I’ll be honest, I always liked the concept behind Fiverr.com.
Just a few clicks and a client can place an order with a freelancer based on a specific set of deliverables.
Easy peasy, right?
Sure, but it comes at a cost. A big one.
This is one the few freelance platforms where buyers are given free reign to abuse, threaten and outright blackmail sellers any way they like.
Why? Because Fiverr turn a blind eye to it.
In this post, I want to share a recent bad experience as a seller on Fiverr, and why I decided to give up on the platform altogether.
UPDATE: I’m pleased to say, after several years of putting up with Fiverr’s platform and their incompetent staff, my girlfriend has finally launched her own graphic design service, BlankPalette.
How A Regular Order Quickly Turned Into A Hostage Situation
While I’ve been using Fiverr myself (on and off) for a while, this particular experience relates to my girlfriend’s account, not my own.
(I’ve been advising her on building up a reputable account, and how to go above and beyond with every last order. Everything stated is her doing, I’m just an observer.)
In this case, she had just gotten another $5 order on her logo gig, which seemed to be like any other… or so we thought.
The order was fulfilled in good time, and my girlfriend had even included a bonus logo concept as well as the source file (which is usually part of the more expensive package).
The client “loved” one of the concepts and so we proceeded to send her the appropriates file sizes, as stated in the gig description.
Soon after, things got a little weird.
The client came back asking for a social media kit to go with the logo, something that is clearly not offered as part of her gig.
Against my advice, my girlfriend decided to deliver the additional work, despite not getting paid any extra for it.
After that, the client responded with even more demands and some changes to the social media files.
At this point, she agreed enough was enough.
Despite every effort to please this person, they were clearly overstepping their boundaries here.
So, she sent the client a polite message:
The next reply was the nail in the coffin.
This is when the client went from simply overstepping boundaries to unquestionable blackmail. (The equivalent of taking my girlfriend’s Fiverr reputation hostage.)
F*cking disgusting.
While she took some time to ponder a response and reach out to Fiverr support for assistance, the client did eventually go ahead and leave a 1 star review.
Presumably this was to show her he/she wasn’t kidding.
Soon after, while still waiting on Fiverr’s response to the support query, the client paid an extra $10 for the social media kit.
Of course, the payment was accompanied by yet another threat.
At this point, all I wanted to do was go all Liam Neeson and hunt this person down so I could repeatedly punch them in the face.
(Seriously, I would have paid good money for the privilege.)
But, at the time, I still had hope that Fiverr support would step in and rescue my girlfriend from this PITA client.
Enter The *Almighty* Fiverr Support Team
When the response came back from Fiverr support, they told her they couldn’t force the buyer to accept the order.
Okay, that’s fair enough. (Even though the buyer already accepted it, technically.)
They also suggested drawing up a list for the buyer to show the work has been completed in accordance to the gig requirements.
Honestly, this reply just didn’t cut the mustard.
My girlfriend communicated in her initial email that the client was trying to extort her for free work outside the agreed terms, by leaving a negative review if she didn’t comply.
Of course, it wasn’t really about the work, it was about seeking protection from an abusive client who was blatantly pushing their luck.
Their reply didn’t give either of us any confidence that Fiverr really understood that, and even at this stage we felt like they didn’t want to get involved.
Here was her reply to Fiverr:
At the same time, she also responded to the buyers latest threat, explaining that she would not continue to work with them unless the feedback was changed/removed.
(Again, this is feedback that was clearly and intentionally left to bully her into providing work outside of the agreed terms.)
A fair request by anyones standards, right?
Well, apparently not.
Rather than acknowledge what the buyer had done up until this point, Fiverr immediately turned the tables on my girlfriend.
Turns out, she was the one breaking all the rules.
Because she had asked the client to change their feedback, she was no longer entitled to any help from Fiverr support.
You can imagine how we both felt reading this.
Everything that the buyer had said and done prior to her last message was now being swept under the rug — as if never happened at all.
Fiverr essentially chose to support a manipulative bully, leaving my girlfriend with a permanent stain on an account she’d worked so hard to build up.
Case closed.
What a f*cking joke.
Think This Was Just A One-Off? Think Again.
If everything that happened wasn’t upsetting enough, it’s knowing that this person is still running rampant on Fiverr, preying on defensless sellers without a shred of repercussion.
And believe me, there are plenty of buyers doing exactly this on Fiverr, knowing they can and will get away with it.
How do I know?
Well, as all of this was happening, I did some research to see if any other sellers went through a similar ordeal with a buyer.
Very quickly, I found a number of almost identical cases on the Fiverr forum dated years back. (that’s right, years.)
Like this one:
And this…
And this…
I could go on, but I won’t.
This is clearly something that’s been going on for a long time and it all stems from giving buyers too much power over sellers.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Fiverr, it’s that clients are ALWAYS more valued than freelancers.
Doesn’t matter how much time you put into a project, or how hard you worked on it, or even how well you handled communication during a dispute, when it really comes down to it…
…freelancers have little to no protection.
Even when it’s a clear cut case in your favour, there’s still every chance the client will come out on top. All it takes it one tiny thing you “did wrong” according to their terms of service and EVERYTHING else is disregarded
The worst part?
Looking at the evidence, it’s obvious to me that Fiverr is well aware of what’s going on, yet is still willing to sit back and let it happen.
Tut, tut.
A Final Message To Fiverr…
If you’re a decision maker at Fiverr and you’re reading this, I implore you to seriously reconsider your current support procedures for freelancers.
It’s not right that someone can put all that time and effort into building up an account and over-delivering at every possible opportunity, only to be shot down by the very people you rely on to protect you.
Look, I don’t want to abandon Fiverr.
I don’t want to be telling people to avoid your platform.
But after everything that has happened, you haven’t left me any choice.
Until something is done to protect freelancers from this kind of abuse, I will continue to spread this post and do whatever I can to prevent others from falling victim to your one-sided support team.
The second you actually do something about it and give freelancers a way to fight back, I’ll be more than happy to update the post.
Hello,
Thank you for the post, I felt heard!
I am a bilingual translator. I am not active on Fiverr, but I have just had a similarly awful experience with Peopleperhour. It wasn’t the first nasty experience with their customer-non-service and bullies/clients.
I am amazed by the shortsightedness and greed of the site hosts. What makes these platforms successful are the sellers, not the buyers. Honest, hardworking sellers who provide quality work and services are penalized, vetted with vengeance, but sellers measures are lax and sloppy.
I am stumped by negative reviews on all the freelance platforms. It makes you wonder where you can get fair work as a freelancer. Where to go next?
Bonnie
Thank you Lewis,I agree.Fiverr support sucks.They don’t care sellers.They have brutal polices for sellers only.
Hi, thanks for alerting people on this. I was thinking of doing freelancing work as an editor on Fiverr, but I think there’ll be many PITAs over there. Not worth my time.
Getting a refund back to a payment card is designed to be difficult. Erg suspect practices over there at fiverr
I’m thinking of starting a gig on Fiverr. But after reading this I highly doubt that it will be successful.
Can anyone suggest a better platform with a good support team.
I can add that the same seller/buyer disparity exists on eBay too. I’ve been an eBay member for 17 years and my experience of the site as a buyer was overwhelmingly positive, so I didn’t think twice about selling a couple of items on there just before Christmas. HUGE MISTAKE. Despite two of my buyers being clearly in the wrong *one with written evidence saying that the items broke in their possession* eBay still found in their favour and even charged me for the cost of them returning items to me. It cost me £20 and I was left with a broken item that I obviously couldn’t then resell (plus the email stating that it worked when they received it – kicker).
As a seller it was almost impossible to get hold of eBay customer services and when I finally did, they told me that according to them an individual person (not even a shop or professional seller) should be able to guarantee an item against misuse by the buyer for 30 days after purchase. 30 DAYS.
What frustrated me was that I had written in my listings that I don’t accept returns. It cut no ice – there is an eBay buyer protection guarantee that overrides the seller’s choices. Buyers can lie about the condition of the item (and get really nasty about their accusations) and get a refund, and eBay can garnish the seller’s PayPal account for the money, plus charge the seller for the return! (An eBay employee told me that they always ask the buyer to return the item so that the seller can inspect it – fair enough – what they didn’t tell me was that they then do not listen to anything the seller says subsequent to that.)
As a buyer you have complete protection and a more-or-less iron-clad return policy. As a seller… well you’re on your own.
I have had the same experience with Ebay. For 6 years I always had a rating of 99 percent plus until a few customers out of country decided to file a complaint that they did not get their product on time. One of them I refunded the money to and the product finally arrived, not my fault. The other two, I shipped replacement product to, as they claimed they had not received the product. It was plainly explained on my product pages that if the item is shipped via post, I can only track it until it leaves the U.S., no further. I have no idea if they got the first item or not, and they absolutely ripped me in the dispute. It was a slow time of year and it affected my feedback enough that Ebay blocked me and the appeal process is a joke. Yes, I am still angry about this, speaking with an Ebay rep, saying for 6 years I had 99 and 100 percent ratings and then three people rip me off for free product. But it was, well too bad that is our policy. Good bye!
Fiverr is something which is only good for buying. If you are selling your services, get a website. Promote your website instead of relying on Fiverr. After 1-2 Years you will realise how much time you wasted on Fiverr sucking support.
Freelancers have been exploited on such websites with fear of negative reviews.
Great blog. Totally agree. I’m a seller who’s always had 5.0 marks for 2 yrs straight on fiverr, but one buyer who claimed to be satisfied and happy with a gig that I revised 3 times for her (well beyond the limit) left me a 3.7 for no undisclosed reason and now my ranking have suffered severely. Not to mention that their so called app wasn’t Sending me notifications as promised or programmed and I missed several inbox messages. They claim to be compatible with iPhone. Yeaa-no. I’m looking for alternatives ASAP for online work.
Any luck with alternatives for freelancers?
I had a similar experience with UpWork (…more like “Up Yours”) except I was the buyer. Seller accepts project based on my specifications. Seller completes all design pages that were to be used for an X-Cart integration. Seller is paid in stages. Final stage ~ Seller tells me that the design cannot be integrated into X-Cart even though my project details indicated the specific integration. A huge WTF on my end. I placed into dispute with Citibank but they were useless (I closed all my Citibank accounts…
F them)…UpWork was equally useless. I got to the point where the all the stress landed me in the hospital for respiratory distress. My best advice is to grow your business slow and steady through channels outside of these companies….especially UpWork. Your talents are worth more than $5.
Thank you for your post. I’d like to add Fiverr both ‘customer service’ and their ever changing & faulty algorithms punish & penalize good people w/ out recourse
When one contacts Fiverr for resolution, Fiverr ‘customer service’ simply cuts & pastes from their computer generated answers to ‘key words’, never actually reading emails or complaints & never, no matter how many attempts you make, resolving issues. It is a literal nightmare of horrible constructed algorithms & seemingly mindless ‘customer service’ bots run amuck
God help anyone venturing in as you will be eaten alive & treated like dirt
Sandra, I know exactly what you mean with the ‘copy paste’ templates. It grinds my gears. I really hope I can update this review to reflect a positive change one day, but I can’t see it happening any time soon.
