Beware! Seller stole money from me

[maddox1011]

Mod Note: You are not allowed name Fiverr users in this way
I allowed a vendor to propose logo designs in line with my requirements. She was **************. Everything she sent completely ignored my guidelines and I asked her to stop. She kept trying and I kindly asked her to stop again. Having believed the conversation was over I moved on and found another designer and got what I needed. Just discovered ************ had increased her proposed fee for me from $50 to $84 and she got paid. At no point did I accept a design from her, and had clearly indicated I would not be buying from her. Because I did not act within some 13 day time frame I was unaware of, I have no standing to get Fiverr to help me get a full refund. They say I’m too late. This is outrageous, fraudulent and unethical.

Beware of following whatever rules they have for dismissing vendors who don’t meet your needs. I am still confused about the process and resent being left holding the bag. Buyer beware!

[eoinfinnegan]

I understand your frustration and it is a pity you have had a bad experience.
However, there are solutions in place to prevent this happening. I suggest that before you decide to buy in any marketplace you check the way it works first.
There is simply no way a seller could have taken money from your account, you must have authorized the payment accidentally or without knowing what you were doing.
It sounds like the seller delivered the order and it was marked complete automatically after 3 days. This is the only way the seller could have been paid. There is nothing outrageous, fraudulent or unethical (well, possibly unethical from the seller, but if they delivered then it is not) about it. You placed an order, received something that you didn’t like and did not know how to use the system to correct it.
I am sorry that this has been your experience but the error seems to have been on your part.

[maddox1011]

I understand your frustration and it is a pity you have had a bad experience.

However, there are solutions in place to prevent this happening. I suggest that before you decide to buy in any marketplace you check the way it works first.

There is simply no way a seller could have taken money from your account, you must have authorized the payment accidentally or without knowing what you were doing.

It sounds like the seller delivered the order and it was marked complete automatically after 3 days. This is the only way the seller could have been paid. There is nothing outrageous, fraudulent or unethical (well, possibly unethical from the seller, but if they delivered then it is not) about it. You placed an order, received something that you didn’t like and did not know how to use the system to correct it.

I am sorry that this has been your experience but the error seems to have been on your part.

I appreciate your explanation but there is definitely fraud on the part of a seller who chose to indicate the order as completed and activate payment however she did it. That is fraud. She knows she got paid in spite of my continuous rejection of her work. I protested and told her to stop repeatedly so she was clear on my intention. Fraud. To then describe it as complete without any word from me, get paid, then indicate she knows its not complete by asking me for a chance to continuing trying shows you she was trying to salvage the order over my protest and criticism.

There was a point when i believed I had to pay before seeing her work and asked her how to place the order. Then she upped the fee substantially, sent terrible work and I rejected the work and the price.

You’re right I didn’t know there was a timeline and process for me to use to end the interaction beyond telling her to stop several times. I moved on to someone else, got results and informed Nickie. Where were the instructions I missed on closing down a relationship with a seller? Telling them “no” repeatedly should be enough. It has been for other vendors I’ve dealt with on Fiverr. Several have responded to my posted order and when it didn’t work out that was it, but for this one person. Your response suggests that anyone who responded to my post for a job could have decided to charge me anything they wanted no matter what I told them. And if I didn’t check back and discover that they’d done so, I’d simply be out of luck. I’m surprised you are taking such a rigid rules-based position with me, but not with her. Where are these rules? Are you holding vendors to rules? Apparently not. You seem to be saying there was no error on the vendors end. You know that’s not true, not fair, not ethical and not legal.

I am working with a fellow now and don’t want this sort of problem to happen again. He and I are doing fine with long gaps between communications while operating with trust and professionalism but I need to know how to find and follow the rules and time frames you refer to so that this doesn’t happen to me again.

