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Why should I pay for a demo?


Prisqua Newall
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I only have one demo on the Marketplace and it is free. All other "demos" are available for viewing and in some cases trying out animations inworld.

THAT BEING SAID --- it is the CREATOR'S choice if they want to charge for a demo. It is YOUR choice if you want to pay. 

SO SIMPLY DON'T PAY AND DON'T BUY FROM FOLKS WHO DON'T OFFER FREE DEMOS --- IF THAT' YOUR THING.

Just walk away from the building!

 

And yes there are still wearable demos although not as many as their used to be. alaskametro has some and I have seen others on the Marketplace. 

 

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37 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

THAT BEING SAID --- it is the CREATOR'S choice if they want to charge for a demo. It is YOUR choice if you want to pay. 

SO SIMPLY DON'T PAY AND DON'T BUY FROM FOLKS WHO DON'T OFFER FREE DEMOS --- IF THAT' YOUR THING.

Hear hear —and that goes for pretty much every other cshoice a creator makes. Demand drives supply.

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7 hours ago, Prisqua Newall said:

 I understand what you're saying, but it would be like paying to try clothes in a RL store: they have to pay the staff to mind the change rooms and put back the clothes on the racks, yet if they want to sell their products, they have to let people try. It's a kind of advertising.

 

The comparison of SL demos to trying out clothes in RL doesn't hold: do you get to keep a copy of a designer dress when you try it on? No you don't, not even one with DEMO sprayed all over it in neon paint. What would those boutiques charge for giving you even a ruined copy of the actual dress (if that was to be a normal thing in RL) i dread to think...

7 hours ago, Prisqua Newall said:

Someone else mentioned SL merchants would probably fail in a RL business, I'm inclined to believe it. RL or SL, there's a need for customer service, even if there are different rules and experiences between SL and RL; money is money and it doesn't grow on trees.

when you decide to spend money in a game you should understand/accept the consequences. You cannot expect the same customer service/treatment in SL as you might in RL, by a simple reason that in SL 99.9% "businesses" are run by common people, like yourself. Most likely they didn't aspire to become a professional businessman/woman, never had any customer service training, with 0 finance background, little (if any) knowledge of trading and markets etc etc. They just happen to have certain skills - 3D modeling skills, talent for drawing (texture artist), or know how to script/code. They can use their skills to make stuff that is useful in this game (and in this game only, because you can't use it outside of it), and LL provided them the chance to sell it to other people. That's all. YOU make a choice to buy it/spend you money on it. You can also choose to live you SL without any money involved, and i know many people manage to do that just fine.

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2 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

You cannot expect the same customer service/treatment in SL as you might in RL

Truth be told, I can 'expect' whatever I want, including top notch customer service.  Reality is that I may or may not get it in SL and I have to decide for myself how I react to that.

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13 hours ago, Prisqua Newall said:

Someone else mentioned SL merchants would probably fail in a RL business, I'm inclined to believe it.

That is an amazingly broad generalization.

My SL business IS a RL, incorporated business. I provide real support to customers, and not just for my products. I pay real income taxes. I earn a real living. Could not be more real. 

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5 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

ou cannot expect the same customer service/treatment in SL as you might in RL, by a simple reason that in SL 99.9% "businesses" are run by common people, like yourself.

People do expect, and receive, the same level of CS, and more, from many of us “common people”.

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1 minute ago, Pamela Galli said:

People do expect, and receive, the same level of CS, and more, from many of us “common people”.

True that,  I have been known to log in and answer a customer question at 4 am because I checked my phone on the way to the bathroom on a middle of the night pee run.  

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There are obviously responsible and sensible (and honest) merchants like you Pamela, but i am just being realistic and reasonable. I am also sure quite a large part of all SL merchants don't pay taxes either, because if they don't report their SL income nobody will find it out anyway, so why should they report it. I'm just reminding you all that most people running SL "businesses" are not professionals, even though they might even have professional 3D/texture schooling. Most are doing it as a hobby, pocket money, and are a "one-man-business", therefor it's just unreasonable to expect the same kind of service from them for your 1.5$ as you do from professional RL shops for the 50x-100x (compared to SL) the amount you pay them.

