Fiverr Community Forum

Bad experience with sellers

Your Fiverr Experience
#1

I have been using Fiverr for services multiple times during the last 3-4 years.

Just recently I needed a trailer for a project of mine, and I reached out to a couple of people who advertised that they are “Professional trailer makers”.

I paid $20 for a trailer and gave very clear instructions as to exactly how I wanted the trailer, including any trailer texts I wanted.

The seller proceeded to give me a product with the clips all over the place (not fitting the texts), the texts I provided now had ugly white backgrounds (they had transparent backgrounds previously) and the actual text was pixelated and low quality (it wasn’t like that previously). In addition to that there were split second frames here and there (just tiny clips that hasn’t been edited away, but that obviously aren’t meant to be in the video). I sent the video through 3 revisions where I gave extremely detailed explanations of how I wanted it, but the seller didn’t listen to my instructions and kept delivering a subpar product. I ended up asking for a cancellation because the seller clearly wasn’t able to make a viable product.

I ended up buying a trailer from another seller at a $10 jump in price (so I paid $30 for the new trailer), and I am seeing the SAME basic mistakes like split second frames, poorly cut video, clips fades out after 1 second and then fades back in and stuff like that. I am not talking about things that are a matter of preference, I am talking about actual mistakes and video editing errors that shouldn’t have happened if any of these sellers checked their own product before delivering it or had any actual QA process…

So far my experience with people who make trailers and video editing is extremely poor, and I have been left with a bitter taste in my mouth after having spent over a week trying to explain to allegedly “professionals” that they have to remove split second frames and poorly cut footage. They all seem to use some sub-par video editing software where all they have are different templates. I can understand if it cost me $5, but the last one was a $30 gig, I should never have received a product of the quality I did. I will never use Fiverr for any future video editing jobs again.

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#2

I’m sorry for your bad experience with sellers.

However 30$ for video editing is not even a market price.
I know that fiverr makes you feel that for 5-50$ you can get the moon and the stars but it’s not in reality.
Video editing is already a tough category to find talented professional people and those for sure change way more than 30$. (And by way more I mean 10 times more at least).

I’m also sure there are talented people who put their prices as low as 30$ but are you ready to spend your time with trial and error trying to find those people among amateurs that are offering their services at low 30$? Looking for them is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

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#3

That’s all well and good, and I realize that I get what I pay for. However, I still expect the product to be without basic errors. No matter the price there shouldn’t be any mistakes, and I shouldn’t have to ask people to correct the same mistakes twice.

I don’t require top notch editing, I just want a product that is working. If you buy a plastic cup from a shop you don’t expect it to look nice and have the best quality, but you DO expect it to at least not leak. The same way I expect the trailer I paid for to not be faulty.

1 Like
#4

Being video editor myself, I agree it is quite bad, problem in fiverr is that anyone can pretend to be professional to attract people.

1 Like
#5

@olejesperoliver
Have you contacted the seller before to explain what you want and possibly make a price for what you want?
Many sellers use various templates for texts and transitions in the trailer gigs, in the gig gallery you can see repetitions of styles.
If you have your own idea different from the presentation or what you saw in the seller’s gallery, you should have contacted him before.
I don’t know what kind of trailer you ordered, but there are also very talented sellers who can fulfill any wish, but for that, there is a different price.

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#6

I did indeed contact them both, and gave them clear instructions (and all relevant source material) before placing an order. Both of them seemed happy to take my order, and raised no concerns regarding the material I provided.

1 Like
#7

@olejesperoliver It means you had a bad experience with both of them.

#8

Sorry to hear this experience but do not let that reflect badly on other creators on the Fiverr platform, the talent here is exceptional. @mariashtelle1 made a great point about the going rate, you most probably hired someone that is not actually skilled in that arena but knows how to use the basics of the software. I have not seen the video but they did deliver a video, the quality is another discussion. The licence for Adobe Premier Pro (fairly industry standard editing programme) is around is $20-30 per month, hopefully that puts into perspective. The famous saying always come to mind “you buy cheap, you buy twice”. Mistakes should definitely not happen but it is possible that these are not mistakes in their eyes as they are not trained in this industry but just looking to make some money (especially in the poorer regions of the world). Cheers.

4 Likes
#9

Had you downloaded the video file they attached and was it the right resolution/full resolution or were you viewing Fiverr’s preview? The preview is 720p at most and if it’s shown in the smaller box it’s possible that might show aliasing when the full resolution video doesn’t. Maybe you could specify to the sellers what background(s)/background colours you wanted them to use for it.

