Fiverr Community Forum

Is this a violation of TOS or not?

Your Fiverr Experience
#1

As a seller I know a buyer has to pay before ordering. But, the seller won’t receive this payment until completion of the order.

One of my buyers already started using my work from earlier deliveries that he asked revisions on; so from a yet to be completed order.

This means it would be possible for the buyer to cancel the order while he is already using my work. I tried to explain this to him, but he doesn’t really see the error in that.

I’m wondering, is this a violation of TOS or not? This is what I was able to find, but it doesn’t quite cover my problem:

‘All transfer and assignment of intellectual property to the Buyer shall be subject to full payment and the delivery may not be used if payment is canceled for any reason.’

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#2

If they are using the delivery already, what is the revision request for? Isn’t there Fiverr watermark on every delivery?

They can always claim it’s important to see if the design works well with their website. Not sure if CS would have much of a problem with that!

Other forum members may have more insight on the issue though.

1 Like
#3

I was just going to mention the watermark as well.

I think you better contact Fiverr CS for some direction.

3 Likes
#4

Already contacted support about it, no clear answer yet. The watermark only works for me for seperate images, but a lot of my deliveries include files that don’t seem to support Fiverr watermarks.

2 Likes
#5

Is the order going well? It might be beneficial to finish the order instead of worrying over supposed ToS violation. If the order gets completed successfully, they’ll use the design anyway.

CS can take up to 2-3 days to reply.

#6

Just in case, I would recommend taking a few screenshots now of their usage. Proof, just in case the Buyer does try to cut-and-run. You might not ever need them, but if you do, you’ll have them.

You had the ‘face in shadows’ thread, right? So we already know this is a difficult Buyer. If this is the same one.

Have you looked into Milestone orders?

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#7

@imagination7413 no that was a different buyer, I attract some tricky ones :joy:. I finally got him to understand now. We both made some mistakes along the way. I trust things will work out now, but I did take the screenshots :slight_smile:

Yes, I have looked into milestone orders, but I’m not quite sure yet if you can add milestones during an ongoing order? It has happened to me numerous times that I start off with quite a simple order and the buyer requests extra stuff (for extra time and money, obviously) and I just add extras instead of milestones.

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#8

If you sent a partial delivery and the order is not ready, yet you marked it as complete, then you broke the TOS and you can get a warning or even a ban. You should never send incomplete work as a delivery. Otherwise the buyer is able to complain to customer support, cancel the order, and you might even lose your account.

#9

No, you cannot change an order into a milestone order.

(For anyone else visiting this thread who wants to know more: https://www.fiverr.com/support/articles/360010560178-Working-with-Milestones)

Back to your original question:

Ownership and limitations: When purchasing a Gig on Fiverr, unless clearly stated otherwise on the Seller’s Gig page/description, when the work is delivered, and subject to payment, the Buyer is granted all intellectual property rights, including but not limited to, copyright in the work delivered from the Seller, and the Seller waives any and all moral rights therein.

Technically Fiverr itself is a servicer of a payment in escrow.

BTW, major kudos for actually having read the ToS! Have you read/seen this yet? Top 5 Tips to Protect Yourself from Badly Behaved Buyers (you seem to already know these, but just in case…)

3 Likes
#10

@donnovan86 Luckily that was not the case! I think you are misunderstanding something :slight_smile: . I delivered the complete work just as the buyer ordered, but he had some feedback so asked for a revision. Yet he already started using the completed, yet not final/accepted work (because of the revision).

1 Like
#11

I see

You said earlier deliveries, that implies you delivered multiple times, and that’s why I assumed the order was incomplete since you had to deliver multiple times.

My bad if I misunderstood, it certainly implied that, at least for me. Stay safe, glad it worked out.

#12

Glad it worked out.
Don’t panic and stay positive.

Maybe theres a reason why they are already using it.

1 Like