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Why should I pay for a demo?


Prisqua Newall
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I've started this discussion on Flickr which might get me banned somewhere for opening my big mouth but I would like for someone to give me a good reason of why I should pay for a demo. And is there anyone that agree or disagree with this? It's not the first I see that at events. I passed on a pair of boots because they were L499 and I had to pay for the demo. I also came across a store once that had all their demos set at L$1.

Why should I pay for a demo?

 

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On the MP, I prefer $1 demos, it allows me to send them to my Alts without all the rigmarole of relogging into MP as them, then back again.

For vendors in stores that's less useful, but it's like 1/3 of a penny so no real skin off my nose. One good thing is it gives me a good indication of the creator's thoughts of their customers.

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7 minutes ago, Haselden said:

Well, its that or you can pay the full price of the product which is normally 600L+.

 

 

What do you mean? I wanted to try the dress before I buy it since I've never bought from that designer.  I want to understand why some designers are charging to demo their clothes at an event. What's next, we're going to have to pay to look at a piece of furniture before we can buy it?

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If someone uses a certain vendor system then I am pretty sure even free items need you to pay L$ 1 which is automatically refunded.  It is not always clear to people this will happen though without an info sign.  

As Callum said, also MP allows for gifting a demo.

Outside of these 2 things, I see no reason why you would have to pay for a demo.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Interested to read thoughts though

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2 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

On the MP, I prefer $1 demos, it allows me to send them to my Alts without all the rigmarole of relogging into MP as them, then back again.

Yes, I understand that. When it has a purpose, it's fine, but if you're trying to hook me at a fashion event, charging me for a demo is not the way to go in my books. It's a demo.

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1 minute ago, Prisqua Newall said:

What do you mean? I wanted to try the dress before I buy it since I've never bought from that designer.  I want to understand why some designers are charging to demo their clothes at an event. What's next, we're going to have to pay to look at a piece of furniture before we can buy it?

Most makers only started doing Demos because apparently in the past there would be alot of "Fuss" over the product after purchasing.

However, the reason why they charge 1L normally is because 1) They want the profit, and 2) Sometimes the demo is so good you don't even need to buy the original.

 

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I have to say, it's a very good question. Not being a shopper, it doesn't affect me at all, but I do see that there should be no charge in SL for demos, except perhaps for the reason that Callum mentioned, and the 'vendor' reason that Cindy mentioned. It's not as though a demo costs the seller anything for materials.

Edited by Phil Deakins
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2 minutes ago, Haselden said:

However, the reason why they charge 1L normally is because 1) They want the profit, and 2) Sometimes the demo is so good you don't even need to buy the original.

I'll say again that I'm not a shopper, so I'm not experienced. That said,  I thought that demos came with things like limited time before it poofs, or attached signs, or signs on the item's texture. If a demo is effectively no different to the real thing, then the seller isn't very good at it.

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1 minute ago, Phil Deakins said:

I'll say again that I'm not a shopper, so I'm not experienced. That said,  I thought that demos came with things like limited time before it poofs, or attached signs, or signs on the item's texture. If a demo is effectively no different to the real thing, then the seller isn't very good at it.

Some of them do but I rarely see them to be honest. Any other demo, have demo written all over them, lack of texture or some big horrible thing hanging over your head or around you. Never seen a demo good enough to wear. And I'm not after freebies. I'm happy to pay but sometimes I need to try before I buy, but I can't see why I should pay for a demo.

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12 minutes ago, Prisqua Newall said:

Damn, I've never seen a demo that was good enough to wear.

Ironically, some makeup vendors for mesh heads have "wearable demos" on the MP, free, a copy of their multi eyeshadow, lipstick applier hud where only one lipstick and one eyeshadow work, free so you can see exactly what the quality is like, you can get the free demo, apply it to your mesh head and just make do with that particular colour, or, go back to the MP and pay the L$ 75 or L$ 100 or LS 150 for the full hud.

This model seems to work for their business.

Conversely, there are merchants who charge L$10 for a demo, and that just screams...

"Once you try the demo you will never buy the product because it's awful, so I make what I can stiffing you for L$10 for the demo of my overpriced rubbish"
 

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8 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

The simplest reason I can come up with is "to stop copybotters." Misguided as that may be. 

They may indeed be one way of doing things, there's a lot of reasons, but the main one typically is the whole gifting thing and not having to go through the 0L$ buy screen which advertises a bunch of other products for you to scroll past... I guess 1L can add up eventually, but I'm not sure I'd consider it a problem.

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20 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

The simplest reason I can come up with is "to stop copybotters." Misguided as that may be. 

Putting

!QUIT
!QUIT
!QUIT

In your MP listing ensures that they can't steal all your stuff, too.

