Abuse of timed demos?

[Paul Hexem]

So, for some of my products, I sell no copy demos on a timer that deletes the demo after a few minutes.

It's been the perfect solution until now. This week I've noticed two residents purchasing multiple copies within minutes of each other. Presumably to use them together, rezzing out new copies each time the timer runs out.

Instead of buying the product, they're just rezzing out a new copy every 3 minutes, I suspect.

As merchants, would you guys let this slide, or do something to prevent people from buying multiple copies like this?

[angeoco]

I'm not a merchant, just a user who always tries demos before buying anything costing more than a few lindens.

I see in your marketplace list that you offer a demo submarine that expires after 3 minutes. That seems to me to be barely enough time to figure out the controls never mind test the thing, so it is understandable that a prospective purchaser would want to try several demos before deciding.

Maybe these particular customers are gaming the system, getting a few minutes of fun for free, but they could also be genuinely testing the item. Having to re-rez a submarine every 3 minutes is a load of hassle so how long can they keep it going before either giving up or buying the item for full price? It costs you nothing and you could well get a sale or two out of it.

My latest big purchase was a boat costing 4,000 L$, the third full-price boat I have bought from that maker. The maker offers 10-minute test-drives and I took full advantage of that I'm ashamed to say how many times, before I felt comfortable that I really wanted this boat. It cost them nothing and now they have made a substantial sale. Would I have bought it without being able to test it fully? I don't think so.

[Paul Hexem]

22 minutes ago, angeoco said:

I'm not a merchant, just a user who always tries demos before buying anything costing more than a few lindens.

I see in your marketplace list that you offer a demo submarine that expires after 3 minutes. That seems to me to be barely enough time to figure out the controls never mind test the thing, so it is understandable that a prospective purchaser would want to try several demos before deciding.

Maybe these particular customers are gaming the system, getting a few minutes of fun for free, but they could also be genuinely testing the item. Having to re-rez a submarine every 3 minutes is a load of hassle so how long can they keep it going before either giving up or buying the item for full price? It costs you nothing and you could well get a sale or two out of it.

My latest big purchase was a boat costing 4,000 L$, the third full-price boat I have bought from that maker. The maker offers 10-minute test-drives and I took full advantage of that I'm ashamed to say how many times, before I felt comfortable that I really wanted this boat. It cost them nothing and now they have made a substantial sale. Would I have bought it without being able to test it fully? I don't think so.

Good feedback.

[So Whimsy]

Hi there Gadget!

Your vehicle offers a lot of options, from moving parts to color change, search light to the actual driving itself. 3 minutes does indeed sound like an awfully short time to test, I agree on that angeoco. If I were to consider purchasing the submarine I would spend those three minutes just fiddling with colors and checking it out from the outside, try out the moving parts and the search light.

If the time wasn't up during that it surely would be before I even took a seat in the actual vehicle. Add lag, a sim restart or simply taking the time to type to a friend about the pro's and con's of the product would eat up minutes fast.

3 minutes seem like ample time to get a feel for how the vehicle drives and whether it'd be for me or not but your vehicle offers much more than simply driving it around (which is awesome and I might get it!) and customers will be naturally curious about those other functions. That's the point where 3 minutes are over too fast. Rez your boat and pretend you have never seen it before and set an alarm for three minutes, would you think you got a good grasp of its functions/driving in that time?

500L can be a lot when on a budget so people test test test!

You could of course be right too and they just want some extra minutes of fun. Why not send them an IM or Notecard inquiring their reasoning behind buying several purchases of the demo

[Lillith Hapmouche]

31 minutes ago, angeoco said:

Having to re-rez a submarine every 3 minutes is a load of hassle ...

In terms of hair and mesh clothes, the typical script used for such time limit harassment even deletes the worn object and prevents you from putting on another copy from your inventory.
It's a fail-safe guaranteed method to give me a clear "stay away from my offers, you horrible being!" message, triggering me to delete the crap and avoid that overzealous creator like the plague.
In such cases, I would definitely not mind to call that "abuse of timed demoes" ... on the merchant's end. 

Then, on the other hand, for some purely rezzable items, there can be a justified use to delete the rezzed copy. 
I help translating the help notecards for a fireworks system, which also features a limited test version. It comes with a limited number of rockets, with the launcher deleting itself once that number is fired. I think that's quite fair to get a good impression.

But 3 minutes for a ridable? Some people need at least a minute to have stuff properly rezzing on their end...

Edited March 30, 2018 by Lillith Hapmouche

[Alyona Su]

3 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

So, for some of my products, I sell no copy demos on a timer that deletes the demo after a few minutes.

It's been the perfect solution until now. This week I've noticed two residents purchasing multiple copies within minutes of each other. Presumably to use them together, rezzing out new copies each time the timer runs out.

Instead of buying the product, they're just rezzing out a new copy every 3 minutes, I suspect.

As merchants, would you guys let this slide, or do something to prevent people from buying multiple copies like this?

 

2 hours ago, angeoco said:

I'm not a merchant, just a user who always tries demos before buying anything costing more than a few lindens.

I see in your marketplace list that you offer a demo submarine that expires after 3 minutes. That seems to me to be barely enough time to figure out the controls never mind test the thing, so it is understandable that a prospective purchaser would want to try several demos before deciding.

Maybe these particular customers are gaming the system, getting a few minutes of fun for free, but they could also be genuinely testing the item. Having to re-rez a submarine every 3 minutes is a load of hassle so how long can they keep it going before either giving up or buying the item for full price? It costs you nothing and you could well get a sale or two out of it.

