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Sick and tired of Customer Support - I quit!


print_it

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I am sick and tired of the so called “Customer Support” not even assessing my submitted tickets but instead replying with a standardized message time after time. Honestly, really Fiverr, REALLY?



You know guys, I do love graphic design, I do love my work, I do love happy, polite and humble customers. I’ve been a member for a month, I’ve had over 300 orders since I joined and yes, I am well aware of that I am working for peanuts here, but still, I am passionate about what I do.



HOWEVER, there’s a line. I love my work, I am passionate, I love my customers, but I will NOT be bullied!



When people come and bash me, swear, abuse me, and even litterally threaten me with bad reviews unless they receive free extras because they just don’t want to pay that extra ten dollars, --> “OR ELSE I WILL LEAVE YOU A NEGATIVE FEEDBACK AND YOU WILL LOSE SALES ON FIVERR THERE SI NOTHIGN YOU CAN DO ABT IT” - that’s just sad, sad, sad. But it doesn’t stop here, what makes me hurl is when I provide screencaps of these conversations, write a lenghtly and well formulated message explaining this to Customer Service upon which they do NOTHING but send me automated replies over and over again. They ask us sellers to remain professional towards all our buyers. If we were to send automated replied to our buyers - I don’t think Fiverr would exist, our buyers would go insane!



Let me present you with real life scenario.


  • Oct 17, 1 PM - A buyer places his order with me.
  • Oct 17, 2 PM - I delivered the order after mere one hour. I also inform the buyer of that I am based in Sweden in a different time zone.
  • Oct 17, 6 PM - The buyer marks the order as completed, thanks me, and gives me a “thumbs up”.
  • Oct 17, 11 PM - The buyer changes his mind and sends me a message asking for a modification (why he does this after he already checked order as completed and rate my service with a thumbs up - is a mystery to me, but I guess we all can have second thoughts and I do not mind revision his order even though I do not even have to do this). October 17, 11 PM and I am sound asleep, being based in Sweden I guess the buyer who’s in USA is growing impatient with me, because six hours later, around October 18, 6 AM, I wake up, turn my computer on and I see that the buyer is pissed off with me, swears at me, and altered his “thumbs up” to a “thumbs down” saying I suck at communicating and that I did not respons.



    Six hours. Come on … Really?! Seriously?! Has he ever heard of time zones?!



    So I screencap the converastion and send it off to customer support as I feel this review is unjust. Before doing this, naturally, I try to communicate with the buyer in a professional and polite manner, but he is furious. Why is he furious? Because he as the middleman he is, being signed up on Odesk and Fiverr simultaneously, buying a flyer here from me on Fiverr for $5 and selling it on Odesk for $500 pretending to be the artist himself, has a mad customer on Odesk wondering why the adjustments have not been done on his flyer.



    Anyways … as I was saying, I send this off to Fiverr and I get an autmated message back that thanks me for my message, reminding me of that the feedback is an essential part of the Fiverr rating system and all that jazz, adn then they say that "except for justified and exceptional circumstances which include direct violations of our terms of service, will be removed only with buyer’s consent. Repeated requests for unilateral removal of feedbacks may indicate a problem with a particular gig or with the communications with that seller’s buyers."



    Honestly, I got like five messages, identical to eachother, just like this above. Did they even read through my message and the screencaps I provided? I feel BULLIED.



    Then we have this slightly other scenario which you will laugh at cause it’s so RIDICULOUS it couldbe on candid camera. I delivered a flyer and the buyer then asks me for the PSD, upon which I kindly ask him to see my Gig Extras; the PSD is not included for free, but he can purchase it for an extra fiverr. That makes him really upset and he calls me retarded ro stupid (I dont remember the exact words) and threatens to leave a bad review which will affect my sales negatively, unless he received the psd for free. I have attached the message so that you can see for yourselves.



    So please dear colleagues and customers; is it okay for Cusomter Service to behave this way? I’ve been selling my graphics here on Fiverr for a month and I’ve already delivered 300 orders and I have 175 “thumbs up” versus 5 thumbs down (and all of those thumbs down are idiotic, unjust and … well … just see the screencap!)



    I’m sick of being bullied this way! Just because I’m on fiverr doesn’t mean I’m a homeless ■■■■ working for free.
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Hi



I totally agreed to you on this statement. We are bullied on fiverr by the buyers with the pressure of giving harsh negative feedback. When you turn the light on the case by customer support then they will just send the same automated message.



"Feedback cannot be removed without the buyer consent"



I think they should delete the drop down option of choosing to review the feedback since they never turned the feedback in sellers favor. They will not even see your text.



My rating is currently 94% because of which i am not able to make offers and they say get more positive reviews who can make them understand if i can’t offer the new requests then how could i make new offer.



