Question for merchants

[Teagan Tobias]

I have seen this all to often and I see it more and more.  I look at an item in a store and there are no permissions listed.  I click on it to get a price and all I get is the amount to pay, nothing about what I am trying to purchase.  I have tried to send note cards to owners asking them what the permissions are on there items but most of the time I never get a response.  Obviously I do not purchase the item or any items in there store.
My Mom says its called a pig-in-a-poke.  Why is this method used, its really unfriendly to the buyer.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

A number of stores will have permission information on a sign in the shop or on a notecard given to you when you arrive and or that is available at the customer service desk if there is one. I have even seen it in some designers profiles.   Most designers use the same permissions on all the items they sell.  Of course if you can't find the information in the store, then I don't blame you for not buying, I wouldn't either.

[Deja Letov]

I don't know why merchants do it. I usually list it on my vendor boards. However, sometimes there are no vendor boards, like if you are buying an item right on the store. But in that case, all you have to do is go into edit mode on the item and you can see the permissions by which ones are checked. Just touching an item won't give you permissions unless they are using maybe a networked delivery system. I've been using Caspervend, and even on items that are right on the floor, if you touch it and then click the button for "info" it will tell you the name, the permissions and the price. More than that, you won't get unless it's on their posters.

[Dora Gustafson]

I totally agree and I dislike it very much too.
The problem arise when merchants use vendors that do not supply names of what is sold and what the permissions are.
The vendor used is the merchant's choice so it is the merchant's responsibility.

A scripted vendor will only open a Pay window with the vendor's name and the price to pay if the scriptor didn't take steps to provide the full information.

An unscripted vendor will open a Buy window with all the information you can ask for.

Merchants should demand vendors that supply all information or refrain from using scripted vendors.
As an alternative the information should be written on the vendor.

[Spica Inventor]

My Mom says its called a pig-in-a-poke.  Why is this method used, its really unfriendly to the buyer.

I would have to file that under the category of 'GREED', like all the other deceptive practices in SL. ;-)

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

I like to cooperate with other creators in SL. In most cases we work with a formula where every creator who has contributed to the product, gets a percentage of the sales. It happens often the we have to split sales among 3 persons. This can only be done by a script. But as soon as you use a splitting script, you can no longer use the buy option to put your products for sale. Only the pay functions allows you to work with a splitting script.

That is the reason you cannot look into the boxes in my shop. I wish I could both show my customers the content and permissions of the items in the box, and at the same time split the prize amoung several merchants. But this is just not possible.

[Teagan Tobias]

Seeing in the box is not the point, the point is just being able to know. There is no reason the information can't be posted in the store, and a lot of the times it is not. If I don't see it sometimes I ask using a note card, but most of the time I just go look for a friendlier store.

And after reading your post I now know that two or three people have lost a sale, not just one.

[phaedra Exonar]

Most my items have mixed perms so even looking at the contents of the vender box would not show the true perms, which are mostly set to prims copy/mod and most scripts copy only but not all.  Besides the perms the feature list of most my items are to complex to list on the face of a prim.  Even when I have demos set up inworld, looking at them and trying them out would still not show all the features.  Even if you don't like to shop on the marketplace, you can still look up an item on the marketplace that you found inworld to read more info about it, and see additional pictures.

[phaedra Exonar]

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Teagan Tobias wrote:

Seeing in the box is not the point, the point is just being able to know. There is no reason the information can't be posted in the store, and a lot of the times it is not. If I don't see it sometimes I ask using a note card, but most of the time I just go look for a friendlier store.

And after reading your post I now know that two or three people have lost a sale, not just one.

---

 

 

 

Some merchants prefer IM over note cards, I can't all way log in to SL to read a note card but might be able to respond to an IM that went to my email even if I'm at work.  If a merchant doesn't list how they prefer to be contacted in their profile, try both before giving up on them, but some sadly just don't respond.

[Teagan Tobias]

I am not talking complex builds here, I'm talking a pair of jeans, a blouse, things like that. There is no excuse for not having permissions clearly visible. And my shape is no modify, so no mesh, it does not fit, so mesh permissions don't even come into play here. Luckily there are a lot of merchants that do care about there customers, but unfortunately you don't know if they care or not from looking at a store.

[Jennifer Boyle]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

I wish I could both show my customers the content and permissions of the items in the box, and at the same time split the prize amoung several merchants. But this is just not possible.

---

Not possible?  Hardly.  Just make an alt that does nothing but act as seller and collect for sales.  Periodically log onto that account and distribute its money, which shouldn't take five minutes to do.

[Jennifer Boyle]

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phaedra Exonar wrote:

Most my items have mixed perms so even looking at the contents of the vender box would not show the true perms, which are mostly set to prims copy/mod and most scripts copy only but not all.  Besides the perms the feature list of most my items are to complex to list on the face of a prim.  Even when I have demos set up inworld, looking at them and trying them out would still not show all the features.  Even if you don't like to shop on the marketplace, you can still look up an item on the marketplace that you found inworld to read more info about it, and see additional pictures.