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54 minutes ago, Elvina Ewing said:

There are obviously responsible and sensible (and honest) merchants like you Pamela, but i am just being realistic and reasonable. I am also sure quite a large part of all SL merchants don't pay taxes either, because if they don't report their SL income nobody will find it out anyway, so why should they report it. I'm just reminding you all that most people running SL "businesses" are not professionals, even though they might even have professional 3D/texture schooling. Most are doing it as a hobby, pocket money, and are a "one-man-business", therefor it's just unreasonable to expect the same kind of service from them for your 1.5$ as you do from professional RL shops for the 50x-100x (compared to SL) the amount you pay them.

I agree that some people do not understand that if we spend an hour trying to solve a problem for them, often unrelated to the actual product, which cost them a dollar, we lose money. But that is business in SL. Customer support has to be built into the price. If we make a solid product, we won't have to do much product support (but will still need to do the "How SL Works" type support.) And some sellers don't understand that when they sell something, they are signing on to a potentially lifetime support contract. 

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I'll pay 1L for a demo no problem (unless I only have 10L to my name) especially if the demo is one of those that are kind of a fat-pack. Like this split tongue I wanted to buy, I thought I was just going to get one instance but holy damn I got the entire package and it didn't vanish after 5/10 minutes which would have made me buy it if I did not find one a Group Gift, lol, but vendors like that I will happily support because I feel they know how to treat their customer base.

Now those who charge 10L for a demo? lol, they can piss off 'cause the demo was crap and I was not going to pay 10L + 100L or whatever it was listed as on MP.

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On 6/11/2018 at 11:47 AM, Elvina Ewing said:

There are obviously responsible and sensible (and honest) merchants like you Pamela, but i am just being realistic and reasonable. I am also sure quite a large part of all SL merchants don't pay taxes either, because if they don't report their SL income nobody will find it out anyway, so why should they report it. I'm just reminding you all that most people running SL "businesses" are not professionals, even though they might even have professional 3D/texture schooling. Most are doing it as a hobby, pocket money, and are a "one-man-business", therefor it's just unreasonable to expect the same kind of service from them for your 1.5$ as you do from professional RL shops for the 50x-100x (compared to SL) the amount you pay them.

While I may agree, to an extent to a lot of what you've had to say, I still think you're selling a lot of hobbyists quite short. While we may be hobbyists, that doesn't exclude us from offering top notch customer service. In fact, *my* experience over the years tells me that there are far MORE people who offer great customer service than there are those who do not...regardless of what label those merchants/creators might fall under (hobbyist, professional, whatever have you). 

Whether or not the expectations people have can be met in full isn't dependent upon where one "shops", be it rl, online somewhere, even sl. Sure some folks have very unrealistic expectations-by my own definition(s) and those of others, but I don't think most people do, to be honest. Yes, I do expect even a hobbyist merchant to offer quality customer service. *I* am a hobbyist, and have been for years, a rather busy one at that between my own schooling, homeschooling my children, working, plus any creating I do in sl(which for quite a while has been primarily for individuals/groups not my own store), and you know general life.....yet, I manage customer service just peachy, lol. Yep, I too get the occasional weird request,  customer that just can't be pleased no matter what,  someone that just goes off for no real reason about a problem that doesn't exist, and of course the "how do I sl" type questions that have nothing to do with the product-even questions related to the product that meld into "how do I sl" questions, lol. But, for the most part...I'm pretty good at keeping on top of things.

It's not rocket surgery, lol. If you want customers, you need to offer customer service, that's the rub some folks don't seem to get, but I still believe that the vast majority of folks get it just fine, and those that don't are few and far between (these days anyway, it wasn't always the case) Whether it is a penny or ten thousand pennies, customer service costs me nothing, other than time(and yes, I too value that) but can GAIN me far more in the end. Shrugs...I suppose to each his/her own, but my experience tells me that MOST creators/merchants are pretty darn good at customer service. That's most likely where the expectations people seem to not like, stem from...*because so many are pretty darn good at it, so finding one that isn't so good at it isn't as common as it once was. 

