Second Life should have a way to return unwanted items

[Elinah Iredell]

I think it is time for Second life to have a way for me to return an item I bought  that I feel disappointed with. In real life we can return things we change our minds about or that turn out to be defective why not in Second life too?  Too many times I have bought something that I regretted only to be stuck with it. Sometimes an item does not have a demo ( or the demo comes in only one color) and the item is a disappointment. or sometimes the mesh turns out to be of poor quality and disappears if not seen up very close . I have even bought items by mistake occasionally in high lag areas just moving my avatar around or thinking it was a demo but was actually the full price product that was put right next to it. I have also been ripped off before with the item not being what was advertised ( a marketplace gacha) . It is time to add the ability to return items as an option . 

I do not ask that the customer be allowed to keep it a long time like all day because that would be abused, with people getting clothes for an event and then returning them and things like that, but if we could have the option to return an item for fifteen minutes to a half an hour or so it would take the risk away of making a bad purchase and make the purchasing experience in SL a lot better.

How do I ask second life to add a return option to the purchasing experience both in world and on the SL Marketplace?

Edited August 19, 2018 by Elinah Iredell

[Cindy Evanier]

3 minutes ago, Elinah Iredell said:

I think it is time for Second life to have a way for me to return an item I bought  that I feel disappointed with. In real life we can return things we change our minds about or that turn out to be defective why not in Second life too?  Too many times I have bought something that I regretted only to be stuck with it. Sometimes an item does not have a demo ( or the demo comes in only one color) and the item is a disappointmen,t. or sometimes the mesh turns out to be of poor quality and disappears if not seen up very close . I have even bought items by mistake occasionally in high lag areas just moving my avatar around or thinking it was a demo but was actually the full price product that was put right next to it. I have also been ripped off before with the item not being what was advertised ( a marketplace gacha) . It is time to add the ability to return items as an option . 

I do not ask that the customer be allowed to keep it a long time like all day because that would be abused, with people getting clothes for an event and then returning them and things like that, but if we could have the option to return an item forfifteen minutes to a half and hour or so it would take the risk away of making a bad purchase and make the purchasing experience in SL a lot better.

How do I ask second life to add a return option to the purchasing experience both in world and on the SL Marketplace?

You file a jira for feature requests but I see one flaw immediately in that you cant return copy items.  

[Elinah Iredell]

7 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

You file a jira for feature requests but I see one flaw immediately in that you cant return copy items.  

I know it is getting complicated to ask this but is there a way to suspend the copy ability until the return period is over? Or maybe just have a redelivery of the item if you need a second copy ?

Edited August 19, 2018 by Elinah Iredell

[Cindy Evanier]

4 minutes ago, Elinah Iredell said:

I know it is getting complicated to ask this but is there a way to suspend the copy ability until the return period is over?

Some creators do those scripts for demos where its timed to delete after a certain period.  I have no idea how easy or hard it is to implement that though.  I deal in furniture so pay for a sim for people to demo everything. As far as I am concerned when buying, if the demo isn't suitable to show me what I want I move on to something else.

[Elinah Iredell]

4 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

Some creators do those scripts for demos where its timed to delete after a certain period.  I have no idea how easy or hard it is to implement that though.  I deal in furniture so pay for a sim for people to demo everything. As far as I am concerned when buying, if the demo isn't suitable to show me what I want I move on to something else.

I see your  point but what about marketplace gacha resellers claiming to sell something that is not actually included, or the case where I bought something by mistake? Shouldn't there be a way to return the item if it was accidentally purchased or if was a scam?

[Cindy Evanier]

5 minutes ago, Elinah Iredell said:

I see your  point but what about marketplace gacha resellers claiming to sell something that is not actually included, or the case where I bought something by mistake? Shouldn't there be a way to return the item if it was accidentally purchased or if was a scam?

gacha's are a whole minefield   You really have to do your homework on the seller on those.  I'd prefer then to be removed from the MP and the sellers have to have inworld locations at reseller markets or something.  That would sort out some of the scammers though tough on the legitimate resellers

[Lindal Kidd]

Most items have demos, and for those that don't, you can make the choice to risk your money, or not.  I've bought things by mistake, or bought an item twice by mistake, or due to SL misbehaving.  In most cases, the merchant has been very understanding.  I've also gotten items that were defective...no alpha mask, or an incorrect alpha mask.  Again, a polite note to the creator has usually resulted in a fix.

I don't think a "return" option is worthwhile...the prices are so low, compared to RL, and the times I've wanted to return an item so rare, that it's really no burden to just suck up the occasional unsatisfactory item.

[Elinah Iredell]

4 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Most items have demos, and for those that don't, you can make the choice to risk your money, or not.  I've bought things by mistake, or bought an item twice by mistake, or due to SL misbehaving.  In most cases, the merchant has been very understanding.  I've also gotten items that were defective...no alpha mask, or an incorrect alpha mask.  Again, a polite note to the creator has usually resulted in a fix.