(Not really, but those anti-copybot shouters in 2007 or so were funny)

 

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1 hour ago, Prisqua Newall said:

I've started this discussion on Flickr which might get me banned somewhere for opening my big mouth but I would like for someone to give me a good reason of why I should pay for a demo. And is there anyone that agree or disagree with this? It's not the first I see that at events. I passed on a pair of boots because they were L499 and I had to pay for the demo. I also came across a store once that had all their demos set at L$1.

Why should I pay for a demo?

 

Can someone please explain, why i should pay a few hundred bucks for a single colored piece of fashion (Erratic), if i can get the same look and quality somewhere else for just 250LD, including a 30 colors and 20 texture HUD (Hilly Haalan)? Why?

See, its just about personal preferences. Some people dont care about paying 400 LD for one single colored shirt, others do. And therefore they dont even visit shops like Erratic.
And thats what you also should do. Just visit stores offering free demos.

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The main reason is for gifting purposes as you cannot send a gift if it's 0L (this is mainly because it's easily abused at 0L to spam people's received items)

Gifting helps speed up time if you're trying to test things on an alt and don't want to swap logged in accounts, so it's paying for a convenience there.

1L for a demo isn't an end of the world scenario. It's approximately $0.004 per $L1, you can find that amount of linden at a multitude of free places or even like 5 cents on the street.

For me personally I prefer the 1L for a demo. Allows me to just gift instead of dealing with the situation where I'm trying to explain to a friend here get this demo and they're being slow about it or if I want to test demos myself.

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1 hour ago, Tails Wirefly said:

1L for a demo isn't an end of the world scenario. It's approximately $0.004 per $L1, you can find that amount of linden at a multitude of free places or even like 5 cents on the street.

The rest of your post is fine, but I find this logic flawed.

1. You can't buy single lindens, and even if you could, the overhead fees would raise that number by a lot. You can't turn that 5 cents into lindens no matter how hard you try. 

2. While you can get free lindens easily, I don't want to camp for 10+ minutes or go on a treasure hunt inworld just so I can gift a demo to my alt. It's going to be faster and more convenient for me to just log onto my alt. 

P.S. The way you abbreviate linden dollars also really bothers me. It's either L$1 or 1L, not $L1 or L1. (I would add a happy emoji but phones are difficult.)

Edited by Wulfie Reanimator
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4 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

The rest of your post is fine, but I find this logic flawed.

1. You can't buy single lindens, and even if you could, the overhead fees would raise that number by a lot. You can't turn that 5 cents into lindens no matter how hard you try. 

2. While you can get free lindens easily, I don't want to camp for 10+ minutes or go on a treasure hunt inworld just so I can gift a demo to my alt. It's going to be faster and more convenient for me to just log onto my alt. 

The logic there is that if you're trying on a demo for something with a full retail price with the idea that you're most likely able to buy it if you end up liking it, whether by loading up the required linden(or more) or have already earned it in world. As for the 5 cents in linden comment I made, it was more so an emphasis of how easy it is to acquire ~1250% more currency than the 1L cost is.

There are other ways to get lindens so fortunately you don't have to camp for 10+ minutes but if you're really scraping for quick ways to get a small amount of lindens then it's probably the best bet.

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I dont mind paying $1 to get a demo. I wont buy a product if I cant demo it first (unless its from a store I know and trust). I like that most shops now offer demos and  I think it only fair to pay for the service. 

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I believe it was once mentioned that those 1L demos are a relict of the ancient past, where there were only prim vendors with no sale tracking or whatever, and vendors used the 1L fee to track their demo sales. Or something.

As for the rest... well, can't really comment. My alts do keep some kind of "lucky 1L", but that relates to previous Christmas offers at 7DS, where you got a full pack of useful goodies and you were refunded. I can't recall that I ever got a product featuring a 1L demo.

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5 hours ago, Prisqua Newall said:

Damn, I've never seen a demo that was good enough to wear. Sometimes they even disappear after a few minutes.

I found a demo cloak that was so nice I forgot to buy the product. It had "demo" written all over it, but the text was small, and from a distance it just looked like a pattern on the fabric. In fact, I got so used to the pattern I tuned it out until a friend pointed out, "um, you're still wearing a demo".

Dang, I should probably check and make sure I actually did buy the product. I've certainly got enough use out of that demo, the creator deserves something back for it.

Though I don't remember if the demo was free or not.

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4 hours ago, CheriColette said:

I dont mind paying $1 to get a demo. I wont buy a product if I cant demo it first (unless its from a store I know and trust). I like that most shops now offer demos and  I think it only fair to pay for the service. 

It's not a service. They're trying to convince you to buy the item and you would be a fool to buy it without checking out a demo first. You might as well start paying shops to advertise to you. 

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