Michele Maddox

[vigasan]

I appreciate your explanation but there is definitely fraud on the part of a seller who chose to indicate the order as completed and activate payment however she did it. That is fraud. She knows she got paid in spite of my continuous rejection of her work. I protested and told her to stop repeatedly so she was clear on my intention. Fraud. To then describe it as complete without any word from me, get paid, then indicate she knows its not complete by asking me for a chance to continuing trying shows you she was trying to salvage the order over my protest and criticism.

There was a point when i believed I had to pay before seeing her work and asked her how to place the order. Then she upped the fee substantially, sent terrible work and I rejected the work and the price.

You’re right I didn’t know there was a timeline and process for me to use to end the interaction beyond telling her to stop several times. I moved on to someone else, got results and informed Nickie. Where were the instructions I missed on closing down a relationship with a seller? Telling them “no” repeatedly should be enough. It has been for other vendors I’ve dealt with on Fiverr. Several have responded to my posted order and when it didn’t work out that was it, but for this one person. Your response suggests that anyone who responded to my post for a job could have decided to charge me anything they wanted no matter what I told them. And if I didn’t check back and discover that they’d done so, I’d simply be out of luck. I’m surprised you are taking such a rigid rules-based position with me, but not with her. Where are these rules? Are you holding vendors to rules? Apparently not. You seem to be saying there was no error on the vendors end. You know that’s not true, not fair, not ethical and not legal.

I am working with a fellow now and don’t want this sort of problem to happen again. He and I are doing fine with long gaps between communications while operating with trust and professionalism but I need to know how to find and follow the rules and time frames you refer to so that this doesn’t happen to me again.

Michele Maddox

Hey Michele,

When people do logo design work, they submit the order with each revision for you to approve or deny. You then have 3 days to request modifications. At this point, you can cancel as well if you wish.

After 3 days, the order is automatically accepted (to ensure the seller gets paid in case a buyer disappears - which is understandable). Even after this, you have about 2 weeks before the funds are cleared in which time you can contact customer support to cancel the order.

So you literally have 2-3 weeks to cancel the order, if you don’t, that’s really not the seller’s fault. She did her work, you hired her based on her portfolio, she made revisions, if you didn’t like the end product, that doesn’t mean she works for free. You missed your time period to cancel, that doesn’t mean she took money from you. You paid for a product/service that you didn’t like and didn’t “return” it in the allowed time, so expect the same outcome as if you purchased something at the store and didn’t return it in time.

[eoinfinnegan]

I appreciate your explanation but there is definitely fraud on the part of a seller who chose to indicate the order as completed and activate payment however she did it. That is fraud. She knows she got paid in spite of my continuous rejection of her work. I protested and told her to stop repeatedly so she was clear on my intention. Fraud. To then describe it as complete without any word from me, get paid, then indicate she knows its not complete by asking me for a chance to continuing trying shows you she was trying to salvage the order over my protest and criticism.

There was a point when i believed I had to pay before seeing her work and asked her how to place the order. Then she upped the fee substantially, sent terrible work and I rejected the work and the price.

You’re right I didn’t know there was a timeline and process for me to use to end the interaction beyond telling her to stop several times. I moved on to someone else, got results and informed Nickie. Where were the instructions I missed on closing down a relationship with a seller? Telling them “no” repeatedly should be enough. It has been for other vendors I’ve dealt with on Fiverr. Several have responded to my posted order and when it didn’t work out that was it, but for this one person. Your response suggests that anyone who responded to my post for a job could have decided to charge me anything they wanted no matter what I told them. And if I didn’t check back and discover that they’d done so, I’d simply be out of luck. I’m surprised you are taking such a rigid rules-based position with me, but not with her. Where are these rules? Are you holding vendors to rules? Apparently not. You seem to be saying there was no error on the vendors end. You know that’s not true, not fair, not ethical and not legal.

I am working with a fellow now and don’t want this sort of problem to happen again. He and I are doing fine with long gaps between communications while operating with trust and professionalism but I need to know how to find and follow the rules and time frames you refer to so that this doesn’t happen to me again.

