Jump to content

Buyer cancellation/refund window should expire at 2 weeks


Recommended Posts

It’s happened to me, and it’s happened to many others around here. A buyer places an order and the order is delivered on time (or ahead of schedule) and often with zero response from the buyer. The order is automatically marked as complete after three days.

Suddenly - days, weeks, even months later - the buyer pops up and cancels the order.

Because sellers don’t have the ability to decline express gig orders (at least not without wrecking our ratings and hurting our presence in the search algorithms), we’re pretty much backed into taking orders without vetting them.

Most of us selling on Fiverr trade in data. Whether it’s music or voiceover, graphic design, web coding, video or text editing, writing… what we provide is delivered as a digital file at the end of the project. Once that data is in the hands of the buyer, it’s theirs to do with as they please. If they cancel the order, they still have the files.

For the seller, the payment funds take 14 days (2 weeks) to be released. I propose that cancellation and refunds should be blocked after that point. I’d actually love to see it happen sooner, like after the 3 day completion window, but at the very least it should expire when the funds are released to the seller. This open-ended cancellation ability encourages unscrupulous buyers to game the system. I know they aren’t the majority of buyers, but they seem to be common enough that this issue pops up in the “Ranting Pot” section quite often, and the sellers have very little defense in these situations. It’s been noted that Fiverr is heavily weighted toward the buyers. This would be a welcome (and necessary) level of seller protection that simply doesn’t exist right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

What you’ve suggested makes a lot of sense and would make sellers’ lives much much easier. If it were possible for Fiverr to implement it, they would have already done it by now.

However, since Paypal has a massive share of the online transactions done on this website (or so I think), Fiverr HAS TO abide by Paypal’s terms of service. Unfortunately, they don’t have an option there. Paypal promises its users 100% refund (no matter whether the reason for the chargeback is legit or not) of their money up to 6 months after the date of the transaction and Fiverr has no say in it. They are not in a position to dictate terms to Paypal as they are dependent on them for their business.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

What you’ve suggested makes a lot of sense and would make sellers’ lives much much easier. If it were possible for Fiverr to implement it, they would have already done it by now.

However, since Paypal has a massive share of the online transactions done on this website (or so I think), Fiverr HAS TO abide by Paypal’s terms of service. Unfortunately, they don’t have an option there. Paypal promises its users 100% refund (no matter whether the reason for the chargeback is legit or not) of their money up to 6 months after the date of the transaction and Fiverr has no say in it. They are not in a position to dictate terms to Paypal as they are dependent on them for their business.

That makes sense, but it seems that Fiverr would be able to implement this policy with the exception on PayPal chargebacks. My experience was a cancellation through Fiverr, not PayPal.

So the PayPal issue would be a loophole for buyers, but still…

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It’s happened to me, and it’s happened to many others around here. A buyer places an order and the order is delivered on time (or ahead of schedule) and often with zero response from the buyer. The order is automatically marked as complete after three days.

Suddenly - days, weeks, even months later - the buyer pops up and cancels the order.

Because sellers don’t have the ability to decline express gig orders (at least not without wrecking our ratings and hurting our presence in the search algorithms), we’re pretty much backed into taking orders without vetting them.

Most of us selling on Fiverr trade in data. Whether it’s music or voiceover, graphic design, web coding, video or text editing, writing… what we provide is delivered as a digital file at the end of the project. Once that data is in the hands of the buyer, it’s theirs to do with as they please. If they cancel the order, they still have the files.

For the seller, the payment funds take 14 days (2 weeks) to be released. I propose that cancellation and refunds should be blocked after that point. I’d actually love to see it happen sooner, like after the 3 day completion window, but at the very least it should expire when the funds are released to the seller. This open-ended cancellation ability encourages unscrupulous buyers to game the system. I know they aren’t the majority of buyers, but they seem to be common enough that this issue pops up in the “Ranting Pot” section quite often, and the sellers have very little defense in these situations. It’s been noted that Fiverr is heavily weighted toward the buyers. This would be a welcome (and necessary) level of seller protection that simply doesn’t exist right now.

For the seller, the payment funds take 14 days (2 weeks) to be released. I propose that cancellation and refunds should be blocked after that point.

From Fiverr’s Terms of Service:

“Completed orders (or, where applicable, completed milestones) may be cancelled, upon review of our Customer Support team, up to 14 days after the order (or Milestone) is marked as complete.”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the seller, the payment funds take 14 days (2 weeks) to be released. I propose that cancellation and refunds should be blocked after that point.

From Fiverr’s Terms of Service:

“Completed orders (or, where applicable, completed milestones) may be cancelled, upon review of our Customer Support team, up to 14 days after the order (or Milestone) is marked as complete.”

So it must be the PayPal loophole that’s screwing people over past that window.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...