Fiverr Community Forum

I'm quitting Fiverr

Your Fiverr Experience Fiverr Stories
#1

I’m just done with this platform, customer service never gives any importance to sellers and just does what they want to keep the buyer happy at all costs.
A week ago, I received a 70$ order that includes a smart banner ( PHP coded to work on TeamSpeak 3 banner ) a visual identity and a set of icons.
This customer said: I want a set of subdued military icons with specific colors.
I endless nights to make this order ready within a week, I finally got the banner and everything done. The day before yesterday, I contacted him on the order page and asked him to clarify what the icons should be like. He then sent me a link: army.mil/ranks and said nothing but describe the colors again.
I started making a similar icons to the ones on the website from scratch with the requested colors. I spent the whole night making his icons.
Once I’m done, I sent him a preview of all the icons I’ve made and waited one more day before I delivered. He did not answered that day, so I delivered the other day which is yesterday.
A few moments later, the person downloaded all the stuff and actually used the banner on his TeamSpeak server and the icons too. Then, he came back and requested a modification. He stated: " the ranks pictures are not Subdued. please see link for an example of subdued rank. " He now sends another link with some other icon designs and that wasn’t in the scope of the order anyway, he did not pay to get a huge modification like this after the order was done.
I kindly declined his modification request because I can’t re-do all the work because of his own fault which is not describing the design he wanted correctly.

He then asked to cancel the order, I did not accept that either so he immediately went to customer service and 5 hours later, the order was cancelled and he benefited from a free service because he was smart to fool Fiverr customer support and get away with it.

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This is the email I received on my inbox today, I can’t even click the click here button.
I don’t even know why did they cancel an order that was already delivered and one that I spent a lot of time and effort making it accurate to what the customer needed.
This was not the first time to get this, I’ve opened disputes before and they all got judged for the customer’s sake.
I mean I’ve never won a dispute. I’ve been on Fiverr since 2017 and every time a customer has entered an argument with me, I’m always the one who get punished for it. There are times where the support sided with me but still cancelled the order after I delivered it and my points are reduced because of an order cancellation that was caused by a naughty customer.
I’m just done with all this, wasting my time to get dumped in the end and the customer gets my work for free.
Imagine how much time and effort I spent on this order making the design look as beautiful as possible, but still the customer gets it for FREE!
That was just my honest experience as a seller on fiverr
Thanks for reading.
I’m sorry I couldn’t link all the screenshots and details because I’m only limited to two links per post.

Edit: Usernames edited out of the screenshots.

15 Likes
#2

Erase the buyers name because it is against forum rules to share their names.

During all this time did you open your own website and start offering your services there as well?

Fiverr should never be single source of income.

And to all people on forum, this is the reason why I do free samples. In inbox.

I want to make sure buyer is 99.9% certain that design I made is what he wants before order.

From my 128 completed orders I only had 5 occasions where I worked for free and it did not end up with order and payment.

In most cases when clients approach me I do all or most of the work in inbox, or at least sketch.

Going in to order without precise idea and defining on what client really wants is just going to end up with cancelation or negative review.

Even if you deliver as per offer, you see from the OP sample and many other stories, you could lose the money you worked for.

4 Likes
#3

Looks to me you encountered something those of us who have owned and operated businesses in the past call, doing business.

It happens.

You can’t expect every customer to be perfect.

You can’t expect every Buyer experience to be perfect.

When I owned a small town newspaper I got threats of legal action, advertising and subscription cancellations, people spitting on the storefront windows, etc. because they didn’t like some of our content.

However, there was the other side of the coin as well.

Lots of good and a bit of bad.

It drove my wife nuts.

Especially when some of our customers made us wait months for them to pay their bills.

Then there were customers who would pay in advance.

It’s called doing business.

Some of us are cut out for it…some of us are not.

Let me guess which one you are.

8 Likes
#4

I’m sorry for you. It’s probably happened to most of us though.

Just last week, I had this happen. The buyer booked me for a relatively simple VO and paid for 3 revisions as he thought he would need them. I followed his directions for the first recording and he came back saying it sounded like a robot. OK. He changed the direction a little bit and we went into revision. After receiving the revision, he said it was obvious I hadn’t revised and just sent the same file, which was utter BS. It was clearly different and I told him so. He asked me if I’m really British and said I sound Australian and/or (?) American. Apart from anything else, I haven’t yet ever been to Australia or America. He also isn’t British, so I’m not sure where he’s getting his accent references. The Crown maybe.

