HELP WITH AN INFO PLEASE !

[DISSONI]

Hi, i just saw on marketplace few minutes ago some SEMI-EXCLUSIVE mesh items that i payed a fortune before to buy it and make it for my store, and now i see them for 1000 L$ full pack, is this normal, there is no TOS against this??? Please help me with me

[Perrie Juran]

sorry to say but

caveat emptor

 

 

[Rolig Loon]

The general rule of marketing is that a product is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it.  You can kick yourself for not finding the "semi-exclusive" items at a lower price first, but that's not the merchants' fault.  If you bought the things for a price that you considered fair at the time, then it was worth it. 

As an aside, many years ago in an older version of Marketplace, some clever person listed a custom-built plywood cube (full perm too, so you could stretch it and texturize it in thousands of ways).  If I remember correctly, it was listed at L$45,000.  I doubt that he ever found anyone who thought it was worth the price.

[DISSONI]

Ok, i understand but it is not normal, we payed a SEMI- EXCLUSIVE, available for 15 persons ONLY and now its available for the whole marketplace for a much lower price than before a FAT PACK. Must be a rule or something about this, they dont have respect

[Cerise Sorbet]

This come with the territory when you decide to resell prefabs. You get to set your own prices, but so do the others who bought into it.  You can compete on price and hope to make it up in volume. Or, you might come up with appealing and unusual texturing and charge a little more. Or, you can make your stuff like everyone else's, instead put your effort into making expensive-looking branding and shop space, and charge a fortune for the ordinary.

[Rolig Loon]

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DISSONI wrote:

Ok, i understand but it is not normal, we payed a SEMI- EXCLUSIVE, available for 15 persons ONLY and now its available for the whole marketplace for a much lower price than before a FAT PACK. Must be a rule or something about this, they dont have respect

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Oh, I see what you mean.  Yeah, that's sad but I can see exactly why a creator might do that.  It takes a lot of time and creative energy to make a beautiful product, but it's very hard to decide what to sell it for.  After all, it's not worth anything if nobody is willing to buy it.  So, you set a high "semi-exclusive" price and hope that a few people will pay for it.  Sadly, only one or two people do.  After it has been on the market for a while, you swallow your pride and decide to take the Wal-Mart option.  You drop the price 50% and it sells like magic.  Did you cheat the one or two people who paid the original price?  No.  They agreed that it was worth paying.  They just bought during the "test marketing" phase.

The only time I would not even consider doing that is when I have created something as a custom item for a specific client.  Under those circumstances, I promise the client that I will not sell the same thing to anyone else.  The promise is only as good as my word, of course, so Linden Lab wouldn't punish me if I broke it.  I'd know, though, and I'd probably lose future clients if the news got out.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

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DISSONI wrote:

Ok, i understand but it is not normal, we payed a SEMI- EXCLUSIVE, available for 15 persons ONLY and now its available for the whole marketplace for a much lower price than before a FAT PACK. Must be a rule or something about this, they dont have respect

---

Oh, I see what you mean.  Yeah, that's sad but I can see exactly why a creator might do that.  It takes a lot of time and creative energy to make a beautiful product, but it's very hard to decide what to sell it for.  After all, it's not worth anything if nobody is willing to buy it.  So, you set a high "semi-exclusive" price and hope that a few people will pay for it.  Sadly, only one or two people do.  After it has been on the market for a while, you swallow your pride and decide to take the Wal-Mart option.  You drop the price 50% and it sells like magic.  Did you cheat the one or two people who paid the original price?  No.  They agreed that it was worth paying.  They just bought during the "test marketing" phase.

The only time I would not even consider doing that is when I have created something as a custom item for a specific client.  Under those circumstances, I promise the client that I will not sell the same thing to anyone else.  The promise is only as good as my word, of course, so Linden Lab wouldn't punish me if I broke it.  I'd know, though, and I'd probably lose future clients if the news got out.

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I doubt there's anything to be done about this, but the concept of "limited edition" does have some legal standing in the physical realm (in this case art prints).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_edition

In which there's this line...

"In the United States limited editions are regulated under state consumer protections laws."

[DISSONI]

Thanks a lot everyone, i just got mad because its not normal to type in the product descriprtion "ONCE THEY SOLD, THEY GONE" and after 1 month put them back on sale. Anyway i guess i found the solution for this, thanks again everyone. I appreaciate

[Rolig Loon]

True, Maddy, but you'll have to admit that's a very narrow corner of the market.  Limited edition works of art are almost always numbered and signed, following a long-standing tradition that was in use well before those few state laws were enacted.  The much more common case, described at length in the wikipedia article that you quoted, is "special editions" or "limited editions" of DVDs, music albums, teacups, and paperback novels, for which "companies widely use special editions and incremental improvements to sell the same products to consumers multiple times."  I certainly agree that there are ethical boundaries to the practice, but I think you'd usually have a hard time getting people to agree where they are.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

True, Maddy, but you'll have to admit that's a very narrow corner of the market.  Limited edition works of art are almost always numbered and signed, following a long-standing tradition that was in use well before those few state laws were enacted.  The much more common case, described at length in the wikipedia article that you quoted, is "special editions" or "limited editions" of DVDs, music albums, teacups, and paperback novels, for which "

companies widely use special editions and incremental improvements to sell the same products to consumers multiple times

."  I certainly agree that there are ethical boundaries to the practice, but I think you'd usually have a hard time getting people to agree where they are.

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Yep, I agree. What got me to highlight the limited edition line was the OP's statement that the item was purportedly to be sold to 15 people. That feels a li'l like numbering prints.

There's plenty of grey here. I sympathize with the OP. I don't think there's anything to be done about it.

[Chic Aeon]

If I understand your post correctly, you bought what was listed as an item that would only be sold "15 times" or whatever. The same item not long after became an unlimited item at a much lower price.

I can think of some things that might be viable to do.  Most likely in the order I am listing *wink*.

 

#1 write to the seller and request a refund of the difference since you bought a product in good faith and they did not deliver on their marketing "promise".

#2 if you are able to write a review on the product (it may have the same marketplace ID with just info changed) then state what happened for others to know.

#3 report this as fraud on a ticket. (I doubt this will do much good but to me it is fraud.).

Just some thoughts. Sorry this happened.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

I stick with Roligs reply as it sums up nicely the decisions a creator has to make.

And we do not want to harm our customers doing so. Rolig explained in a good way what would possibly bring you to make such decisions about your product.

For a customer it's of course always bothersome when you figure you bought something that just dropped in price the next week or even day. But if this would be forbidden / prohibited.. think about all the supermarkets who sometimes change their prices and offers on a daily basis to make the offer fit to the current needs / requests.

You can ask 'nicely' for a refund of the difference or at least a bit, or any other arrangement.

As long as there was no documented contract involved that guaranteed you to have semi exclusive rights on this for X-amount of time, and that the price of the product won't change - then there is nothing wrong with it nor illegal =)