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12 hours ago, Tari Landar said:

*snip* I still think you're selling a lot of hobbyists quite short. *snip*

you all seem to have missed my point entirely. And strangely enough you seem to feel addressed personally. It's not about you Tari, it's not about Pamela, it's not about me. The point i was trying to make: you cannot compare SL to RL. SL businesses vs RL businesses in particular (which i was talking about), but also in other aspects (of which i will not speak). A lot of merchants do strive to be professional, yet even Pamela wants to reserve the right to ban people from her shop/Marketplace. Imagine IKEA scanning every customer at the door and keeping the doors closed for difficult customers who proved to be a major problem in the past... Because IKEA and most other RL businesses have tens/hundreds/thousands employees whose only job is customer service. They get hired for this purpose and when they go to the job interview they get selected because they qualify. And when they are rude to the customer or don't provide good customer service they risk of losing their job. Nobody will fire you or me if we are having a bad day and just don't want to deal with a particularly difficult customer.

Again, i don't question your customer service, you can do your best to be professional, or always expect top notch customer service in SL, and more power to you. Just don't be shocked when you sometimes don't get it.

PS. I really fail to understand people of this forum. You justify not answering to a customer who paid US$ 1200 (!!!!!!) and see no problem with that (see the other thread), yet you demand top notch customer service to each and every 1$ customer in SL... :S where is the logic in that...

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26 minutes ago, Elvina Ewing said:

you all seem to have missed my point entirely. And strangely enough you seem to feel addressed personally. It's not about you Tari, it's not about Pamela, it's not about me. The point i was trying to make: you cannot compare SL to RL. SL businesses vs RL businesses in particular (which i was talking about), but also in other aspects (of which i will not speak). A lot of merchants do strive to be professional, yet even Pamela wants to reserve the right to ban people from her shop/Marketplace. Imagine IKEA scanning every customer at the door and keeping the doors closed for difficult customers who proved to be a major problem in the past... Because IKEA and most other RL businesses have tens/hundreds/thousands employees whose only job is customer service. They get hired for this purpose and when they go to the job interview they get selected because they qualify. And when they are rude to the customer or don't provide good customer service they risk of losing their job. Nobody will fire you or me if we are having a bad day and just don't want to deal with a particularly difficult customer.

Again, i don't question your customer service, you can do your best to be professional, or always expect top notch customer service in SL, and more power to you. Just don't be shocked when you sometimes don't get it.

PS. I really fail to understand people of this forum. You justify not answering to a customer who paid US$ 1200 (!!!!!!) and see no problem with that (see the other thread), yet you demand top notch customer service to each and every 1$ customer in SL... :S where is the logic in that...

Umm...nice rant, but no, I didn't "miss the point", I disagreed with a point you were trying to make. Disagreeing doesn't mean I didn't understand what you were saying. There can be other viewpoints, you know, lol. I can also have an opinion and know that your words were not directed at *me* personally, but rather an entire group of folks-in which group I happen to fall. I didn't take it as a personal insult, I disagreed with your assessment of merchants, most particularly, hobbyists, because I think it was a poor assessment. 

You stated that no one should expect the same kind of customer service as one might get in rl. I disagreed with that, as I don't believe it is unreasonable in the least. This is primarily due to the fact that MOST merchants/creators in sl, do, in fact, offer customer service that is equally as good as what one might receive in rl.  That has been my experience, and the experience of a lot of others too apparently, for quite a while now. Years ago, running into a creator/merchant that couldn't be assed to offer even mediocre customer service was a lot more common than it is today.

No, someone isn't going to fire us for not offering customer service, but It does, in fact, affect our work/businesses.  Also, even in rl, most customer service folks that screw up don't get fired that easily. I have no idea where you have personally worked, and I won't try to even guess, but I *have* worked customer service in quite a few places...I think you'd be surprised at what those folks can get away with, lol. 

Also, I don't think anyone said they were "shocked" at not getting amazing customer service, I've no idea where you pulled that from. It sucks when it happens, but it happens in rl too..all the damn time(more so in rl, actually, simply based on the mathematics of it all). You put an awful lot of words there in that post that haven't been said by anyone else here. I'm not sure what you're reading, perhaps my vision is far worse than it was just yesterday, because I still can't find these things said by others, lol. 

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15 minutes ago, Tari Landar said:

...running into a creator/merchant that couldn't be assed to offer even mediocre customer service...

