Seller not even online

[megingost]

Hi there!
It’s my first time on fiverr and it looks like I got pretty unlucky with it.

I ordered a gig on Jan, 17 and the seller didn’t even respond once. He/She wasn’t even online, it says now “last seen 1 week ago”.
Two days ago I requested a progress update, in hope that the seller will get some sort of email notification. Still no response. I thought that the order will be automatically canceled if the seller fails to respond. The deadline was an hour ago and the Request got withdrawn automatically since the seller didn’t respond?! I cant follow that logic. A Buyer sends a Request because the Seller isn’t responding. The seller still fails to respond. So now the Request is just withdrawn and I have to make another request for cancellation and wait another two days?!

Is there nothing I can do to cancel that Gig faster? I’m definately not ordering another one until this is resolved.

[adsensewizard]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. Has the seller been on Fiverr for long? If they have lots of reviews, then there’s probably a good reason for them to not be able to log on and are not doing it because they don’t care about you. If it’s a new seller, then there’s always the risk that they even forget that their gig is active and don’t check their mails.

But at least not long ago if the order goes 1 day or so overdue, a button appears on the order page which you can click to cancel the order instantly.

You can also contact customer support to have an order cancelled sooner if the seller is not responding and it looks like they’re not working on your order at all.

In the future it might be better to choose gigs that have lots of reviews, so you know the seller can do their job.

[megingost]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. Has the seller been on Fiverr for long? If they have lots of reviews, then there’s probably a good reason for them to not be able to log on and are not doing it because they don’t care about you. If it’s a new seller, then there’s always the risk that they even forget that their gig is active and don’t check their mails.

But at least not long ago if the order goes 1 day or so overdue, a button appears on the order page which you can click to cancel the order instantly.

You can also contact customer support to have an order cancelled sooner if the seller is not responding and it looks like they’re not working on your order at all.

In the future it might be better to choose gigs that have lots of reviews, so you know the seller can do their job.

Hi adsensewizard, thanks for your reply.

The seller I chose started in Jan 2020. He has a few reviews, all 5*. His average response time is (still?) 3 hrs. So I had a pretty positive impression of a small seller who delivers good work. Also, I’m looking for character drawings, so the art styles of the sellers are also important.

Sure, choosing a seller with more ratings would be safer, but I know from my own experience that everybody starts small and struggles to get orders. So I thought I’d give it a try. Maybe the combination “First time buyer” + “Small seller” isn’t the best idea. Also I don’t want to be the guy that expects updates every four hours. A simple “I’m on it” would have been enough to satisfy me.

[olyasr]

Did you contact this seller before ordering his gig? It is always better to contact sellers first, because sometimes people can log out, turn-off notifications and maybe this seller simply doesn’t know that someone ordered his/her services.
Contact CS team with this issue

[megingost]

Did you contact this seller before ordering his gig? It is always better to contact sellers first, because sometimes people can log out, turn-off notifications and maybe this seller simply doesn’t know that someone ordered his/her services.

Contact CS team with this issue

Well some may call me old-fashioned or even stubborn on this one, but: If I, as a seller, offer a gig for others to buy, I have to be able AND willing to do the task. (And check for new orders.)

I did not contact the seller before buying the gig, because I want exactly the service he offered without any changes or specials. Why should I ask upfront if it’s okay to buy the gig?

I can see how many orders they have in queue and may think otherwise if the seller already has 10 orders in queue, but that wasn’t the case.

So yeah, I am pretty sure that the seller doesn’t even know that I bought a gig, since he wasn’t even online since then. But does that really matter? I’m not getting what I paid for and I have to go through the hassle of getting my money back and looking for another seller.

[marinapomorac]

Well some may call me old-fashioned or even stubborn on this one, but: If I, as a seller, offer a gig for others to buy, I have to be able AND willing to do the task. (And check for new orders.)

I did not contact the seller before buying the gig, because I want exactly the service he offered without any changes or specials. Why should I ask upfront if it’s okay to buy the gig?

I can see how many orders they have in queue and may think otherwise if the seller already has 10 orders in queue, but that wasn’t the case.

So yeah, I am pretty sure that the seller doesn’t even know that I bought a gig, since he wasn’t even online since then. But does that really matter? I’m not getting what I paid for and I have to go through the hassle of getting my money back and looking for another seller.

Well some may call me old-fashioned or even stubborn on this one, but: If I, as a seller, offer a gig for others to buy, I have to be able AND willing to do the task.

1 out 100 times I had a buyer who bought without contacting me the right package, 99 times they bought wrong (lower package).

Plus I do not offer a refund at all. And for some GIGs zero revisions too.

But this all depends on a category.

