Fiverr  – Fiverr just left my kid without food & me without job…

I actually can not choose words to describe the situation… My scariest dream came true…

What happened?

I have been selling my services on Fiverr for 3 years now. Mainly Shopify website redesign. I earned $10k+ and have more than 100 positive reviews. At some point, I decided to quit my day-to-day job as I started earning enough to cover the bills and I was extremely thankful for the platform. I even hired myself an assistant to improve the quality and be able to take more clients… Everything was working incredibly well, I even started considering buying a new car, and then…

1st of January… Celebrated New Year yesterday… with my daughter… (I am literally crying while writing this). One of my old clients reached out as he needed some changes to his website and I was happy to help. He asked if he can pay for that… I told, “thank you, it would be great”. I have done the job he asked for, created an offer, he paid and I delivered it… He left a positive review…

Of course, he left a review… I helped him on the morning of 1st January when nobody works…

1 hour after I received a message – your account got denied because the platform thinks I was trying to make fake reviews which are prohibited.

One thing is that I use WhatsApp to stay connected with the clients as I can create a group chat, so I can add my assistant to it (of course I didn’t give him credentials to my Fiverr account… it’s not safe, so WhatsApp is the only solution how I can safely collaborate with client & my assistant at the same time).

I always charged clients on the platform as I know that’s against Fiverr’s rules to use other payment methods outside Fiverr. But the policy tells that you can communicate with clients outside the platform if the project requires it… Yes, I can not work without my assistant, so I literally didn’t make anything that is not prohibited…

What did I do next? I reached out to customer support. To be honest, earlier in my carrier on Fiverr I tried to speak to the support team but always faced some simple answers and I understood that… “Probably they have more serious stuff to handle, not my stupid questions about how the platform works” – that was my logic, so I always tried to do my own in-depth research (youtube videos, blogs etc.)
But you know what… This time nothing changed, they just copy & paste the text from the email they sent me.

The main idea is – “our team analyzed your account and it’s our final decision, your account can not be restored”… My question is… WHAT HAVE YOU ANALYZED IF THERE WAS NOTHING TO ANALYZE?! When I reached the support I provided VIDEO evidence showing communication with clients on WhatsApp, I showed the client’s request, the previous conversation with this client as well as showed conversation with other clients, how they paid on the platform, and left a 5-stars review… To prove that I am not breaking any rules…

Nobody cares… Just copied and pasted the same text…

Please, explain what should I do in this situation… I was punished not for breaking rules but for following them… I could have asked this client to pay me directly but I respect the efforts your team is doing to provide me with an opportunity to work from home and that’s why I ALWAYS get payments only through Fiverr…Now I don’t know what to do, my main source of income was destroyed in 1 hour… Please let me know how should I explain it to my daughter…