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Bad review clearly not deserved...any tips?


shuriken12

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Hi all!
so, as the title I would like to deal with a bad review that was completely free…
the only mistake I’ve made was not cancelling the order… ok. I’ve learn from that!

anyway, a customer ordered a gig without contacting me before, asking me to do something clearly out of my gig service (creating a presentation, as my gig was only for a background design). At the time I didn’t cancelled the order as many clients used to send me the slides for me to put them already in the file…just to save time I suppose.
this one didn’t even had the writtens he wanted into it sending me a video with some rought ideas…
anyway, I did the design, and put in the presentation those sentences and I sent him the file clearly stating that it was to know his feeling about this… as the client didn’t reply, I ended delivering since the order time was almost over.
again, in the delivery I invited him to ask for a revision whenever he wanted it and that a refund was always possible.

so, what happened then? nothing… the client completely disappeared for more that a month and then suddenly came back giving me 2 stars. this is so unfair and so dishonest!

this happened some times ago already… alredy dealt with the bad feeling… I already thought that I would have some bad review at some point…
I have only great a stunning reviews! so, this won’t change a lot… but if something is possible, why no, right?

I gave a 1 star review back to his comment defending my work. But now, to delete this I have to ask him to agree in cancelling the review right?

anyone has some similar experience? what do you suggest?

thanks!

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Your response to the bad reivew was perfect, it lets other potential clients know that the work he ordered was different from the services you offered.

Yes the ball would be in his court to cancel or change the bad review but time is running out for him to be able to that even if he wanted to.

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I wanted to say contact customer support but since you delivered he has the right to give a review, and customer support will say that the only way to remove it is by agreeing with the buyer on that and he seems like a buyer who doesn’t visit the site alot and probobaly will not have time to deal with this, i recommand you just let it since you defended yourself with that comment and eventually that bad review will not matter if you get new positive reviews.

I also recommand never delivering a work unless you know that you can 100% do it, always offer mutual cancellation if you can’t do it.

Good luck

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That sucks when this happens. If you’re curious, I recently wrote a guide in the category “Improve My Gig” about this very situation: http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/how-to-prevent-and-remove-negative-reviews/

Anyway, I went to your profile and checked out your gigs to see if I could find the negative review in question, but I didn’t see it so I’m guessing you either deleted the gig or you already petitioned customer support to remove the review? At any rate, if the review is still there but I didn’t see it, remember to take screenshots and document all communication with the client. Even then, that may not be enough and customer support may not remove the review unless you can show that the review is abusive or untrue. There’s no guarantee that customer support will ever remove a review, but if you can make a strong argument to show that the review is abusive or untrue, they’ll probably help you out.

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I don’t like being the mean guy here but actually, I think the gig description would lead me to believe that you will do the whole presentation project. It certainly does not sound like it is only for background design. This is the cause of you getting the order in the first place, your description led the buyer to believe you were right for his project.

Secondly, you chose not to cancel it, as you said - you have learned that lesson.

Third, the buyers fault, he did not give any feedback. Do you tell your buyers to check messages regularly? In my requirements, I now suggest that my clients to download the Fiverr app to make sure we can communicate easily. Buyers don’t always understand that they need to contribute, they sometimes expect us to be magicians, mind-readers and other things we are not. Do everything you can to avoid this.

Fourth, the result the buyer got was not what he expected. With respect, and I acknowledge that writing is not part of what you offer, I suspect the written work you did may not have been great as your English is good but not perfect.

Finally, I suggest you rewrite your gig description and be clear about what you will do and also perhaps, what you won’t do.
Don’t worry about the review, your other reviews would more than make up for it if I was looking at your gig and your response was perfect.

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thank you! I’ll go have a look!
you can’t see my gig as I paused it… I was in the process to improve my gig and due to this situation I decided to pause and to concentrate myself on the other which were also more profitable…

anyway, in the tos it is written that the buyer must agree in deleting the review which is a little bit…hard right? I mean, the buyer went back 1 month after the delivery just to post the review…sounds like he really felt better before this… you’re saying that the customer service would delete it even without his consense?

anyway, the only way I was thinking that he may agree is knowing that this would delete my bad review for him as well… that is maybe reducing his chances to become top buyer or something? is this worth trying?

