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Recent MP Redelivery Feature Question


Ela Talaj
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I don't get many re-delivery notifications but there are a few. One of them was re-delivery of a product originally purchased in 2012. The product price didn't change so I've no problem with that specific re-delivery. But what if the price has changed? Let's say a customer buys a product for L$999. A year or a few years later the customer loses the product and goes to the MP for re-delivery. The product is still listed and has the same name but the price now is L$1599, which is L$600 higher than what the customer has paid. Would the product still be re-delivered? If yes, it would seem a pretty big hole in the re-delivery feature.   

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If it is the same listing but only certain features have been edited (like the price or the item to be delivered) i think the system will still treat it as the same listing and it will be redelivered. That happens when i update a product, people will redeliver and get the latest version. If you don't want that to happen you have to create a new listing. I don't see it as a "hole" , i see it a an intended function. I believe most creators will see it that way since a lot guarantee free updates for the entire lifespan of a product. If the price change is that significant it must have been quite the change in the functionality of the item to warrant such a price difference which, in my humble opinion, would warrant it to be listed as a new item.

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19 hours ago, Ela Talaj said:

I don't get many re-delivery notifications but there are a few. One of them was re-delivery of a product originally purchased in 2012. The product price didn't change so I've no problem with that specific re-delivery. But what if the price has changed? Let's say a customer buys a product for L$999. A year or a few years later the customer loses the product and goes to the MP for re-delivery. The product is still listed and has the same name but the price now is L$1599, which is L$600 higher than what the customer has paid. Would the product still be re-delivered? If yes, it would seem a pretty big hole in the re-delivery feature.   

Yes, and it should.

You go buy a shiny new TV on sale for $999, then it goes bad and you take it in to exchange it and they say "sorry, it's not on sale anymore, it's back to $1999" - how do you feel about that as someone just trying to replace something you've already purchased for what you feel is a fair price?

IF you have improved the product for some reason then create a new listing. otherwise, it could be a selling point: "All future improvements available through redelivery, even as the price will go up later" - this creates a sense of urgency "Buy it now".

Oh, and when I shop I do pay attention to that little notice at the right that shows "Redelivery Available" and whether it's crossed-out or not. If it's crossed out I move on. Redelivery is a selling point, but not allowing it (for copyable items) is a direct conscious choice to limit that function and that creator-choice is not lost on shoppers.

Edited by Alyona Su
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So you think it's okay to sell a product to someone, and if there is ever an issue with said product in the future to nickel and dime them for something they already purchased? Yeah, that would go over as well as it would in real life.

They bought the product, its theirs, SL can be a right out bish when it comes to eating inventory and randomly breaking things, your customers shouldn't be punished at all for that. Why would you even think that? Greed or sheer ignorance?

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6 hours ago, Syn Anatine said:

So you think it's okay to sell a product to someone, and if there is ever an issue with said product in the future to nickel and dime them for something they already purchased? Yeah, that would go over as well as it would in real life.

They bought the product, its theirs, SL can be a right out bish when it comes to eating inventory and randomly breaking things, your customers shouldn't be punished at all for that. Why would you even think that? Greed or sheer ignorance?

It might feel good to sermonize a simple technical question: whether or not the re-delivery feature considers the listing changes as compared with the listing at the time the purchase was made. Yet it hardly contributes to a meaningful answer.

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22 hours ago, Jules Catlyn said:

If it is the same listing but only certain features have been edited (like the price or the item to be delivered) i think the system will still treat it as the same listing and it will be redelivered. That happens when i update a product, people will redeliver and get the latest version. If you don't want that to happen you have to create a new listing. I don't see it as a "hole" , i see it a an intended function. I believe most creators will see it that way since a lot guarantee free updates for the entire lifespan of a product. If the price change is that significant it must have been quite the change in the functionality of the item to warrant such a price difference which, in my humble opinion, would warrant it to be listed as a new item.

What you saying seems reasonable yet there are complexities in the matter. Consider this: If an item has been listed for quite some time and sells well it would appear somewhere in the top pages in users search. If new features contributing to the price change were added and the item is listed anew it would have to start its ascend in the search pages all over. Not to mention reviews... There are ways around it of course like adding the new item to the related products in the old item listing but it is questionable that the users actually scrutinize listings that much.