Michele Maddox

I just want to say firstly that I am simply another seller here, I am not employed by Fiverr and the position of Moderator is voluntary and involves nothing more than some basic control over the forum as part of a team.

Anything I say here is simply my own opinion, not necessarily that of Fiverr or its staff.

The Fiverr Terms of Service explains how everything works here and the link to it can be found under “Legal” at the bottom of every page.

Regarding my original opinion - this was formed based on the info that you provided initially. If I have missed something or misunderstood then I apologize, however from what you have said all I can ascertain is that you placed an order, the seller delivered something, the order was marked as complete after 3 days. The fact that there was communication in between (in my opinion) is irrelevant. I have no problem criticizing people, I am one of the first to admit that there are some truly awful sellers here, however the system is there to be used. It is vital that the system is the same for everyone.

The “Resolution Center” is there to be used when necessary but there has to be some time frames involved or orders could never be closed and sellers would never get paid. The fact is that you didn’t use it and didn’t know the order would be marked as complete.

There is a few things that confuse me about what you have said.

The way it should work is that you select the seller you want (either through the search menu or from those who responded to you buyer request), you place an order, your buyer works on it and then delivers it, you accept it or request a revision. If you do neither then it is marked complete after 3 days.

From what you say it sounds like you placed a buyer request, many responded to it, you selected one and somehow an order was placed accidentally by you. (There is no way a seller could take a payment from you without your involvement. Payments are done securely through Paypal). You were not happy with what the seller sent to you but did not request a revision or cancellation. You simply said you didn’t want it and moved on to another seller.

If this is the case, it is unfortunate but the seller didn’t actually do anything wrong in my opinion. The delivered an order and you said you were unhappy and moved on. You did not take any action that was necessary to prevent the order being completed. The system then automatically marked it complete. The onus is on you to reject an order if necessary.

[rainny_writer]

I just want to say firstly that I am simply another seller here, I am not employed by Fiverr and the position of Moderator is voluntary and involves nothing more than some basic control over the forum as part of a team.

Anything I say here is simply my own opinion, not necessarily that of Fiverr or its staff.

The Fiverr Terms of Service explains how everything works here and the link to it can be found under “Legal” at the bottom of every page.

Regarding my original opinion - this was formed based on the info that you provided initially. If I have missed something or misunderstood then I apologize, however from what you have said all I can ascertain is that you placed an order, the seller delivered something, the order was marked as complete after 3 days. The fact that there was communication in between (in my opinion) is irrelevant. I have no problem criticizing people, I am one of the first to admit that there are some truly awful sellers here, however the system is there to be used. It is vital that the system is the same for everyone.

The “Resolution Center” is there to be used when necessary but there has to be some time frames involved or orders could never be closed and sellers would never get paid. The fact is that you didn’t use it and didn’t know the order would be marked as complete.

There is a few things that confuse me about what you have said.

The way it should work is that you select the seller you want (either through the search menu or from those who responded to you buyer request), you place an order, your buyer works on it and then delivers it, you accept it or request a revision. If you do neither then it is marked complete after 3 days.

From what you say it sounds like you placed a buyer request, many responded to it, you selected one and somehow an order was placed accidentally by you. (There is no way a seller could take a payment from you without your involvement. Payments are done securely through Paypal). You were not happy with what the seller sent to you but did not request a revision or cancellation. You simply said you didn’t want it and moved on to another seller.

If this is the case, it is unfortunate but the seller didn’t actually do anything wrong in my opinion. The delivered an order and you said you were unhappy and moved on. You did not take any action that was necessary to prevent the order being completed. The system then automatically marked it complete. The onus is on you to reject an order if necessary.

The onus is on you to reject an order if necessary.

@maddox1011: That about summarizes it. And in all fairness, the system is designed with a greater bias towards buyers than towards sellers. That you did not understand this is not a fault of the system, but a fault of yours. If we as sellers could bring our wishes to life, we’d increase our level of protection because currently…it is non-existent.