As a seller they aren’t very helpful either. The CS is subpar. Lack of phone number and real time communication make problems drag out for days.
I paid an invoice from my seller and the system hit my multiple times to the tune of $2000 USD. Drained my account. Within a 2 hour period of time I only got 2 replies fro the Team leader…THE TEAM LEADER. all she did was tell me she needed the transaction IDS and order number . Ok. only the vendor hadn’t been paid and there are no numbers until then.
It’s ridiculous. Don’t use them. They are completely dysfunctional.
Wow… that’s just… wow.
I appreciate you taking the time to let us know. Nothing will change until they get enough bad press. Such a shame considering how much potential this platform has.
Seriously? All this because of one one star review? Btw, your website is just annoying with all the pop ups and offers.
Thank you… Thank you so much for this! I have been extremely depressed since yesterday over my first bad experience with a fiverr buyer.
This buyer had essentially ordered a gig that required me to do an unreasonable amount of work in a short period of time. I was creating a website for her but I first had to design a mock up design of the website, create a bootstrap website from the mock up and then make a wordpress website in 5 days time. Yeah I know, it doesn’t sound so bad. But here is where its really funny… The seller said they would send the images I required to create the website… They did not send anything. They disappeared from fiverr for several days and only appeared online to give an “okay” reply. Well being a seller hell-bent on trying to deliver good work on time, I created a mock up using some images I took time to research, created a bootstrap file and started making the wordpress website. At the time of delivery I sent them the mock up and bootstrap files and asked them for where I would finally integrate the wordpress website. They gave me a domain name… not a host. Almost like I had to purchase a hosting plan for them so that I can deliver their work. After explaining to them tirelessly the things I needed inorder to completely finish the work they called me a scammer. I asked customer support to cancel the order and refund the buyer as I had just hit rock bottom after the buyer went ahead and left a 1 star bad review. Yeah I know right, five days with about 16 hours spent a day to complete a job, only to be called a scammer, you get a tarnishing bad review and the support is happy to refund the buyer who won’t remove their bad review. What a life.
I’m sorry to hear about your experience. Nobody deserves that.
I can only hope that Fiverr customer care find this review (and people like you in the comments) and actually do something about it. The problem is, too many Fiverr sellers just roll over and take it rather than make their story known.
So I appreciate you taking the time to comment, because people really do need to know how badly Fiverr treat their sellers.
I just got banned and blocked. No free speech, I joined fiverr in 2010, took me years and hard work to get to top rated seller, the they pull your most profitable gigs without explanation and put you back where you belong.
Not a revenye and seller/buyer-focused system, fiverr !!!
I’m really sorry to hear that, Roger.
Maybe turn your attention to cold email outreach. This is something I’ve started to play with lately and I’m seeing positive results.
Maybe next time offer 2 price points the first and an all inclusive price where the transaction is cancelled within 24 to 48 hours of the required parts not being supplied. This allows you to move on to another one. And include the sentence where the buyer agrees to be responsible for the cancellation if they failed to provide you with the parts in time.
Why are there so many narcissistic Sellers on Fiverr? I’ve used Fiverr on and off for years now and every time I decide to use Fiverr for a small web development project, I screen several Sellers and even after careful screening and filtering out the most obvious idiots, 7 out of 10 times the web developer I choose turns out to be insane. Either he straight up lied about being able to do the tasks and then blames me for it or he does the tasks so poorly you have to wonder if the Seller was high when he coded it. And if you tell Fiverr Support that the Seller is a complete idiot, Fiverr Support pastes their cancelation guidlines that you can’t cancel just because you don’t like their work. Really? So I paid the Seller to do bad work and in some cases no work at all? I didn’t realize Fiverr was a charity for narcissistic idiots Sellers.
I was scammed on Fiverr for 127,68 euro by developerstate . I ask for a 3D logo and get back a 2D drawing that looks like made by a child.
He take a free clip-art and chanced a little bid, this is not designing, this is stealing.
I give this guy more input and a lot of examples how I want the 3D logo look like.
The response was worse then before.
I is a totally waste of time, stay away from it.
Yep, I feel your pain. This is something Fiverr need to start paying attention to if they want to keep their position in the market.
Hi Lewis, thanks for the article. It is quite an eye opener. I’m really curious to hear what Fiverr reply will be.
Thanks Jack. I’m curious if I’ll ever get a reply to be honest. I did email them the link and tweet their CEO, but nothing yet.
Thank you for this review. I’m looking for a freelancing site, but I definitely won’t try Fiverr.
Thanks Debbie! — I recommend Upwork!
Sorry to read of your experience with fiverr customer care. Please understand that a 3 year old could do more than those stupid uneducated An Idiot Abroad type customer service people. They dont value freelancers you only make them money. They break there own T&C that often i am not surprised those idiots replying as so called customer care dont care. Report your cause to visa or MasterCard, then you see the top scammer owners of fiverr working. Stay as far away from fiverr.com as you can. in saying that there is a lot of real and genuine freelancers on the site . but with the most stupid pigs ever in customer care, scammer owners and the biggest load of scammers going fiverr is the new style of fraud.
I know exactly how you feel, trust me.
Fortunately, in this case, a refund wasn’t offered to the seller since feedback was already left. It wasn’t in my girlfriends interest to refund the money after that. Especially since the work WAS carried out.
Fortunately, I did my due diligence before posting my seller profile on fiverr. It led me to your serendipitous article and I have now deleted all my info from the site. You saved me a lot of potential sweat and tears. Thank you.
Thanks Phoebe!
I hope people don’t abandon Fiverr altogether. I believe it still has a lot of potential if some of the issues I mentioned in this article are taken into serious consideration. That’s a big if, however.
I was going to buy from this site but I do not need that headache. Sorry to the potential freelancer who may have been able to provide service for me.
Thanks for dropping by, Debbie.
I have had these kind of experiences. One just now and this is just but the truth. As a seller you really have no protection.
My case is interesting because i have just contacted them as a seller requesting for a potential customer bullying over an order. They replied with their usual automated responses. I then replied to them asking if they really help sellers at all because with all the evidence, a buyer will still cancel and i lose my money ,sweat and time. I get a reply check this out:
”
Michael (Fiverr Customer Support)
Mar 24, 6:04 PM EDT
Hi again,
We are very sorry if you got the impression that we are helping the sellers.
We would like to clarify that both – buyers and sellers are from the equal importance to us.
We do not take anyone’s side. Our goal is to make everyone satisfied and to assist them with their issues.
Your order is still active. We suggest you to communicate with the buyer and try to come to a common ground in an amicable way.
Hope this helps. ”
They just addressed me as a buyer. They dont even check , i think when we report to them, bots are the order of the day. How could they miss am a seller and address me as a buyer? Beats me
Again, there is this thing of removing the best rated gigs for imaginary TOS violations. God, this is so frustrating how they beat us down after all the effort we put for them as they make cuts.
I also like Fiverr as a platform, the dynamics are great but currently they should be dealt with at workers’union. PS: Joke…wish it was possible though.
Thanks for your wonderful post.
I also had same brutal experience with Fiverr. I would like to tell my story so as some one else could be saved.
It was my first contract on Fiverr( was of $160 ) and was related to WordPress plugin development. It was a 30 days gig and I completed that in 27 days, delivered to client and client completed it successfully with a 5 stars review.
Then after 2 months, client came back and asked me to do some extra with same money on which I clearly asked him that it can’t be done in same money and definitely it would cost more.
But that guy was not ready to understand and keep on asking me to do it in any way. So at last, I just stopped responding him thinking that Fiverr does understands that gig was completed and changes can’t be done after 2 months, especially after 2 months of order delivery( none of the freelance site will understand this, I think ).
But I got surprised when Fiverr cancelled the completed( and 5 star already given ) order and also removed the funds. So I contacted Fiverr support to inquire why did they do it.
To my surprise, Fiverr support asked me that it is unprofessional to not responding any person. So basically, according to Fiverr customer support, as I am seller, I don’t have right to decide whether I should speak to a person or not( which is the first right of every person living in democracy ).
Further they asked me to fulfill the buyer else they will take all money( $160 ) from my account( to this point they only took $10 ). So I decided to fulfill him as this was my first order and was not willing to worsen the experience. So I started communication again and fulfilled his requirements. And as a proof I asked my buyer “IS THIS ALL DONE..?”and he said “YES”. So again I went to Fiverr support and asked him to complete the cancel order as you would probably know that “Cancel” order worsens the buyer experience.
Again to my surprise, they said me that this is not possible. “Cancelled” order can’t be reverted to “Completed”. To this I was like cut sharp to death. If they can cancel the completed order, after 2 months, then why they can’t complete the cancelled order..?
Is this a joke..? How I will get $10 back..? If I am not getting then why I helped buyer..?
To this Fiverr asked me to convince my buyer to place new order and get money. Hell, this is a SHIT. They are asking me to convince my buyer so as I can get my money..? And just forgetting money, what about cancel order..? This also effects my ranking, as per stated by Fiverr itself.
So after doing all, giving an extra-ordinary support, which no agency usually provide, Fiverr dumped me out and there was nothing that I can do against Fiverr’s ALIEN policies.
I wonder if there is any court where I can make a case against Fiverr and close them permanently. I immediately closed my account and started my new account on UpWork and guess what I am earning lot more with no ALIEN policies as do Fiverr have.
Thanks for reading.
As a top seller in Fiverr, working full time for the last 6 years making 6 figure earnings, I have to say that Lewis, your review is quite monochromatic and it doesn’t reflect the true core state of our marketplace. Too many things I disagree with, I wish i had time to comment on all of this. It was a bit disappointing reading your article. 🙂
Hey Maria,
For sure, this is just one experience. Thing is, if you look at the other comments, you’ll see that most people’s experience with Fiverr is pretty negative. I’m pleased that not everyone gets burned, however.
I think you are the only one who is satisfied. I, with my many friends had same experience and thus I can say you are among the 1% happy people in the burning hell.
If you would have suffered the same experience as I had then you would also say same thing and just use any other market place.
Go get fucked, you corporate shill. You are probably one of the people selling spells or psychic readings and blabbing on about how “it’s real hard work”. Go to the forums and see what EVERYONE is saying. Fiverr is a great concept but their customer support is ATROCIOUS and they have 0 respect for sellers. I hope you starve.
Oh yea it does reflect it but you just dont want to admit it. Just look how many comments share your opinion it is not a matter that you have good experience it is a matter that more people have a bad one.
I somehow think you are not even working there yourself but either have company or you are employer of fiverr.
I had the opposite problem. Tried to buy some service to produce graphics for a book cover. I included a rough mock-up of the cover design. What was returned was a horrible copy of the mock-up. Poor color choice. No artwork at all beyond what was supplied. No real evidence of effort at all, just a quick and dirty poor copy of the mock-up. And arbitrarily different fonts. The font on the spine was FAR too small to read. Every person I showed it to thought it was really bad — far worse than the mock-up I had sent.
