Fiverr is safe for buyers if you follow the terms of services. Founded in 2010, this platform tries to create the safest possible experience for both – buyers and sellers. In this post, you will learn how Fiverr buyer protection works along with the best tips on how to safely order on Fiverr.
How Fiverr’s Buyer Protection Works When Ordering a GIG:
From my long years of experience of using Fiverr as a buyer, I can tell that this platform seems to support the buyer’s side a lot. However, that does not mean that the buyer has no responsibilities at all, but if you follow the correct steps, everything should go smoothly without any problems.
Every step from placing an order to receiving the work seems to be legit, safe, and secure. Here we will go through each of these steps and explain how Fiverr works at its best to provide the safest buyer experience:
Placing an order:
If we assume that you already have found a gig that you want to order, you can follow a few steps that are common for everyone.
First, you make sure that you have read the GIG page (service page) and all the included details within it.
Remember, as a Fiverr buyer, you will never have to pay for an order if you are not happy with the delivery. However, it’s always better to avoid issues that can waste your time and create confusion with the buyer by carefully reading GIG pages.
By placing an order you submit that you agree with the seller’s information provided about the service, and you should not expect anything that’s not on the GIG page.
Once you are ready, you can click the continue button to start your order. The next page will allow you to choose the quantity of the gig and the extras.
The extras will be available for 12 hours from the moment you place the order, so, you don’t have to buy everything in the beginning.
The total price of your order will depend on the quantity and the extras of your GIG. For example, if you would like your order to be completed within 1 day instead of 3, it will be a GIG’s extra.
Payments:
Fiverr works with the world’s most trusted payment solutions to provide safe and secure transactions. All sensitive buyer data is protected by having a strong encryption system in place, so you should definitely feel safe when entering your personal details unless you do this outside the platform.
When it comes to payments you have a number of payment options, such as Credit/Debit Card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL, GiroPay, and Sofort.
Must mention, that weather it is a Credit Card or Paypal Fiverr is able to remember your payment details so you don’t have to enter them every time. It remembers your login details too.
While this can be an advantage that saves time, it may cause security issues if someone you don’t know or trust uses the same computer or device.
Submitting the order requirements:
Most gigs include requirements that you must fill in after placing the order. This is your project scope, and a clear description of how would you like the work to be done.
Remember, it’s always best to give enough information about the project to the seller. The more information you will give, the more seller is going to understand what your project is about.
It is also critical that you provide realistic expectations that match the information stated on the seller’s GIG page. Asking something that is not promised by the seller can simply result in your order being rejected.
This part is also important in case you don’t like the delivery of the service. Then you can show your submitted requirements to the Customer Support and how the seller failed to meet those, so they can issue you a refund.
The time does not start to count down before you complete those requirements, and once you do so, you will only have to wait for the seller to complete it. Generally, it’s a safe and straightforward process, and nothing wrong can really go wrong if you provide enough information about your project.
Completing an order:
You don’t have to be logged in on Fiverr all the time when you place the order. Fiverr will send you an email and notifications on the mobile app when the buyer completes it. After that, you have 3 days to check, accept, or reject it. If you do nothing, Fiverr will accept it automatically.
After reviewing the delivery, there are two scenarios. You either like the delivery or not. If everything is as expected – hit the accept button to complete the order. After completing the order, you can leave public or private feedback, and the buyer will also leave feedback for you.
Canceling the order and Refund Policy:
Fiverr is a huge freelancing platform with more than 830,000 sellers, and it’s normal to find different levels of them.
Most buyers have a positive experience on Fiverr, but some sellers may not deliver as you expect.
Usually, it is obvious from all the parts that something is wrong with an order, but there are some cases that the seller is sure that he did a good job even if you don’t like it.
When you are not satisfied with a delivery, you can request a revision. If the seller charges for the revisions, you need to consider if it’s worth the money, but most sellers give a few revisions for free.
When an order is not acceptable at all, you can request a cancellation. The buyers of Fiverr don’t have to complete the order if they are not happy.
Here are the most common reasons why buyers on Fiverr ask for revisions, or a refund:
- The order was not received
- The seller delivers the order without sending the requested files (only clicked the delivery button)
- The seller requested extra money to send the order.
- The quality of the order is very low.
And if the seller doesn’t agree to cancel the order, you can always contact Customer Support. The support will consider many factors as the seller’s history, reviews, and responsiveness to solve the issue.
However, most problems with deliveries are clear for every part. The support only helps to resolve the situation when the communication between buyer and seller is not good.
When you cancel an order for any reason, the money that you spent to order will be added to your credit balance, which you can use to repurchase the other GIGs.
There’s also a cash refund possible, and for that, you will have to fill in the request a refund form. The money will be processed back to the original payment source, in the original currency, but it can take time. While refunds to Paypal are processed within 24 hours, it can take up to 7-10 days to receive funds back to the credit cards.
Best Tips To Order On Fiverr Safely
Like any other freelancing platform, Fiverr involves some risks. You may end up paying for the service you don’t like, or you can get hacked or scammed. Therefore, it’s important that you follow some safety tips that will give you the best possible experience on this platform.