By this point, he’s really rubbed me up the wrong way by accusing me of not revising the work and not being authentic. Still, I politely offer a further revision but he cancels. I contacted CS and gave them enough info and asked to at least have my completion rate kept at 100%, but they wouldn’t do it. So I lost time, money, and my perfect stats and spent most of that afternoon in a foul mood. But, as looseink says, it’s business and it really does get easier to let these experiences go. I’ve also learned to let go of seller-level angst. I’m TRS so any drop in stats is a heart-stopper as you never know if you’ll get that level back should you lose it. But is it really worth holding ourselves hostage to stats and the occasional PITA client? NOPE.

10 Likes
#5

I get your point, and It’s unfortunate.
I am relatively new here and I hope I don’t get such clients

2 Likes
#6

I appreciate the support! But I really think I’ll switch to another platform or start my own thing.
It really happened to me multiple times to the point of no return.

2 Likes
#7

Like many sellers we have all experienced ups and downs but what you should do instead of quitting is evaluate your processes. It is often easy to cast blame on the buyer or Fiverr but the best way to succeed is to try to minimise this from happening with the procedures you set in place.

For example

Was the project deliverables / direction clear on both sides and mutually agreed on before you spent hours working on this? You mentioned that you had to ask the buyer questions after you had worked hours regarding icons which seems like something I would do right at the start.

So the customer was not happy with your delivery and proposed an alternative but you refused due to being out of the scope of work? We can refer to the first point that maybe that was partly on your side for not fully understanding the order. Again how did you handle the request for the revision? Did you just say no or did offer a mutually fair agreement “I cannot do this but what i can do is this”. Remember the customer is not always right but they are always the customer.

I saw another member saying about giving out free work samples, I would not suggest this, that is what a portfolio or examples of your work are for. You time is your value and giving it away to any customer is not a good work process.

Fiverr offers a huge network of opportunities and i would not get dishearten by one bad thing that happens.

5 Likes
#8

Ayman, One more Important thing that i do in order to maintain my completion rate that I do not take the order from my clients right away, First I do all the work and in the end of the Work i take order from them and Seriously I have been avoiding many unwanted Cancellations by this and I think that this is a great Idea to become good seller on fiverr with all the Stats 100% Maintained I have never dealt with any client that ran away after getting the work done and did not pay me.

3 Likes
#9

Marina, In Order to keep the best Performance of my Account First i do all the work and in the end I take the Order from them. I dont really care if they run away and dont order me. I just want to make sure that my Account is Performing Excellent and i get more clients and by this I have also avoided a lot of unwanted Cancellations and Marina, No one runs away after getting the work done they just pay you on time!

2 Likes
#10

So you are willing to waste your time without knowing if you get paid or not? It’s not really the best approach, I will be honest.

4 Likes
#11

Thank you so much! I really Appreciate your Opinion on this. Ummmmmmm Ofcourse i dont want my time to get wasted for not Getting paid and get the Job Done at the same time. But Most of the time i do it with those clients like who are a little bit unkind in talking to me while we are discussing about the project Soooo I see how they communicate with me if they are nice and cool i take the order right away but if they are not so cool in communication so at that time I don’t take the order instead i take it at the end of the work!

Thank You!

#12

I got you, i have canceled also so many orders.
Afterwards when i see word yo, or this must be viral, or they compare the footage what they send me and want edit video like huge artists its a no no for me and i dont even make a offer.

With a time you have to learn and you will feel what person will fit you on order and who not.

I got atleast 40 orders canceled, its a huge number.

1 Like
#13

and secondly u offer to low price for your work,. and thats a huge mistake, low budget attracts junk people. trust me.
rise the price by 2x and it will change, remove 5 usd offers and u will be doing better.

#14

Not really. It depends on the service. I had higher priced and lower priced services, they both attract scammers at various levels.

3 Likes
#15

Yea, but atleast it decrease the ammount + i dont know why but after working for one year at fiverr i got feeling atleast few months what person is a no no to work with,.

2 Likes
#16

Oohh that’s a huge Cancellations!

#17

40 cancellations in a month? Or since the beginning?

#18

40 cancelations in 13 month

#19

40 in 13 months is a lot of cancellations. Could be buyers scamming you or miscommunication, but, that is a lot. I have been here since 2013 and have only had 204 cancellations.

GG

2 Likes
#20

Hi, I know it’s really a big frustrations for you. But, It’s a business and you will get lots of clients who have negative mind. Some time we are unable to manage them. I think the misunderstanding is the main issue. Please don’t look back. It’s an accident. Forget it. A bad experience can’t stop your carrier on Fiverr. If you honest from your side then you can explain your issue to support. I’m sure you will get compensation.