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Buyer expected completely different result from the gig (wrong language)


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Hi there,

did someone had a similar situation?
I am providing content writing in Thai as well as translation from English to Thai. Someone requested a custom offer, coming from my gig

Title: “I will write Thai SEO content”.
The first sentence in this gig is: " I will write you SEO optimized content in Thai"
The package he bought says: “1100 WORDS THAI SEO CONTENT
The custom offer says: “I will write Thai article around 1,100 words.”

I made it clear in all possible places, that my text will be in Thai, however after delivering the work, the buyer is requesting a translation to English. He said it was never discussed that the text will be in Thai.

Now he keeps pushing it into revision and requested to cancel the order.

I contacted the fiverr support and told them everything about it, attached screenshots and so on. The fiverr support offered me to cancel the order but who is compensating me for the work I put in?

To summarize this: I can come as a buyer, order a gig for something after the work is delivered I just say I expected something completely different, and Fiverr will be on the side of the buyer? I don’t see any seller protection here at all and my case seems to be pretty clear?

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What does your custom offer says? From your gig title and description is clear the content would be in Thai, but it’s my understanding a custom offer would take precedent over the gig it’s attached to.

Personally, even if the custom offer doesn’t explicitly say it’d be Thai content, I think you’d have to be a special kind of dumb not to realize the content would be in Thai, but they may use it to build a case against your delivery.

If your custom offer explicitly tells the content delivered would be Thai, then I’d open or update the current ticket with CS and ask them to escalate it until someone give you an appropriate answer, because the way I see there are no grounds for cancellation of that was the case.

What does your custom offer says?

“As discussed in Chat, I will write Thai article around 1,100 words.”

As we were discussing keywords before but he said that he does not have any specific keywords.

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I think your gig is very clear about what you offer. It is mentioned in the title, the description, and the package. I really don’t see how your buyer could miss it.

I am so sorry to hear that CS did not compensate you for your work. I think it is a pretty clear-cut case of a buyer not thoroughly reading through the agreement that he agreed to.

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Customer support is saying the following:

It is essential that orders are delivered in accordance with the Gig description and buyers’ requirements. Since there was a Gig misunderstanding we will not be able to grant compensation.

Am I missing something here? It’s not the first time I sold this gig and no other buyer had issues with my delivery so far.
The buyer is requesting now that I translate the Thai article to English.

I am really confused. This would mean I can sign up as a buyer on Fiverr, order something and then just say that I want to have something completely new not related to the order and get everything for free as the seller has to cancel the order? That can’t be right?

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so the customer support finally answered the following:

Please rest assured that we take our sellers’ revenue very seriously.

However, the advice is to cancel the order. They say that the buyer is not allowed to use the work I did.
I am still not sure what to do? Should I just keep the revision open? Every time I make a delivery the buyer is complaining and puts the order back in revision. At some point, he has to contact the customer support right?

Because the support isn’t helping me and the buyer will not accept the delivery …

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You’ll have to decide if the money, or principle of it, it’s worth your time and a possible bad review.

If you decide to go to war, tell them that hitting the revision button without an actual revision just to force you into cancelling and order, which has been delivered within the order’s specification is a violation of Fiverr’s Terms of Service and if they keep on doing it they will be reported.

I never been through this situation, but it’s been reported that eventually buyers will give up and just let it go, at which point you’ll be paid.

I am aware of the review issue if the buyer would confirm the delivery, but I guess it would also be against the terms to give a 1 star rating when everything was ok?

It would be cool if I could split the cost with the buyer and to 50/50 but I don’t see any option like that. Maybe he would accept it? In the end I might just give up.

As I know, nothing will happen to me if I keep the revision open right? So at the end the buyer has to contact the support?

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I am aware of the review issue if the buyer would confirm the delivery, but I guess it would also be against the terms to give a 1 star rating when everything was ok?

It would be cool if I could split the cost with the buyer and to 50/50 but I don’t see any option like that. Maybe he would accept it? In the end I might just give up.

As I know, nothing will happen to me if I keep the revision open right? So at the end the buyer has to contact the support?

Have you offered the buyer an extra to translate the article? Maybe offer them 1/2 off the translation project since it was a misunderstanding? - I am not saying you are at fault here at all but it seems to be a solution that would be the best for both parties.

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I am aware of the review issue if the buyer would confirm the delivery, but I guess it would also be against the terms to give a 1 star rating when everything was ok?

They’re reviewing their experience so it’s subjective. In reality it would be really hard to dispute a review, so I wouldn’t count on it.

It would be cool if I could split the cost with the buyer and to 50/50 but I don’t see any option like that. Maybe he would accept it?

There’s no way of doing that.

Follow @ducktheunicorn advice as that seems like a good compromise and hopefully you’ll be able to sort it out with your buyer.

Good luck

Follow @ducktheunicorn advice as that seems like a good compromise and hopefully you’ll be able to sort it out with your buyer.

I am sure that if I offer him this and he would accept it, he would complain that the English text isn’t what he was looking for and the problem will start again 🙂 I will send the buyer one more message, even if he is not responding anymore. Maybe he has a good heart and understands that there was a mistake on his end …

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Customer support is saying the following:

It is essential that orders are delivered in accordance with the Gig description and buyers’ requirements. Since there was a Gig misunderstanding we will not be able to grant compensation.

Am I missing something here? It’s not the first time I sold this gig and no other buyer had issues with my delivery so far.

The buyer is requesting now that I translate the Thai article to English.

I am really confused. This would mean I can sign up as a buyer on Fiverr, order something and then just say that I want to have something completely new not related to the order and get everything for free as the seller has to cancel the order? That can’t be right?

Was the example article the buyer provided in English?