#10

As I also explained to @mariashtelle1 I share the same sentiment of “you get what you pay for”, but the things I got delivered were technical mistakes (again, not just my “opinion”, we’re talking about actual mistakes).

When I buy a product I do expect the product to not have any faults. I don’t care what price range I pay for that product, if it is advertised as a viable product I won’t accept getting something broken in return.

The fact that they “delivered a video” is besides the point. Using my plastic cup argument again, imagine you go to a shop and buy a plastic cup. Surely you don’t expect the cup to be a work of art, but rather only to serve its purpose as a cup. If you buy that cup in good faith, but later come to realize that the cup is leaking from the bottom I’m pretty sure you would also find that unacceptable, and not according to the purpose of the cup. Let’s say you go back to the store to change the cup, and the cashier tells you “but you did get a cup!”. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be too happy.

Bottom line is that, I get it, people want to make money but if they advertise themselves as possessing skills they don’t actually have then they’re ruining for themselves. If they want to sell a service or product they should at least make sure they are able to make something worth the money they’re paid.

1 Like
#11

Well yes. The video was the agreed resolution, but that was never the problem.

The actual texts I provided were provided in gif and png format with transparent backgrounds. They were later converted by the seller to a format that doesn’t support alpha channels, and used as they were after conversion with no further modifications.

I shouldn’t have to specify that I want to retain the transparent background, that’s a no-brainer.

#12

I think it would have helped if you let the editor know, since they probably didn’t know otherwise. mp4 doesn’t support alpha channels and if it’s a trailer they don’t normally support alpha channels. eg. I don’t think you can upload a video to youtube in a format that supports transparency.

The gifs might have been a problem, since they only support 256 colours, 1 of which is used for any transparent colour so it might not have been antialised well on other backgrounds. Though if you sent them with high enough res (eg. higher res than they would be used to allow for better anti-aliasing?) maybe it would have been okay.

1 Like
#13

The expensive cup and the cheap cup are both typically made by the same manufacturer. The issue here is you have picked a poor / extremely unreliable manufacturer to create your product. You are not buying from a shop, you are buying from the creator and thus the mistakes/poor quality issue have occurred. There is no excuse for this but this is typically the reason why.

1 Like
#14

I ended up having to make a background for him in the same color as the background used in the video. If I hadn’t I am quite sure the seller would be unable to figure out how to do it himself.

Also .mov video files supports alpha channels, so there are ways to do it quite easily if he knew half of what he should know as a “professional” video editor.

#15

I’m not sure how unreliable they are really (counting by reputation only), since they have mostly good ratings (to my big surprise). Worst thing is that all the videos on their portfolio and so on seems fine, and I’d be happy to receive a product that looked even remotely as good as the videos in their portfolio.

#16

I agree but still letting the seller know you needed it in a format with an alpha channel was what you wanted would have been best so they knew. I assume they thought it was meant for display on a website in the delivery format, but I don’t think websites can make the .mov’s with an alpha channel transparent, or at least not normally. Are there any sites that display video from .movs with the alpha channel being transparent when shown on the website?

#17

I provided quality services for my first few gigs for the reviews at a really low price. I won’t comment about the market price.

The idea of communication is important. You inbox the seller, was the communication flow good? Was there any misunderstanding… did you have to clarify anything… did the seller understand you or just nodding his head, as you continue gibbering?

If the first impression is good communication, you didn’t need to further explain the same point repeatedly. If the problem is with the seller if you didn’t let that be a component in your decision-making process… There’s no one else to blame.

#18

Well the .mov files are just supposed to be merged with other video clips anyway, so where I use the final product shouldn’t matter.

Had it been me, and I see that I won’t be able to support material brought to me by a client I inform the client, and asked how they wished to proceed from there instead of making something that looks different from the material given to me.

#19

I did contact them before I made a purchase, and the communication seemed good enough. However after having placed the order I realized there’s a language barrier. I did notice that the seller often pretended to understand what I meant, when that wasn’t the case in reality.

I tried keeping my explanations really simple, but it didn’t work out at all. I had to cancel that one. I’m still in revisions with the second seller, so hopefully that one turns out alright.

#20

I got my trailer back after the second revision from the second seller, and you really can’t make this shit up.

I ordered a 120 second long trailer and the first delivery I got was a 1m 37s long video. Obviously I sent it to revision and asked to get what i ordered (120 seconds). The next video I receive is 1m 20s… I mean come on, what even is that…