But since I had paid already, there was no recourse. Technically, she did the job, it just looked really crappy.
I could not find any place to “review” the gig. I have seen reviews from other people, but somehow I am not able to add one. Of course I would add a scathing review. Any real review system has to allow all recipients to review to have an accurate representation of the jobs. It was strange how I received such a scammy job, and no ability to review, no recourse whatsoever.
So … that is $35 thrown away, and I will never use Fiverr again. Ever.
Keith, asking someone to do a book cover for $35 is like asking me to suck your d*ck for a penny. If you can get it for $500 you’re “REALLY really lucky.” – a quote from a talented designer with many years of experience.
Sorry to hear your situation bro. I’ve been a Fiverr seller for over 2 years and I could tell you that so many days I feel that I want to give up on Fiverr despite it is my main source of income.
Fiverr has given me so many good things, for example, I could make in 2 years $200k, but the pain to get here doesn’t worth the money. I know so many people would like to get paid $200k but believe me Imma real hustler.
The pain to get this $200k is really big, especially this month with over $3k in cancellations. For example, an $800 order where the customer got the work for free just because he keeps sending revisions until he could cancel the order. A Fiverr CS cancellation of my work cause I delivered what I didn’t promise, and so and so.
Sometimes the answers from CS are like “Wtf man?”, they just copy paste the answer without even read the messages, sometimes for a really easy thing I have to write them for 3 or 4 days until we almost solve the problem, but the client will always right.
As I said, I just have given up, I don’t care anymore, I don’t care if the client like or not if my gig doesn’t show on the results, if the scammer rips me off or if the CS just downgrade my seller level.
Sometimes you might feel that you would like to punch the CS in the face, I hope one day I will haha, but the best thing is to have a Plan B in case that something happen and I see that the Plan B is coming soon 🙂
Thanks a lot for the post, I enjoy a lot and keep doing the good work!
7kidz,
Hi Lewis.
It broke my heart when I read at the beginning of your article, your girlfriend’s message to the abusive buyer:
“I have also added an extra 1 design for you, free of charge :blush:”
Why are there such mean people in the world? : (
Lewis, thanks so much for this thoughtful, beautifully crafted examination of Fiverr. My view is quite different from most I’ve read here: I am a 68 yo retired psychiatrist and was thinking about doing some coaching, thus looking carefully at Fiverr’s setup. I was impressed with how much financial responsibility they placed on sellers (the nickel and dime effect at every turn). That’s what stopped my reading their rules and regs to go find a review. Sad as your commentary is, it does not surprise me that your company (and others like it) give “their workers” no support. But, in contrast to Maria’s view (March 25, ’18), I would say that the experience of the freelance worker is in exact keeping with that of the worker everywhere, as now made infamous by the stories of subcontractors working for Donald Trump in real estate development in the 1980’s. The dignity of the worker, across the globe apparently, is the price paid for the greed of the owner/investor/buyer. The willingness of the latter to steal the human rights of the worker has led civilization to a humanitarian crisis that has resulted in a division of wealth, the likes of which may destroy civilization. The problem you are discussing here is one of the unimaginably many tips of this iceberg that may sink us all. Thank you for your ongoing efforts to make the true extent of these injuries public.
Hi,
After one bad experience I stopped using fiverr, what happened is the opposite of what you described, the gig was not delivered, and the person claimed it’s completed, fiverr support was useless, PayPal cannot do anything by the end I lost this money
Thank you for positing this…i do not feel as if i am the only one that this has happened to 🙂
I also got knocked back down to level 1, and some of my gigs was taken down all because some one wanted something for nothing and abuse the system.
Fiverr always seems to side with the abusive client rather than getting both sides of the story before they deliver the TOS violation and destroy the 4 years of hard work and client building that i had performed before this “person with ill intent to begin with” ruined my reputation with lies and deceit against me.
Thanks again for posting 🙂
Hello,
I am a top rated seller on fiverr and in the beginning it was all bliss, sunshine and rainbows but just like your girlfriend it has become more of a job than actual freelancing.
Not only do you have to deal with abusive sellers. (Plenty of those f****** jokers) but you also have to deal with other sellers who offer 4 times more work than you for half the price and you cannot compete.
I’ve been on there for 7 years now and I think it is time to throw the towel in but the money is so good.
Where can I get better paying clients?
H
Hey it was actually GOOD to see a response from support worker KENN.
his response was WORD FOR WORD the SAME response he left for me.
I’ve had to deal with KENN many times.
I honestly have to say this guy needs to be FIRED.
He does NOTHING. EVER. After many support issues, I get the exact SAME copy/paste response.
Fiverr SUPPORT IS THE ISSUE.
THe owners of this website DONT KNOW that they’re paying ZENDESK for services THEY ARE NOT GETTING.
ZENDESK is responsible for the support workers on fiverr.
The owners of fiverr probably have NO CLUE.
1> fiverr support DO NOT FULLY READ support tickets. Its quite common that they answer with messages that has NOTHING to do with the help you need.
2> No matter what your complaint is, THEY DONT INVESTIGATE ANYTHING. EVER.
3> They send you off to read the T&C’s that FIVERR SUPPORT actually breaks MORE TIMES than site users do.
a) report someone for DEMANDING WORK THEY DIDNT PAY FOR or ORDER= fiverr support will send you to read the t&cs
b) report someone for THREATENING a BAD REVIEW= fiverr support will send you to read t&c’s
c) report someone who DEMANDED work they did not order, threatened to leave a bad review and then DID leave a BAD REVIEW that had NOTHING to do with the work ordered= fiverr support will send you to read the t&c’s
After this: they’ll stop answering you
and they DONT CLOSE ANY SUPPORT TICKETS where they think THEY will get a bad review.
KENN actually marked my account as DO NOT RESPOND. So no-one was answering my tickets.
Then I had my earnings FROZEN from withdrawal, with TWO LIES here:
1) a client has complained about one of your orders, so we’ve frozen funds until we sort this out. PROBLEM HERE: a) ALL MY ORDERS WERE COMPLETED and b) fiverr rules state: that fiverr support will NOT intervene in ANY orders unless the buyer has used REQUEST REVISION and messaged the buyer. And I proved this had NOT happed= there WERE NO GIGS NOT COMPLETED and NO BUYER had complained and ALL BUYERS had left a 5 star review.
I had to start legal action BEFORE fiverr support would contact a TEAM LEADER.
ALL FIVERR SUPPORT IS is fluff.
The owners of fiverr should know that ZENDESK STAFF are being paid to do NOTHING.
THey dont care about anti bullying, in fact zendesk support WILL BULLY YOU themselves.
For the rest of the world, know this: ANYTHING you want done on fiverr is FREE. Just order it, and then DONT MARK IT COMPLETED. and its yours. Support will do nothing. Except threaten you.
Hi Lewis
Thank you for this article, I was on Fiverr for two years as a translator with an excellent 5-star seller account. A buyer asked me to translate his website which I did and delivered on time, however, i didn´t get any response and 1 hour before the order would be completed by Fiverr in the 3 day´s after completion he asked for a revision on which I replied that it was okay, Another 3 days and again 1 hour before completion he asked for another revision on which I replied that I already gave him the revisions according to my gig and that I needed him to accept my work which he never did. I contacted CS and they told me that there was nothing wrong with that my client asked for a revision and that he was in his right. After 15 days of continuous revisions he finally canceled, Fiverr refund the money to him and his website, translated for free with my work, is now displayed on the internet. Afther this I decided to close my account on Fiverr.
Helma
May I know his website? If it built on WordPress I’ll be glad to do you a favour by give him a lesson. You can reply me by write his website with space to avoid google index. E.g. h i s w e b s i t e dot com.
Recently, I got same shit like you. Financially, I lost. But psychologically I felt like a boss after I destroyed an ex-client’s website since he refused to pay my hard works, threatened me and spread false story about me among my clients…not fiverr related however.
Anyway, thanks Lewis for this article, I was thinking to join fiverr but luckily I made a research first and found this.
I’m very happy this post is ranked on possition #2 in my serach, becasue this is the true!
I’m seller there from 8 years.
This is not all folks. There have new army of cheaters.
Here is what is happen:
– buyer place an orders for $20+ (few $20+ orders)
– buyer leaving positive feedback
– 5-6 days late buyer opening refund dispute direct in paypall (with temp paypall I guess)
Result:
– all orders canceled and refunded
– I lost few days of work, fiverr lost few bux
– my selling level dropped, because high cancelation rate, becauase this orders and the support don’t care
Few more words about the support: This is not support! Their job is to click on pre-made messages and sometime these messages are not even near to the problem.
OMG! You couldn’t have put it any better. The same has just happened to me. Some douche bag has just dealt a heavy blow to my ratings using this exact trick. CS is a joke! I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. I’ve asked them to check the conversation between the buyer and I, buyer’s gig instructions, and what was delivered and finally approved by the buyer, with the comment, “…perfect”. But no. The darn bastards over at CS will have none of it. They also want to deduct the entire amount the jobs are worth, not even what I received as my cut. So frustrating dealing with their CS. Bunch of dummies!
Seller be warned!
Hi Lewis
I’m completely agree with you.
It happens many times with me. I’m selling on Fiverr since last 3 years, many times people just place an order and then ask for cancellation, sometimes they placed an order by mistake or sometimes they ordered inappropriate gig. In any case when I cancel order, it messes my rating and reputation. Increasing my order cancellation rate, Fiverr should think about it.
Thanks for this article! Very informative!
I was just about to make a purchase because I would like my resume and cover letter revised but I do not think they deserve me as a client now knowing what I know. Any idea how I can get a reliable and knowledgable person to review and fix my documents as I am not too familiar with this.
Selling from time to time on FIVERR as a hobby has brouhgt me some great and fun expierences.
There are idiots and scammers all over the world. The skill you need to master is to spot and unmask them quickly.
You DON’T WANT EVERY CLIENT or PROJECT.
When I sent a bad buyer just cancel the order … Don’ t deliver.
F*ck the ratings just do your thing … Truthfull people will keep finding their way to your gigs
Fiverr has become a really BAD PLACE, they are pushing the buyers more and more every day to the limit, i hope people get tired of this plattform and a new one arrives being more human. Fiver DOES NOT CARE FOR THEIR SELLERS!. They are just thinking new ways to push the seller everyday and to get rid of giving any kind of support
Thanks for this post!
I just downloaded the app and was about to make an account when I figured: “let’s first see what people’s experiences are”.
Delete.
lol same, it has been 3 years since this post. The fact that Fiverr seem to have done nothing about this issue speaks volumes of the shortsightedness of their business plan.
This kind of behavior is only going to get worse with time as stories like this spread and buyers expect work for free. Eventually only the dregs of society will be buying and selling, because no self respecting seller would put up with this.
Many thanks for posting – it’s good to know this. I hope you’re both having good freelance experiences now.
Micro-thing – ‘free _rein_’
Best regards
The person who created Fiverr was desperate , therefore when one becomes in a desperate. State .. There is always someone looking for prey. Five dollars is nothing to pay , how can anyone expect anything more or less then predators.