1. Avoid Certain Services
This section has only to do if you are ordering traffic, SEO, and other website marketing related GIGs. If you look for such services you will see there are tons of traffic and ranking boost GIGs that can be done for as little as 5$.
Be aware that these kinds of services may include bot traffic, harmful Private Blog Networks, and cheap low-quality backlinks to your site. Nowadays if you want to increase your website’s traffic or rankings, you are most likely have to put hard work into it and that is the content creation.
Focusing on shortcuts and ordering backlinks that will “magically” boost up your site may actually be damaging your site and putting it towards a penalty from Google and other search engines. But if you really want to take this path make sure that you order quality gigs from trusted sources.
2. Keep Your Account Safe
The first tip is standard for every important online account that we have as internet users. Fiverr is a place to pay for freelancing services, so make sure only you or people you trust can log in to your account.
Weather, it’s a credit card or Paypal, Fiverr remembers your payment details, so having a strong password is truly recommended. Also, don’t forget to logout once after finishing your tasks if many people use the same computer.
3. Keep Everything Inside Fiverr
Fiverr can help you with all your transactions on their platform. However, it can’t help you if you communicate or pay sellers outside Fiverr.
Professional sellers of Fiverr will never request a payment outside of the platform. If someone wants to contact you or ask for money outside of Fiverr, that seller violates the terms of use and may want to scam you.
Fiverr will simply take care of all your payments if you follow their terms of service. You can also request help with any order issues but you will lose all safety features if you don’t order through the platform.
4. Only Complete Orders When You Are Happy With Them
Fiverr wants you to complete the orders only when you are satisfied with the delivery. If you don’t follow that, you may pay for the service that you don’t like.
It’s unlikely for a seller to request a completion before sending the order to you. If it happens, it means that they want to avoid late deliveries or just want to trick you.
Once they deliver the order, you have a period of three days to review it. If you don’t respond, the order will become completed automatically.
If you don’t like the service you have received, the first good step is to communicate it with the seller to see if he can make a revision or cancel the order. Most of the sellers on Fiverr are humble and will agree to do so, but if they not, you can ask the customer service to step in and look into the situation.
If it happens that you accepted the order by mistake, Fiverr gives you 14 extra days to communicate with the support regarding a completed order.
It’s still possible to cancel the order in these 14 days but you need to have a good reason for that. Once the 14 day period passes, the seller can withdraw his earnings, and it’ll be no more possible to cancel the order.
5. Check The Seller’s Profile Before Ordering
A great way to avoid any problems is to check the seller’s profile before ordering any GIG. The GIG page should give plenty of details about the service that you will receive.
Ideally, the seller should not have a lot of pending orders in the queue, and his average response time should be within the hours, not days. Besides that seller’s page displays other important info, such as the languages he speaks, linked social media accounts, skills, education, and approved certifications.
There is also a description and reviews below the seller’s page, and these details are normally enough to understand what you should expect.
Seller’s reviews are probably the best factor that determines whether the seller is good enough. Unfortunately, not every seller is honest on this platform and some of them might have fake reviews on their account. Make sure that those reviews are unique, not repetitive, and consist of different countries.
If you need even more information, you can always contact the seller to ask some questions. Good sellers always reply fast but keep in mind that many of them can be offline in some hours of the day due to the difference in the world’s timezones.
6. Test It
Most sellers have three packages for each gig. These packages increase the quantity or quality of the project as you pay more money.
Fiverr allows making custom offers for bigger projects. To avoid any waste of time and money from big projects, you can firstly make a test order.
For example, if you want a seller to create ten website pages, you can order the first one and decide after the delivery if you will order again. Or if you want an ebook to be written, you can request a sample of the first few pages.
This tip is important when you consider bigger projects and many repetitive orders for a specific task.
7. Follow The Terms Of Service
Most buyers and sellers follow the guidelines of Fiverr, and when everyone follows the terms of service, everything goes smoothly without any problems. However, some people try to game the system, and Fiverr is not a good place for that.
Fiverr’s support checks almost everything, and the sellers are smart enough to contact the resolution center when they see anything weird happening. Fiverr will ban the buyers that don’t follow the rules most of the time.
This platform has a forum that you can use to learn how to reach specific situations. It has a dedicated support team that will respond to any query in just a few minutes. Furthermore, if you check it, you will discover that sellers and buyers talk together on how to avoid problems and protect themselves.
Final Words
Fiverr.com is a safe place for buyers who use this platform to hire freelancers. The system which every buyer has to go through when ordering GIGs is very simple and safe.
The most important things to secure yourself with Fiverr are properly checking the sellers’ profiles, their GIG pages, and contacting them if you have any questions.
Take time to give them as much information as you need to successfully complete an order. By doing that you are securing yourself in case the seller does not deliver what you required in your documentation.
Once again, you will never have to pay for the orders you don’t like, and Fiverr’s buyer protection is always there to protect you.