Why Fiverr’s System Is Totally Biased When It Comes To Sellers VS Buyers
Today I would like to talk about Fiverr . As a webmaster blogger and affiliate marketer with a lot of websites. In fact 650 of them at one stage, for me Fiverr was a great way to get content from advertisers. And get paid some extra money that could help offset the cost of some of my business expenses.
What I have realised in the past month but feel strongly about, and wish to discuss is how their rating system works.  Although I agree and love lots of their features, there is a dark side if you are actually a seller on Fiverr.
In fact you are in a very precarious position, as your income depends in many cases totally on one or two sellers.
You are probably asking yourself why I have said it depends on one or two sellers. Especially when there are many thousands of buyers who actually buy regularly in the Fiverr marketplace.
The thing is as a buyer you are totally dependent upon what a seller says about you.
What does this mean ?
Well if the buyer is having a bad day and decides to reduce your star rating, then it is easy to get demoted from your seller status very fast.
So lets just say I was a negative buyer and decided to buy your gig today.  Basically you are fucked…
As a seller on Fiverr who had a level 2 seller status for years . I have now been demoted to level one.
Why ?? Because this year Fiver decided to do a monthly criteria for sellers and they do it every month.
So if you do not fit into their perfect percentages you get evicted from your seller status.
This month the reason I got demoted was for two reasons, I failed to meet the delivery percentage completed level. And the cancelled orders level was too high.
Well if I was a bad boy I should be punished shouldn’t I. Financially, including my status on Fiverr?
I had a buyer order my gig that states clearly post your unique 500 word article on my blog or website.
After they ordered the gig they had no article to post and refused to buy an article from somewhere else or from me.
Therefore I cancelled the order stating the buyer did not supply me the relevant things to complete the job.
Then a few days later my music website got hacked, The day before someone ordered a gig post your video on my music website. It states clearly in my gig that it will be delivered within 10 days.
That means when you order you should expect it to be completed in that amount of time. I paid someone to fix my hacked site which took a few days to fix. On the 5th day when it was repaired I was getting ready to complete the gig.
On the morning of the 5th day I woke up to an email saying my order was cancelled by the buyer as I had not delivered on time. This was a complete lie and this second cancellation put my 10 day order completion rate to 75% instead of the 90% they require to be a level 2 seller.
When I wrote this article these two factors order completion rate and on time delivery where the problem.  I noticed today that someone contacted me at 2am so I am also below in my response rate too as it took a while before I saw the email and answered it lol..
Bye Bye Level 2 On Fiverr. Oh yes I am ordered to suspend 10 of my gigs as I am only allowed 10 now instead of 20.. Yippy Ki Yay MF…
Thank you for the kind email..
Here is the message that got about my Fiverr account being demoted, oh yeah and I forgot to say the cool music track was a song about whores and strippers that was the chorus line lol..
Definetely not the Gold Standard of Customers ..
At this stage when getting this message to cancel I had two alternatives.
- refuse to cancel and risk getting a crap rating from someone who was being unfair already .
- Or agree, and make sure that he cannot give me a review that will stay on my Fiverr account forever. And lose my level 2 seller rating instead.
Not really a lot of choice there for someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong at this stage.
To me what it highlights is the problems with Fiverr’s rating systems
- There should be a button when a buyer makes a mistake and orders the wrong thing that actually penalises the buyer instead of the seller. And this effects their rating as a buyer, then if a buyer has a shit rating nothing they do should be accepted towards damaging reliable sellers credibility or rating.
- I once had someone purposely ordered 10 gigs and cancelled after threatening me to sell my Fiverr account. Although I eventually got it cleared up with Fiverr, and they banned the sellers account. The cancellation ratio still remained and messed up my account, once again not my fault. But once again seller gets punished for a buyer that is a scammer or unreasonable.
- If I was a shithead like some of these buyers and I wanted to remove a topseller from their status..  All I have to do is order a few gigs and cancel or say I don’t liker their service. And even if their service is the best on the planet their account is toast.. Of course even a competitor could do this.  Giving new buyers with no track record with possibly fake accounts and consistent complainers, or buyers who cancel orders regularly or who are reported by sellers, no chance to rate or comment on orders would fix this problem instantly.
I had a friend who was also a level two seller his account got demoted because he didn’t make a sale in a set amount of time. So that means all his good work and orders count for nothing as he now moves down the ladder.
Who knows after this they may even terminate or cancel my account, but I think the truth needs to be said. As I think their system needs a lot of improvement.
I have create my own micro gig site where you don’t get targeted to be downgraded monthly for not licking ass, and begging to keep your seller status. It is called for5quid.com
And we pay and charge in pounds instead of dollars, you can list your gigs their today for free.  Or order any of my gigs there as well. 🙂
If you have had any similar experiences on Fiverr feel free to post them below, in the comments section.