I am a frequent buyer on fiverr and recently starting selling. My last transaction however, was completed by Fiverr and then cancelled even though I delivered the work. In fact, I spent a week of work on the project and spent money on plugins for the client, and now not only did I work for free I also lost my own money too. I sent a complaint to CS but no response. Also no response from the buyer who has been refunded.
I want to take further action (legal if necessary) and would like to collaborate with others with similar terrible experiences to form an alliance to seek compensation for our inconveniences and losses. I would be grateful if anyone here has any suggestions on how best to pursue compensation.
I am so sorry about what happened. I just sign up for fiver. The very first seller I used did advertising for me and sent me to a site that stated I received over a thousand views. When I went to my website I saw only about 164 views that all came from Facebook. When I inquired about it he gave Some dumb excuse for that. I had advertised on Facebook as well and can see where the traffic is coming from. I did contact him back a and he offered to give me a refund. I said keep the money since I only paid so little. I was not planning to use him again anyway. I didn’t want to leave him a bad review I just suggested that he be more clear to buyer because i felt that i was misled. The next seller was great! I will be using him again. I do agree that you should get a website that you have control of I did!. Because when these people are in control you are slaves to them.
Fiverr, Freelance.com and the like, are a stain on the Graphic Design profession. If you’re a halfway competent designer, your rate should be around $150/hour. If you think your time is worth $5, you need to find another vocation. Don’t sell yourselves short, people and for God’s sake don’t give potential clients the impression that Graphic Design starts at these garbage rates – it’s ruining the industry for new designers.
Egg-actly! But I must admit sometimes life is up and down. When you’re at the bottom you’ll be struggle and start to see fiverr as reviver. So I think most of pro designers in fiverr are in this situation.
nice post.
I am doing digital marketing on fiverr for the past year. made over 40k . the money is good, i work a lot, however there are too many scams in there. i have had many cancellations , after I did the job.
The customer might get what he wants ( sales/conversions etc), but at the end he can claim that the result wasn’t good enough, and demand a refund. at this point, there is nothing you can do, since if you contact fiverr customer support they will say that ”they can NOT force the buyer to accept the order delivery”. Today I also got an unfair negative review, 25 days after the order has been completed.. the buyer came back and left a negative review.
Generally fiverr is a joke. Do i make good money out of it ? yes. but i don’t know for how long I will be able to do that. Probably not long. If you are thinking about joining fiverr,please understand that the power is in the hands of the buyer. The buyer controls everything. if they want, they can get your work for free.
HI
I have both worked on Fiverr and Upwork and for me, Upwork is giving me the runaround that there is an oversubscription in my skillset so they have to deny my account. I have had my account on upwork suspended because I am sending out proposals that are not fitting with the job description. A bunch of crock. I have looked at each job carefully, applying with caution, but with Upwork, it was just a bunch of dummy posts where jobs are concern.
Fiverr I had my growing share on Fiverr, where one particular seller, sold me a gig and disappeared. CS stated that they had cancelled my order but I had to write them repeatedly to cancel it. If the system cancelled the gig, then I would had have the money refunded to my Paypal account. I had to write them for that as well, as they placed the money in my shopping basket instead of my paypal. Now I had requested it to be done so and I have not seen reflected in my account…maybe I need to wait a bit more to see it
Lewis and every commenter giving examples of maltreatment by fiverr staff are right, i have made the same experience, like thousands others:
fiverr staff CANNOT read, so totally unrelated are the staff’s replies all too often.
Fiverr is run by teenagers – if at all that mature?
The website itself has SO MANY FLAWS it is a miracle how the site could survive through recent years – where quality matters more than ever.
And then their childish popups when you (even accidentally) hit the wrong key (like say @). Fiverr is not from this world, and I foresee they go bust one day. Not soon, but they will. It’s just too crappy to exist.
Oh and their “search algorithm”, what a farce. Unless you use THEIR terminology, they won’t find you what you’re looking for. I could give many example that document that, again, teenagers work at fiverr, who cannot devise an algorithm.
Hey what can you expect if they can’t even read?
I have read most of the replies, but please guys let’s be fair… If you were running a website like Fiverr, how would you resolve this kind of disputes/issues/situations ?
I have paid for about ten marketing, legal and web design gigs on Fiverr in the last three years. Most in the last few months.
I will say the “hostage situation” of which you speak works both ways. I have been “held up” for reviews and dealt with outright unprofessional if not fraudulent behavior, bait and switch, etc.
Most of these sellers, even with US residency, don’t speak English well enough to understand the specifics of most requests.
I have paid for SEO and Social Media marketing, millions of emails, etc., etc. and not gotten a single result. I am sure some of the email marketing gigs never sent a single email.
The “Top Rated Sellers” are some of the worst. In all fairness I have been a bargain basement shopper. Some of the gigs asking for hundreds or thousands of dollars may be better. In this situation before I have seen people ask for obscene money and deliver the same quality, they just have bigger balls.
Hey Doug,
Yeah, that’s a fair point. I would say a large portion of Fiverr gigs over promise and under deliver, but that’s because these are services that can’t (and shouldn’t) be offered for such a low price. You can’t expect your site to rank in Google on the back of a $5 gig. Even someone offering to do it at $500 would be suspect.
Hi, this has now gone one step further (a step too far in my eyes!), where a seller on Fiverr contacted me out of the blue on my blog’s contact form with an EXTORTION thread that “he will destroy my site with backlinks” if I don’t send him money. I cannot contact Fiverr in any way shape or form, unless I have an account with them, which I now refuse to open. I have reported Fiverr itself to their host (GoDaddy), but doubt they will do anything about it. Is their any way I can get an email address to contact Fiverr directly?
Mhm, I doubt the host will do anything. You could always try tweeting them, or their CEO, or both.
I got the same extortion mail. Ignore it.
Thanks for this review. Very helpful. I’m just looking into Fiverr as an option, so good food for thought.
Frankly the idea of paying $5 for a logo and expecting the transaction to be in any way professional seems preposterous. A logo is often the first touch point of a brand. And a brand needs to be properly articulated in order to inform the design choices made when creating a logo. This requires discovery and strategy in order to understand the goals of the project. In other words hiring a professional to do professional work. This costs money. Ignorance of these facts means the buyer is an amateur and the seller must be too.
The larger issue is that offering important design communication services (like a logo design) for virtually zero compensation devalues the profession of communications (whether it’s art, or copy, or any other discipline). So for me it’s less about Fiverr customer service and more about the basic premise of giving away work. It’s an age old argument of course, but now because of online access, this devaluation of creative work and ignorance of the value of properly informed communications has become distressingly more prevalent.
I totally respect the sellers on Fivver. I think, for what goes into making a $5 anything (in my case it was a brand logo) should cost a LOT more given the amount of time put in. Hell, it’s less than minimum wage in some cases.
What I don’t like about Fiverr are the reviews. Sellers demand 5-star reviews for less than 5-star work. Ok, so it’s said they will make any changes until I’m happy. I love that, I really appreciate that. But, if they don’t understand the concept from Jump, then it’s just changing something that is already not what I want.
I guess what I’m looking for are people that know more than I do when it comes to graphic design and logo making. Maybe someone who is more creative than I and can work with me to get design ideas. Maybe this isn’t part of the gig?
I have paid up to $20 (undoubtedly a cheap price for a logo, what should I expect?) thinking it would get me better quality or more help. Nothing. The seller demanded a 5-star review. I told her I won’t do it until I get what she promised. In the end, she pleaded and begged that I stop making changes and just give her a 5-star review. I hated to request the changes, but what she was giving me what not even close to the concept I gave her,… even with multiple comparison photos!
How can I trust the review system if the buyers are bullied into leaving 5-star reviews? (I know because I left that girl a 5-star review, so I’m no better)
I’m done with Fiverr. But just to be clear, I give MAD respect to the sellers that are legit and give 110%. Y’all deserve so much better.
Support tickets are closed without an answer
Support tickets are answered with AUTOPOST replies
Any support tickets opened to request a TEAM LEADER or a person higher up in support are immediately DELETED
Fiverr support THREATEN site users with TOS violations IF they contact fiverr support again.
Fiverr support BAND TOGETHER to continue bullying and intimidation of site users and NO support worker will EVER review or fix issues by any support worker that has added answers BEFORE them.
Fiverr team leaders will only message you to THREATEN YOU with a TOS and will NOT do anything about any issues being caused by support workers.
Fiverr support ALLOWS COPYRIGHT THEFT and does NOT take down stolen content used on the website even WHEN NOTIFIED
Fiverr Support ALLOWS buyers to BULLY and THREATEN sellers and does NOTHING.
Fiverr Support ALLOW buyers to order gigs, get goods or services and then refund the buyer even when it is PROVED that the goods or services WERE supplied exactly as described in gig description and in the gig order. And they do this without contacting the seller first! Im guessing they let their friends get work done for free.
Fiverr support state that ALL reviews left are an OPINION even if it includes hatespeech, swearwords, name calling or bullying. Liabelous statements made in reviews are NOT removed. False reviews are NOT removed. The review is NOT investigated or READ by ANY support staff. Reviews that have NOTHING to do with the gig ordered, or the work done are NOT removed.
Fiverr support WILL FREEZE your earnt funds if you continue to press your support issue. This has happened to me. Fiverr support was notified that I was being THREATENED by another site user and I WAS BULLIED BY SUPPORT STAFF who refused to do ANYTHING about it.
Fiverr support do NOT KNOW the TERMS OF SERVICE rules, and when you make a complaint they will only send you a link to it and do nothing. When you show them WHERE in the TOS you are correct they will STOP answering you.
Fiverr support will USE the TOS to THREATEN site users.
Fiverr support WILL GIVE YOU A TOS and LOWER your seller rating IF you message support about legitimate issues that they have done NOTHING about.
They will then inform you that YOU are THREATENING THEM, when it is in fact THEM threatening site workers.
IF you have any issues with fiverr support they will NOT mark the ticket closed
And they will NOT send you a REVIEW email so you can give them a bad score or write any comment.
Fiverr support do NO work, are lazy, incompetent, RUDE, ABUSIVE, BULLYING and THREATENING.
Luckily for me I’ve screenshotted EVERY support ticket I’ve ever opened, and made copies of the source files of ALL pages.
I’ve earnt over $130,000 USD on fiverr
And they keep 20%
So I’ve earnt Fiverr $26,000 USD
For this I get IGNORED, THREATENED, BULLIED and ABUSED and I NEVER GET ANY support. EVER. They do NOTHING, no matter what I ask, or what problem I have they do NOTHING.
Fiverr support has enacted ATTACKS on my user account, my funds withdrawal, my seller level has been demoted, and my support tickets have been marked as “DO NOT RESPOND”
so in an OPEN MESSAGE to Micha Kaufman
Its time you REVIEWED how many support tickets are NOT read, not answered, and not marked completed. I’m BETTING every support worker has a PERFECT record because they DELETE support tickets, and DONT close support tickets where they have BEHAVED INAPPROPRIATELY so NO-ONE will ever know.