[maddox1011]

I appreciate your explanation but there is definitely fraud on the part of a seller who chose to indicate the order as completed and activate payment however she did it. That is fraud. She knows she got paid in spite of my continuous rejection of her work. I protested and told her to stop repeatedly so she was clear on my intention. Fraud. To then describe it as complete without any word from me, get paid, then indicate she knows its not complete by asking me for a chance to continuing trying shows you she was trying to salvage the order over my protest and criticism.

There was a point when i believed I had to pay before seeing her work and asked her how to place the order. Then she upped the fee substantially, sent terrible work and I rejected the work and the price.

You’re right I didn’t know there was a timeline and process for me to use to end the interaction beyond telling her to stop several times. I moved on to someone else, got results and informed Nickie. Where were the instructions I missed on closing down a relationship with a seller? Telling them “no” repeatedly should be enough. It has been for other vendors I’ve dealt with on Fiverr. Several have responded to my posted order and when it didn’t work out that was it, but for this one person. Your response suggests that anyone who responded to my post for a job could have decided to charge me anything they wanted no matter what I told them. And if I didn’t check back and discover that they’d done so, I’d simply be out of luck. I’m surprised you are taking such a rigid rules-based position with me, but not with her. Where are these rules? Are you holding vendors to rules? Apparently not. You seem to be saying there was no error on the vendors end. You know that’s not true, not fair, not ethical and not legal.

I am working with a fellow now and don’t want this sort of problem to happen again. He and I are doing fine with long gaps between communications while operating with trust and professionalism but I need to know how to find and follow the rules and time frames you refer to so that this doesn’t happen to me again.

Michele Maddox

Thank you for taking the time to try to unravel this for me.

I’m not certain she marked it complete w/n 3 days. How can I find out? If so, she did not inform me. Should she have? What is her obligation to me to clarify the status of our relationship? Seems to me that sellers can work this system, do terrible unsatisfactory work, and lock in payment within 3 days notwithstanding repeat rejections by the client. I inquired of her how I was to place an order early on but did not place any order bc the work was unacceptable.

Rather than speculate about what happened can anyone help me look at what actually occurred. What triggered the payment and when? You are kind to try to help me understand but I’d appreciate a factual justification for the outcome from someone with authority.

How does one provide a rating? I did it once before when I got great results from another vendor. The opportunity to provide a rating on that vendor popped up and I followed through. Now I can’t seem to find a way to do it.

I appreciate your help.

Michele

[maddox1011]

The onus is on you to reject an order if necessary.

@maddox1011: That about summarizes it. And in all fairness, the system is designed with a greater bias towards buyers than towards sellers. That you did not understand this is not a fault of the system, but a fault of yours. If we as sellers could bring our wishes to life, we’d increase our level of protection because currently…it is non-existent.

If the controlling policy re the precise time frame is embedded in a legal statement of the terms of operation and nowhere else, I’d call that an effort to protect the seller and very unfair to the buyer. What buyer is fully aware of the legal terms. The norm among consumers is to ignore that sort of info and rely on clearly stated instructions. And there were none on this issue.

So be it. Hard lesson. I can only warn my colleagues after having recommended Fiverr to many others in my business.

[djgodknows]

If the controlling policy re the precise time frame is embedded in a legal statement of the terms of operation and nowhere else, I’d call that an effort to protect the seller and very unfair to the buyer. What buyer is fully aware of the legal terms. The norm among consumers is to ignore that sort of info and rely on clearly stated instructions. And there were none on this issue.

So be it. Hard lesson. I can only warn my colleagues after having recommended Fiverr to many others in my business.

The norm among consumers is to ignore that sort of info and rely on clearly stated instructions. And there were none on this issue.

I can only warn my colleagues after having recommended Fiverr to many others in my business

Just presenting an observation of correspondences on this thread.

The norm for any function is always there, but is it not YOUR responsibility to always perform your due diligence anytime you are investing a monetary value to obtain a service or product?

You have been registered on Fiverr since February of 2016, and in the last 10 months, you have not have any idea of the system functionality?