Fiverr is loosing its position in freelancing market since they are getting it very difficult here to earn money for a newbie


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@print_it: I feel your pain. Trust me, I do. My one negative feedback was such total bs. I delivered exactly what my gig was promised and the buyer didn’t think so. I asked exactly what needs to be fixed, but he wouldn’t tell me. I even offered a full refund, even though i didn’t feel it was justified. He refused it because he wanted to give me a negative feedback and nothing was going to change his mind. He even started threatening me, telling me he was going to get all of his friends to purchase my gig so they can leave negative reviews. LoL he even threatened to call the FBI on me and cursed at me like no other. I googled his info and found him abusing someone exactly like he was doing to me on amazon after they left him a negative review about his book.



I thought for sure CS would handle the situation accordingly as I see people on here saying that you cannot get negative feedback for personal taste… (Which I think is horse crap because if that was the case, there wouldn’t be this many upset sellers). I provided clear proof of what had happened, and even showed them their own TOS and to no surprise, i kept getting generic responses and never even answered my questions to why it was allowed to stay. Finally they just stopped responding.



Long story short… I’ve learned to not care about the feedback and my time on here has been less stressful as a result.



Good luck!!

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Guest matt_garry

I feel like a policy on your gig should be mandatory like as you set it up a gig it will give you a separate section that has all the legal stuff about the max # of revisions how you do not except refunds what justifies a negative all that stuff then cs would not have to deal with 10,000 every hour. if we could simply set are own rules then the jerks who are trying to get free work wont even order because they have read the policy and know they cant rip you off

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Reply to @matt_garry: Yeah I’ve tried to enter a very strict policy in my gig description but guess what? We are only entitled to X amount or characters so I couldn’t even fit my “terms of services” in there. Instead I always send it to my buyers initially, so that they are completely aware of what is included and what is not included - HOWEVER, the “bullies” actually do not consist of people that misunderstand your Gig Description. It consist of people who are well aware of how much a seller depends on his or her rating, so they start to systematically play dirty. Not only do they play dirty, but they go above and beyond to make sure they get the product or service free of charge by literally threatening the seller with a negative review unless they get a refund. This, of course, they do after the final delivery – that way, they can keep the product, not having payed a dime for it.



Don’t believe me? I have numerous of samples of this behaviour and all I need to do is to take a few screencaps and make them go live - unfortunately we are not allowed to do that without censoring who the buyer is, which then serves no purpose, cause my intention is to warn other sellers of these buyers, but I can’t because of the policy. So the only thing I can do is actually whine about it and that won’t get me anywhere, it’s just a waste of time, and that’s why all sellers just keep their mouth shut.

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Reply to @madmoo: Have you ever had something similar happened to you and how do you tackle the issue?



I wrote a reply, I was pretty pissed off, and asked them why they sent me five automated responses and asked them to review the case again, stating that I would continue to bother them (well, I didn’t use the word “bother”) until a human and not a bot answered my support ticket. Then I informed them on that I’d post their answer of these forums.



For example, I had this one buyer that was sent a watermarked version of the flyer and I asked him to confirm he liked it upon which he would be given the original file. He then asked for the full size, non watermarked image, and said he approved of the design. I shortly afterwards sent him the original file, upon he requested a cancelation stating he did not like it and that he wanted his money back. Seriously?



Sometimes it is very clear that the buyer has no intention of purchasing the product - case may be that the buyer approves of the samples, awaits the original, and once having being delivered the high quality file, demands a cancellation - all in the name of free products. At the same time, he/she is using your product on his/her website. Other times, it is not as clear. But you learn to spot these scammers, too bad CS won’t assist. I’m seriously already looking at other alternative freelance sites. I did a quick search at Google and people are laughing at us at Fiverr doing work for $5 not even being guaranteed we will get payed.



You have tons of people from other freelance sites coming on Fiverr, ordering a product for $5, then selling it for ten times the price on the other freelance site. People have no respect, they see us working on Fiverr for peanuts and think that “hey they work for five dollars, they don’t mind working for free, just request a refund”.



Im not making this up. I could gladly link you all the sites and forums where people have said this about Fiverr sellers and I’m sorry to say but I can’t really blame them because that’s the image we project. We have to start taking actions against bullies and not accepting to work for free.

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I have had this happen. I have one negative review out of hundreds, and I feel that the buyer literally just purchased my gig to negatively review it. I have heard of that happening, but here’s why I think what I think.



The order was for an article about some gadget. I researched carefully, wrote about the product, and even provided more words than I usually do. Very quickly after I submit, I have a negative review that says simple “I dont love this gig!!”. Uh, what? I contact the buyer, as I always do modifications or mutual cancels if I truly cannot help them. The buyer doesn’t respond to anything.