If you REALLY want to KNOW what happens on fiverr with your support people you need to send an INDEPENDANT REVIEW FEEDBACK email to ALL fiverr users that fiverr support CAN NOT see, or KNOW about, or have access to.
You are paying people to a job that they DO NOT DO.
I also want you to know Mr Kaufman that it is completely possible on fiverr to get ANY work or thing for FREE because support does NOTHING about theft, copyright issues, or intimidation OR bullying.
This is THE WORST SITE you could EVER work on. And until support are hauled over the coals or fired and replaced with people that actually DO do their job its NOT SAFE TO WORK ON THIS SITE.
When theres a class action against this site I will be submitting ALL my screenshots, and copies of actual html pages, and then I’ll never have to work again.
Top Rated Sellers are “hand picked” by fiverr website admins.
This is very SUSPICIOUS to me.
How can you TRUST that a seller is a top rated seller if its NOT based on their work record, their delivery times, their own customer service, and their reviews and instead its in the hands of some other unknown person? How do we know that these people arent PAYING to be made top rated sellers? Or some DARK WEB fiverr site thats selling top rated seller ranking on fiverr?
You certainly CANT get a top rated seller ranking BY WORKING on fiverr.
I have worked on fiverr for almost 8 years. I have a perfect 5 star record and all my statistics are at 100% for everything.
And I still cant get promoted to a top rated seller.
What I can get is DEMOTED by Support staff.
I have been a level 2 seller for years.
But everytime I have an issue with support I get a TOS and demoted to a level 1
and they threaten me with having my account suspended.
So I’m continually going between level 1 and level 2 seller
I’ve completed over 7,000 gigs with a 5 star rating but NOTHING matters on this site.
You are at the complete and FULL mercy of the incompetants that work on support.
These people should not have any access to your account, your user levels or anything else.
I find this to be a BREACH OF MY PRIVACY.
Fiverr support are intolerable, rude and useless at best.
So back to my original statement, the top level sellers are manually selected by admins.
Very suspicious
and looks very much like “jobs for the boys” or their friends, or themselves.
Everything about fiverr.com is suspicious and badly managed.
this would have to be the worst website to work on online.
You will never know if you’re going to get paid.
And you’ll never know if you’ll be abused by buyers or support staff.
my rating for fiverr support is a minus a million below a zero.
BAD
Being extorted by one of the fiverr consultants after they deleted 17 www sites.
fiverr refuses to take ANY responsability.
Avoid this if you do not have a passport photo of your consultant.
fiverr is a terrible choice.
i am seller from 8 years back in this marketplace, well, i’ve experienced on this kind of buyer, many times …. haha, and yeah, and I feel that it is true that F teams are more defending buyers than sellers.
and the more day, Sellers are just like slaves, you slow response to reply a message, you late delivery (in case if you get annoying buyer), you didnt get any order in a last month, your level is threatened to demoted.
i really missed this marketplace 4 years back that almost none buyer with bad behavior
Sorry for my bad English
All of these “gig” sites are LCD: lowest common denominator. Buyers looking for cheap, sellers looking for easy. If you want to make good money, freelance to the best agency or consulting firm that will work with you. That way you get access to best clients. May have to work your way up the food chain. Then, when you’ve got a great portfolio and reputation for professionalism, you can go out on your own.
I’ve had some great seller-buyer interactions on Fiverr (I’m a buyer), but as with most others here, interactions with customer service have been a complete disaster. Auto-responses, template responses, and responses completely unrelated to your questions. There’s no continuity between you and a single rep either – you need to explain your query from the beginning again each time there’s a back-and-forth, because a different “rep” (or probably bot) replies each follow-up question. And there are lots of follow-up questions because their “answers” rarely address the issue. Horrible feedback loops!
No native English speakers among the reps, and each rep seem to get less and less competent than the last one, as a “conversation” goes on. Usually I’m just seeking a clarification on an update to their TOS or have an Ownership/copyright question, but rarely do I come out of these interactions having these things clarified. Very frustrating, and legally a little dangerous.
Unfortunately, as another commenter mentioned, they’re in the same lucky boat as eBay – the only viable option in their field – so I’m forced to stick with both of them and their incompetence (yes you too eBay)… for now.
Phew, thanks for allowing the rant. I feel better.
I used to be a 5 star / Level 2 seller at Fiverr, but not anymore due to their policies…
I’ve also experienced something similar with abusive clients and yes, Fiverr won’t do much to protect you as a seller, I got a similar response.
Well, it’s official: fiverr is going down the drain; today they suddenly removed ALL my gigs, which were five seduction guides, all very respectfully and carefully listed. When I say ‘they’, I really have no idea who decided to review my account and basically negate it, after I’ve been active for eight years on their struggling online platform, but I suspect it was some overzealous, underpaid employee from some third world country were you can be stoned for having extra-marital sex. Anyway, I can’t help but marvel at the hypocrisy of fiverr, which allows scores of scammers to operate on their platform, offering fraudulent gigs that rely on outdated bots and paid five-star reviews (I’ve been burned many a time by these scammers and no longer rely on fivver for ANY online marketing activity), but removes legitimate offers with real positive reviews. Well, I guess it’s goodbye from me, fivver, I’ll enjoy seeing you go the way of ‘My Space’…
Fiverr is a 2 ways street. If the seller is dishonest, the buyer has no footing. Pay first and then deliver is a bad concept regardless of talent and promises.
I got ripped off on my first order, I hear crickets and no response to my request.
It’s like this, this company is dying a little more every day but they just don’t know it yet. In my opinion, it is an unhealthy company to be involved with or certainly in.
This happens eventually to every company that think they are at the top of their game and as such take advantage of the very people that gave them success. They become sick. Greed is like cancer that spreads slowly and without detection.
I am sad for the staff, there is no future worth staying there for. In my opinion, this company doesn’t care less about you – it’s a systemic problem and is very visible in the way they treat others. The idea of putting profits before customers is and will continue to be their downfall. They are aware that they rely on customers right?
You’re not a rat to jump a sinking ship, you’re smart. If you’re a customer – seek out more sustainable web partners – you are NOT building a business with this company as a partner, they are the boss – you are dispensable.
Staff, think about going out on your own with a better start-up that respects all, not just the $$. You will go far and wide.
Greed always loses out in the end. To some it’s difficult to explain the hurt and pain greed causes, for some, it’s just in their genes.
Perhaps it’s time for an open source version of this company – something along the lines of WordPress.
If you’d like to collaborate in producing a viable, sustainable, respectful alternative to this failing giant – get together in force – you have the power.
Fiverr’s customer support is terrible. I messaged them three times with three different issues, twice as a buyer, once as a seller, they were incapable of solving any of them. No longer having an account on Fiverr and not recommending the experience.
I had a bad experience with Fiverr as a potential seller. I had never been on the site so I tried my best to offer a good gig. I was trying to advertise Craigslist ad posting services just like others do on that site. I thought the other sellers of this kind of service were setting their fees quite low. I realize that Fiverr promotes the $5 gig and I tried to match that. I ended up creating a 3-level service that tried to offer per week or per month gigs as well as a low-priced gig for a one-time project that costs $10. I patterned my offers after some that I had seen. So Fiverr, in their ultimate reasoning, disabled my ads and deactivated my account and barred me for life because some viewer of my offer claimed that I violated their copywrighted services or some sh*t like that! No warning, no specific explanation. I was just banned for trying to make a living. I would have changed my offers to fit their rules but they didn’t care.
Thank you for this post. This article was very enlightening. I’ve been seriously considering setting up a “gig” on Fiverr, but I’ve had reservations. My intuition of having a slight uneasy feeling must be right. I will find another way to make additional income on the side.
That was a hostage and blackmail situation and no help from the site owners concerning bullying on their platform. Absolutely appalling. I guess to sign up one takes their chances with that type behavior
I have also got cheated on fiverr . The thing happen to me is very strange . buyer orders me a gig worth of $180. i have spend my money for full fill gig delivery requirements. like buying hosting and domain for client . as deliver the gig on time . and deliver all details of every thing . buyer mark the gig competed. and given the 5 stars review . and i got sleep as per my night timing . when i wok up in morning , i have seen fiverr has cancel the order and refunded the buyer . even i have written in gig terms . after final delivery and handing over the logins and details gig is not refundable . i have tried to contact the support they said they can’t help about it .as per they cancel the order on mutual agreement. This is the way how fiverr and it’s buyers are cheating there seller .
I messaged them three times with three different issues, twice as a buyer, once as a seller, they were incapable of solving any of them.
Fiverr is the worst!
I got scammed out of $500 by a buyer who cancelled their order a month(!) after it was completed.
A simple message from the buyer was sufficient proof for their customer service.
No seller protection whatsoever. You could lose money after months of having completed the work. It’s ridiculous!
That’s not just fiverr…that’s humanity.
But you made me remind of my similar disgusting experience, I totally feel you. It just wants to make you give effort to find this guy with tricks who he actually is. Find him. And torture him. I totally feel you.
And yep I won’t use fiverr thanks to you ~ . I dont want to fuck again with such people.
The happened to me today. I delivered the gig and thought I would include some free digital content as a thank you. The buyer responded that they were “disappointed” with their free stuff. I then sent them some more free content to which they were still not happy with. The buyer will not accept an order because they are not happy with the free content which was not part of the order anyway.
Does Fiverr want to know or help? No, of course they don’t. According to them the free stuff had now become part of the gig. The buyer walked away with a full refund and over 50GB of free digital content…..and they were STILL unhappy!
Soooo, my question is, is there a better alternative???
Ok, here are my 2 cents. If you decide to become a part of a biz that pays you $5 for your work, and if you are indeed a designer that invested in years of schooling, then you really deserve what you got. Expecting more from them when they are basically exploiting people starting with the business concept, is just dumb.
I take logo design very seriously as I’ve made a 20 year old career of it, and I would never accept $5 for not even the estimate.
Seriously, stop giving room for companies like this to exist, they are just taking advantage of everybody.
Wow!! Just banned from fiverr for being accused of manipulating review system?? What!? They said there was some unusual activity and I’m guessing it had to be that my fiverr gig was actually selling well as a new seller. Created an account last week, had 15 sales now banned? Well, I’m sorry that my gig was doing so well and was getting all positive reviews. Welp, time to start my own freelancing website. And you know what, I will definitely ensure that my sellers are top priority. This is not taboo, as wegmans is a good example of a company who puts their employees first before customers which is why they do so well. Better employers means better service and more customers. Simple. Yes, customers are important to any business I get that, but don’t take advantage of your sellers. Fiverr takes a 20% for every order process. Without sellers, fiverr will be nowhere. Customers come to freelancers, not to Fiverr. We don’t need fiverr!!
Well said, thank you for posting this article and warning others of the potential “bullies” on Fiverr! After unreasonable requests ( asking for extra stuff for free), bullies and abusive comments I decided to deactivate my account for good! The funniest thing is when you are deactivating your account you have to give a feedback to Fiverr on how they can improve their services?! Funny right?! Anyways no one cares for the sellers all that matters is the buyers. This was the most negative and abusive experience I’ve ever had regarding an online freelance website! But after reading your post I feel way better because now I know I’m not alone!