One of the reasons why communicating with the buyer is recommended before the order is just this. If you make a request or order and he doesn’t respond in 8 hours then he is not going to respond at all.

We have people being struck by flood, earthquakes, loss of power to entire cities and region… and pandemic… a lot of things. Ordering without finding is a person even alive…

No, not in today’s situation.

[veniceart]

Hi adsensewizard, thanks for your reply.

The seller I chose started in Jan 2020. He has a few reviews, all 5*. His average response time is (still?) 3 hrs. So I had a pretty positive impression of a small seller who delivers good work. Also, I’m looking for character drawings, so the art styles of the sellers are also important.

Sure, choosing a seller with more ratings would be safer, but I know from my own experience that everybody starts small and struggles to get orders. So I thought I’d give it a try. Maybe the combination “First time buyer” + “Small seller” isn’t the best idea. Also I don’t want to be the guy that expects updates every four hours. A simple “I’m on it” would have been enough to satisfy me.

He has a few reviews, all 5*. His average response time is (still?) 3 hrs. So I had a pretty positive impression of a small seller who delivers good work.

i am really sorry to hear your bad experience!

yes time is definitely important for a buyer and a seller too.

in my mind, might be something bad happened to the seller. Bad things sometimes happen in our life and sometimes there are no reasons for that.

if you contact fiverr support i hope they will cancel the order quickly. they are the only one who can help you right now.

[lenasemenkova]

You’ll be able to cancel the order and leave an automatic 1* review within 12-24 hours of the order being late (I don’t remember exactly).

If the seller was last seen online a week ago and made no effort to rectify the damage their profile would take after this (late delivery + negative review) while having a pristine-looking profile otherwise, something outside of their control could happen in their life. For some reason, buyers never consider that.

If they appeared offline for a week for you, they were offline for the rest of the buyers in their queue as well. And will, quite possibly, get 10 1* reviews which is a blow that is hard to recover from.

Sorry for the time you’ve lost but the seller doesn’t appear to be doing this out of malice or lack of professionalism. And you’ll have 2 options for cancellation made available to you soon enough.

[imagination7413]

Art style is, indeed, a factor that is important when seeking a specific Seller, but there are Sellers who specialize in mimicry. If this order indeed fails, you might be able to hire a mimic artist, though it’s helpful to have a lot of samples for accuracy. (This does mean you’ll need to contact beforehand to make sure they can replicate.)

[megingost]

Well some may call me old-fashioned or even stubborn on this one, but: If I, as a seller, offer a gig for others to buy, I have to be able AND willing to do the task.

1 out 100 times I had a buyer who bought without contacting me the right package, 99 times they bought wrong (lower package).

Plus I do not offer a refund at all. And for some GIGs zero revisions too.

But this all depends on a category.

One of the reasons why communicating with the buyer is recommended before the order is just this. If you make a request or order and he doesn’t respond in 8 hours then he is not going to respond at all.

We have people being struck by flood, earthquakes, loss of power to entire cities and region… and pandemic… a lot of things. Ordering without finding is a person even alive…

No, not in today’s situation.

Hi, thanks for all your answers.

I feel the need to clarify that I don’t think that the seller is doing this on purpose, out of malice or simple trolling. If that was the case, I wouldn’t post this here but contact CS immediately.

In my initial post my complain was more about the Request System of fiverr. I can select a specific request just for “seller not responding” and that request get automatically withdrawn after two more days of no response, without any further information what to do next. That seems very odd to me.

1 out 100 times I had a buyer who bought without contacting me the right package, 99 times they bought wrong (lower package).

Well sure, my main job also includes a lot of communication with customers so I know the struggle. In this case I already bought the premium package. It also depends on the topic, if I need a full-body drawing with background, color and shades of a single character and the seller offers that exactly, I don’t see the need in contacting upfront. But it seems that it’s a common thing on fiverr to message someone before buying, so I’ll do that next time.

[zreine]

I am an artist and I really prefer when customers contact me first. I also offer my services outside of Fiverr and sometimes I have many orders at the same time even if my gig doesn’t say so. At least, when I’m contacted first I can warn the buyer about it and find a solution. Sometimes a Buyer may think I am the right illustrator for their project, but it may turn out that I don’t feel like I have the skills to offer the work quality they expect and I may decline the order because of that. There is many other reasons why the seller may not answer to you, but contacting the seller first would have probably prevented all of this. Just wanted to add support to what was previously said, but I think the answer you got so far are pretty good.

[looseink]

Sadly the Seller you picked is obviously not as active as many of the rest of us are.

Please don’t use this experience to form your overall opinion of Fiverr or the independent freelancers who use this platform for work.

If you do, you become just as unfair as you seem to feel the system we work with is.