How to deal with unreasonable customers

[qifanchang]

Hi, I am a professional commercial photographer and I am just starting on Fiverr to expand my client base. Currently, I am pricing my product photography gig very low to attract more customers and get more reviews. I have worked really hard and hope that once I get to level 1 seller I can raise the price on my gigs so I can start to make some profit. I completed 8 orders ( all 5-star reviews) in the past month but now I have a customer who keeps asking me to revise the delivery and giving out very confusing instructions.

First of all the skincare product that client sent me has labels printed in very low quality. The letters are super small and blurry and the ink is very easy to get scratch off. Some of the bottles they sent are missing caps. One of the jars has leaked and covered up part of the label; when I tried to clean it, all the black ink just came off…

After the first time I delivered my images, the buyer said they are not satisfied with the images because the words on the label cannot be seen. After an hour-long conversation, I realized that the buyer didn’t download the images and didn’t know how to download them. After I taught them how to download the images, they started to telling me very confusing comments like “Resolution too the white is too expressed” or “Hi xxx you can work on the resolutions for all the images and send me for review”.

At this point, I don’t know what to do and had to keep trying different edits of the photos and send them to review. After a while, they send me some pictures of the products they took with their phone and tell me they want the label to look like what’s in their photos. I realize they might not like the lighting style of the photos I created so I offered to retake all the photos in another lighting style. I took an example photo with the different lighting and send it to them. They said, “You got it now right”. BTW I used the first lighting setup for most of the cosmetic photoshoot I did for some pretty big brands, and they love it.

I retook all the photos and delivered to them. This afternoon they replied, “Hi xxx I’m literally tired. We’ve been on this order for a minute now. I thought a product photography was going to be an easy task for me but I’ve wasted so much time on this” and told me one of the product’s label color doesn’t seem right, and they want the color to look like what’s in the photo they took themselves. I really don’t see much difference in the label color of my photos and theirs. I am using professional studio flash lights and a very high-end medium format camera that are exclusively used in the high-end commercial shoot, and my monitors are also color calibrated. I figured maybe instead of accurate color, they just want the color to be more saturated, so bump up the saturation of the labels and sent them for review. I also checked their Instagram, and they have already posted the pictures I took.

I have dealt with some difficult clients in the past(not on Fiverr), but they can at least explain themselves very well. However, in this case, the client really can not explain what they want and what they don’t like but kept letting me redo the work. The client first requested order resolution twice and then used a revision.

I also suspected that the client wants me to shoot lifestyle product photos (my more expensive gig option) for them for free or a very cheap price, since they mentioned they want to try lifestyle photos many times during the conversation right after they said they are not satisfied with the job. There was once in the conversation when I offered to do 5 lifestyle photos for 50( already a ridiculously low price), and they replied:”*50 more xxx after I was unsatisfied with your previous work*”. I can’t really report to Fiverr support because they never explicitly blackmailed me.

I know the story is a bit long and I really appreciate whoever read through. I wrote down the story and post it here to seek advise from you guys. I neither want to cancel the order nor want them to leave a bad review. I completed 9 orders but already had 1 canceled order because of a PayPal chargeback on the clients end, Fiverr canceled that order and left me a 10% cancel rate. I don’t care about the earning from this order because I am already doing close to free work anyways, but if I canceled I have to do another 9 order to fix my completion rate. Do you guys think Fiverr can help me remove the bad review if it comes to that in the future? The situation is really bothering me because I fear if I don’t handle it correctly, all the grind I have done last month will go to waste.

[priyab468]

Hi. I checked out your gig and saw that the basic had 1 revision, and the others had 2. So how can they keep asking for more? If you delivered the product that was agreed upon and you have evidence that they’re already using said product (instagram), then I would suggest that you still go to Customer Service. The buyer may not have made threats, but they are taking advantage and abusing the revision option.

Take screenshots of everything and send it to CS. And ask if they can send the buyer a gentle reminder on the TOS. If they use this as a reason to leave a negative review, contact CS again. And if that doesn’t work, sellers can respond to the rating, explaining their side.

That’s what I would have done.

[Alex.M]

Hi. I checked out your gig and saw that the basic had 1 revision, and the others had 2. So how can they keep asking for more? If you delivered the product that was agreed upon and you have evidence that they’re already using said product (instagram), then I would suggest that you still go to Customer Service. The buyer may not have made threats, but they are taking advantage and abusing the revision option.

Take screenshots of everything and send it to CS. And ask if they can send the buyer a gentle reminder on the TOS. If they use this as a reason to leave a negative review, contact CS again. And if that doesn’t work, sellers can respond to the rating, explaining their side.

That’s what I would have done.

So how can they keep asking for more?

nothing prevents them to ask revisions even if they are not included… normally a buyer would have to respect the terms of the gig however not all buyers do so…

[qifanchang]

Hi. I checked out your gig and saw that the basic had 1 revision, and the others had 2. So how can they keep asking for more? If you delivered the product that was agreed upon and you have evidence that they’re already using said product (instagram), then I would suggest that you still go to Customer Service. The buyer may not have made threats, but they are taking advantage and abusing the revision option.

Take screenshots of everything and send it to CS. And ask if they can send the buyer a gentle reminder on the TOS. If they use this as a reason to leave a negative review, contact CS again. And if that doesn’t work, sellers can respond to the rating, explaining their side.

That’s what I would have done.

Thank you so much for the advise. I will try to contact the customer support. As I mentioned, they first issued resolution instead of revision, then they used it again, the third time they used revision. I am just scared of saying no to the buyer since I am just new to the Fiverr platform and any bad review or cancellation can do big damage to my gig.