Feeling this unjust, I contact support who gives me the same issue they did you. They said they absolutely will not remove feedback unless the buyer agrees. That means they’re useless. Unfortunately, buyers know this and are sabotaging and abusing others. Customer support doesn’t exist here at Fiverr.

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Reply to @friendly_person:



I am happy to hear I am not alone even though I am sad to hear it’s happening to you too. What really bothers me is the automated message “Feedback cannot be removed without the buyer consent” - I don’t think they even read our messages, which really upsets me because I can spend up to one hour collecting all previous history with the buyer to screencap it and send it to support and have them review it. To then just receive an automated message feels like a slap in the face.



I agree that it’s very difficult to be seen as a newbie - your only chance is by being listed highest in the searches which you do by either having excellent feedback or being labeled as an Express Gig.

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Reply to @est1990: That sounds insane! Not sure if this is allowed but if it is, do you mind inboxing me with the name of the person so I can stay away from him/her? I do not want to make business with anybody like that.



I know it says in Fiverrs’ ToS that personal taste is not is not valid reason for cancellation or negative feedback but I agree with you - Fiverr doesn’t even seem to be following their own policies. I’m so sorry to hear about your experience - it seems like a horrid one and I wouldn’t believed it if you had told me three weeks ago.



This is really upsetting … Don’t they see that it’s the talented sellers that are making them the money? And all the talented sellers that have the tiniest amount of self respect are turning to other freelance sites.



Way to go, generic responses!

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Reply to @madmoo: Thank you so much for listening to the rants.



I do understand CS are busy and all that jazz HOWEVER, if they are so busy resulting in that they can’t even keep up with their own policies then they shouldn’t offer the service (ie offering CS for a seller that feels he’s been given an unjust review) - they should remove it all together. At least then the seller would be aware of that there’s absolutely no guarantee he will get his money after completing the gigs.



What I am trying to say is if I had known how easy it is to have your revenue just taken away when I first started I would NEVER have offered flyers and logotypes. I’d gone for something much more easier and less time consuming - then I wouldn’t care if I had to refund. Now, I spend up to one hour on flyers (I always over deliver, just look at my portfolio).



I charge 2000 SEK (~$400) for a flyer here at the web bureau in Sweden, and once I have delivered a flyer of the same quality and standard for $20 here on Fiverr, I do not want to refund.



If only I had known, I’d instead had set up gigs such as “I’ll send you a pic of my bum with your name written on it” or I’ll send you a ten sexy pics of me in my bikini and then just re-used the same ten pictures over and over again. I bet that’d get me ten times the revenue I am receiving now and I would spend ten times less time - and in addition I wouldn’t care if I had to refund because after all the work took me 30 seconds.



Oh well I guess what I’m trying to say is that every body who offer QUALITY services will LEAVE Fiverr and there will only be BS services left.


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divethenight said: Unfortunately, buyers know this and are sabotaging and abusing others.

 

Yes, you're right. Many buyers are now aware of this and put it into a system to get free products. The problem with refunding to avoid negative feedback - is that you literally

condition and train buyers to demand refunds.

 

This happens ALL the time. Don't believe me? Leave a piece of negative feedback on a popular gig and just await the seconds it takes until the seller tries to come to an "agreement" which probably involves free additional work or refunds.

 

I never. ever. never refund. So buyers, if you come across this thread - don't even try to bully me.

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@print_it The only thing I would suggest here besides the good advice other people have given is this.



If people start making outrageous demands or threats in any way, shape, or form, make it very clear to them that your work is publicly visible for everyone to see in your portfolio the moment feedback is left and as soon as they leave feedback other buyers will immediately be able to see what the feedback is for and be able to make their own judgement.



If someone does leave what you consider to be malicious feedback you can also point buyers to your portfolio in the feedback so they can see the quality of the work you have done. This obviously does not offset the fact that someone has left undesirable feedback but it can alleviate the damage it can cause.

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I am attaching one of the recent threat images of one of the buyer [fragglesrock].Please sellers never take her order since she will thrash your rating



Sheriff’s note: Please do NOT call out sellers or buyers on the forum. This screenshot (and therefore also comment, since we can’t separate the two) may need to be removed.

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print_it said: What I am trying to say is if I had known how easy it is to have your revenue just taken away when I first started I would NEVER have offered flyers and logotypes. I'd gone for something much more easier and less time consuming

 

Exactly why I don't offer more of my design services or any of my web design services on here.... It's not worth all the work and time you have to deal with which causes more stress than need be.

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It should go without saying that you need to pick a talent that nets you a nice ‘hourly’. It’s fine to offer nicer gigs to start, but if you want to make any decent income, you need to choose something you can do quickly. Otherwise, you’re looking a 2$/hour incomes that’s not worth anybody’s time.

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