Fiver sends out automated orders prior to “Auto Completion” of an order, stating (and I paraphrase): “Please take action now, or your order will be marked COMPLETE”; did you ignore such emails from Fiverr?

We appreciate your feedback here, but if your answer to any of my queries above was a “Yes”, unfortunately the finger does point back at you for your unfortunate experience with this seller.

Regards.

[maddox1011]

I appreciate your explanation but there is definitely fraud on the part of a seller who chose to indicate the order as completed and activate payment however she did it. That is fraud. She knows she got paid in spite of my continuous rejection of her work. I protested and told her to stop repeatedly so she was clear on my intention. Fraud. To then describe it as complete without any word from me, get paid, then indicate she knows its not complete by asking me for a chance to continuing trying shows you she was trying to salvage the order over my protest and criticism.

There was a point when i believed I had to pay before seeing her work and asked her how to place the order. Then she upped the fee substantially, sent terrible work and I rejected the work and the price.

You’re right I didn’t know there was a timeline and process for me to use to end the interaction beyond telling her to stop several times. I moved on to someone else, got results and informed Nickie. Where were the instructions I missed on closing down a relationship with a seller? Telling them “no” repeatedly should be enough. It has been for other vendors I’ve dealt with on Fiverr. Several have responded to my posted order and when it didn’t work out that was it, but for this one person. Your response suggests that anyone who responded to my post for a job could have decided to charge me anything they wanted no matter what I told them. And if I didn’t check back and discover that they’d done so, I’d simply be out of luck. I’m surprised you are taking such a rigid rules-based position with me, but not with her. Where are these rules? Are you holding vendors to rules? Apparently not. You seem to be saying there was no error on the vendors end. You know that’s not true, not fair, not ethical and not legal.

I am working with a fellow now and don’t want this sort of problem to happen again. He and I are doing fine with long gaps between communications while operating with trust and professionalism but I need to know how to find and follow the rules and time frames you refer to so that this doesn’t happen to me again.

Michele Maddox

Hello Vigasan,

Let me clarify again, that I did everything I believed necessary to prevent any further work from the vendor. I cancelled but not according to rules I’m learning now. I had no idea after all my dealings with Fiverr that I had 2 - 3 wks to cancel. I had no idea I needed to go search for this policy and find it in the legal terms of operation. No one reads that stuff. And you know how difficult it is to find any real customer support. You click on that are sent to topics to peruse for answers. I finally clicked help and found you

As you can see in my posted conversations with her I repeatedly told her to stop and then that i had found someone else who had done the work. Apparently that was not enough. So, on Fiverr. “No” doesn’t mean “No”. I got screwed. (sorry)

Please give me your official stance on the vendor’s conduct. You are putting this all on me because I didn’t follow the invisible protocol She marked this order complete when it was not and got paid. I don’t think you’ll find any evidence of me accepting anything from her and she knows that. Also, she raised the price without any input from me. What is your policy on that? Not only did I not receive anything satisfactory, she raised the price without getting my input. What is your policy on that? She knew I had cancelled with her. No where in the dialogue did I ever say I was accepting her work. No where! So how can I be charged? I got nothing but her persistent attempts to satisfy an order. She was incompetent. I tried to be courteous and respond to her continuous efforts with “please stop”. I denied her work repeatedly as is clear in the dialogue.

I still don’t know how to cancel her. There were no instructions on this. Shouldn’t she be penalized for declaring the work to be complete without my consent? And for raising the price without my involvement in going forward? What are your rules about her misconduct? What steps do you take to control the shady dealings on her part?

Very very poor business practice.

I have not seen how to rate this experience with her. How do I do this. And how do i check for past payments to vendors that I may not have noticed? I want to know how much money I’ve spent here unknowingly.

Michele

[maddox1011]

The norm among consumers is to ignore that sort of info and rely on clearly stated instructions. And there were none on this issue.

