How to Avoid the Problem of Bad Sellers

[eoinfinnegan]

I have bought 80 times on Fiverr, spending over $1000 for a wide variety of services from website design to logos, graphic design, article writing, SEO services and more. I use a mix of Levels from newbies to TRS depending on my timeframe and budget.
Of these, I have cancelled 4 due to the following reasons:
Seller did not deliver on time
Seller was ill and could not do the work
Seller (SEO) did not do as promised
All the other work (76 orders) I asked for was delivered on time, as I wanted them and as I expected it to be. This is not down to good luck or chance.

This is a great success rate I believe, and probably better than my experience getting work done offline or on other sites as well as great value.

How?

I EXPECT to pay more than the minimum offer/price I can find.
I VALUE people’s work correctly according to the time it will take and the level of expertise required.
I RESEARCH the sellers and contact them before ordering.
I DISCUSS the project as it goes along (for bigger jobs, not for a standard $5-25 gig)
I give TIME to the work, allowing time to the seller for completion and time to review and modify it. Unreasonable timeframes cause problems so discuss it with the seller and pay more to make it worth their while.
I am POLITE in my communication regardless of difficulties, problems or poor work.
I do not THREATEN cancellation, bad reviews or reporting to Customer Service, I reserve these for when cancellation is necessary, a bad review is deserved or I actually need CS to get involved (I have never has to contact CS regarding sellers)
I am PATIENT when communication is an issue and I put the effort required into simplifying the language I use.

As a seller, I have experienced buyers who do not treat me in the way I treat others.
The difference I feel when getting orders from people who are rude, unprepared and disorganized is huge. While I am always professional and carry work out to the best of my ability, a reasonable buyer who knows what they want is easier to work with and so I will often deliver more than was ordered to encourage the buyer to order more. This is normal human behaviour and I believe it is how I have had such a good experience on Fiverr.

Do the same as I have done and you will get the same results as I have.
For more about buying on Fiverr check my other post here http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/tips-for-buyers-from-a-buyer-and-seller-i-am-both/

[michelezucal]

Thanks for your suggest

[lisacondon]

Maybe you can help me with an issue. I try to research my sellers and I try to give them as much information regarding my project and I do not expect to pay minimum amounts. I am willing to give the amount of time needed and I try to communicate as much as possible. What I am finding frustrating as a buyer is ones that read my criteria of my project discuss it with me agree to my budget then wait till the day it is to deliver the project and decide they cannot do it or should have charged more. I try hard to lay that out at the beginning. I have had 4 do this to me in regards to setting up my wordpress site and now I am 2 months behind schedule of when I wanted to release it and it has cost me in the long run. How is the best way to avoid this again? I would like to withdraw my money from fiverr and try something else as I am not having luck and feel very defeated but fiverr does not allow you to withdraw your money.

[lctheartist]

I hope we can have more buyers like you… xD
Sometimes, I lowered my price just to have the clients since I am new here and I need to be a recommended seller. I am an Illustrator by the way…

[crcanny]

For some reason I seem to get high rated sellers who pick the week after I order to flake out. Third one in a row that’s not only not delivered my order (I gave them all the instructions, didn’t hassle them once) but they conveniently went ‘on vacation’ the day after I ordered without saying a word to me. So irritating … just do a mutual cancel immediately if you can’t/won’t do it, don’t make me wait a week to find someone else!

I’m a seller here for years and I wouldn’t dream of disappearing with orders in the que. Maybe I’m jinxed as a buyer.

[eoinfinnegan]

That’s unfortunate. There are a couple of different reasons people go on “vacation mode”. Often they go on vacation mode as they have too many orders. I am doing that at the moment as I have a couple of big orders but my regulars still contact me and place custom orders.
Is it a big job you are getting done, could that be why they go on vacation?

[fastcopywriter]

“I RESEARCH the sellers and contact them before ordering.”

I HATE THAT. Please, please, please, READ THE GIG, CHOOSE THE GIG EXTRAS YOU NEED, then PLACE YOUR ORDER!

All the other stuff you mentioned is fine by me.

[eoinfinnegan]

I know you have an issue with that, I’ve seen you mention it before.
Two points about that - there are many times that sellers don’t respond when buyers place orders as they are not active anymore. That doesn’t happen with a TRS like you but with other sellers it does, so doing this alleviates that issue.
Anyone ordering a gig of under $25 should just place the order when a seller is obviously active/ a TRS.

Contacting first also stops having unnecessary cancellations which waste the time of both buyers and sellers.

[fastcopywriter]

Well, that is a good point. There are other ways to tell if a seller is active, if you see recent reviews, that guy is active. If the last review was 6 months ago, maybe you can write first.

Personally, I rarely write to sellers, it’s a waste of time. I just order what I need and hope they’re responsible. If they’re not, I order from someone else, or make two orders and see who does it better.

[crcanny]

No. There are five “Order Cancelled! Seller failed to deliver on time” in her review section over the past two days. She just made a run for it – which is fine, but please TELL US that you are overwhelmed and just cancel. Don’t run off without a word and make me wait a week to find another seller. (I would have even mutual canceled with her to save her review page. Oh well.)