A true gem of a typo that only helps emphasize the point. Brilliant! ^_^

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5 hours ago, Tari Landar said:

Also, I don't think anyone said they were "shocked" at not getting amazing customer service, I've no idea where you pulled that from.

i am not pulling that from anywhere. Don't get so wound up, i was talking in general about customers who "expect top notch customer service" just because they pay a few bucks in SL. Those "daddy's little princess" kind of customers, you know, who seem to go by the rule "customer is king". I personally have had plenty of those, and yes they do get genuinely shocked when they realize i don't go by the same rule.

words "top-notch" customer service have been thrown here and there, so we were not talking about just any customer service, or mediocre customer service. We were talking about top-notch customer service. Again, i have not attacked neither you, nor Pamela, nor anyone else here, so i don't understand why you get so defensive and feel the need to attack me personally for having an opinion based on my personal experience/belief that is apparently different to yours. Neither you, nor anybody else here needs to extensively prove to me or anyone else that YOU for one DO have excellent customer service. I personally couldn't care less how you or Pamela or Bob the Builder treat your customers. Because it's not what got me posting here in the first place. If you want to argue with me about customer service in SL, or the lack thereof, i kindly pass, this subject doesn't interest me. Again, the subject that got me posting here was SL vs RL, from the business point of view. Now, considering the fact that this thread is about something else entirely, i personally will not derail it any further.

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2 hours ago, sirhc DeSantis said:

Failing to see the tpyo there - unless it is about donkeys, so its two sides of the atlantic seperated by a common language :)

Is "be assed to" actually a phrase in 'merican? I honestly thought it was a typo for "be asked to". It's lovely anyway and definitely a keeper. :D

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23 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Is "be assed to" actually a phrase in 'merican? I honestly thought it was a typo for "be asked to". It's lovely anyway and definitely a keeper. :D

It is slang for "bothered".  "can't be assed to" = "can't be bothered to".

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45 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

It is slang for "bothered".  "can't be assed to" = "can't be bothered to".

Ah OK doesn't make much sense though as an idiom as e.g. asses can't be assed into doing something against their will. Well idioms never ask wether they make sense though...

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1 hour ago, Fionalein said:

Ah OK doesn't make much sense though as an idiom as e.g. asses can't be assed into doing something against their will. Well idioms never ask wether they make sense though...

I think it just our (American) version of the UK "can't be arsed" phrase.  I seldom ever hear it used.

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2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Is "be assed to" actually a phrase in 'merican? I honestly thought it was a typo for "be asked to". It's lovely anyway and definitely a keeper. :D

Actually I think I Usually see it as “arsed”, which means we borrowed it.

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17 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

i am not pulling that from anywhere. Don't get so wound up, i was talking in general about customers who "expect top notch customer service" just because they pay a few bucks in SL. Those "daddy's little princess" kind of customers, you know, who seem to go by the rule "customer is king". I personally have had plenty of those, and yes they do get genuinely shocked when they realize i don't go by the same rule.

words "top-notch" customer service have been thrown here and there, so we were not talking about just any customer service, or mediocre customer service. We were talking about top-notch customer service. Again, i have not attacked neither you, nor Pamela, nor anyone else here, so i don't understand why you get so defensive and feel the need to attack me personally for having an opinion based on my personal experience/belief that is apparently different to yours. Neither you, nor anybody else here needs to extensively prove to me or anyone else that YOU for one DO have excellent customer service. I personally couldn't care less how you or Pamela or Bob the Builder treat your customers. Because it's not what got me posting here in the first place. If you want to argue with me about customer service in SL, or the lack thereof, i kindly pass, this subject doesn't interest me. Again, the subject that got me posting here was SL vs RL, from the business point of view. Now, considering the fact that this thread is about something else entirely, i personally will not derail it any further.

Again, a differing opinion, doesn't mean I am defensive...or can you not accept that not everyone agrees you? We have differing opinions, I have no issue accepting that. I merely shared my own, just as you did :) 

 I didn't attack you, no one did, lol. 

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15 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Is "be assed to" actually a phrase in 'merican? I honestly thought it was a typo for "be asked to". It's lovely anyway and definitely a keeper. :D

Lmao I use it all the time in place of "can't be bothered" :D  I also hear people use it all the time, but yeah, definitely more folks from the US than anywhere else. I have no idea where I heard it first, but likely my great grandpa, who didn't sugar coat ANYTHING lol. 

Like, I can't be assed to use my TTS on these forums anymore, lol (hence the warning in my sig). 

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