I can only warn my colleagues after having recommended Fiverr to many others in my business

Just presenting an observation of correspondences on this thread.

The norm for any function is always there, but is it not YOUR responsibility to always perform your due diligence anytime you are investing a monetary value to obtain a service or product?

You have been registered on Fiverr since February of 2016, and in the last 10 months, you have not have any idea of the system functionality?

Fiver sends out automated orders prior to “Auto Completion” of an order, stating (and I paraphrase): “Please take action now, or your order will be marked COMPLETE”; did you ignore such emails from Fiverr?

We appreciate your feedback here, but if your answer to any of my queries above was a “Yes”, unfortunately the finger does point back at you for your unfortunate experience with this seller.

Regards.

I believed I understood the process and was having no problems like this. No, I did not read the Terms of Service, the only place where the “functionality” is described I’m told. I rarely ever do as a consumer. Normally I can comfortably rely on instructions and easily accessible customer service which does not quite exist at Fiverr.

You assume I received an automated email regarding “auto completion”. I can’t swear it never came, but to my best recollection I’ve received no such notice. I never approved any work by the vendor and was adamant that I wanted nothing from her after rejecting several efforts at a design. What is your position on the fact that the vendor had originally posted a fee of $50, marked the order completed and charged me $84 with absolutely no input from me?

Your comments were clever but only based on theory and not enough of the facts.

Finally, resolution has been provided by customer support in my favor for which I am grateful.

Michele

[eoinfinnegan]

I believed I understood the process and was having no problems like this. No, I did not read the Terms of Service, the only place where the “functionality” is described I’m told. I rarely ever do as a consumer. Normally I can comfortably rely on instructions and easily accessible customer service which does not quite exist at Fiverr.

You assume I received an automated email regarding “auto completion”. I can’t swear it never came, but to my best recollection I’ve received no such notice. I never approved any work by the vendor and was adamant that I wanted nothing from her after rejecting several efforts at a design. What is your position on the fact that the vendor had originally posted a fee of $50, marked the order completed and charged me $84 with absolutely no input from me?

Your comments were clever but only based on theory and not enough of the facts.

Finally, resolution has been provided by customer support in my favor for which I am grateful.

Michele

I am glad to hear you got a satisfactory response from customer support.

I am going to keep this comment to a couple of points from what you have said.

• All those who have responded on this thread, including myself, are not Fiverr staff and do not have ANY authority. We simply offer opinion and advice which you can take or leave as you wish. Fiverr staff OCCASIONALLY comment on the forum but they are clearly marked with “Fiverr Staff” where it says moderator beside my name.

• Fiverr ToS is actually a very readable document. It is not like a standard legal notice on a website. It is in good sized fonts, laid out logically and broken down into clear sections. Most sites deliberately make their terms small and difficult to read so people skip them as you mention, Fiverr does the exact opposite to encourage people to read them.

• All orders will complete 3 days after delivery. This is automatic and not controlled by the seller. The only way to change this is to “Accept” it (immediate completion) or “Request a Revision” (seller must then re-deliver and the 3 days starts again) by clicking on the corresponding button.

• What is your position on the fact that the vendor had originally posted a fee of $50, marked the order completed and charged me $84 with absolutely no input from me?

There is simply no way this can happen! The seller cannot take extra money. We can request it through an “Extra” mentioned within the Order Conversation but you would then need to accept it and pay the Extra amount. Again, all Fiverr buttons for payment are clearly marked.

[silkroute]

This is probably the 6th thread I am reading here in a span of 2 hours about buyers having had a bad experience with logo design fellows.

All the bad ones are getting all the orders. On the other side, there are good logo designers complaining that there is no work.

[zubairfb]

This is probably the 6th thread I am reading here in a span of 2 hours about buyers having had a bad experience with logo design fellows.

All the bad ones are getting all the orders. On the other side, there are good logo designers complaining that there is no work.

🙂 this is how real world works, lets hope and pray buyers may go to the Best Sellers in the particular field and everyone stay happy…