And tell your girlfriend I’m so sorry for this negative experience! Keep on rocking!
All these companies care about is their commission and profit. And the buyers always win regardless of how fraudulent they are – because the companies are greedy and so are the buyers.
I agree. I’m also a seller on fiverr. Been on the platform since 2012, I’ve completed thousands of orders and I have thousands of 5star reviews.
I get “nominated” for TRS once a month because my ratings are perfect, but surprise surprise every time they say the same thing “we decided you’ll stay at level 2 for now”. Funny thing, each time when I get the message that I’m nominated for TRS, my orders drop and less people contact me. It happens literally every time so it has something to do with it.
Sometimes I get bad buyers too, people who try to blackmail me or who expect me to be their personal slave for $5. Fortunately that doesn’t happen very often.
Fiverr support has been bad but also good. They did remove some unfair reviews for me. But I can also confirm your story, the buyer is god on Fiverr.
It also sucks that the platform is based on “threatening” the seller, here some examples:
– If you don’t reply fast enough your ratings will drop. Sometimes Fiverr won’t notify you and you miss messages, then your ratings drop. Sounds fair.
– Buyers order “by mistake” or change their mind after ordering “I don’t need this anymore”, no big deal right ? Yes it is a big deal, since you have to cancel the order, your ratings will drop. Sounds fair.
– Buyers order, don’t give you enough information, so you have no clue what they want, Fiverr clock is ticking, boom you’re late, buyer can leave you a negative review or your ratings drop for being late. Sounds fair.
– You can’t take time off, because when you do that the Fiverr algorithm will punish you.
And the list goes on.
I mean, Fiverr has given me a lot of opportunities, I’m traveling the world, working from my PC. But it has many downsides too.
….let’s face it…fiverr has gone the way of eBay….100% increase in “service fees”, high commissions and lousy support for both the buyer and seller…..fiverr will not survive
I had the same experience on Fiver just 2 days ago. I am a translator/editor who could translate from 5 different languages. After I worked hard for 7 days on a short story for an Italian client, she asked for a review ( which I did), but never replied to my emails asking for specifications. After I send her the finished product and she finally replied saying everything was fine, she went ahead and left a 3-star review with a comment that she wouldn’t recommend me to a friend.
Fiverr just terminated the account of one of my friends after claiming she sold outside their terms and conditions which she didn’t. When she asked for proof they said they werent obliged to give any! The company is from Israel and she is Iranian and she was terminated as she was about to sell to a customer in Iran. Says it all.
Thanks for your post. Twice I had a bad experience from “buyers”. I completed sample voice overs (which I translated into English and corrected at no additional charge) and once I sent them to the clients, made requested revisions, I heard nothing.
I believe they took my work and ran with it.
Fiverr is cancer. How long did your girlfriend spend on this ridiculous transaction of $15? I shudder to think how much it came out to per hour. We’re talented, people. We all have to end this crap by refusing to sell ourselves short. $5 for a logo? Are you effing kidding me? 10 years ago, that would have required a significant amount more… and frankly, if I told you how much the ad firm I worked for used to charge for basic services like that, you’d probably be shocked. Absolutely not ashamed, because it was worth every penny. You didn’t get clients that were jerking you around, and in return, we were able to put our expertise to use. Don’t cheapen yourself. Stop using sites like this.
Wow, this post is right on the money. These mother f#*kers don’t give a rat’s behind about sellers. They are the most unhelpful people on the planet. Buyer abuse is rampant. Been using this platform for a year now and spammers hit me all the time and when I cancel I get penalized with a lowered completion rate. I only have one gig so it only takes 1 or 2 for my rate to go below 90% which drops me from Fiverr seller level 1. I asked them multiple times to make things right and they don’t help at all, just tell me to cancel the order, basically it is what it is. These buyers should be automatically booted from the platform, not give free rein to abuse sellers, or at the minimum we Fiverr support should be supportive. Laughing loudly… They don’t give a hoot, real pieces of work. A-holes if you will. Anybody, are there any other platforms to sell gigs, specifically SEO gigs? Cheers! -Mark
As a seller on Fiverr for a few years selling leads, I have been up and down the Seller Levels, cancellation rates, and dealt with some real stupid buyers who cant read the ad. And forget CS, although, Ive had better luck throwing myself at their mercy with abusive buyers. I have learned to add 10 requirements stating my policies that they have to go through before they can order. If they dont follow my rules, I cancel them immediately. But what I really pay attention to is how they communicate with me. If I see one red flag or if I have a bad feeling that they are gonna be trouble, I block them and block fast. I am high on the algorithm and Google SEO search, but I make it hard to make an order out of the blue that affects my cancellation rates. So, I use a strategy: I go “online”, but in the Settings, I click that “Out of Office” button for days in advance or some dummy will sneak in. It forces the seller to contact you and until you get every bit of clear info you need, they cant just order. I send samples first so they know what they are getting. If they agree that is exactly what they want, I then send a “custom offer”, even it matches my ad packages, and they can submit their order that way. I dont just wait for an order to come thru and then have a ton of problems. I feel these buyers out and pay attention. If they so much as ask me the wrong question or have a tone Im not cool with, I block them. Have I been successful, yes. Am I desparate, no. Have I had to give away some freebies, yes. Revisions? A few. Knuckleheads? Cancel immediately and move on. I dont promote on social media or buy traffic. I dont promote at all. But I vet the hell out of the buyers and have some great regulars. This is not for the thin skinned. But when you see a red flag, cancel, block, and add an interrogation of requirements like a detective grilling a suspect, and never leave your order button open. One time a buyer left me a 4 star and came back to buy again the next day. I didnt ask him to change it, I told him why he was being blocked, sent it, and hit that pfff button. If a buyer was a punk, I make sure to 1 star them and leave some comments, even if they gave me 5 stars. Make sure to charge for your time in research, samples, and demos first before they buy an actual service with a custom order button. Make sure they know this for research, samples, and demos only, not a final product. Charge for your time before you ever start a real project. This weeds out a lot of bad buyers on Fiverr. You can find me at “quikfiks” if you need help…Fiverring is savage, so expect some real PITA days if you have the stomach for freelancing.
Hello Lewis,
I read your article and I think that was a pretty bad situation and that the customer was blackmailing and abusing about the rules and the situation.
Despite I think the result was unfear and that customer should be tagged internally by fiverr as problematic and give a faster and better support (and a solution that they didn’t). I must say, please no offence, that the fact your girlfriend demanded the customer to delete the 1 star comment was a mistake, because you enter her game and became same guilty as her (legally spoken, not morally), and made fiverr in a bad position as must have 2 victims if they are exhaustive (the customer and your girlfriend). They decided to have 1 (that is not excuse as you showed this customer did this continously they could use that to defend your girlfriend, but my experience says no company does that).
My advice is, when someone blackmails you do not answer with another blackmail, keep your chat clear and if you were a saint 100%. Do all with a smile and sincerity anyway if you want to kill the other person and ask for help, making Fiverr to take a decision.
Hope Fiverr would did something better if not, but not sure at all.
All best
Hello,
I’m a professional seller at Fiverr and I have 400+ positive reviews (98% are 5 stars).
All I have to say is that I’m leaving Fiverr, soon. They don’t care about their sellers who give them 20% for every sale! They also have a very weird algorithm, so at the moment, my very popular gig is lost somewhere and people can’t find my gig.
They also are very strict if you have some problems with the client, but in my case, 99% of the problems were made by my buyers. They will response with automatic messages like bots and that’s just stupid, because I thought that we are making some serious business there?
It’s just not fair,
F*ck them!
Cheers and thank you for this post!
Mr. Nobody
I completely understand what you & your girlfriend feels, as i am a freelancer on fiverr and this happens to me every other day, unfortunately the fiverr offer worst support to the freelancers and working on fiverr sucks, i would say if ever in life i have other options the first thing in my life i am gonna do is “TO LEAVE FIVERR FOREVER”
Because it sucks, it feels like you are slaves there and you have to agree with everything your buyers ask you to do!
otherwise you know what is going to happen with you…
This is absolutely true. Even though I have loads of good experiences with Fiverr, if there is one person that wants to be malicious you are screwed. Since my services (linkbuilding) are removable if they cancel atleast I can delete all my work if they decide to cancel and make sure their website gets some bad reputation. I lost $50 last time and had to remove a lot of work, but I destroyed the clients Google Maps reviews so badly that they had to remove their complete Google My Business page. Most of you will know their website or business, get your revenge and don’t let them win 😉
It is a shame to read all of this about Fiverr. I just recently started using the system and awarded two small projects to a seller, all went well and I provided deserved 5 stars for a job well done to the seller.
At the very least, the seller can also review the buyer and give them bad/good stars, so I guess this would help you sellers see the reputation for the buyer before you decide if you are willing to take the job?
Hi Lewis,
I just made my first order on Fiverr for a premium logo design service for about USD65. The seller doesnt seem to be very fluent in english, but he is a level 2 seller and his artwork seems promising. I’ve made 2 revision (he provides unlimited revisions) as he couldn’t seem to understand my request and i’ve recently submitted a 3rd revision but he hasnt responded for 2 days.
So i decided to google what is the deadline for sellers to deliver revisions and somehow i chanced upon this website. I intend to run my business ethically and morally, no sweat shops, no greed at the top management, and definitely a big no to taking advantage of workers.
Thanks for revealing the truth behind the pain of being a seller at Fiverr. As a buyer, I didn’t expect sellers to be facing such treatment from the very company you guys are working for. The rates on Fiverr has already been slashed so much, as a buyer, we should expect the quality of work according to what we paid. Buyers should not expect a $1000 artwork by paying $10.
I really do hope there is a way for us buyers to contact the sellers personally if we do enjoy their services. Freelancers with their own websites should consider including their webpage link within their delivery.
In this world there are bad sellers as well as bad buyers. I paid two gigs for a file to be printed on the tag of a product. The file did not work. I asked the seller to refund one of the gigs, he would not even answer my text. Fiverr is ok with that kind of quality. Fiverr will close its door someday.
I am a buyer on fiverr right now and it was recommended several times over the past few months. I had an idea for my logo, barn wood silhouette of a tree with a”cutout” of a treehouse with blue and green watercolor. Boutique type feel. I browsed the sellers ‘portfolios’ of work and found one that looked amazing, so I picked them. I got a cartoon!! It looked NOTHING like the images I sent him, nothing like what I described to him, color was cartoonish, shapes were cartoonish, looked like a pre-k kid did it! This artist had lots of good feedback. I am only now realizing that ALL of his feedback is from two different names! He is in Pakistan and may have a language barrier, but this was pitiful. I am wondering if any of his ‘portfolio’ is even his! I hate that sellers are scammed on this site, but it is not only the sellers getting abused!
Fiverr is the Yelp of crowdsourcing. No accountability for the things people do, no clear operating rules, and no hope if you’ve been screwed over.
