D B.

My review is based on one experience but it was enough for me to see how they work. I choose a seller with almost 7,000 5-star reviews for a 300-word blog article. His profile described how passionate he was about writing and providing interesting content."with so many great online reviews, how bad can he be?"

I provided a clear outline of what should be covered in the article and several websites where they could research the topic and find all the info they needed. Even though the seller had such great reviews, I still didn't have high expectations - I just needed a decent write up.
The article I received was such low quality, though. Poor grammar, lots of repetition, no mention of the key requirements in my outline - high-school level writing - and that is giving it too much credit.
When I complained to the writer, he said it was written by one of his newer writers and he has so many writers he can't look at them all. (What about his profile that implied he writes all the articles and was passionate, etc etc.?) He also said, "I try to only hire American English speaking writers, but since I only correspond with them through email, it is hard to say sometimes." I realize now that he is farming out the work to people anywhere in the world, he has no quality control. I don't know how he has managed to get so many good reviews, but I do know that it was impossible for me to leave a bad review.

AND - this guy was probably one of the good ones, because at least he responded to my criticism and offered me a refund (it's not really a refund, it's a credit since I don't get the money back.)

So, who wins in this situation? Fiverr does - they get to keep my transaction fee and they will get the $5 I was "refunded" because I will never use that credit.

I understand their business model now: Fiverr doesn't care about quality. At all. They make money on every job, no matter what happens. The vendor profiles are complete lies - they make it sound like they are doing the work but they are just farming it out to whomever, with no quality control.

I had low expectations and was willing to lose this small amount of money so I am not really upset, but I feel bad for those who got hurt more severely.

What can be done to stop these scammers?