[eoinfinnegan]

That is unfortunate! Sorry you had that experience…

[eoinfinnegan]

As you can see from @crcanny 's comment above, it can happen and cause frustration. These tips are aimed at ensuring buyers have a good experience. I know you have a high number of $5 orders so there is no need to contact you first but for a large number of sellers I think it is advisable to contact them first. Most of my sales and purchases are for $30-200 so you can understand why I think contacting and discussion first is important and it doesn’t bother me. I seldom get $5 orders and I suppose if I did, having to discuss them all first would be tedious and a waste of time.
In summary, people should use common sense and if the gig description says what you want done then they should just place the order for the standard gig.

[fastcopywriter]

My average is $10, my largest order ever was $70, ironically, I had to refund that one because the buyer wanted the impossible, and it wasn’t worth my time.

Either way, the only thing that matters to me is orders that I can do. I don’t need to be contacted first, clear instructions are enough for me.

What will you do if someday you’re getting 40 orders a day and each order comes with a pre-order message? I’m not there yet, but if 5 messages annoy me, imagine 20, 40, 80.

[k_renae_p]

“…contact them before ordering”

This is my first time buying on Fiverr, and I wish I would have done this before my first purchase. If I had, I probably would have figured out that my seller was not the best choice. I hate for my first review to be a negative one, but I’m not sure what else to do when the seller doesn’t deliver work on time (twice- the original work and the request to make font larger).

[eoinfinnegan]

I think we are discussing two different order types here so disagreeing on the contact first vs order first idea makes sense. If you were contacted for every $10 order you wouldn’t get any work done! If I didn’t get these messages I wouldn’t get the orders I want to focus on. Different gigs, different sellers, different preferences.

[fastcopywriter]

Even if it was a $200 order, I would rather just refund if I can’t do it. That takes less time than chatting with people. Another annoyance is that sometimes they forget to give instructions because they think their messages count as instructions, they do not. I’ve had to cancel orders because of this. I always try to nudge them first, but some people are really horrible using Fiverr, I don’t get it. Fiverr is super easy.

[fastcopywriter]

Why give a negative review? Why not just click resolution center and solicit a refund? You’ll get your money back and then you can hire someone else.

[amitkaria]

Great Inputs and thank you for sharing your Experience…

Well coming to my experience it has been kind of a 30-70 Where as Positive being on 30% and Negative being on 70% 😦

Well i admit that i did not do a thorough research… i went by the Reviews of the Seller… infact i must share this as well "For one of my Web Design projects, i hired a TRS Seller he delivered the work (which was of Average) but was not at all Responsive even after delivery of the work … i really got pissed off at the end and just moved on…

But i had a good experience with Level 1 Sellers … they were very creative, responsive and also went extra mile for delivering my work…

So i learnt a lesson that its not about the RATING n Reviews … Its about the Research thorough Research (As you Rightly Said 🙂

[k_renae_p]

That’s what I did. I’d rather not give a review than a bad one. I told the person not to worry about it since I was disappointed, and I cancelled it today.

Edit: I’ve decided not to cancel. She did some work and deserves to be compensated even if I’m not completely happy. I just won’t leave a review and take this as a lesson learned. I have a better idea of what to do next time.

[fastcopywriter]

That’s very nice of you, I hope your seller realizes she must improve, others won’t be as kind as you.

[fastcopywriter]

If you want a seller to respond fast, the easiest way is to demand a modification, sellers pay attention to those because they want to close the order ASAP.

Furthermore, it is about ratings and reviews, if someone has hundreds of positive reviews, I can trust that person. If he or she fails me, that’s just bad luck. Sending annoying messages is not going to make a difference, neither will research.

Fiverr is very simple:

1. Look at portfolio samples
2. Look at reviews
3. Choose the right gig extras
4. Order

Messaging should be used rarely. For example, Jenny is a Muslim graphic designer and you’re selling a book about eating pork. In that situation, you might want to message her before ordering.

But if you message me with dumb questions like: “Are you available?” That annoys me to no end.

[k_renae_p]

I hope she does. I know I learned my lesson as a buyer. I did very few of the suggestions in the forum which was a ridiculously stupid rookie mistake. $5 lesson learned.

[fastcopywriter]

It happens to all of us, I once got a message from a desperate seller, he said he was an SEO writer, begged me to hire him, I did. He wrote the worst blog I have ever seen, a 5-year-old would have done better. Then he rejected my refund request in spite of me threatening him with a bad review. Well, I gave him 1-star and wrote a nasty comment. A few months later, I found his gig again, his rating had dropped to 60%, I wasn’t the only one who had a bad experience, and he was no longer accepting orders.

That’s why I have faith in the market, those doing bad work will suffer sooner than later.

[amitkaria]

i got your point but i had messaged him because there was a small update on the order… 🙂

[eoinfinnegan]

Reviews are not infallible, I had a translator with over 500 positive reviews give me a worse than google translation for an order. When I queried it he requested cancellation. He continues getting work because anyone who queries it gets a cancellation and so does not give a bad review and those who don’t notice give him 5 stars because he seems like a nice guy, good communication etc. The only thing that saved me was the fact that I know the language relatively well, just not enough to translate into - although I am clearly better than him at it!