If so, that would explain the issue. If you say you can do that in response to him sharing an English article, he was expecting an English article and you said you would do that. Because why would he link to an English article example if he wanted Thai?

Also, just because he messaged you on your Thai page, that doesn’t mean he was asking for Thai. Never assume that.

I have had many requests via gig pages for things that differed from what I was offering in the gig. You just assumed that because he was responding via your Thai gig that he wanted Thai. But he didn’t actually say that and your custom offer didn’t say it would be in Thai either.

You can do custom orders for things that differ from your gigs. He easily could have thought that’s what you were doing as sellers can only make custom offers via a gig and if you don’t have an English SEO gig you couldn’t have sent that to him.

So while he should have explicitly asked for English SEO, it was inappropriate for you to assume that he wanted Thai. There are many loopholes here and it easily could indeed be a misunderstanding.

This is why you need to be explicit in custom offers. You weren’t. A custom offer is a contract and you can’t say after the fact that a contract meant something it doesn’t explicitly say you meant. The gig associated with the custom offer doesn’t change this tenet of contracts and the gig title associated with the custom offer isn’t the contract. The message inside it is.

Never assume that because of a gig association you don’t need to be explicit in a custom offer. You do. It’s a contract and if there are loopholes you can’t defend yourself.

The custom offer doesn’t state it is Thai SEO and if the sample link the buyer sent you, if in English, that demonstrates intent that he wants it in English.

Correction: I mean “if in English” not “is.”

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Was the example article the buyer provided in English?

If so, that would explain the issue. If you say you can do that in response to him sharing an English article, he was expecting an English article and you said you would do that. Because why would he link to an English article example if he wanted Thai?

Also, just because he messaged you on your Thai page, that doesn’t mean he was asking for Thai. Never assume that.

I have had many requests via gig pages for things that differed from what I was offering in the gig. You just assumed that because he was responding via your Thai gig that he wanted Thai. But he didn’t actually say that and your custom offer didn’t say it would be in Thai either.

You can do custom orders for things that differ from your gigs. He easily could have thought that’s what you were doing as sellers can only make custom offers via a gig and if you don’t have an English SEO gig you couldn’t have sent that to him.

So while he should have explicitly asked for English SEO, it was inappropriate for you to assume that he wanted Thai. There are many loopholes here and it easily could indeed be a misunderstanding.

This is why you need to be explicit in custom offers. You weren’t. A custom offer is a contract and you can’t say after the fact that a contract meant something it doesn’t explicitly say you meant. The gig associated with the custom offer doesn’t change this tenet of contracts and the gig title associated with the custom offer isn’t the contract. The message inside it is.

Never assume that because of a gig association you don’t need to be explicit in a custom offer. You do. It’s a contract and if there are loopholes you can’t defend yourself.

The custom offer doesn’t state it is Thai SEO and if the sample link the buyer sent you, if in English, that demonstrates intent that he wants it in English.

Correction: I mean “if in English” not “is.”

This is why you need to be explicit in custom offers. You weren’t.

In my opinion, it was very clear that it was Thai even in my custom offer?

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As to the sample text he sent, yes it was in English, but so far almost every customer I had was sending me English examples. Out of 40 orders (which were all about Thai, either translation or SEO) I didn’t have any issue. It’s the first time that this happened. Most of my customers have an English website and are doing translations so they order the SEO content gig and attach their English text to it.

I am now asking the buyers on every order if they know that the text will be in Thai to avoid that problem in the future. I think it is more a principle fight which is not worth the time and $20 😉 Lesson learned I would say.

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This is why you need to be explicit in custom offers. You weren’t.

In my opinion, it was very clear that it was Thai even in my custom offer?

As to the sample text he sent, yes it was in English, but so far almost every customer I had was sending me English examples. Out of 40 orders (which were all about Thai, either translation or SEO) I didn’t have any issue. It’s the first time that this happened. Most of my customers have an English website and are doing translations so they order the SEO content gig and attach their English text to it.

I am now asking the buyers on every order if they know that the text will be in Thai to avoid that problem in the future. I think it is more a principle fight which is not worth the time and $20 😉 Lesson learned I would say.

That could still be a misunderstanding though, from a legal standpoint. “Thai article” doesn’t necessarily mean written in Thai and in your discussion you never discuss that it will be in Thai. He easily could have overlooked it.

I totally agree with you and I’m not defending his irrational behaviour. I’m just saying that Fiverr is going to be conservative about misunderstandings to protect themselves legally. And knowing Fiverr they would say it’s your fault for not confirming the scope before doing the work. I’m not saying that’s okay, just that this is how Fiverr is and so we need to protect ourselves.

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I am aware of the review issue if the buyer would confirm the delivery, but I guess it would also be against the terms to give a 1 star rating when everything was ok?

It would be cool if I could split the cost with the buyer and to 50/50 but I don’t see any option like that. Maybe he would accept it? In the end I might just give up.

As I know, nothing will happen to me if I keep the revision open right? So at the end the buyer has to contact the support?

It would be cool if I could split the cost with the buyer and to 50/50 but I don’t see any option like that.

If you really want to do that, there is an option, it’s even in the Fiverr Seller Help Center FAQs, I really recommend reading those, even all articles in that Center, it can come in handy to know how to handle situations quickly.

Orders can not be partially cancelled or refunded at this time. Once an order is created and there is a need to partially cancel/refund your buyer, we recommend that you ask your buyer to place a new order. Once that new order is created and then marked as complete, you can cancel the original order.

(Remember that a cancellation will affect your order completion rating, though; you can try to get around that by asking support to cancel that order, but that’s rather inconvenient at the moment probably, if they really need up to 10 days to respond.)

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