Sure you can increase the price of an active order, but it will also be good to be able to reduce the price. Why does refund have to mean cancel the order all the time?
For instance, after spending weeks working on an order and the client suddenly changes her mind for no real reason, after you have invested so much of your time. Time is a freelancers #1 commodity and should be compensated for. With that said, the buyer and the seller can come to an agreement to split the order. The client gets refunded an agreed amount and the seller keeps the rest. The way, our profit loving platform can still gain their 20% from the income earned buy the seller instead of nothing if the order was cancelled.
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Because this is a marketplace model and logistically and legally it canât work that way.
If a buyer changes your contract after youâve already set it, blame your buyer, not Fiverr. Focus on repelling buyers who pull stunts like this and attracting competent professionals.
No successful freelancer operates the way you just described.
Small correction on your terminology. From what I understand âreduce the price of an active orderâ is a wordy way of saying âpartial refundâ.
Fiverr has, in the past, recommended making a new order for the work completed. The buyer then accepts and completes that order, and only then should the original be mutually cancelled. This is time-intensive and requires the buyer pay for the new order before the original is cancelled, their funds are also not returned to their bank or card. The seller also still takes a hit to their completion rate.
Would it be nice if there were a smoother system in place? Yes.
Should Fiverr make one? Not necessarily. There are already too many people in general that prefer shoving blame onto others. Freelancing is a job that comes with responsibilities, including being intelligent about contracts and clients.
Thereâs a passable workaround in place. Iâd rather Fiverr focus on the dozens of other things that need to be fixed with the platform.
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Hello,
I wanted to use the term partial refund, but ârefundâ on our beloved platform simple means cancel the order. For lack of a better way to express this, I went with "Reduce the price of an active order.
With that out of the way, why does the seller have to take a hit as well? It just sounds like an awfully long process creating another order. Seems like an easy fix to be able to control the price of the order. You might have misunderstood the point as I am not sure why the word âblameâ came up in your reply.
In business, misunderstandings occur, and its especially difficult to explain when you arent face to face. You also mentioned contracts, a contract on fiverr begins as soon as an order is placed right? The buyer purchases one of the packages understanding the conditions of the package, but chooses to do otherwise. Sellers are forced to agree, knowing that if they cancel the order they lose rank amongst other things. Which brings me back to my original point, which promotes less cancelled orders. I personally dont have issues with cancelled orders as I always provide exceptional results, but for certain situations, it would be great to have a little control over the funds. It is not a partial cancellation more like a part payment.
Many business are known to offer refunds, why must it be a 100% refund on fiverr?
Thanks for your input, but I have to respectfully disagree with you.
A buyer sees your profile and places an order without contacting you. After exchanging a few sentences, you realize that the buyer didnt meet up with your terms. You bring this to the buyers attention and buyer chooses not to concede. You had rather that the order be cancelled having the seller walkaway with nothing but a lower ranking? You should understand that most people that contact freelancers are people trying to start a business and are not fully professional orientated. Professionalism is a skill acquired over time after having various experiences.
Freelancing isnt much different from any other business model. Having control over your funds is a basic requirement for a business owner.
Regarding your very last statement. I am led to believe you completely misunderstood my message, since I was not describing how a freelancer should operate rather, making a proposal on how cancellations can be better avoided.
If a successful freelancer in your books means walking away with nothing, you might want to stop reading that book.
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It doesnât take business skills to read a scope and follow it. If a buyer doesnât do that itâs not because they are new to a business, but because they are unscrupulous.
And itâs simply not true that most buyers are new to business. It sounds like youâre only attracting amateurs. That creates problems. Why not focus on attracting true professionals so then you donât have to worry about this. There are plenty of professional buyers put there. Ask yourself why they arenât coming to you.
If the seller is doing their due process, they will not start the order until establishing that the buyer understands what they order. No, a seller should not start working on an order when they know the buyer is incompetent or ordered the wrong thing.
No, it shouldnât affect our ratings. That is definitely unfair and I never said it was okay.
But the solution isnât to do part of a job that the the buyer doesnât want. They would contact Fiverr for a refund and then they would win. So you would have spent time working unpaid plus it
will have been stressful to work for someone who youâve forced to buy something.
If the buyer doesnât ask for a refund until after the job is done then you donât ask for a partial refund
Youâre proposing retroactively changing the terms of a contract and policy canât work that way.
In some freelance contracts elsewhere you can put a penalty clause if the person backs out early on at a certain point. But that canât work in a marketplace. Can you get a partial refund on a product from Amazon and keep half of the product? Logistically and legally it doesnât work.
