I recently visited fiverr.com for a cheap service I was looking to purchase knowing that there was a good chance someone would be offering it, and looking forward to making my second purchase on the site – my first one was way back in March 2010. For those who haven’t heard of fiverr, they describe themselves as being “The world’s largest marketplace for small services, starting at $5”. As a web guy, I love the idea and it’s a great site. My initial purchase was for some minor SEO scripting services which was well worth the $5 I paid.
Back to recent events. When I went to login, I had forgotten my password. I tried and tried several combinations without any joy, and soon realised that my account had actually been disabled. Come to think of it, I thought, it had been a while since I had a weekly digest email from fiverr – makes sense. So, I logged a support case with them expecting to find an easy way to re-enable my account (I was working on the flawed assumption that my account had been disabled for lack of activity). How wrong was I. Turns out, my account was “restricted due to suspicions of multiple accounts possibly from the same location and/or with the same PayPal address”. Restricted, as in disabled. As in, I could not login. What’s more, I was told “The account will not be reinstated”. mmmm odd. Ok, these things happen right? It’s the internet. People claim to be other people, fraud sometimes happen, but there’s a way for the genuine user with a genuine account to get their account back right? Wrong. When I asked should I create a new account, I was told to “refrain from opening any new accounts”. Huh? I realise I am not paying for this service, and I’m at no financial loss, but REALLY?!
In this day and age where impersonation online happens countless times daily, where fraud is being committed from dusk till dawn, and where online customer support is more important than ever, surely there is a more sophisticated way to identify genuine users, and to treat your customers with the dignity and respect they deserve?
Below is a transcript of the conversation with their support rep so far. To be fair to him (because I am a nice guy and respect his privacy), I will not name him. I haven’t heard back in 24hrs, whereas the other responses were almost instant. I’m really not expecting a response, so I took to writing this post to see if it prompts some action.
Anyone else have similar experiences with fiverr? Anyone else think this is incredible? Comments below please.
Mark Stanley
Jul 15 01:57
My account has been disabled. What gives? [USERNAME PROVIDED]
[SUPPORT GUYS NAME] – Fiverr’s Customer Support Team
July 15, 2012 10:37
Fiverr.com’s Help Desk
Hi Mark,
Your account has been restricted due to suspicions of multiple accounts possibly from the same location and/or with the same PayPal address. The account will not be reinstated.
Regards,
[SUPPORT GUYS NAME]
Mark Stanley
July 15, 2012 10:58
Hi [SUPPORT GUYS NAME]. I am a legitimate user with only one account (this one). What should I do to get my account back? Create a new one?
[SUPPORT GUYS NAME] – Fiverr’s Customer Support Team
July 15, 2012 10:59
Fiverr.com’s Help Desk
Hi Mark,
Please refrain from opening any new accounts.
Regards,
[SUPPORT GUYS NAME]
Mark Stanley
July 15, 2012 11:15
[SUPPORT GUYS NAME] you have to be joking right? I am a legitimate user who was using your service and then suddenly had my account closed with no notice from you and only when I asked a vague explanation referring to multiple accounts, of which I have no knowledge. I genuinely want to purchase a service through your site and you are telling me my account has been shut down with no recourse and I cannot open a new account? That is incredible. Do you understand the term ‘customer support’? I can understand if there was some sort of strange activity on my account by some third party – it happens – this is the internet, but any reputably service would provide a system through which an innocent user can reestablish their account. I am flabbergasted quite frankly. Surely you can do better than this?!!!
No response since….
Hi Mark:
I’m the latest victim of this bloated monster called Fiverr. I have the same problem as you and after the first time of them contacting with their spurious claim without any evidence they’ve gone silent.
I have contacted on twitter and keep emailing them but no response.
Unlike Google, Facebook which will take serious ingenuity and financial muscle to tackle, Fiverr ain’t no monopoly and for the way they’ve treated me and the several hundreds/thousands out there, I pray other companies rise up and dominate the scene. They obviously will lose customers in the time ahead with their dead end customer service.
To think that I used to praise them!