Today was the second time I got a mix delivered with some pretty severe clipping issues. Outside of that, I've almost never had a positive experience with a mixing engineer on Fiverr, at any price level - and I've tried several. Cheap, expensive, hundreds of 5-star reviews, top tier, and so on...

Harsh mixes, muffled mixes, abrupt volume fluctuations... one guy even forgot to put one of the stems in and kept being defensive when confronted with constructive criticism.

How am I supposed to believe anything other than that these people must be thriving on people who have little or no idea what a good mix is, giving them positive reviews?

I'm honestly baffled. It's such a colossal waste of time. The only positive is that it's actually quite easy to get a refund.

UPDATE:
Before anyone else mentions "any decent mixing engineers start at a minimum of $500 per song" and I "got what I paid for" at $300 (i.e. crap), hold onto your invoices. The only positive experience I've had was with a local mixing engineer (who unfortunately didn't have time to finish), who charged me roughly $100 (1000 SEK), normally $200 (2000 SEK). And we have some pretty high taxes here. She's both college-educated in the subject and working actively (to the degree she wasn't able to finish).

Why should the Dunning-Kruger effect get better when paying more? Just look at, you know... any overpriced anything.

UPDATE 2: Some of you just love beating a dead horse.... there are several examples just in this thread of people having positive experiences working with reputable Mixing Engineers doing it for less $300. Give it a rest.