Sick of the misrepresentation [ARCHIVED]

#1

I am getting really fed up with all the misrepresentation that goes on on FIverr. I really wish Fiverr would tighten up on this and do something about it. For example,

  1. People lying about which country they’re from. And don’t give me that, “Oh I accidentally chose Panama but Fiverr won’t let me change it” line. I have a seller who says she’s from the UK and her English is so bad we can barely work together.

  2. People lying about whether they can speak English. No, using Google translate is not speaking English. We all know English is a very peculiar, very difficult language. Don’t say you can speak English if you really can’t. This is a major pet peeve of mine. I’ve wasted so much time and money with sellers on this one.

  3. People who say they can do SEO work but don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Another thing that ticks me off. I ask you to do simple <title> and <meta> tags. I even complete half the rows on the spreadsheet for you. I give you URLs for the site, keywords, etc. And yet you STILL can’t figure it out. What this tells me is: you don’t really know SEO. So why are you selling an SEO gig???

  4. People who say they can do sales, but really only offer clickbank or other garbage traffic schemes. Sales is sales. Traffic is traffic. Don’t reply to my buyer request for a salesperson with a Clickbank, TrafficMonsoon or other garbage traffic generation scheme. Ugh!

  5. People on Fiverr from Ghana, who say that they can’t use Paypal because it’s banned in the country. I’m sorry to hear that, but that’s not my problem. No, I’m not signing up for Skrill or some other payment processor who’s gonna charge me $4.99 on a $5 withdrawal. If you don’t have Paypal in your country, then perhaps you shouldn’t be on Fiverr.

What are your pet peeves?

#2

They are not necessarily all lying about their countries. That seems to change at random for no known reason on my profile and has not shown my real country in a long time.

#3

I have recently used Fyverr for the first time…and have found 2 x Sellers misrepresented their expertise. I have paid for a PPT I will not be able to use due to such poor design from 1 seller, tried for improvements but then decided to just accept I chose the wrong person. Then a sales email from another - they can write great sales emails so they stated - again another lemon…this one issues with grammar, sentence structure (non English speaking?) and not a sales email at all.
My 3rd experience with a seller was much better…(no mis representation here) a Flyer design…no communication from this seller during the process, even when they asked me for information & I responded - seller did not confirm they had received my response to their query. other than that - a good experience.
Now on to my 4th seller…creating 2 x powerpoints - paid for gigs & that is when I discovered there is an English speaking issue - I discovered this only when offer was made with requirements attached and it was all in Spanish…
Still, this seller is very communicative…and I am hoping this is a better experience where I actually get what I paid for…professional service in the area seller claims is his area of expertise.
I basically…have chosen the wrong sellers to date (except for the Flyer seller)…and thus far have spent $375 on these projects…ouch!!
My fingers are crossed for seller number 4 to deliver on his claims, otherwise that is it for me on Fyverr…to costly with sellers overstating what they can actually do and delivering work I cannot use professionally in my business.

#4

I feel ya in that respect, I am both a seller on fiverr but I also purchase services for things I need or can’t or won’t do lol writing is not my strongest forte. I am more of visual creative person. I can relate to the experience, I have had someone not from fiverr, I tried to hire to do ghostwriting and got samples and everything and tried to initiate conversation but the person wouldn’t say more then 2 sentences… Your going to write 50,000 words but you can’t communicate with me with more then 20 words. I think overtime you learn to spot the signs but the journey through that learning is a very painful in terms of mental, emotional, and financial.

#5

I always fire off a message before ordering a gig. If for any reason, to see if communication will be an issue. If it is, I don’t order.

There are some fiverr glitches that are not the fault of the user. The country flag is one of them. I have had my flag change to another country after a Fiverr update and at the next update, it changed back to my country.

Some gig categories seem to be more genuine than others. For example there are a ton of Voice Over gigs that are legit – the same with Writing gigs. There are a few categories that seem to get slammed more than others. SEO and Logo gigs seem to get more than their share of complaints on the forum where I rarely see a Voice Over complaint.

Fiverr is growing faster than the Fiverr staff. As much as it may be needed, I doubt if the Flag issue will be a priority. Fiverr techs are too busy keeping up with their priority of expanding Fiverr with new features. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if Fiverr slowed down a bit and just worked on the number of bugs that have been around for sometime.

#6

Thanks palabara…I have hired Fyverr gigs to do things I felt were not my forte - seems they were my forte after all, lol ,as my stuff ( except the flyer gig) was more professionally written and presented. I think it is quicker (and cheaper) for me to keep doing my own stuff in future…my Fyverr experience has not been great thus far…a waste of time and money actually ( again, except the flyer gig…I will be able to use it which is great - much better than my old design)…so I am very grateful for that.

#7

If Fiverr would actually have a better moderation on who is selling and what are they selling, and some basic skill test, those all problems would be avoid.

#8

Can you help? I have decided to see if I can cancel an order I received 3 days ago…I have currently asked the seller to send me through a Mutual cancellation order - if he doesn’t do so - what do I do from there.
Originally…I did not want to hurt his feelings and thought I would just have to suck it up - but, now having another seller re doing the 1st sellers work due to it being unusable has put me out of pocket…I would really value some help here. Thank you!

#9

Better Moderation: Yes
Basic Skill Test: No

I’ve heard the skill test idea in another thread and a lot of users are against it for various reasons.

It would be nice if searching through gigs were more simplified than complex. It would also be grand if gigs on the front page were cycled through more often as opposed to showing the same/similar gigs over and over.

#10

Mutual cancellations have to be agreed upon by both parties. If Seller refuses contact Customer Support and see if they’re able to assist.

#11

Thanks topaz_muse - how long should I wait for the seller to respond to my request today for a mutual cancellation?