I don't think a "return" option is worthwhile...the prices are so low, compared to RL, and the times I've wanted to return an item so rare, that it's really no burden to just suck up the occasional unsatisfactory item.

True the prices in second life are lower than real life but it could be argued that the uses for the items are also much more limited than in real life so that is justified.  I guess my point for all of this  is that second life is supposed to be an enjoyable experience, not an unpleasant one and I think people would be more willing to take a chance on buying an item they are unsure of if they knew they could return it so it would help commerce in Second life not hinder it.  When things go wrong like this for me it makes the experience an unpleasant one. And even though it is not a lot of money compared to real life I still take it seriously. I know not everyone agrees with me but I would like to see linden offer a return option if it is possible to create one. Or maybe the creators can offer it themselves?

[MoiraKathleen]

2 hours ago, Elinah Iredell said:

True the prices in second life are lower than real life but it could be argued that the uses for the items are also much more limited than in real life so that is justified.  I guess my point for all of this  is that second life is supposed to be an enjoyable experience, not an unpleasant one and I think people would be more willing to take a chance on buying an item they are unsure of if they knew they could return it so it would help commerce in Second life not hinder it.  When things go wrong like this for me it makes the experience an unpleasant one. And even though it is not a lot of money compared to real life I still take it seriously. I know not everyone agrees with me but I would like to see linden offer a return option if it is possible to create one. Or maybe the creators can offer it themselves?

I would think that it would need to be the creators that would offer it.  When you buy something, you're buying it from the seller, not from LL.

While it might seem simple and nice from the consumer side, it seems like it might add a lot of extra workload on the seller side.

   

[Elinah Iredell]

 

7 hours ago, moirakathleen said:

I would think that it would need to be the creators that would offer it.  When you buy something, you're buying it from the seller, not from LL.

While it might seem simple and nice from the consumer side, it seems like it might add a lot of extra workload on the seller side.

   

A return policy from the seller would show they believe in the product being sold and stand behind it. I like that, if not maybe second life can get involved? I will ask about it . Now just have to figure out how to file a " jira" .

[Ethan Paslong]

33 minutes ago, Elinah Iredell said:

 Now just have to figure out how to file a " jira" .

that won't help a lot i'm affraid, as Moira also already said, the sellers have to decide this.
If you file a jira you expect LL to do it... not much of a chance i'm affraid, it's very unlikely LL will drop this on the heads of the merchants.
And mod/copy items will disappear totally.. doesn't look like a desireable situation at all.

 

[Elinah Iredell]

On 8/20/2018 at 8:13 AM, Ethan Paslong said:

that won't help a lot i'm affraid, as Moira also already said, the sellers have to decide this.
If you file a jira you expect LL to do it... not much of a chance i'm affraid, it's very unlikely LL will drop this on the heads of the merchants.
And mod/copy items will disappear totally.. doesn't look like a desireable situation at all.

 

Well I really think it is needed. Just recently I mistakenly bought a dress that I loved as a demo entirely because it had a gold accent hud and the dress looked beautiful with the gold option. I bought the dress not realizing that the hud was not included unless you purchased the fatpack. I was very disappointed, so much so that I stopped coming to the game for a while.  Had I been able to return it that would not have happened. The experience affected my enjoyment of the game. I guess nobody cares about unhappy purchases, so far everyone seems against me on this. I suspect however many of you  who are taking the time to reply to me ( which I appreciate) are thinking about it from the point of view of the creators and not the customers. I guess my only recourse is to purchase less items. Be more careful.  It may be true  what you say that Linden will not care  .

Edited August 26, 2018 by Elinah Iredell

[Cindy Evanier]

34 minutes ago, Elinah Iredell said:

Well I really think it is needed. Just recently I mistakenly bought a dress that I loved as a demo entirely because it had a gold accent hud and the dress looked beautiful with the gold option. I bought the dress not realizing that the hud was not included unless you purchased the fatpack. I was very disappointed, so much so that I stopped coming to the game for a while.  Had I been able to return it that would not have happened. The experience affected my enjoyment of the game. I guess nobody cares about unhappy purchases, so far everyone seems against me on this. I suspect however many of you  who are taking the time to reply to me ( which I appreciate) are thinking about it from the point of view of the creators and not the customers. I guess my only recourse is to purchase less items. Be more careful.  It may be true  what you say that Linden will not care  .

Did you contact the seller and explain your mistake and try to come to an agreement over the colour you wanted?  Most will try to help.  If they don't then that's the time to kick yourself for not realising you needed the fat pack  

[Ethan Paslong]

4 hours ago, Elinah Iredell said:

 It may be true  what you say that Linden will not care  .

they perhaps care a lot about it, but LL is not involved in this problem. And to be honest... there isn't even a issue, you bought the wrong, or not complete pack you needed.