None of this would matter for most products but what if you have a very well selling item priced at L$12K (and I have such) and new features you add justify the price increase to L$18K. Do you continue redelivery for the original price and lose money or make a new listing and lose sales?

 

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34 minutes ago, Ela Talaj said:

What you saying seems reasonable yet there are complexities in the matter. Consider this: If an item has been listed for quite some time and sells well it would appear somewhere in the top pages in users search. If new features contributing to the price change were added and the item is listed anew it would have to start its ascend in the search pages all over. Not to mention reviews... There are ways around it of course like adding the new item to the related products in the old item listing but it is questionable that the users actually scrutinize listings that much.

None of this would matter for most products but what if you have a very well selling item priced at L$12K (and I have such) and new features you add justify the price increase to L$18K. Do you continue redelivery for the original price and lose money or make a new listing and lose sales?

 

If you search hard enough on the forums somewhere Dakota Linden covered this if I remember correctly saying if significant changes had taken place in order to cause such a price increase, then it should be a new listing.  I am sure someone will let me know if I am not remembering that correctly.

 

EDIT.  I think I am wrong and remembering this thread incorrectly, forgive me

 

Edited by Cindy Evanier
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1 hour ago, Ela Talaj said:

What you saying seems reasonable yet there are complexities in the matter. Consider this: If an item has been listed for quite some time and sells well it would appear somewhere in the top pages in users search. If new features contributing to the price change were added and the item is listed anew it would have to start its ascend in the search pages all over. Not to mention reviews... There are ways around it of course like adding the new item to the related products in the old item listing but it is questionable that the users actually scrutinize listings that much.

None of this would matter for most products but what if you have a very well selling item priced at L$12K (and I have such) and new features you add justify the price increase to L$18K. Do you continue redelivery for the original price and lose money or make a new listing and lose sales?

I would say if the changes are so big that it would warrant a big price increase, then it is almost a new product. Then it would be fair to make a new listing for it. If you keep the same listing for a heavily upgraded product i would still see it as an upgrade and provide my customers with that upgrade. I wouldn't see it as a loss of income but as a service. If you want to get the new price for the product AND keep the high listing, it sounds to me like wanting it all. In my personal opinion it would almost be as bad as using the ranking on MP for one product, for the purpose of selling a new product. Let's say a product is jeans and sells very well and is high up on the pages, i then change that listing to a jacket. It kinda feels like gaming the system. It is either updating a product and providing that to people who bought the original or create a new listing. Can't have it all. If the product is really good and has such a high selling price it will get back on the top pages on it's own merit again.

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1 hour ago, Cindy Evanier said:

If you search hard enough on the forums somewhere Dakota Linden covered this if I remember correctly saying if significant changes had taken place in order to cause such a price increase, then it should be a new listing.  I am sure someone will let me know if I am not remembering that correctly.

 

EDIT.  I think I am wrong and remembering this thread incorrectly, forgive me

 

I think this might be the response from Dakota you were thinking about.

She talks about if a change is significant to change version numbers to affect redeliveries.

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One of my very best selling items (the top seller actually) is a ten year old item. I have remade it a few times --- first it was prims, then one of my first mesh items, then an upgraded mesh item.  It can still be redelivered and it is still the same price.   I don't see why the COST of an item would go up over times unless it was definitely upgraded --- and if it is worth that much more then it should be a new listing IMO.  

I only have one item that I have raised the price on that I can remember (many have been discounted over time).  But there are now THREE versions (including the original) in the pack.  It can still be redelivered to the original purchases. Just my take on the situation. 

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12 hours ago, Ela Talaj said:

Do you continue redelivery for the original price and lose money or make a new listing and lose sales?

Whichever direction you choose. Evaluate the costs and benefits and make a business decision.

Now, it seems to me that you are perhaps overestimating the revenue loss from allowing redelivery of an updated item (only a minority of your previous customers would buy the new shiny version if the one they had was working well and they had to pay for it) and discounting the benefit in support costs (since redelivering an updated item as the first troubleshooting step means you only have to actively support the current version).