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no bad guy here! especially if you’re right…
I think that this episode do suggests that the gig description let think that I could an entire presentation… this gig has never been my best one so it happened that I’ve improved the other and let this one behind… however, it is stated several time that the gig is for “design presentation” and not its content… and the extras are music and animation… never content…
but, anyway… I agree that the gig itself hasn’t been well built…that’s why I’ve paused it to improve it!

yes… I know, I should have cancelled it when the buyer did not respond and let me in a tricky situation as the design was ready (and not so bad actually) but the content wasn’t good… and not because of my english but because he gave me no material to work on! just a video with a couple of sentences and titles…

if you ask me to rate the presentation I think that 2 stars are a good review as a presentation with a professional design, without content isn’t so good to see right? so, in this sense I may undestand that the buyer wasn’t so evil and just didn’t get that, as you say, I’m not a magician. But since he didn’t reply (the whole conversation contains 3 messages he sent me…nothing more) and since the design was ready, he really left me in an uncomfortable situation…I really paid because of my unexperience…

anyway, yes…I’ll redo the description and will come back when this will be ready!
this post was just to find a solution, if there is any…
thank you for you help! 🙂

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Generally speaking, the only way to get rid of a negative review is if the buyer agrees to remove it, but as you correctly pointed out, this is not an easy task since most buyers who decide to leave negative reviews are resolute in their opinion.

This is made more difficult by the reality that many buyers will become even more upset if the buyer asks them to change the review. If the buyer can be politely persuaded to change the review (usually in exchange for a refund), then depending on how long ago the review was left the buyer can do it manually him or herself. After the change is made, either the buyer or the seller may initiate a request for mutual cancellation.

But if the window of opportunity has closed and the buyer can no longer edit or remove the review, the only option left is to contact customer support and ask them to refund the order. If you the seller initiate this request without any correspondence from the buyer, then customer support will issue a credit to the buyer, but leave the review.

But if you are communicating with the buyer and have screenshots to show what was agreed, then customer support will refund the buyer and remove the review.

But again, all that depends on a cooperative buyer who’s willing to accept a refund. Some buyers don’t want a refund because they’re willing to take a loss on their order if it means their review will serve as a warning to other buyers. In that situation, so long as the review was truthful, there’s nothing you can do. You’re stuck with the negative review.

But - and this is a really big “but” - IF YOU CAN PROVE that the review is either abusive (think George Carlin’s 7 words you can’t say on TV) or wildly untrue (buyer says you delivered a dik-pic instead of a funny cat), then you can petition customer support to remove the review. There’s ZERO guarantee that customer support will remove a negative review for you - each decision is made on a case-by-case basis - but if you can provide screenshots and documentation of all interactions with the buyer and can show FAR beyond a reasonable doubt that the buyer is abusive (“you’re ugly”) or a liar (“you sent me a dik-pic”), then customer support is likely to remove the negative review without the buyer’s permission and also without refunding the order.

In your situation, I don’t know that you have a case to have the feedback removed since - if I understand the scenario correctly - you chose to make a custom offer to do work unrelated to the gig in question. I understand that you told the buyer that he or she needed to contact you for further work, and it sucks that the buyer didn’t do as you requested, but you put yourself in a very challenging situation the moment you offered work outside your portfolio. If you want to do odd jobs unrelated to your main gigs, then you need to create a catch-all gig for this very purpose.

This doesn’t guarantee that you won’t have this problem ever again, but it will make it easier to separate one service from the other and avoid a poo-tar stain on what was an otherwise perfect gig.

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You’re welcome.
It is important to be clear about what you offer.
This will give confidence to some buyers that you know what you are talking about. It may stop others buying as you don’t offer what they are looking for.
The best reason for being specific is that if there is a conflict, customer service first look at “did the seller do what he said he would do?” If your description is clear then you can point that out to customer service and they should agree with you.

You can consider saying something like “If you require a feature/service that is not listed above, please contact me to discuss it BEFORE placing an order”.

Best wishes and think of the bad experience as a learning experience, you won’t let it happen again!

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Yesterday, we got a review as satisfied while we always expect the client to leave five stars. Even then, we offered more than 75$ free services to get five stars in return. Buyer still only satisfied. So we believe, some customers are demanding, but ocean is too big, do not lose the hope and work hard 🙂

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