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Can I be sure that the item being sold on MP has ther same permissions as the one being sold in world?

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

Not possible?  Hardly.  Just make an alt that does nothing but act as seller and collect for sales.  Periodically log onto that account and distribute its money, which shouldn't take five minutes to do.

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And how does this alt know which money goes to whom? I would need a huge administration, with 400 products, that can all have different splits. I guess it will take about an hour a day to keep track of this administration.

Besides of that, my co-creators would not know which products are sold. Now my vendor script send them a message when they receive a split, so they know for what product they are paid. 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

Not possible?  Hardly.  Just make an alt that does nothing but act as seller and collect for sales.  Periodically log onto that account and distribute its money, which shouldn't take five minutes to do.

---

And how does this alt know which money goes to whom? I would need a huge administration, with 400 products, that can all have different splits. I guess it will take about an hour a day to keep track of this administration.

Besides of that, my co-creators would not know which products are sold. Now my vendor script send them a message when they receive a split, so they know for what product they are paid. 

 

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It IS possible though to put the permssions on the picture of the time you are selling.  If your item has complicated permissions such as the prims are copy /mod , but contents are copy only, or there is a license involved, use a script that will give a notecard with the information on it when the vendor is touched.

If ithe permissions are not clear before the sale, i won't buy an item.  As an earlier poster said that is just buying a pig in a poke.

 

[Sassy Romano]

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Dora Gustafson wrote:

An unscripted vendor will open a

Buy

window with all the information you can ask for.

Merchants should demand vendors that supply all information

or

refrain

from using scripted vendors.

As an alternative the information should be written on the vendor.

---

Unfortunately, this isn't the case at all.

It only takes a no modify resize script or similar which is dropped into a prim part of the product and the item permissions now show the collapsed permissions of (no modify).  Then we're back to the sending of IM's/notecards asking if the item is actually a modify prim with a no mod script or whether the whole object is no modify.

I had the most ridiculous exchange with a merchant over just this very behaviour.  It was surreal, I sent a detailed question and got back the answer "did you already buy it?" so I rephrased the question, the answer was "did you want me to remove the script?" and it went on and on, mostly while I was offline so I was responding via email.  When I did log in, the conversation was just as pointless with the creator totally failing to answer the simple question of "is the prim object modify and is it just the resize script that is making it appear no mod, or is the prim object no mod too?" 

After a while, she stopped answering.  I can't understand this at all, MAKE IT EASY FOR PEOPLE TO BUY IF YOU WANT TO SELL STUFF!

So no... selling via a prim doesn't help at all.

[Sassy Romano]

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Teagan Tobias wrote:

I have seen this all to often and I see it more and more.  I look at an item in a store and there are no permissions listed.  I click on it to get a price and all I get is the amount to pay, nothing about what I am trying to purchase. 

---

I had a thread about this bugbear a while ago.  I wasted a lot of time trying to find a dress that I wanted.  I hunted all over, either no permissions were listed or I had to hover over each item to see the price.

It was tedious and like you, I had no response from many.  I cannot understand merchants who on the one hand are complaining about lack of sales but on the other, totally failing to:-

a) Make the buying process simple by providing all the information in the first place.

b) Respond where there are questions that the information does not answer.

I can only assume that they're not bothered about it and it would just be easier to have a big sign in the shop that says "Buy it if you like but I just don't care about all of this".  Then potential customers would know where they stood.

I also believe that MP should show the last logged in date of the merchant, on each listing.  Then you'd also be able to spot dormant or potentially unresponsive merchants.

[Dora Gustafson]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

I wish I could both show my customers the content and permissions of the items in the box, and at the same time split the prize amoung several merchants. But this is just not possible.

---

Not possible? Of course it is. If the demand is there someone will make it:)

 

[Sassy Romano]

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Dora Gustafson wrote:

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

I wish I could both show my customers the content and permissions of the items in the box, and at the same time split the prize amoung several merchants. But this is just not possible.

---

Not possible? Of course it is. If the demand is there someone will make it:)

 

---

The request for a viewable permissions tree is here https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-29240 and resolves this issue and that of collapsed permissions in prim content.

[Deja Letov]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

I wish I could both show my customers the content and permissions of the items in the box, and at the same time split the prize amoung several merchants. But this is just not possible.

---

Not possible?  Hardly.  Just make an alt that does nothing but act as seller and collect for sales.  Periodically log onto that account and distribute its money, which shouldn't take five minutes to do.

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That suggestion would be a management nightmare. While technically possibly, everyonee can make an alt, it's not feasible or user friendly. The other merchants would also have no record of the sale. However, there are plenty of vendor systems that can do this exact same thing for you.

On the information aspect, the system I use is very helpful and tells exactly what people need to know. i do put it on the actual poster itself, but if you touch the item (vendor or the floor item, it doesn't matter) you get a detailed description, which is usually a copy of my marketplace listing but then the last line says :

[06:36] CasperVend System: This product is the Gothic Library Prefab Building, and it's available for $750. Its permissions are: COPY, MOD, NO TRANS.