Blame Fiverr for penalizing you for things buyers do wrong. But donât think that the solution is to force a buyer to start part of an order they have told you they donât want.
Make sure your scope is clear.
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You and a buyer agree on a $50 price for a project. You start to work on that said project. When you complete the work the buyer requests a revision. After you complete the revision they tell you they arenât satisfied with your delivery and feel they should only pay you $20. They demand a partial refund or they will cancel the whole order. You donât wonât to lose out on your entire earnings so you accept the partial refund terms.
There are so many ways of abusing the partial refund I would rather do without it.
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Hi man you understand my point exactly. But right now, the buyer can just say he doesnt like the work after making several revisions and cancel the order. You walkaway with nothing. And if he goes to fiverr and say you provided poor work even if he liked the work, fiverr will cancel the order and theres nothing you can do about it. You will walkaway with nothing.
You dont get to choose, but this solution gives you an option. So if the buyer was lying or not, at least the order isnt cancelled, and you get a little compensation.
You know if you refuse to cancel the order, fiverr can cancel it without even contacting you. The buyer just has to present a good argument true/false fiverr doesnt investigate. Spoken from experience and I even received an apology from fiverr.
You are still missing the point.
Never mentioned doing part job here. You can read my comments and return to the may point I made. Maybe you will understand it better.
I wont start working on an order if I know the client is incompetent. This was mentioned in light of your last comment, again which was not focused on the point of this discussion. The main point was after working on an order for several days when everything seemed fine, suddenly the client wants to cancel. You had rather the seller work away with nothing?
Again you missed the point here didnt say new to business, said starting a new business, theres a big difference.
This is far from my point, but an unscrupulous buyer obviously lacks professionalism, you seem to think all buyers have been buying for years on the platform, there are new buyers who might have read the terms, and probably dont understand. I have seen this happen several times, I run a very successful not in your terms of walking away with nothing, but a very successful service.
Your mistake is comparing services to goods. Amazon offers goods, freelancers offer services. Besides the service we offer, all we have is our time. You cant work on an order for days investing your time, when everything feels like its coming to an end, the client just says she wants to cancel. This just happened to me after completing over 3000 orders in less than a year. So clearly I am a successful freelancer. With the comments you have made so far, I suspect you are not a freelancer, so you will not be able to understand. Checkout j6nyc6 comment, he gets the point even if didnt agree. You can read my reply to him. I just feel its better to walkaway with half than nothing, compensation for time invested. Many business never offer full refund and even fiverr doesnt refund all the money the buyer spends on the purchasing the order.
Okay, yes, I admit I missed your point. Youâre complaining against complete cancellations. Which is slightly different from the topic of your original post of arguing for partial cancellations.
I completely agree that the way cancellations are done now is a problem, but I donât necessarily think partial refunds are the solution. Or, not the best or only solution. This is why the other posts commenting on flaws and alternate steps that can be taken, because we have to work with what we have, and waiting around for Fiverr doesnât help with the now.
Oh, that. Thatâs just basic human behavior. If people can blame something/one else, many do. Like âitâs Fiverrâs fault for offering partial cancellation, because it attracts scammers who never intended to pay full price anyway. Fiverrâs enabling this behaviorâ or âif I didnât write a proper contract, itâs Fiverrâs fault for letting meâ
Exactly. Even in this thread thereâs a fair bit of disconnect. Technically a contract on Fiverr begins before the order, because Fiverrâs ToS trumps anything put in a buyer/seller contract. No one should agree to a contract if they havenât read it. There are far, far, far too many people on Fiverr who have done just that.
forced
/fĂ´rst/
adjective
1: obtained or imposed by coercion or physical power.
âthe brutal regime of forced laborâ
Similar: enforced, compulsory, obligatory, mandatory, involuntary
It only feels forced if you give them that power over you.
. Stand Your Ground: Setting Boundaries as a Seller
. The power of saying, "NO!"
. The Art of Saying No Nicely
Fiverr ToS (https://www.fiverr.com/content/payments-terms-and-conditions):
Orders are not eligible to be canceled based on the quality of service/materials delivered by the Seller if the service was rendered as described in the Gig Page. You may rate your experience with the Seller on the Order Page, including the overall level of service quality received.
Fiverr Customer Support will cancel orders based on, but not limited to, the following reasons:
Active orders: 2. Users are abusive towards the other party through threats of low ratings or leveraging order materials (such as logins, personal information) against each other.
