My Cancellation By Fiverr

Those who are excited to see me canceled will probably be excited by this. Feel free. I have several hundred clients I can contact OUTSIDE of Fiverr, by nature of my gigs. It was never my intention to do so; I’d planned to stay with Fiverr. But once they kick me out, I’m not bound by their terms of service.

Here’s the story:

1. I asked for a refund on some stock photos, because I found some evidence that the seller was NOT an authorized reseller of stock photos.
2. I got the refund. AND the Seller got banned. And I got a warning. This makes 3 warnings in 10 years, and so Fiverr is in the process of removing my seller account.
3. Which makes no BUSINESS sense. But it makes plenty of #cancelculture sense. I’m a canceled person. Someone noticed. They decided to get rid of me, and throw their Terms of Service to the wind; this is my best guess, anyway.
4. Here’s the whole support ticket. Enjoy.

REQUEST #4641245GRAPHICS WERE OF POOR QUALITY AND NOT CERTIFIABLY ROYALTY-FREE

• wickedjeffmachWednesday at 10:01
• I don’t think I can use these graphics. I don’t think they’re royalty-free; I can find no evidence that they are; and the seller is no longer here.
• AnastasiaThursday at 08:13
• Hi there Jeff.
• Thank you for sharing this with me, let me check it for you.
• I will need to review this further with our team. As soon as I’m able to provide you the details, I will follow up in this ticket request.
• Kind regards.

• Anastasia | Fiverr Customer Support
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• wickedjeffmachThursday at 12:15
• Thank you.
• wickedjeffmachThursday at 17:01
• As far as I can tell, I seem to have received no details, but gained a warning and had my account disabled.
• What’s going on?
• UrosThursday at 17:06
• Hey Jeff,
• The order has been canceled now and the funds are in your Fiverr balance.
• If you need a refund to be issued to your original payment provider you can submit a refund request through this link:
• https://buyers.fiverr.com/en/article/payments-and-invoices#refunds
• Please bear in mind that this service is not allowed as it violates third party ToS and therefore ours.
• As you received multiple warnings your account is now under a review by our relevant team. You will be notified once they reach their decision.
• I’m here if you need anything else.
• Take care,

• Uros | Fiverr Customer Support
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• wickedjeffmachThursday at 17:38
• Hi Uros,
• I’d like to take some strong objections here. Let me start with the simplest:
• You know me by now. If I thought I was breaking the law, or Fiverr ToS, I would report it…. WHICH I DID.
• Now you appear to be punishing me for reporting an apparent violation of ToS?
• I’m not actually an expert the resellability of collections of royalty-free images.
• But there’s no reason it would inherently violate ToS for someone to resell royalty-free images.
• There are multiple legal ways for someone to resell royalty-free images. For example, https://www.shutterstock.com/business/premier-licensing has multiple ways to resell photos.
• If I look at Fiverr — and this is pretty much the basic test to see if something seems at least mainstream on fiverr — I find hundreds of gigs selling royalty-free imagines.
• I began to suspect that these images might not be royalty-free, and that I had been deceived. Treating me as someone who intentionally was doing something wrong when I was REPORTING something wrong is not cool.
• It would also go against precedent. When I’ve reported possible fraud in the past, no-one has said, “If you warn us about something you bought which violates ToS, you will be prosecuted as if you’d intentionally violated ToS”.
• wickedjeffmachThursday at 18:01
• Also: Are you saying that ToS says that BUYER can be held liable for purchasing Fiverr-approved gigs which are found to violate ToS?
• Because your ToS is clear:
• ‘Sellers warrant that any content included in their Gigs shall be original work conceived by the Sellers and shall not infringe any third party rights, including, without limitation, copyrights, trademarks or service marks. In the event that certain music or stock-footage media are incorporated within the Gigs, Sellers represent and warrant that they hold a valid license to use such music and/or footage and to include them in the Gigs.”
• In other words, FIVERR approved this gig, and many others like it. The BUYER is not in violation of ToS for buying a Fiver-approved gig. The BUYER buys with the knowledge that each seller has warranted that they have valid license to use that footage, and Fiverr has approved that gig.
• Again, ToS states:
• 1. Sellers warrant that they have a license to sell what they are selling.
  2. Fiverr reviews gigs — manually, I am told — and approves or disapproves them.
  3. SELLERS can be held responsible for violations of sales ToS.
• I’ll note again: *I* voiced a concern. I brought it to you.
• YOU gave me a third warning — knowing I was already contesting the earlier warning.
• Once again, Fiverr’s speed of punishment far outstrips the user’s actual ability to know what’s going on.
• UrosToday at 17:08
• Hey Jeff,
• We reviewed this carefully and even though I understand where you are coming from we will not be able to remove the warning.
• As for the warning regarding the inappropriate language you can check out the communication with the user ezdtech.
• Take care,