If in doubt on the poster, you can find out through that. Of course, it needs to be known without saying that perms apply only to the objects and obviously not scripts. I've had to write that into my store policies because people seem to think that.

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Deja Letov wrote:

However, there are plenty of vendor systems that can do this exact same thing for you.

On the information aspect, the system I use is very helpful and tells exactly what people need to know. i do put it on the actual poster itself, but if you touch the item (vendor or the floor item, it doesn't matter) you get a detailed description, which is usually a copy of my marketplace listing but then the last line says :

[06:36] CasperVend System: This product is the Gothic Library Prefab Building, and it's available for $750. Its permissions are: COPY, MOD, NO TRANS.

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When I first needed a vendor system, the system that you name was not available yet, as far as I know. Actually I could not find any vendor system that did split between more then two persons, and was both a single prim vendor. Then a friend wrote this script for us, that I have been using since.

Till now it has functioned exactly as I needed. It does a better job then the 'distribution split' on the marketplace. So why change? It would involve a lot of extra work.

I do make clear what the permissions are of my products. For two brands it is on the productboxes, and for my other brand (full perms) it is the shop description..

 

[Sassy Romano]

There's no benefit in chastising the merchant when even selling from a prim fails to show permissions on anything other than a simple object and with so much "resize" only scripted parts to clothing, has all but made the ability to see permissions in prim content as redundant.

The issue should be addressed in a more expanded tree view of complex permissions as suggested in the JIRA I linked that was opened by Casper Warden.

We don't need the infighting when LL have failed to produce the tools.

[Deja Letov]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

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Deja Letov wrote:

However, there are plenty of vendor systems that can do this exact same thing for you.

On the information aspect, the system I use is very helpful and tells exactly what people need to know. i do put it on the actual poster itself, but if you touch the item (vendor or the floor item, it doesn't matter) you get a detailed description, which is usually a copy of my marketplace listing but then the last line says :

[06:36] CasperVend System: This product is the Gothic Library Prefab Building, and it's available for $750. Its permissions are: COPY, MOD, NO TRANS.

---

When I first needed a vendor system, the system that you name was not available yet, as far as I know. Actually I could not find any vendor system that did split between more then two persons, and was both a single prim vendor. Then a friend wrote this script for us, that I have been using since.

Till now it has functioned exactly as I needed. It does a better job then the 'distribution split' on the marketplace. So why change? It would involve a lot of extra work.

I do make clear what the permissions are of my products. For two brands it is on the productboxes, and for my other brand (full perms) it is the shop description..

 

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Oh no, I think you're fine. You basically are using a scripted vendor object. Personally I think you're good. As long as permissions are availble on your vendor poster, I don't see what the complaint is amongst anyone. I was replying to you but really it was a comment for anyone that it is possible to use vendors and show the perms either on the poster or through a scripted notice. Nothing meant negative towards you Mad 

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

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Teagan Tobias wrote:

I have seen this all to often and I see it more and more.  I look at an item in a store and there are no permissions listed.  I click on it to get a price and all I get is the amount to pay, nothing about what I am trying to purchase. 

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I also believe that MP should show the last logged in date of the merchant, on each listing.  Then you'd also be able to spot dormant or potentially unresponsive merchants.

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I like this idea!!!

[Jennifer Boyle]

Actually you could automate the computations using Excel; Access could no doubt automate it better, but I don't know enough about Access to actually know how to do it.  Using Excel, you would have each item on a line on one worksheet, along with who got paid for it and what percentage they got.  You would paste the transaction history of the alt into a second worksheet in the same workbook.  You would need some fairly complex formulas on the first page that used the lookup functions in Excel to grab data from the second worksheet and calculate who was due how much.  It could calculate the total due each.  My wild guess is that it would take someone with good knowledge of Excel a day to produce and debug the spreadsheet.  My guess is that it would take about 10 hours to enter the data for the first spreadsheet if you had to do it from scratch.  It would be much faster if you have an electronic file containing it that is in, or can be converted to, a format that Excel can read.  Anyone could maintain it, removing and adding items as needed.  Anyone could paste the transaction history into it and read the total due each person.  That would take almost no time.  

[Jennifer Boyle]

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Deja Letov wrote:

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That suggestion would be a management nightmare. While technically possibly, everyone can make an alt, it's not feasible or user friendly. 

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See my response to Madeliefste for a description of how to do it.  It would be a nightmare if you were doing it with a pencil and paper, but it would be pretty effortless using a computer, once you had it set up.

The quote above, to me, demonstrates what the problem actually is: the tendency to put convenience and ease for the merchant ahead of convenience for the customer.  Think about Wal-Mart---they try to give the customer the best deal they can, and squeeze their suppliers in order to do it.  The customer comes first.  Look where it got them.