Buyer is LATE and my Order shows LATE

[jackfoster]

I had a few occasions where my buyer made me wait between 3 to 7 days for the materials needed for me to complete the work.



I recently had a client made me wait 7 days before she forwarded me the script that I needed before I can actually start on the work.

She came back 7 days later with the material needed, however,



Now, my order shows LATE which says I have another 24 hours to deliver or the buyer can cancel.

Now I have to really rush to get the job done which is NOT really FAIR.



This is an issue I assume for most providers.



I would like to suggest;



If the buyer starts the order and doesn’t supply the needed materials, then us providers should be able to “Pause the Timer” and when the buyer comes back with the materials needed, the buyer should “Start the timer” again with the provided materials.



This saves a lot of unwanted late orders due to buyers being late.



Please consider this option fiverr.

Thank you.

[presseditor]

Hi there,



I have posted similar suggestions, but the problem is that many people open a new topic about it, so such suggestions are not seen as a whole. We should all post into one topic so the views go up and fiverr probably noticed it.



This would not be a problem if being LATE would not result in possible issues, but as fa as I know there are many issues like it reflecting bad on your ratings, the buyer being able to cancel and so on.



From a technical standpoint this would be really easy to do, as fiverr uses a similar feature already when people ask for a cancellation. Then the timer stops until the other party doesn’t accept the cancellation - then the ticker continues.



The same feature would be great for this. A seller could click “buyer unresponsive - awaiting reply” and the ticker would halt until the buyer replies and then it would automatically resume.



However, you must understand the issues with such a feature too. fiverr also wants to protect the buyer because a bad seller could abuse this feature and simply abusing this and delaying the countdown each time a buyer responds to win time.



So a working middle way would be:

Allow the seller to pause the counter until the buyer responds. When the buyer responds, resume the counter. If the seller uses the pause feature three times, the system could ask the seller if he wants to request a cancellation because it seems like there is trouble with the sale. That way the feature would work for both sides and abuse would be next to non existent.



Maybe something to consider, as the functionality already exists, so actually coding this would not take too long or affect the backend in terms of a higher load etc.

[sincere18]

If that happens, just make sure to let your buyer know that you are waiting for the materials and when you finally get them, give them an estimated completion date. Most buyers will be ok if it’s a day or two longer if they did not get you the materials on time.

[happybex]

I’m a little confused…isn’t the ‘Buyer Instructions’ section of a Gig supposed to prevent this exact thing from happening?



For example, for my voice over gig, when I get an order it happens in 2 steps: 1, they place the order. Then they are sent a message that I made, telling them exactly what I need from them before the order can start (in my case, a script and the file format they prefer). My timer doesn’t start until they submit at least SOMETHING back in the ‘Buyer Instructions’ prompt.



I can see this being an issue if people are blatantly ignoring your buyer instructions, but maybe I’m just lucky because I’ve never had that problem.

[presseditor]

Fact is that many buyers actually post something. I often get orders where buyers just make a post like: I will send the details on monday and the ticker starts running and LATE will come up sooner or later. There are also buyers who post half of the requirements and let it sit over the weekend, which again results in the LATE flag.



This is where a pause would come in handy.

[hayleycurry]

I have been having this same problem. I work on LinkedIn profiles as my most popular gig here on Fiverr, and many times someone will send me their URL so I can take a look at the profile but they will not have their profile set to public, so I won’t be able to see anything. Then I have to ask them to change their privacy settings, and if they don’t look at Fiverr for a while, I am running up against my deadline.

Other times, I will have difficulty logging into their LinkedIn account because we live in two different countries and it can take several attempts before achieving a successful login.

In both cases, I typically deliver a document saying basically “I still intend to finish this gig but I am sending you this document to avoid having this order marked as late.”

I would greatly prefer to have a “mutually pause this gig” option, but I have no idea how to go about asking Fiverr to do this aside from commenting here.