Fiverr is dying, perhaps they can’t see that.
I have just started and it’s my second month on fiverr. And I have already experienced their worst customer support.
April 2019 and this is still happening. A satisfied customer of mine accidentally left a 1 star rating on his order. This brought my gig from a perfect 5.0 rating to 4.9 (not much, but in the bigger picture any buyer will rather work with a 5.0 seller than 4.9 and most won’t bother to check what the actual review is about). The buyer had contacted me right after he left the review to notify me of his mistake, and wanted to correct this. I contacted support to tell them that the buyer had mistakenly left a bad review, when in fact he wanted to leave a 5.0 rating. Pretty simple issue to fix, right? Both parties are happy with the delivery, only the review needs to be changed because of an honest mistake that can happen to anyone. Well, Fiverr CS being themselves flagged my account for violating the TOS, because according to them I was asking for positive reviews! Imagine that. And they wouldn’t change the review because the review itself wasn’t technically breaking the TOS (meaning, if the review doesn’t explicitly contain slurs or other offensive language, tough luck, it’s staying there). If you are wondering if I deserved it because I was asking for a positive review, all I said in my message to the buyer was to let me know what he thought of the order, not necessarily implying that he needs to leave a review, or that it has to be good. I mean, how are you supposed to run a business if you aren’t getting feedback from your customers? Fiverr ignored everything from me from there on and just referred me to the TOS. So, I successfully completed an order that both the seller and I were happy with in a timely manner, and I ended up with a 1 star review and a warning to my account. From that moment Fiverr has left a bad taste in my mouth and I’m looking to move my business elsewhere.
Hello, i have same problems with fiverr support they are di.ckheads or BOTs i asked twice help in different cases and twice get punished for that now all my gigs are denied and my account under review but why? when i complete work and deliver that website buyer send me message and say he wants now cancel order because my website files dont work he lie my and dont show any issue and after that he make website backup and download in PC after that he delete all filles in public_html, when i ask help to support they defend buyer and my gigs now is denied
I too faced a bad experience recently on fiverr. Just like to share this email which I sent to fiverr customer support detailing my problem-would be beneficial for others as well :
“I had a bad experience. I also reported that buyer in that order separately.
The problem is that i see it as a flaw in your system. When the order was delivered successfully and buyer also paid that, then why there is an option to cancel the order ? I know there is 3 days for order to be marked a completed (in this case he paid for me with full rating) but this should be disabled if client satisfied (and hence confirmed the order delivery and paid).
You could check the chat with this guy. As i reported he expecting dozens of things to be done for one gig whereas gig only covers 4 or 5 tasks as discussed with this guy on chat before i made a custom gig. He comes again and again asking for this to be fixed or that to be fixed whereas they were new problems and not discussed in that gig or mentioned to be fixed. He always want favors.
Now in this order my work was completed and he given me full ratings but due to lack of his understanding on web hosting concepts he blaming new issues to my gig even they were not to be fixed as mentioned in the gig. This is not fair that when order delivered and after two days you come and say to fix a totally new issue in same custom gig whereas it requires a new gig to be created. I was giving favors to him but this time i was not going to do that as he always comes with this and that problems after few days expecting me to always 24 x 7 available.
Now when i didnt do that, he made use of your system flaw and canceled the order which was completed and paid.
In last order he also did the same thing and put a review request on a task not included in the gig and I was giving favor to thim {that order too completed and delivered}. This resulted a delay mark in delivering my project and i also got a warning from you/your system that i did not obeyed the T & C.
How would you help me in this case ?”
Is all this still true? I’m setting up gigs now and this post and the responses sure give me pause. The reason I decided to set up gigs with them is that they changed the platform and now have training, etc. You can now create three packages and they don’t have to be for $5.
Any updated experiences from sellers dealing with Support? Thank you.
This is enough to convince me not to consider fiverr for anything.
It is useful knowing how Fiverr mistreats its sellers.
Besides, I think that its business model it is not an open market (the way Freelancer is). In Fiverr, a seller needs to upload/post a gig, and expect clients/buyers to show… am I right? In Fiverr, a potential buyer has to browse through thousands of samples and then he/she choses a designer, translator, etcetera, while in Freelance a buyer posts a gig request. In Fiverr, it is some kind of a blanket of mist, a fog bank which covers the plains, and prevents open communication.
I just came across this post after googling for Fiverrs Customers support contact.
Just wanted to leave a short comment here as I also penalised by their services due to false accusations. My account has being permanently disabled under the accusation of me using a fake ID! Customer support is refusing to discuss this issue and completely blank me after accusing me of such a disgusting thing.
Anyway, do to use Fiverr as they are not fair with sellers.
It is common for this kind of apps. Never use them, they only focus on rights of consumers and never freelancers who are actually also consumers from owners perspective. You will never be protected against bullying in such sites. Clients can do whatever they want, but you as a freelancer have to accept it. I believe that many clients there are sociopaths.
I’m just starting to look into fiver then I read this blog post which is quite scary. Has anything changed this year?
This is clearly a joke. That’s why I left that toxic community long ago. Coming from a level 2 seller with 4,9 stars who invested a lot into that site and I admit it was a bad investment. If you are looking for cheap stuff go there and deal with all the Indians that are left. (Have nothing against Indians. It’s just that people from poor countries are willing to continue working there no matter their own safety.) Poor guys.
Thanks. All I need to know, I’m glad I saw this before I joined Fiverr. I’ll make sure to tell anyone who thinks about it.
Well there is not so much protection for buyers either when you can buy gigs that actually doesn´t exist, so you have to upgrade or loose your money.
I am new to fiverr as a buyer of services. Nonetheless, I read your article and can only express (as a salesperson) how scope creep and creeps in general can ruin a good thing for the rest of us. I hope that the small percentage of jerks wont dissuade you ( and your wife in particular) from advancing your work on Fiverr. I only say this because I just today, made my first purchase, and I truly pray that the work is performed well (fear is that if Fiverr is soo bad to freelancers, that only the bad freelancers remain). I paid for the expedited receipt of work ($200 for this). I am an excellent salesperson, but not a great writer, and could use the assistance of one to help craft emails, cold pitches, etc.
aren’t these so called “freelance” sites all about exploitation though to start?
Everything is done far cheaper than it should be, people work far below standards of being paid a respectable wage, and people who want to use/exploit are drawn to these sites, little wonder then, that they bother to care what goes on. Respect has to start somewhere, and if this is what these sites stand for, I refuse to work at them (especially because my country/city has a high cost of living, there’s NO way I could be paid even a min base wage off this place, it would likely pay far less than a min wage job). Hopefully there are actually respectable sites with standards to look up, all about hooking up work for creators while not encouraging them to devalue their own time and skillsets to make someone else money.
Put it this way: logos are for making someone else’s business do well and bring in $$, why aren’t we charging accordingly? what a scam!
Jesus, a simple “fuck you, I am not doing more than I was paid for” would have solved this.
😀 Millenials are all feely touchy till they meet the harsh and ungrateful reality of people being assholes.
I was just about to sign up with FIVERR when I decided to read some reviews, and found this. Thank you VERY MUCH for posting this review. I am also grateful to everyone who corroborated the original post. I’m going to examine other options now.
Hello Lewis I’ve never used Fiverr so was curious when I saw the title “Fiverr Review: Why You Should NEVER Use Fiverr For Freelance Work.”
Verdict: The customer was wrong yes: Your girl friend thou is not of the hook: First offering extra for free “First Mistake.” Second saying “However I will only continue working with you if you change your feedback.” That’s the main mistake. I’m not saying this to knock or take sides because we all make mistakes so the thing to do is understand WHEN we make these mistakes and WHY and then don’t make them again.
Easy to say that “true.” WHY are the most SUCCESSFUL learning so fast? Their learning from their mistakes. We make mistakes WHEN we lack KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE and UNDERSTANDING. Therefore were always going to make mistakes and this is not a bad thing, we just have to REMEMBER “what can I learn from this?”
On our own PLATFORM we are in control and any bad reviews just delete them. Still your going to get bad people who just spread lies. As long as your Creditable and Ethical which sounds like your partner then she has nothing to worry about. Hope this advice helps and thanks for an honest review of Fiverr.
I would like to know how you can get a refund. I’ve been working with a seller who delivered the project on a Friday that went to completion on a Monday morning without me having had the chance to see it and then reply that it is not completed. I had to hire someone else to complete the logo and still I do not have a refund from the first seller. How can a project be complete unless both the seller and buyer agree… That just doesn’t work for me. Since then on another project that buyer has delivered the project on a Friday… catching me off guard again. I’m now keeping my fingers crossed that the seller will complete the project even though it is marked as complete…
I’ve decided that I cannot work with Fiverr, it is too risky to be spending more then 10 bucks. The resolution centre is not available to me seeing as the projects are marked as completed. Customer service has not taken action.
I feel sorry for the reputable sellers too, it sounds like they are also losing out. Are there other platforms to sell and buy? (Besides eBay..)
Its the support team that allows these problems. I’ve been racially mocked and treated badly when I started complaining about communication issues.
Long story short, I am a buyer and I found an issue on a software product a few months after it was delivered. This would have been picked up if the seller tested all the new functions properly. I quoted his message where he said he will happily sort out bugs after delivery without a problem so that gave me confidence in the transaction.
The racial comments came after I asked for feedback and assistance. I then reported the issue to fiverr who deleted ONLY that message and has been closing all my support tickets asking for a copy of the message to revert to legal action.
They don’t seem interested and their system is a double edged sword for buyers and sellers alike.
I will personally NEVER use or recommend them. Put on your running shoes when you hear a word that starts with “f”…..
Reading this in 2019 after dealing with one terrible customer, who claimed I was trying to send him malware. I sent him the build exe file of a game we both agreed upon and I was clear about.
It makes sense that Fiverr will side with the guy with the money so they can get their cut.
Yes, some seller have a bad experienced on fiverr, but luckily I never experienced bad buyer like your girlfriend has, my first freelance works is on fiverr, now I’m limiting order on fiverr and move to another level, fiverr is nice for a new freelancer to learn the real clients but not for the next level job, my tips dont accept the picky, cheap, and bad chat text buyers at first and I always said ‘message me first before the order’ on the profile so buyer have to contact you first and you can create a custom order, be carefull to buyer from a cheap country too, and if they want something big in 5 dollar dont accept those seller, I’m never accept 5 dollar job except to most easy one, if they start to harshing you dont hestitate to cancel order, that’s okay to decrease the level rather having a bad experience and rating
Happened the same to me. CS is the worst thing ever. The solution is simple, use fiverr to get your customers, but do not initiate an order through fiverr. Instead offer a 20% discount to your client and get them to pay you through Paypal. It is a nice offer that most people will accept. Paypal is still a secure way to pay, however you can set your conditions and protect yourself from abuse. How? Simple. After negotiating the gig send them a picture with your email on it. You’ll say oh that’s not ethic blah blah blah. Yeah sure, so it is when you have scammers on the site who get support from the staff. If it os a 5$ project do it through fiverr for the ratings. For larger projects, no way. Protect yourself!