My latest big purchase was a boat costing 4,000 L$, the third full-price boat I have bought from that maker. The maker offers 10-minute test-drives and I took full advantage of that I'm ashamed to say how many times, before I felt comfortable that I really wanted this boat. It cost them nothing and now they have made a substantial sale. Would I have bought it without being able to test it fully? I don't think so.

10 minutes MINIMUM. I have a friend who sells a couple time-limited demo boats and his clock is set to 30 Minutes. He gets it. I mean there's a gigantic "THIS IS A DEMO" sign stuck to it LOL.

The *worst* are clothing time-limited demos. 5 minutes, seriously? I want at least 15 minutes because what you, dear creator, may not be aware of is that I have three or four different outfits of yours I want to demo and plan to purchase only one or two - so I will compare them, wear each over and over again. Then there's the texture-rezzing time. I've actually had demos EXPIRE *before* the textures fully rezzed.

Time-limited demos should be for rezzables only and even then I think a minimum of 10 minutes should be offered. Time-limited demos for clothing!? Seriously!? Are you THAT paranoid?

[Fionalein]

5 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

...

Time-limited demos should be for rezzables only and even then I think a minimum of 10 minutes should be offered. Time-limited demos for clothing!? Seriously!? Are you THAT paranoid?

I think the idea is to allow you to see it without those demo lines... but yeah I had that with a knight's set of armour. The time it took me to cycle through all the options had the center piece dematerialize....

You could try a demo rezzer in world, allowing for unlimited test time ... yes that will lead to a lot of people abusing your demo rezzer to just ride the vehicle. But also consider this: Your demo will be seen all across Linden waters... eventually someone will rightclick inspect it and want it 

Before I bought my two non freebie planes I testrode them across several sims, from one airport to another, taking off, landing, taking off again. Guess submarine buyers might like to do similar.

Edited March 30, 2018 by Fionalein

[Tari Landar]

Hello, my name is Tari, and I am a timed demo abuser....I think...that is if buying multiple timed demos of the same item makes me an abuser....

For all the reasons everyone else already stated, and probably lots more, including the fact that I'm visually impaired and even if everything rezzes quickly, that doesn't mean *I* can see, or use it quickly, because I have to adjust my cam view, sometimes adjust my monitor even, test things in a specific environment (likely, if I have a specific use for something). It can take me a bit. 

Though, in my defense, I only demo things more than once if I am pretty darn sure I really want it (I can be terrible at deleting demos, sometimes, lol, so I don't want fifty million of something), but yeah, it can definitely take me way more than 10 mins, sometimes. If I know something has a shorter demo rez time, odds are really good I don't even demo it, even if I really want it, even if it's from a seller I think I like...because I don't want to have to buy ten of it just to try it out for a few minutes  I've gotten those "I see you've bought this demo X amount of times" kind of IM from a seller before-twice actually, one super nice and one really really not nice, it's super unpleasant to be thought of as merely taking advantage of a freebie/demo-which is how those messages from sellers often come across (intentional or not, it does). It's like feeling as if you got caught doing something you shouldn't, but you know you weren't doing something you shouldn't, you just feel awkward with someone else saying you've done something you shouldn't...strange feeling nonetheless.

So, yeah, that's my long winded way of saying even if you make super awesome things, and are a super amazing creator-as a great deal of folks truly are-if your timed demos are short, you're likely not doing yourself any favors. And...if you have customers buying multiple of those demos, so they can try it out, it shouldn't automatically make you think they're taking advantage but that A-they like your stuff(YAY!!), and B-you should rethink how short the timer might actually be....'cuz you may well be cutting off your own profits and not realize it. 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

56 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

I think the idea is to allow you to see it without those demo lines...

That certainly wasn't the case with the hair and clothing samples I came across. So you had your typical demo lines, textures and signs and on top of that, the time limit. As if they literally begged you not to buy the stuff.

[Fionalein]

1 hour ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

That certainly wasn't the case with the hair and clothing samples I came across. So you had your typical demo lines, textures and signs and on top of that, the time limit. As if they literally begged you not to buy the stuff.

Interesting, the only merchants I know about using this so far didn't have those demo lines, so it is an interesting way to do it (not the one I would do myself though).

Edited March 30, 2018 by Fionalein

[Paul Hexem]

Fair enough, good feedback.

[LittleMe Jewell]

@Gadget - Yeah, I'd definitely start increasing the time limit on those demos.  It definitely sounds like that is the type of product that needs at least a good 10-15 minute time frame and possibly more if the item in question has lots of configuration/controls to study.

 

For any random hair/clothing creator reading this thread:  As Lillith mentioned, timers on those type of demos totally suck - or at the very least they need to have a much longer timer and they definitely should not be deleting the original item because I am going to want to try it on multiple times comparing it against other demo outfits that I try on in between those times. Lately though, I have simply immediately tossed all such timed demos into the trash and added the creator to my "never buy from" list.

[Callum Meriman]

For a vehicle (which you can obviously paint with garish ads) I don't see the harm in a 20 or even 30 minute demo to be honest. Anything shorter than that isn't much use. For me, if someone is selling a vehicle with no demo, or with a demo so short I can't do at least 10 sim crossings, play with the menu, look at the animations, and so on, meh, I skip purchase.

Your product was good enough for you to spend all those days making it, so you need to trust it can stand up to 20 minutes of demo.

[angeoco]

I tested another two boats from different makers in the last few days, both offering demos of at least an hour - just go to the maker's yard, admire the lineup, hop on one you like the look of, and go (if you know how :-) ). I bought one of them.

Edited April 3, 2018 by angeoco