#12

Well people can be against skill tests only if they have no skills…

#13

I think it is 3 days if you request cancellation or buyer, but for mutual after you both agree it is immediate.

#14

Thanks…no response from my seller as yet…have requested cancellation through Customer Support…waiting to hear from them also.

#15

I’m against skill tests because all of the skill tests I’ve taken aren’t even relevant to what I’m doing. I’m not the only one who feels this way either.

#16

Yeah, I don’t buy it. When almost every seller I choose has a flag that says, “US” or “Canada” or “UK”, and a name like “AhmedAli” and then you start chatting with them and they can’t even formulate a sentence with a noun and a verb or you send them a document and they can’t read it, this is more than just a glitch. It’s probably people using some sort of IP address anonymizer that is saying they’re in one location when they aren’t.

And don’t get me started on all the people in Africa, India, or Pakistan using pictures of blond haired, blue eyed women as their profile photos.

There’s a problem here with misrepresentation. And while there may be a minority of cases where it is a true Fiverr glitch, my experience is that isn’t true in the majority of cases. My flag has always been the same, every since I joined Fiverr in 2012, four years ago. It has never changed. I’ve never had any confusion from any buyer.

Yours probably is a genuine glitch. But I don’t think it is in most cases. I realize it’s unpopular to be from certain countries nowadays, we’ll just leave it at that. I think what they’re doing is taking an IP address cloaker, hiding their true location, choosing a different flag, and then getting hung up in the Fiverr program that detects this when they change their IP address. That’s my guess.

#17

When almost every seller I choose has a flag that says, “US” or “Canada” or “UK”, and a name like “AhmedAli” and then you start chatting with them and they can’t even formulate a sentence with a noun and a verb or you send them a document and they can’t read it, this is more than just a glitch. It’s probably people using some sort of IP address anonymizer that is saying they’re in one location when they aren’t.

And don’t get me started on all the people in Africa, India, or Pakistan using pictures of blond haired, blue eyed women as their profile photos.

There’s a problem here with misrepresentation. And while there may be a minority of cases where it is a true Fiverr glitch, my experience is that isn’t true in the majority of cases. My flag has always been the same, every since I joined Fiverr in 2012, four years ago. It has never changed. I’ve never had any confusion from any buyer.

There are probably genuine flag glitches. But I don’t think it is in most cases. I realize it’s unpopular to be from certain countries nowadays, we’ll just leave it at that. I think what they’re doing is taking an IP address cloaker, hiding their true location, choosing a different flag, and then getting hung up in the Fiverr program that detects this when they change their IP address. That’s my guess.

#18

I dunno I am man, like I know I took on other site skill test on graphic design, questions were like pretty much way different then stuffs I am doing, but I passed it in top 20%… so even when skill test is not so much relevant to its content on work you do, it is still showing your basic knowledge in your field of work. And like I said, I think when it comes to testing anything only people who lack knowledge/skills etc are against it…

Now, you admit it or not…would you rather hire for example content writer (English), if person has on profile note how he passed English language test some category (pick from A2 to C1), or the one who didn t even try to do test? It is showing not only skills, effort one seller is willing to put into selling himself.

#19

I have just had 3 articles written by 3 different sellers. 2 of whom have 5 Star ratings well into the 100’s. One of these HIGHLY RATED sellers has sent me an article that has been plaguerised from various sources around the web, including the BBC. Entire sentences have just been copied and pasted and not even spun or re written.

The other two articles, one sold to me by a seller with a 5 star rating and over 600 reviews are both terrible and do not read well at all. Both sellers claim to be Native English speakers, but I very much doubt it!

Now, I am not interested in a refund, I would rather leave an honest review for other buyers to read. So that is what I did. All three sellers begged me to take a refund so that their rating isn’t affected. This to me is a deep flaw with the ratings system. If a buyer can just keep refunding when they produce poor work, they can paint themselves an image of the perfect seller, when in actual fact, they are far from it.

#20

@petrosianii I think my flag never changed. And yeah people are using proxies and VPNs to hide their real identity, then after some time they have problems with withdrawing money and etc…so it hunts them back. Now, I will never understand fake images, it is not like this is a chatsite and people just wanna troll, it is selling-buying platform and I honestly doubt anyone gets more sales based on profile picture. There was even a seller with Miley cyrus picture, Leonardo Dicaprio, Brad Pitt etc… I can tell them all, blond chicks don t get more sales, what gets more sales is portfolio, repeated costumers and actually being good in what you are doing.

@seaniselectric you have a good point, when review is removed we have no idea that some other people had bad experience with that seller as well. Now as a seller I can tell you, I got bad reviews, like 2 or 3, and didn t beg for them to be removed. In my case I had after delivered work (without watermark) and blah blah buyer out of bloom requesting cancellation and treating with bad review, I was just like sure dude, I wont cancel, you give me the worst review ever and don t forget to attach image of my work with it. Sellers which knows they actually do horrible job are the ones which are trying so hard just to keep good reviews and hopping to scam as much as possible buyers. When you are confident with what you do, you don t mind bad review, because lets be honest (at least in my field, I do design), not everyone can like everything, and just a basic of human nature; can t everyone work with everyone, sometimes two people just don t get along. And in your case I think you are pretty cool for leaving a review instead of asking for a refund.

^due to all this above, you guys still think basic skill tests on fiverr would be bad thing to do? Like I said, if seller can t pass English language skill test, they shouldn t have gig with writing on English… and a lot of this bad experiences for buyers would be avoid, and instead of buyers being angry and disappointed and eventually stop using platform, we would have more happy and satisfied buyers, more professional sellers and on the end better references for future buyers…It is all about selling-buying. If buyers leave, to who we will sell, and how will platform make money?
quality > quantity on end results with quality quantity.