Delivered Orders: 6. Users who threaten to leave a damaging review to gain more services from the Seller not related to the agreed requirements.
Yes, the above has loopholes, but there are stories here on the forums that if CS is informed (with evidence) that a seller has been threatened but wants to finish the order, and the threat is carried out, the review is removed. (This is time intensive.)
I know you didnât. Itâs a logical conclusion.
You are saying you shouldnât have to cancel just because the buyer made a mistake and had to cancel the order before starting it or have had it underway
And youâre also saying you want to reduce the price of the order. So if youâre reducing the price, you would either reduce the work or stop doing the work once you see the misunderstanding. Make sense?
Unless you think you should get partly paid for a job you havenât even started and will never start. As I explained that legally and logistically doesnât work in a marketplace or anywhere else.
We shouldnât get penalized for mistakes buyers make but this solution doesnât work. Itâs actually illegal.
If you havenât vetted the client to make sure that itâs what they want and you donât know it isnât until youâve finished the project, thatâs on you.
You missed the point again
You worked on an order for serval days or weeks and the user suddenly changes their mind.
I suggest a partial refund to compensate for time wasted and its not illegal. Buyer and seller can agree on this. Instead of cancelling
Thatâs why you never do orders that take that long. The risks outweigh the benefits.
Mitigate risk instead of futilely saying the risk shouldnât be there. It wonât get you anywhere.
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Your original idea of âsplittingâ is flawed in my mind.
Hereâs an example.
I hire a painter to paint the outside of my house.
Weâve gone over the details and agreed on a fee.
After the job is done I tell the painter I donât like the colour.
It doesnât look like the paint sample.
Do it again but with a better shade closer the the one I want.
The painter puts considerable amount of time and effort into trying to please me but Iâm still not impressed.
I suggest your idea of us âsplittingâ it so we can go our separate ways.
I doubt the painter is going to appreciate the idea after all the work he/she put into dealing with me (a somewhat difficult customer).
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@humanissocial - I understand what you say about risk but all my orders take days or weeks and I love how easily it works for me. I think itâs something some sellers can do very successfully with experience and confidence.
A copy editor does not always work from the beginning to the end of a script, A-Z style, so the staged payments/segmented jobs approach can result in an editing disaster. Each ed is different but my colleagues also refuse partial scripts.
I rarely make it possible for clients to buy work from me in stagesâthe only time I do is when a client is struggling to fund a single-hit edit, but then, I have a minimum spend of $500.
I feel that editing in stages is akin to trying to edit the first few minutes of a 30-minute video; we need to take the whole into consideration to appreciate context and deliver consistent quality across the whole, and while we can think that we just edited the first few chapters perfectly, by the time we reach the end, it may be that those first chapters will be refined again.
Issues emerging later in a book can also affect the beginning and early chaptersâhence, only by working on a complete script can we ensure the copy remains consistent and reads beautifully end to end, rather than feeling like several edits joined together, with differences in tone and style that creep in by treating chapters as separate components.
It would be a real struggle, too, to manage more projects (or elements of projects) than I have now! If jobs were split into smaller elements, thereâd be a lot more buyer communication (and hassle/chit-chat!) in between those deliveries and my time would be eroded.
THE OPâS PROBLEM⌠(this part is to nswer the OPâs query to himâŚ)
Coming to the OPâs problem or query, I think partial refunds would end up in a mess too, as others have said. The point of doing a job is to do it perfectly, and to get a happy client. A system with a partial get-out clause aims for lower standards of delivery than the service demands at presentâŚ
It may lead some people to try less hard to please a client.
Right now, having a system in which the buyer has to pay up in full or not use the product thatâs been delivered is nice and clearâno gray areas, and it offers little room for clients to claim dissatisfaction, still use my work and pay half the rate!
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Is it really necessary to show off your orders and how much you got for them? Itâs irrelevant.
If you like working his way, fine. But it is incredibly risky.
For me, what is more inherently risky is splitting jobs up into small onesâbecause it lowers quality (for my work type) and if, say, this resulted in one large job becoming several small ones, the time incurred in discussing and keeping up with the multitude of jobs would very quickly amount to more âspendâ than a potential loss of any single cancellation (say). I think it comes down to knowing which clients to choose and which to avoidâthere are many I do avoid!
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Project management is inefficient as heck in the Fiverr system, am I right? Ugh.
But ideally you donât have discussions for every order with small orders and when you do they should be brief.
Yeah we can certainly attract good clients and repel bad ones.