Fiverr ID VERIFICATION- ALL I LEARNED ON THIS ROLLER COASTER JOURNEY.

A few days ago, I woke up to a surprising notification from Fiverr. It looked like this.

I was surprised but didn’t think much of it. I immediately grabbed my Nigerian National Identification slip and took a picture, after which I was requested to take a selfie, which I did. To my surprise, it didn’t work.

I noticed the minute I had clicked upload, they showed me a preview of my image, and it was blurred. I thought it was expected, so I didn’t understand why it didn’t upload. I tried again, the same blurring effect happened, and my I.D got rejected for the second time. I was confused and immediately went on the Fiverr forum.

All the information I got scared me into taking slow breaths and just stopping the identification process for a while.

What I learned;

• Your account would be temporarily disabled after the third failed attempt at verifying your I.D — I found this to be true because, at my third attempt, my account was indeed temporarily disabled.
• You will not be able to make withdrawals once your account is disabled — false; even after your account has been disabled, you can still withdraw and wait for your earnings to clear even while under temporary restrictions.
• You need an iPhone to take the picture so your account would be verified — false. I used a high-grade iPhone, and my I.D was still rejected. You can use any mobile device with a clear camera. When my I.D was finally verified, I had used an Android device with a 16mp camera.
• You cannot take in new orders— True, your gigs would be removed during this period, and you will not be able to get new orders, but can still work on current orders and chat with the buyers of those orders in the order section.
• There’s little chance that you’ll get your account back— false; customer support kept allowing me to try to verify my i.d over and over again ( It took them a while for them to realize why my I.D was getting rejected by the automated system put in place to verify the I.D). As long as you aren’t using multiple accounts, you don’t have a problem. Also, I believe when you were creating your Fiverr account, you should have used your real name, which is what the I.D will verify, to prove you’re not an imposter. ( Real name is different from the username, your username can be anything you want, but your real name was requested when setting up the account, it is not displayed like the username, so you have to ensure that while creating your fiver account, you used your real name when you were asked for it. Also, ensure the name on your I.D matches the name you provided.

Remember, real name, not user name! Your username doesn’t have to be your real name.

• You did something wrong — not necessarily; the customer support was very helpful and told me I had no reason to worry and that I had done nothing wrong. Now some people might be asked to verify their identity due to suspicious activities on their account.

Why was my I.D rejected?

The Nigerian National Identity slip is not accepted by Fiverr, only the I.D card. I had to apply for an international passport and got it in a week. As a matter of fact, the international passport was ready in 3 days, but I was too lazy to pick it up and decided to pick it up on the 5th day

After getting my international passport, I contacted Customer Support, and they allowed me to try again ( this was like the 7th time from the first failed attempt). I did this on Friday that I had gotten my international passport; by Sunday, my account was restored.

My gigs were showing under the denied section, I contacted CS again, and they told me all was fine on their end and told me to delete cookies and caches. I did. It still didn’t work.

I eventually just tried clicking the edit button ( I didn’t actually make any changes to the gigs) and then clicked ‘save,' and my gigs were showing under the active section again! ( I had to do this for each gig). It was surprising that even CS had no idea why this occurred, even though on their end, my gigs were showing fine.

With my account restored and being back in business, I expected the swarm of business I had recently been experiencing before the verification process, to continue but lo and behold! The temporary restriction had caused my gig ranks to plummet.

Lucky for me, I was having discussions with some buyers on new orders before the restriction occurred. We simply continued from where we stopped, they placed their orders, and I had to explain to some, what had happened, and they gladly placed new orders too.

The problem with the restriction from I.D verification is the fact that if you get temporarily disabled for a while, then when your account is restored, your gig might not be getting any attention. You can focus on buyer’s request and old clients for a while, and hopefully, your gigs would be ranking again!

If you have any questions about the Fiverr I.D verification process, I would love to answer them.

Cheers🍷