Long term orders. To risk or not to risk?

[Guest phantompower]

So I need advise on this issue. Would you be willing to invest your time to one large long term order? I just got a message from 2 people who want services that could take up about 2 months. My problem isn’t with the time or the amount being paid for the service. The problem is with the risk of a charge back. If someone pays 4k for service only to ask for a refund through paypal, what can you do??

[Guest offlinehelpers]

Chargeback through PayPal - not much from what I’ve read.

Also, isn’t there a 30 day delivery limit on all things Fiverr?

[djgodknows]

You may wish to hear what @eoinfinnegan has to say about this, because he had a very similar issue couple of months back.

p.s
My personal recommendation would be to really create SHORT deliverables, so everything is accounted for in details.

Also think about this, if a Chargback DOES take place, 1 vs 15 chargebacks by the same user can be handy in case you do wish to make some sort of case against it.

[anamariaedan]

Split the order. I think it’s a great way to check how the progress goes with a first one, and then continue with others. 😄

[capitalquality]

I’d only agree to this with a buyer I already knew and trusted.

Breaking down the order is great if it is something that can be sensibly broken down and if you realise they may stop after a few deliveries and you might not get all the work.

I’ve had buyers where breaking the order down has worked very well (i.e. the buyer accepts they’re not getting everything they want with the early deliveries, and they end up ordering more than originally intended when they like what can be done) and buyers where this has worked very badly (i.e. they keep asking where the functionality they requested is in early deliveries even though I have sent them a very clear list of what’s included in each delivery and/or they stop ordering after the first or second delivery because they can’t see their end product).

[Guest phantompower]

You may wish to hear what @eoinfinnegan has to say about this, because he had a very similar issue couple of months back.

p.s

My personal recommendation would be to really create SHORT deliverables, so everything is accounted for in details.

Also think about this, if a Chargback DOES take place, 1 vs 15 chargebacks by the same user can be handy in case you do wish to make some sort of case against it.

According to one of the buyers is that he wants to pay all the money at once because he might not have it each and every time if I split the order.

[Guest phantompower]

Chargeback through PayPal - not much from what I’ve read.

Also, isn’t there a 30 day delivery limit on all things Fiverr?

Yes the max might be 30 days but there are ways to get around that. My concern is mostly on the charge back. How long would it take to recover from that type of fall.

[djgodknows]

According to one of the buyers is that he wants to pay all the money at once because he might not have it each and every time if I split the order.

money at once because he might not have it each and every time if I split the order

🚨 anyone?

[Guest phantompower]

money at once because he might not have it each and every time if I split the order

🚨 anyone?

I told the guy that I would rather get 1000 10$ order rather than get 10 1000$ order. Puff silence since then.

[djgodknows]

There ya go Phantom…

[misscrystal]

I just had four orders from the same buyer back on November first get chargebacks. So breaking the order down into several orders won’t help. Nor can you ask Paypal to contest it since it is fiverr who has the account with the contested items. At least that is my understanding.

There should be an escrow option available for large orders or multiple orders from the same buyer.
Generally for any large internet purchase buyers and sellers use an escrow service.

[myskillsforsale]

Yeah, I wouldn’t risk this. A chargeback could basically mean the end of your account, if you’re losing thousands of dollars and Fiverr won’t fight on your behalf.

How to “background check” buyers:

1. Check how long they’ve been a buyer – been here for years? Might be okay to do a big order. Account created in the last 2-3 months? No.
2. Search their username in your choice of search engine and find the buyer’s review of others. If your buyer doesn’t frequently leave reviews, this could be a red flag (reseller, scammer, etc.)
3. Talk about the financial aspects of the order – if the buyer tries to strongarm you into a deal, you probably don’t want to deal with them.

I wonder if you could make a contract with them. Write up some legal-sounding document that’s like “I (seller username) agree to provide (buyer username) with (description of work), to be paid ($$$). The transaction will occur on Fiverr.com, utilizing the Fiverr escrow system. Buyer agrees to remedy any issues with the order within Fiverr.com (as stated by the Fiverr.com TOS) and to communicate effectively with the seller.” Add whatever else you want. Get the buyer to sign it and send it through the Fiverr message system so the “signed” document comes through their account, clearly.
Then if they do a chargeback you can hand Fiverr your contract and say “Here’s our contract; here are my deliverables, they agreed to payment.” and then maybe Fiverr would have enough ammo to argue with Paypal… if they felt like it. Which is a big if.

I’ve had a couple larger orders go swimmingly, but it’s a heavy risk! Take care.

[misscrystal]

Yeah, I wouldn’t risk this. A chargeback could basically mean the end of your account, if you’re losing thousands of dollars and Fiverr won’t fight on your behalf.