• Uros | Fiverr Customer Support
  Please review our Fiverr Online Safety Tips.
  Try FREE Time Tracking and Task Management from AND CO.
• wickedjeffmachToday at 17:24
• Hi, Uros,
• Help me understand.
  If I report a seller for possible ToS violation, how does that make me complicit in ToS violation?
• Seriously, is there any reasoning behind this other than “you want me off the platform”?
• Also, show me where cursing is said to be inappropriate language in the ToS. It isn’t. It is a judgment call; I get that you made that call, but when I didn’t fight it,
• (a) I was trying to show some empathy for Support, which has a difficult job, and
  (b) Warnings were still clearly interpreted as in the ToS — that you need to avoid getting warnings within a 30 day period, not “three warnings of any kind will get you kicked off the platform, no matter what they’re for, and no matter what time period they occur in.”
• I’ve been on this platform for ten years. What’s going on?
• This is a series of deliberate judgment calls, some of which are apparently in violation of ToS.
• And I do get it: You clearly want me off the platform, for whatever reasons.
• But… why?
• I had never considered taking the client information I have, which is, obviously, information on 500+ clients with whom I have had Skype and phone calls, and using it to say, “Fiverr kicked me out for reasons which I considered unjust; I am no longer on the platform and no longer bound by ToS; would you like to work with me?”
• Not a threat. Just a statement of fact; obviously, once you kick me off, I’ll go private. This is against the spirit of Fiverr’s rules; but so is crushing a loyal seller and not even trying to say that it’s justified by ToS.
• Once you kick me off, what else would you expect me to do?
• I have some idea of your buyer turnover rate. Generating another very, very disillusioned seller isn’t exactly going to help.
• Not even YOU can offer me an explanation of how you are penalizing the Seller for the actions of the Buyer. My friends don’t understand either.
• 1. I had a specific discussion with support about this very issue. In that discussion, I specifically asked about continuing to use these services, which were still on Fiverr, and was told I could do so.
  2. Then you simply reversed that, banned the seller, AND gave me a warning for something YOU said I could do.
  3. Then I got a THIRD warning for a ToS violation where you have literally given zero justification. Again, you banned the seller AND gave me a warning, as if — after ten YEARS with this platform, and years of discussions with support, and an ability to look at every action I’ve made on this platform — you somehow suspect me of colluding with Fiverr sellers to do something nefarious.
• (News flash: People who want shadier services can find them easily at GigBucks. Why in the world would a seller in good standing even try anything weird on this platform, when, EVEN if I wanted to do something that might be questionable, there’s a better, cheaper platform? You KNOW my knowledge of ToS is extensive, and you KNOW I have almost 2000 gigs and a 5-star rating as a seller.)
• Why are you doing this?
• I mean, in the end, you can act in whatever manner you choose, whether or not anything fits your Terms of Service. You’ve clearly decided to get rid of me. You haven’t addressed my major complaints. You’ve been overturning my gigs. You issued me a second warning without addressing the first warning. You’ve removed as much of my revenue as you could, secure in the knowledge that any money you take from sellers will go back into your pocket, because you issue it in the form of credits which can only be used with you.
• Let’s be direct: I think you’re cancelling me for some outside reason, and you know you don’t have ToS support for what you’re doing.
• You’re not the only company to cancel people for no reason, but I had expected better of you.

-Jeff Mach