On the other hand, if you were so minded you'd be able to update your old listing to say in large font "This item has been updated and the new version can be found here (link)" possibly adding "This version is no longer supported." - this would mitigate some of the sales loss of a new listing as the search prominence of the old listing would still direct potential buyers to the new one and your existing customers could still redeliver the version they have.

 

What you can't do is have your cake and eat it - you can't get the full benefits of an existing listings prominence and force existing customers to pay for a new version while allowing redelivery. It's your business, you know your sales numbers and your customer base better than anyone else, so you get to make the call which way to go. Other people with different business numbers might choose differently but so long as you are making the right call for your business, it's no skin off your nose is it?

 

If you're playing, why should you care either way? But if you're running a business, run it like a business - which means making judgement calls like this on a regular basis.

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Don't forget potential future sales - some people might be more inclined to buy more stuff from creators that offer free updates...

Like RL small scale business you will have to listen to your intuition to decide what's right for you, at those scales there is no reliable data or market analysis - basically what @Da5id Weatherwax said.

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On 4/10/2019 at 8:58 PM, Ela Talaj said:

Let's say a customer buys a product for L$999. A year or a few years later the customer loses the product and goes to the MP for re-delivery. The product is still listed and has the same name but the price now is L$1599, which is L$600 highe

I think that's against the Second Marketplace Listing Guidelines

Quote

 

Anti-Competitive or Abusive Behavior. Examples include, but are not limited to:

  • inflating prices on the SL Marketplace, in comparison to other e-commerce sites,

 

 

On 4/10/2019 at 8:58 PM, Ela Talaj said:

Would the product still be re-delivered? If yes, it would seem a pretty big hole in the re-delivery feature. 

I wouldn't consider that a hole at all. I'd say "good for them". It was the creator's idea to inflate the price in the first place.

Suppose redelivery would no longer work after inflating the price. The consequence is self-evident: old customers would no longer be able to have their item redelivered. This would far worse than that 'pretty big hole'.

Over the past years, I transitioned from sculptie to mesh with many items. I didn't replace them, I just made completely new listings with the mesh versions.

Edited by Arduenn Schwartzman
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15 hours ago, Ela Talaj said:

What you saying seems reasonable yet there are complexities in the matter. Consider this: If an item has been listed for quite some time and sells well it would appear somewhere in the top pages in users search. If new features contributing to the price change were added and the item is listed anew it would have to start its ascend in the search pages all over. Not to mention reviews... There are ways around it of course like adding the new item to the related products in the old item listing but it is questionable that the users actually scrutinize listings that much.

None of this would matter for most products but what if you have a very well selling item priced at L$12K (and I have such) and new features you add justify the price increase to L$18K. Do you continue redelivery for the original price and lose money or make a new listing and lose sales?

 

Firstly, you dont have anything for sale at 12K or 18K... on the MP anyway. 

1. If the new features make you bump the price by 6K then relist it. Its a new item. 

2. If you don't want to relist it then either allow redeliveries or face the possibility of bad reviews for not delivering an updated product. 

3. If I have bought you item at 12K and you upgrade it and bump the price to 18K can i pay you the difference for the new one? I mean, if you wont redeliver it..

An update should ALWAYS be a free redelivery. An upgrade should be a new listing. 

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  • Moderators

Greetings all!

If an item has changed significantly, the creator/seller CAN create a new product listing on the Marketplace for the new version of the item and they would not be in violation for "disabling or deleting and relisting an item". 

The creator/seller does not have to create a new listing, but they can, if they choose to.

Using information posted previously, if a creator makes an item using prims, and then updates that item to be Mesh, the creator CAN create a brand new listing for the Mesh version of the item, since upgrading the item to Mesh is a significant change to the product. 

When buyer requested redelivery was implemented, some creators/sellers were concerned that their Copy Enabled items that had been around for a while, or ones that had been updated, should not be able to be redelivered, so the option was added, as noted above, so that the creator/seller can disable that ability on the Edit Listing page for the product. It states that the option only applies to Copy Enabled Items because the system should not allow redelivery of No Copy items.

Items can be updated and the creator/seller can choose any price they wish, even if the item was a lower cost previously, they can still change the price at any time, to any price, for any reason, and that does not violate the "Inflated Listing Price" section of the Listing Guidelines. 