I really don't see the urgent need to change the whole system for that.
And you'r not the only one who has this, have this or will have this... we all made purchase mistakes. And in 99% of those mistakes it's nobody else to blame than ourselves.

As Cindy also said, contact the seller if you have such thing, a lot of them won't let you down.

demo - demo - read  carefully - and only hit the "pay"if you'r sure, as most of us, you can only spend it once.

[LittleMe Jewell]

6 hours ago, Elinah Iredell said:

Well I really think it is needed. Just recently I mistakenly bought a dress that I loved as a demo entirely because it had a gold accent hud and the dress looked beautiful with the gold option. I bought the dress not realizing that the hud was not included unless you purchased the fatpack. I was very disappointed, so much so that I stopped coming to the game for a while.  Had I been able to return it that would not have happened. The experience affected my enjoyment of the game. I guess nobody cares about unhappy purchases, so far everyone seems against me on this. I suspect however many of you  who are taking the time to reply to me ( which I appreciate) are thinking about it from the point of view of the creators and not the customers. I guess my only recourse is to purchase less items. Be more careful.  It may be true  what you say that Linden will not care  .

In RL online shopping I have sometimes bought something that for one reason or another ended up being something I didn't want.  Much of the time the return costs me money, unless there is something truly defective in the item.  Thus when it happens, I have to either suck up the loss or pay money to send it back and get a refund that sometimes also subtracts a re-stocking fee.  I had to learn to make sure I understood return policies before buying online and then decide what level of loss I am comfortable with.

Given that L$ are roughly 250 per US 1$, even something that you pay L$1000 for is less than $5 US dollars.  Possibly you don't live in the US and the exchange rates mean that L$1000 costs a bit more for you, but I still have a hard time understanding how basically throwing away a few dollars can cause extreme upset - unless you did it multiple times.

Also, I'm sure the creator would work with you to get you the fatpack with the gold option and reduce the cost by what you already paid for the one you bought - assuming you might be interested in that option.

Side note - I am definitely not a creator in SL.  Simply another consumer of the SL goods.

[MoiraKathleen]

I am not a creator either, and I can sympathize with the mistake over buying a single color rather than the fat pack which comes with the HUD to change colors/options.  I've made that mistake myself before, and now I'm much more careful in reading all the fine print on the vendor picture.  Also, there are some stores/creators where you always need to buy the fat-pack in order to get more than a single color, and other stores/creators where they don't have fat-packs and always include the HUD to change colors/options.  So some of this is figuring out which stores have the preferences that you want, and then shopping more at those types of stores.

The suggestion to contact the creator is a good suggestion - it certainly won't hurt, and who knows, they might exchange what you bought for the gold option.  Find out from their store policy or their profile how they prefer to be contacted (NC or just IM, etc) and be polite in wording your request.  

[Nalates Urriah]

On 8/19/2018 at 6:41 AM, Elinah Iredell said:

I see your  point but what about marketplace gacha resellers claiming to sell something that is not actually included, or the case where I bought something by mistake? Shouldn't there be a way to return the item if it was accidentally purchased or if was a scam?

This brings up a couple of interesting points about personal responsibility, the free market, and the torrent of RL talk about making 'OTHERS' solely responsible and total avoidance of personal responsibility.

Accidentally purchased? I see no place in the purchase process where an accident like a RL light burning out happens. These accidents I see as almost exclusively human error. The person at the center of and cause of such an accident is 'us'. Yes, there are scams and frauds, but we have some recourse in those cases just as in RL. So, this becomes an effort in how do we protect you from your dumb mistakes?

Make better idiot proofing and someone makes a better idiot. That is the basic nature of humans. How does one get around that?

Scams are prevalent in SL and RL... probably at about the same rates. But, there is no hard, objective evidence on rates either way, AFAIK. The biggest problem is again human nature. Eliminate one scammer, another steps up to to replace them. So, no matter how good the laws one has to learn to spot a scam as they will always be around. Trying to remove the responsibility from ourselves for falling for a scam generally aggravates the problem. In such a scenario we no longer have to learn anything and rely on others to care for us. That is an ideal environment for scammers.

[Alyona Su]

Snowflakes are as snowflakes do.

Here's a solution for the OP: every product you buy comes with a time bomb script in that will make it unusable in any way, shape, or form. Rather than purchasing the said item outright, you subscribe to it. Each week's payment will extend the time bomb fuse to prevent it from going off. If you decide you've accidentally purchased something then don't continue the initial subscription and it will then become "nuked". Now you've only lost a very few L$.

On the other hand, let us say it's something you absolutely love and use all the time. Now you're paying weekly subscription fees (a.k.a. Renting it to use it) for the rest of your Second Life. Is that where you really want to go?

