I set a very specific task with instructions for my seller, so it was clear as to what I wanted from the gig. He only has 5* reviews, so I thought "hey, this seems pretty decent". I had a very strict deadline, so I needed it done by the agreed deadline. He agreed that he was perfectly capable to fulfil this, and so we started business.
Each day, I checked in on him to see how he was doing. His answer was always "I'm generating the data" (which was the initial step to the whole thing). He was communicative, but gave a lot of false promises. I never received any kind of proof on where he was or what he was working on, but he'd always say "I'll show you later" or "I'll show you tomorrow". Some days, I'd skip checking in on him to see if he'd actually done anything to update me on the progress of it. Alas, he never did.
On the last day, I asked him where he was at, and his response was still "I'm generating the data". I said to him that if he doesn't think he can do it, or if it's too hard for him, then I'm happy to mutually cancel with no repercussions. I also gave the option of extending his time to another day, to see if he could get a week's job done in a day (I'm a fool for that). He said "Yes. We'll see where things are at with the data generation tomorrow". At this point, I was thinking jfc the data generation should've taken less than 20 minutes of this entire project, so "seeing where things were at" and with ONLY the initial step obviously meant he wasn't going to be able to fulfil the entire project by then.
So once the deadline passed and nothing got delivered, I requested a cancellation through the Resolution Center, and he seems to have chosen to dispute it. Now, I have a few questions about this:
How long does this "dispute" process take? I am currently out of pocket by hundreds of $$ due to this, so cannot/do not want to spend more money opening an alternative gig with someone else for this.
How likely am I to lose this case, if he somehow manages to blab his way out of it? How much do Fiverr favour sellers over buyers? Do they look at your conversation for proof, etc.?
If I did lose the case for whatever reason, does he then get all of my money even if he didn't deliver anything?
Is there a way for me to add more information and evidence to my cancellation request? Because I only gave a brief explanation due to the character limit, but have a lot more to say to back my case.
I am extremely disheartened by this experience and probably won't use Fiverr again because of it. If someone hasn't delivered anything by the deadline, why aren't buyers then able to just cancel it? This sucks big time. Fiverr for freelancing has good potential otherwise, if it weren't for people like this. What do I/can I do?
