How to tell if seller is genuine?

[Liaa Nova]

Hi all,

So, I recently came across a place that looks very likely to have copied/stolen? all of their skins from somewhere else (this has been reported to the genuine creator who has had problems before with the store that may have copied their stuff)

It just has made me wonder, how the hell do people know if something's been ripped from another creator? Maybe you mostly don't, but i'm wondering if anything obvious to look out for I guess, as I feel a bit weird at coming across it & glad I didn't buy one of their skins!

I guess I make no sense (those who know me, know I have big communication issues!) but I was curious as I don't really want it to happen again, especially as it was a pretty expensive skin & if i'd bought it, LL may have taken it from inventory too.

Are there things to look out for, obvious things I might not have even thought about? I always kinda just bought things and assumed it was by the seller.

[Chic Aeon]

While there is no real way other than time and knowledge of creators a few things to look at would be.

Do they have an inworld store?

How long have they been in business?

How old is the account selling these items?

Do they have an unreasonable amount of five star reviews in a very short period of time? 

None of that will give you an answer but if the Marketplace store is a less than month old account with no inworld store you should likely investigate some more.

Actual creators do make new alt accounts to sell "different" items than the main might sell, so someone could be legit and fail all three of those 'tests' above.

This has been going on for over a decade, so not new.  I wouldn't say "buy from the long time creators" necessarily as the skin I wear is from a new person (who I suspect is not really NEW but I don't know that LOL).  If the brand new account with great looking stuff turns up in some top events? You can pretty well guess it is an alt account and that the main knows the event owner - :D.

It is good to be on the look out for thieves but sometimes it is very hard to tell. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

5 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

While there is no real way other than time and knowledge of creators a few things to look at would be.

Basically this.

It's like getting that designer Guchi bag...

If you know brands... you'll realize that it's supposed to be stamped with 'gucci'... If not... you just walked out of that stall thinking you got a great deal.

In SL, after a while you know what different designer's products look like... and you also tend to realize that if you're in a shop that looks like the products were made by 7 different people... it's probably because they were...

Also... if you get a bunch of very different stuff and it's all full perms... it's time to open up that AR window and report the person who sent you that stuff... It is possible it's legit. It is also possible you could win the lottery the next time you scratch those numbers...

 

[Chase01]

Some thieves go to greater lengths to mask their theft, but many do very little and it is in those cases very obvious. Here are some of my suggestions for spotting the latter.

1. Generally, (not always) it is quite common to find these products sold at discounted rates. If the price looks too good to be true ... you know how the rest goes.
2. Look at their product photos, are there similarities in the style and theme? A lot of these copybot vendors use the original artwork with little to no modification.
3. Always look at seller feedback. Does the vendor have 1-star ratings? What do the comments say?
4. Is there a lot of variation in the quality of the items this vendor sells, do they sell a lot of random things (non gacha)?
5. Demos! If they're selling skins, there are generally no demos.
6. The more you shop and become familiar with brands, it becomes easier to spot some of these fakes with little effort.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Among the questions I would ask are, how old is the creator's account and business?   If the creator seems to have produced a remarkable number of good quality skins in the short time she has been in SL, that might give me reason to pause (maybe she's the new account of someone who has been around for ages, but maybe not).

I also ask my fashionista friends for advice, if it's not a creator I'v heard of, or take a look at the various SL fashion blogs (a dead giveaway, of course, is if you see the same adverting images in the blogs, only with a different product name and creator, which is certainly not unheard of). 

[Bebe Bunny]

What I do:

• Check if the store name is the same as the skin creator name (funny enough I never saw a copybotted item that didn't have the original creator's name on the listing).
• Read the description, if it's a gacha item or not (even if it's a gacha product, you might be stolen, I had that issue once, bought a 450L gacha skin and only got a folder with a notecard, no refunds from the reseller.)
• Goggle reverse on the product image, that helps a lot in case the listing has no name about the original creator.
• Reviews might be useful too, sadly to post a review the person has to actually give money to the botter.

[Heathernorton]

I click on the store owner's name. If the profile is blank..  that's a huge red flag

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

7 hours ago, Heathernorton said:

I click on the store owner's name. If the profile is blank..  that's a huge red flag

 Like meli and her host of alts and associates? It gets confusing. 

[Maitimo]

Another clue is that each skin/hair/whatever will have only one colour or tone option.  There won't be a range of skintones for the same style skin.