 

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1 hour ago, Dakota Linden said:

Items can be updated and the creator/seller can choose any price they wish, even if the item was a lower cost previously, they can still change the price at any time, to any price, for any reason, and that does not violate the "Inflated Listing Price" section of the Listing Guidelines.

Ok, thanks for that.

Clearly I need to take some course in legalese, at some point.

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On 4/12/2019 at 8:49 AM, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Firstly, you dont have anything for sale at 12K or 18K... on the MP anyway. 

Yes I do. It's not a consumer product but a very narrow purpose industrial product so not on the first page of the listings but it is there, sells pretty well in its niche.

In the substance, when I release an upgrade for increased price existing owners of the previous version can upgrade for a price difference. I always put a notice to this extent in my tech support group.

In my terminology "update" is a bugs fix release, there is never extra-charge for an update. "Upgrade" is new features addition. It may or may not affect the price. Depends.

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On 4/12/2019 at 6:09 AM, Fionalein said:

Like RL small scale business you will have to listen to your intuition to decide what's right for you, at those scales there is no reliable data or market analysis...

I agree. Wish my intuition always worked but sometimes it doesn't . So I wish the SL software made those decisions, not I :)

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2 hours ago, Ela Talaj said:

Yes I do. It's not a consumer product but a very narrow purpose industrial product so not on the first page of the listings but it is there, sells pretty well in its niche.

In the substance, when I release an upgrade for increased price existing owners of the previous version can upgrade for a price difference. I always put a notice to this extent in my tech support group.

In my terminology "update" is a bugs fix release, there is never extra-charge for an update. "Upgrade" is new features addition. It may or may not affect the price. Depends.

My bad, you do have one item for 12,500L. 

I have never understood why anyone would charge their existing customers for upgraded products. If its enough of an upgrade that you feel you need to charge for it, Make a new listing. 

 

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17 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

I have never understood why anyone would charge their existing customers for upgraded products. If its enough of an upgrade that you feel you need to charge for it, Make a new listing. 

Nods, nods, thumbs-up to this.

If it's a new listing then simply include at the very top of the "old" listing that there is an upgraded version with new features and include it in the Related Items listing. I cannot speak for others, but I always look for this kind of things, especially when it comes to tools and gadgets, etc because I like to have the best I can find. If your gadget/tool/utility/technonerdy-toy is selling for more than 5,000L - I will definitely investigate all alternatives, including viewing the creator's store to see if there are additional versions (either greater than or less than doesn;t matter - I like to know the big picture before I commit with a purchase).

In other words: I am the type of customer who would be willing to pay that kind of price provided 1) it appears to fit my needs and 2) There is some way to experience it before purchase, either through a demo or some other means.

My main point: A "new listing" for an upgraded product is not a detriment to the creator, but rather a benefit because those willing to spend higher WILL find the new listing, but also those not willing to spend higher won't care AND previous purchasers will be able to take redelivery.

The perfect example is the new Water Horse Animesh versions: The older Bento versions are still listed as they always have been, the newer, upgraded versions are an entirely new listing. And *both* are selling like gangbusters.

Edited by Alyona Su
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I had this recently; i noticed a shower I brought from designer on MP had update; not upgrade so I went to see if I could get my old shower re-delivered for the updated one to come through however I could not but left designer a detailed NC explaining the situation; with relevant information and the designer of said shower was very kind and sent me updated version of my shower which made me happy customer so little things like that make me willing to come back and spend money again with that designer again.

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Sticking my nose in here.  if I buy it, and want to get it again later on,  I expect it to be there and how it was when I purchased it,  oh you might have a newer version of it, but that should be a new listing with a new price you want to charge, trying to jack up my old units price without any features or updates, means I'm going to black list you and spread the word by mouth. 

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On 4/27/2019 at 7:46 AM, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Sticking my nose in here.  if I buy it, and want to get it again later on,  I expect it to be there and how it was when I purchased it,  oh you might have a newer version of it, but that should be a new listing with a new price you want to charge, trying to jack up my old units price without any features or updates, means I'm going to black list you and spread the word by mouth.  

Have you ever heard the word  "inflation"?

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