If they were trying to crush a huge percentage of revenue gaining sellers then they did a good job. What I am noticing is that the people who do logo design and graphics are the ones mostly affected by this change. People who do written work like proof reading or legal work are all getting 8 through 10 on their seller scores because the work is pretty straight forward. It's not the same and shouldnt be treated as such.

I went from 4 years consistently as a level 2 down to a level 0. I've been a level 2 for almost my entire 6+ years with fiverr but had a few hiccups along the way and lost it once or twice in the beginning.

two years is what they're saying.