After communicating with CS I understood it is not about rules and fairness for them. It is all about opportunity and winning. So you do the same.
This is indeed a huge issue.
One solution is to simply cancel the order. If you feel that you are being bullied and being manipulated, just cancel the order.
Fiverr will simply refund the person whos order got cancelled.
I know that the system is some what vulnerable, but they created the cancellation process for a reason. Even though, it is pretty annoying when experiencing rude buyers and abusive ones.
The Support has a bad reputation for buyers too. I’ve lost a lot of money by using their site and have had issues with receiving final products. In some instances, I’ve hired someone and they haven’t done the work at all. I cancel and Fiverr holds the money. They are basically in it to get everyone’s resources on every side and leave everyone without anything in return.
Hi,
I want to share quick story and ask for help. Please tell me what to do in this abnormal situation and sh*t fiverr customer support.
I had a customer who asked for an AR app. I delivered the app and he forgot about the order. The order as marked as complete, the money was cleared. He realised his mistake and wanted to open an other order for 5$ just to have something going.
I delivered the project, and he told me its not working, i was trying to fix the bug for weeks, and after he realised that his phone is not compatible with AR, he could not install ARCore because it was restricted in his country. So i was chasing a ghost for weeks in vain. I have sent him a link where to download the ARCore apk to install it.
After 1 month of the first order, which was already crealered and the money was mine, he requested a refund and he got it. I wrote to customer support, which is a pile of sh*t,explaining the situation and could not resolve anything.
Again, he asked for an AR app, i delivered it, he realised his phone is not compatible, and he could ask for a refund. What the hell is this? This is not normal at all, the product is still sellable and working how he wanted, only he doesnt have the necessary hardware for it.
What to do in this situation? Thank you.
Today: 7th May 2020.
I agree, skip Fiverr.
I have been a customer for nearly a decade, and I’ve come to realize it’s best to go somewhere else.
I’d been in fiverr for almost 7 years. I experience 3-5 fraud buyers with no protection from support. I just kept on because I believe that there are still many good buyers. But upon learning that stuff like this has been happening to many sellers out there, I think it’s time to give up my account. I hope this company will close soon. They get 20% of our revenues but they are unable to provide the protection that sellers need. What a heck. Sometimes it seems that fiverr has something to do with their fraud buyers, in order to gain more income, lol unethical company.
I’ve had this happen multiple times on Fiverr.. I absolutely hate that platform as well as how it’s being run. It attracts all the scum clients that want to get free stuff, and want it within a day. I’ve never had this problem on sites like Upwork however, as they seem to be geared more toward professionals versus penny-pinchers. I have left my profile still available on Fiverr and vet my clients before accepting a job, but for the most part all of my work is done through Upwork
Excellent article. 100% my experience. I honestly would switch places with you if I could. I am a PhD in engineering woman out of Australia and am going to provide all documents re my experience freelancing on Fiverr so please, if you are a stake holder and interesting in investigating further, please feel free to contact me any time re this, would love to show all of my communications and emails and dealings to founders of Fiverr or investors. I have DOCUMENTED everything. So I opened a gig offering something I am very good. My gig was unique and I was getting attention from the get go. 5 star after 5 star, with NO ONE leaving me anything less than 5 star. After a month, I was promoted to level 1 seller, appearing at the very top. The quality of my gig, in terms of the image, the presentation was far superior to vast majority of people and I noticed that clients from western developed nations definitely were attracted to me compared to the 99% who were offering gigs out of developing economies. In 6 weeks, I was making money for myself and for Fiverr, UNTIL a psychotic client approached me. Everything about her was suspicious. Everything. She had multiple FAKE profiles with OBVIOUSLY fake reviews, I mean, so obvious a child could see them, like 6 consecutive 5 stars from someone with the same exact avatar and name and even description etc, have an image of that too. She was all sugar coating talk, all acting like she is my girlfriend & slowly doing her best coercing me into saying yes to everything she wanted. I wasn’t offering zoom meetings or video recordings, she told me she does it all the time and everyone does it, all acting upset and disappointed at me. I accepted at first and gave her a tentative date for a zoom. Then I realised, this is probably not allowed as I remember reading the terms and it was vague. So I contacted customer service like any decent ethical seller would. They were at first all helpful and cooperating, but they didn’t exactly make it easy for the zoom option and for $35 and the whole day I needed to work on her case, I realised it is not worth it. I tried to cancel her 3 times. Each time she refused. She also wasn’t around much, would only come on fiverr every 3 days. I ended up having MY FIRST LATE warning from the gig, went on panic mode, wasn’t sure what to do. So I made video recordings for her, took 3 hours and an ENTIRE SATURDAY trying to figure out how to upload and how to send to her due to size limit. She was NOT even responding. Fiverr staff tried to help me with the attachment issue. Anyhow, a whole Saturday went by, my family was so angry at me due to all sorts of mess that created, Fiverr staff, probably 4 or 5 were working non stop trying to help, was a TRUE CHOAS. From that day, the woman only returned 3 days later asking for her work. I was about to choke her, but I politely said, It has been delivered 2 days ago, please refer to your delivery page. She then returned 2 days after, and said something like a pure trap, trying to get me to admit that I didn’t give her the job with correct information. This time, she had a NEW fake profile. A NEW profile?!! How is that even possible?! Anyhow, I had to go through 100s of messages I had received in the 2 weeks prior when she was sugar coating me and priming me for a disaster and find her exact request. Sent those all in documents. She disappeared. Not a Thank you. NO rating. NOTHING. I told Fiverr one thing which I think alerted them to start punishing me as the ‘naughty seller who refused to be SLAVE”. I politely told Fiverr if this client gets to review me anything less than 5 star, including a 4 star review, given how much I went out of my way for my lowest price on my gigs and how much I accommodated her and how many days I lost to her for her $35 and extremely deva abusive behaviour, I will leave Fiverr for good. EXACTLY from that moment, Fiverr, without telling me, removed me from search pages. After a week of noticing this and not complaining, assuming it’s a mistake or glitch, I opened a new ticket, asking them to tell me why. Then they got back to me and said it’s all fixed. I pressed more and asked them why that had happened and also why my statistics and analytics is all gone and I only get error messages. They ignored me and ghosted me and then a day later, I found out that my gig was not there again among hundreds of inferior gigs with much less ratings. I opened another ticket. This time, they got back to me and said, sorry, your gig is under REVIEW due to some issues. Then a day after, they told me I must fix ‘misleading’ information. There was NO SUCH A THING, NONE whatsoever. My 5 star gig that had been so popular and so ‘perfect’ went under some BOGUS review all of a sudden, only because they couldn’t apologise to me or to tell me honestly that they f&&&ed up. I deleted 90% of my bio and made it quite robotic and impersonal just to satisfy them. It is still under review. I know they are doing their best for me to leave. I was investigating and found out that close to 90% of Fiverr’s employees are from 3 nations in South Asia. And my gig was in direct competition to people from the exact region, I’d say 90% of those offering what I was were from those exact nations. I am beginning to think Fiverr has turned into a Nigerian style SCAM which is rife with favouritism and discrimination against western high quality English speaking highly educated sellers and the founders/upper management of Fiverr are either incompetent or they are CLUELESS about what’s going on. That woman was probably a paid SET UP just to get me destroyed & Fiverr’s lower staff are either in it with their cousins or friends who were threatened by my presence or they just look the other way. What a sham!
Faced similar issues on Upwork and Freelancer.com
I already hate Fiverr.
Such bastards are everywhere. I remember giving away7-8 articles for free just to avoid negative feedback on my profile.
There are some buyers who clearly write in their job descriptions to leave 5-star feedback to the new freelancers in return for buying their time taking services in pennies. That is clearly taking advantage of their situation. Period!
I really wish there was a freelancer union or an international online court that could address such miseries of hardworking freelancers and charge fraudulent buyers and freelancing sites for their prejudice.
All power to freelancers who give their hefty 20% to these zionist freelancing platforms like Fiverr. As much as we are thankful to these freelancing sites for great opportunities, we are also frustrated with their bias.
Fiverr has other issues with unfair treatment of freelancers, too. They recently removed my gig, ostensibly for “Taking part in doing someone else’s academic work (which will likely be submitted as the student’s own work) or engaging in acts of plagiarism/unauthorised copying”
This is completely false.
First: I made statements in my gig specifically stating that I would NOT do this.
Second: my gig had not had any buyers, so obviously I had not committed any such act.
Of course, since they disabled my account, there is no way I can communicate with them other than their Messenger page. I attempted to reach out to them there and explain that a false allegation has been made against me. I even provided them with screen shots of my chats on another freelancing platform, to show that I reject those kinds of jobs when they are offered. They have neither taken any corrective action nor even acknowledged my communication.
although you were put in a tough situation you can also leave a buyers review on his page. This will hopefully change people’s views on this one off buyer when they check out the account of a 1 star review scattered in a load of 5 stars. As long as it is an anomaly then potential buyers will check this buyers account and hopefully see other sellers who have had a bad experience with this seller (i’d assume this wasn’t his first time). Leaving the potential buyer to the assumption that this was the buyers fault and not yours.
Wow, this (and all the comments) is an eye-opener! I’ve just hired someone on fiverr for the first time, for a small job, but now I regret going through them, if this is how they treat their freelancers. I’ve been on the other end of this kind of thing myself and your gf’s experience sounds terrible!
The way they run the platform is awful. On my first or second sale, I had my client request a revision. I certainly do not mind making revisions, but I would like to be treated respectfully for my time. On my gig, based on suggestions from Fiverr itself I added “extras” such as revisions. However, the client did not pay for the “extra” and requested multiple revisions after that at no charge. As a new seller I felt I had no choice but to do this revisions at no charge, because I need good reviews to grow my account. I later reached out to Fiverr support to ask why the client was able to request a revision without buying the “extra”, they responded saying it’s on me to inform the client of the extra purchase. What is the point on building this options into your gig if the platform does not even support it. I’m not going to say to my client, I’ll do the extra work, but you have to pay more first. That puts me in the same situation as stated in your story. This platform traps us artists into doing more work than our gigs state, and does not prevent buyers from scamming the system and squeezing work out of the artists.
It’s 2020 and I still fell victim to the same buyer behavior on Fiverr. I really think that Fiverr needs to reconsider its policies and try to value freelancers putting their time, effort and resources to make the best possible profile which gets destroyed by one negative review from some spam/fake seller. That is disgusting and frustrating 😓.
What a smart dude, I hope a lotta people see this so fiverr contacts you and compensate for the damages caused
I have been victim of this. A buyer ordered and I gave him 108 pages of work in $500. He asked for revisions repeatedly and later I realized he is just not serious. He continuously threat me cancel order, he was rude and abusive. Later he got the order canceled by fiverr support. I was okay and I asked him to not use my work. He blamed me that I am trying to hack his site and I will get banned my account. I reported to fiverr because he was still using my work without paying. Fiverr support never helped me with this. They don’t take a moment to cancel the order but they are not able to resolve seller issues. Very disspointed.