How to “background check” buyers:

1. Check how long they’ve been a buyer – been here for years? Might be okay to do a big order. Account created in the last 2-3 months? No.
2. Search their username in your choice of search engine and find the buyer’s review of others. If your buyer doesn’t frequently leave reviews, this could be a red flag (reseller, scammer, etc.)
3. Talk about the financial aspects of the order – if the buyer tries to strongarm you into a deal, you probably don’t want to deal with them.

I wonder if you could make a contract with them. Write up some legal-sounding document that’s like “I (seller username) agree to provide (buyer username) with (description of work), to be paid ($$$). The transaction will occur on Fiverr.com, utilizing the Fiverr escrow system. Buyer agrees to remedy any issues with the order within Fiverr.com (as stated by the Fiverr.com TOS) and to communicate effectively with the seller.” Add whatever else you want. Get the buyer to sign it and send it through the Fiverr message system so the “signed” document comes through their account, clearly.

Then if they do a chargeback you can hand Fiverr your contract and say “Here’s our contract; here are my deliverables, they agreed to payment.” and then maybe Fiverr would have enough ammo to argue with Paypal… if they felt like it. Which is a big if.

I’ve had a couple larger orders go swimmingly, but it’s a heavy risk! Take care.

Not a good idea for a contact as you would need to provide your own name and address and the same with the buyer, along with contact details, and nothing to stop the buyer from reneging on the contract. And no way to track them down and drag them to court, especially if they are in another state or country.

[myskillsforsale]

Not a good idea for a contact as you would need to provide your own name and address and the same with the buyer, along with contact details, and nothing to stop the buyer from reneging on the contract. And no way to track them down and drag them to court, especially if they are in another state or country.

Admittedly, I don’t know a lot of the legality of contracts, so I’ll defer to you on that one. I figured it less as a legally-binding measure and more of a way to make the buyer think about trying to screw over the seller. Sellers sign NDAs and such, I doubt many buyers would be shocked by a basic agreement for a big order, and those that throw a huge fuss – well, it’s just another screening measure.

[misscrystal]

Admittedly, I don’t know a lot of the legality of contracts, so I’ll defer to you on that one. I figured it less as a legally-binding measure and more of a way to make the buyer think about trying to screw over the seller. Sellers sign NDAs and such, I doubt many buyers would be shocked by a basic agreement for a big order, and those that throw a huge fuss – well, it’s just another screening measure.

A contract is un enforcable on this site doing business this way. It’s worthless.

[myskillsforsale]

A contract is un enforcable on this site doing business this way. It’s worthless.

Good to know.

(…20 characters…?)

[eoinfinnegan]

According to one of the buyers is that he wants to pay all the money at once because he might not have it each and every time if I split the order.

Large orders can be worthwhile but you need to be extremely careful.

To be honest, this -

According to one of the buyers is that he wants to pay all the money at once because he might not have it each and every time if I split the order.

sounds exactly like what someone would say if they had or were planning to use a stolen credit card. It may not be and they may just be really bad with money but still, its a red flag for me.

This was how I minimized my concerns about dealing with a particular client:

Some of you may remember me mention a large potential client before Christmas. It was a translation job of approx 500,000 words. I was quite unsure about it at the time and concerned about whether it could be a bad buyer. As you can imagine, there is approx 10 weeks of solid work involved in that so to lose out on that would be disastrous. At the same time, there wasn't a lot of other jobs coming at the time and December is notoriously slow so I spent a long time weighing up the possibilities/pr…

Here’s a post I did about avoiding chargebacks.

As the issue of Paypal chargebacks has been discussed a lot recently including the horrible situation of a large chargeback for one Forum regular, I decided to spend a bit of time looking into them to see what I can find out, what other freelance platforms do and to try and put together some advice on how to avoid them as much as possible. Brace yourself, it's a long one! In this post I will be summarizing and clarifying some of the content of other websites and their terms and conditions, for…

[misscrystal]

fiverr is missing an opportunity here. They need an escrow service. Usually these charge 5% of the value of the item or service. For anything over a certain amount, $350 would be a good place to start, a seller and buyer can put the service into escrow with the funds released to the seller when the buyer gets the service and approves it.

It would be in the form of cash, not Paypal. The buyer would not be able to get a refund once he accepted the service and the seller would not lose out.

[psychicbunny]

Do
Not
Do
It

Only accept maybe $300 worth of orders from one person a month. Trust me.

[psychicbunny]

fiverr is missing an opportunity here. They need an escrow service. Usually these charge 5% of the value of the item or service. For anything over a certain amount, $350 would be a good place to start, a seller and buyer can put the service into escrow with the funds released to the seller when the buyer gets the service and approves it.

It would be in the form of cash, not Paypal. The buyer would not be able to get a refund once he accepted the service and the seller would not lose out.

fiverr is missing an opportunity here. They need an escrow service.

TOTALLY agree. They would make so much more money if they figured out that stuff. Now I have to push alot of my buyers away for fear of you-know-what.