//justsayin'

[Lindal Kidd]

16 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

Snowflakes are as snowflakes do.

Here's a solution for the OP: every product you buy comes with a time bomb script in that will make it unusable in any way, shape, or form. Rather than purchasing the said item outright, you subscribe to it. Each week's payment will extend the time bomb fuse to prevent it from going off. If you decide you've accidentally purchased something then don't continue the initial subscription and it will then become "nuked". Now you've only lost a very few L$.

On the other hand, let us say it's something you absolutely love and use all the time. Now you're paying weekly subscription fees (a.k.a. Renting it to use it) for the rest of your Second Life. Is that where you really want to go?

//justsayin'

Shut up.  Just shut UP!  Geeze, don't go giving people this idea.  I am already paying way too much to Adobe because they had this brainstorm.

[Alyona Su]

48 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Shut up.  Just shut UP!  Geeze, don't go giving people this idea.  I am already paying way too much to Adobe because they had this brainstorm.

Yes, yes, I know. (And why I have left Adobe for good and I work in Creative Arts for a living )- There are some great alternatives, just not for MS Windows ? ANYWAY... I apologize for possibly giving others said ideas (Stupid Apple already doing this in AppStore now, too! ~grumbles~)

[Paul Hexem]

The permissions system in SL would need a complete overhaul for it to work that way. It's just not feasible.

[Pamela Galli]

On 8/27/2018 at 1:20 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

This brings up a couple of interesting points about personal responsibility, the free market, and the torrent of RL talk about making 'OTHERS' solely responsible and total avoidance of personal responsibility.

Accidentally purchased? I see no place in the purchase process where an accident like a RL light burning out happens. These accidents I see as almost exclusively human error. The person at the center of and cause of such an accident is 'us'. Yes, there are scams and frauds, but we have some recourse in those cases just as in RL. So, this becomes an effort in how do we protect you from your dumb mistakes?

Make better idiot proofing and someone makes a better idiot. That is the basic nature of humans. How does one get around that?

Scams are prevalent in SL and RL... probably at about the same rates. But, there is no hard, objective evidence on rates either way, AFAIK. The biggest problem is again human nature. Eliminate one scammer, another steps up to to replace them. So, no matter how good the laws one has to learn to spot a scam as they will always be around. Trying to remove the responsibility from ourselves for falling for a scam generally aggravates the problem. In such a scenario we no longer have to learn anything and rely on others to care for us. That is an ideal environment for scammers.

This! Seriously! 

I am so tired of hearing from these people that want everyone else to pay for their entirely avoidable mistakes. There really is no way to protect someone who will not take responsibility for his own behavior. They insist that the whole world do back flips to prevent them from their own refusal to take responsibility. 

Is this an American thing, blaming others for your own mistakes and failures? Is the whole world cursed with these crybabies as (we) Americans are? 

Edited August 29, 2018 by Pamela Galli

[Madelaine McMasters]

On 8/27/2018 at 1:20 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

Make better idiot proofing and someone makes a better idiot.

...perks.

[Nalates Urriah]

3 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Is this an American thing, blaming others for your own mistakes and failures? Is the whole world cursed with these crybabies as (we) Americans are? 

It is becoming an American thing. The original impetus for this thinking is probably just human nature. We first saw it effectively mobilised and used in Italy and Germany pre-WWII in the form of the then newly idealised Nationalist Socialism, the then new way to sell socialism. In America less and less history is taught. The result is the new label for socialism is Democratic Socialism and young Americans are clueless as to where it is going. For it to appeal to people they have to be taught to expect others to take care of them and think they are entitled to whatever. That movement has been being built for decades. Now it is taking its next steps as more people think socialism is a good thing. We see the primitive or day-to-day results as people blaming others and wanting others to do for them...

Only that part of the world that has a significant level of affluence suffers this curse. So, most of the Western world.

[Larisa String]

On 8/19/2018 at 4:21 PM, Elinah Iredell said:

I think it is time for Second life to have a way for me to return an item I bought  that I feel disappointed with.

Did you try the demo of what you bought before? If the answer is no, then you aren't entitled to a refund.

Did the item have a demo? If the answer is no, and you still went through with the transaction, you aren't entitled to a refund.

Did you buy something two times, by mistake? If the answer is yes, you should polity settle this with the seller as most stores offer a refund if the items come with copy permission.

The only reason I would see for a refund is being scammed, but since you're not buying from LL itself, it isn't their responsibility to give you a refund.

I admit, I was scammed, in the past, having bought something that perhaps was marketed to seem what it's not or just not having the right permissions. At first I was pissed off, but now I'm not because now I know what to look for when shopping on the market.

If in doubt, just don't buy it is the best policy for shoping in SL.

PS: this isn't RL and people should stop comparing the two.