Reviewing your items!

[Tamara Artis]

Say you created an item but you're not completely sure if its amazing or just good? I can give you an honest evaluation about my experience when using your item!

Its very different comparing with your friends comments who will often say its amazing because they don't wanna hurt you, or when you transfer an item to your alt just to check permissions (not counting those alts that have their own personalities). 

I will stay objective, the possible relationship we will have is strictly business and you won't need to wait for a feedback from your customers!

I can check permissions, see if the price is reasonable, are there maybe some things that do not work properly and save you time and money, prevent future refunds, see if the description is corresponding with an item i got to check, and most important, i will write a review of your item!

So, what do you think? 

(I got this idea when a friend told me he is selling many items but no one wants to leave a review. That is really rude, specially if you even help your customers with those items! I will fight and fix that rude behaviour! :matte-motes-nerdy:)

[Chelle Petlyakov]

Hi Tamara. I might be interested. Despite selling hundreds of items, I have not had one review since moving over to the marketplace. Very frustrating. Will you be charging a fee for your services? You'll be reviewing them on the marketplace? How will that work? Feel free to contact me in world.

[Tamara Artis]

Hello Chelle!

I will leave a reply here for all to see but also contact you inworld:) 

First to make it clear; I dont want to keep stuff in my inv, I just want to try them. (I have only 7k of items and i delete every day lmao)

My first thought was to ask a merchant to send me a no copy item inworld, so I can transfer it back after evaluation, but then it would be only that specific merchant who got a review (in the notecard or IM) and no one else could see it. You can't review your own items..

So now what i was thinking is for you, and all interested, to send me just a link to your item on the marketplace. Nothing more, I will act like any other customer. I buy that item, see how it works, evaluate all and leave a review on the marketplace. When you see my review you can send me a refund, the exact price i payed for your item.

I don't ask for a fee, I just thought it would be interesting to try different products and see the difference between them. 

You are free to give me a little tip though lol, but basic thought is to start with posting reviews, and it needs to start from somewhere! Why not with me checking your item?

[Asta Serrta]

It sounds like a good idea, but...... I see two objections, one for each side.

Reviewer can't do anything when the seller doesn't refund.

How valuable will reviews be is you "pay" for them. And you do pay, cause LL takes a % of your price.

[Tari Landar]

Eh, good idea in theory, but not so much in practice.

Personally I'd rather get reviews from actual customers who *wanted to buy my stuff, were looking for my stuff, or had a general need for my stuff. Not someone just looking for something to do. But if I can't have that-which we all know reviews are pretty scarce these days, I'd opt for no reviews at all before I'd pay for them. Others may not feel the same, but I do.

Mystery shopping is more effective in real life than it is in an online world, but even in real life it's not as effective as it should be. I'm not so sure someone who is being paid to review *can actually be 100% objective at all times. Not to mention LL gets enough of my money, lol. If you review my stuff, and then want repayment, I still lose whatever commission I paid to LL. I don't consider that a necessary cost of business in sl.

When I had a business years ago(rl), I actually did have mystery shoppers. To be honest they weren't nearly as effective as I would have liked. More times than not, they are either overly glowing reviews, or overly doom and gloom ones(and the people that do that, were almost always looking for more compensation in one form or another for their "bad experience" above and beyond what they were paid for the shopping trip). It's an idea that sounds much better on paper than it usually ends up being. That's why mystery shoppers in general(in the real world) have diminished greatly. They were simply not an effective tool.

If I have to ask for reviews, how can I attach any worth to them? Yes I love them as much as the next merchant but I want them to come unsolicited not because I'm paying someone for them. Not to mention if you want to review a no copy item and I don't sell that item as no copy, I'd have to make a new listing for it or simply allow you to keep it. One could certainly get a lot of free stuff that way, if they wanted to. I don't mind sharing free stuff with folks, in fact I do it quite frequently. But I can see how other merchants may not want to travel down that road.

[Patnad Babii]

I like this idea, but at some point you might get swamped by the demand and might not find it much fun anymore after a while. 

 

I think tho you put your finger somewhere that the marketplace need to do more work on tho, it should solicitate more the people who actually bought items to review them, its not all that easy to find actually and not intuitive to most of the people.

 

I remember the way Xstreet had it a couple of years ago and it was really working better. When you login, it should show you a list of the items you recently bought, then give you fast access to vote on each of them and give a review, easily. I used to rate every object and review them in the past, even freebies!  Now i tend to forget about reviewing because its so deeply hidden in the marketplace.

Just my 2 cents!

[Tamara Artis]

Yes I agree Sarta, and one could find even more objections but still there are people who are willing to try it.

I can't do anything if the seller doesn't refund, actually I can only write that in my review - the seller asked for the review and then didn't wanted to refund. The world won't crash, but if a person wants me to review then I believe that person will refund me, if not I just go on to the next one. I always ask lets start with the items that are not too expensive.

My reviews are and will be same as for any other item I bought.

 

[Tamara Artis]

---

Tari Landar wrote:

Eh, good idea in theory, but not so much in practice.

Personally I'd rather get reviews from actual customers who *wanted to buy my stuff, were looking for my stuff, or had a general need for my stuff. Not someone just looking for something to do. But if I can't have that-which we all know reviews are pretty scarce these days, I'd opt for no reviews at all before I'd pay for them. Others may not feel the same, but I do.

Mystery shopping is more effective in real life than it is in an online world, but even in real life it's not as effective as it should be. I'm not so sure someone who is being paid to review *can actually be 100% objective at all times. Not to mention LL gets enough of my money, lol. If you review my stuff, and then want repayment, I still lose whatever commission I paid to LL. I don't consider that a necessary cost of business in sl.

When I had a business years ago(rl), I actually did have mystery shoppers. To be honest they weren't nearly as effective as I would have liked. More times than not, they are either overly glowing reviews, or overly doom and gloom ones(and the people that do that, were almost always looking for more compensation in one form or another for their "bad experience" above and beyond what they were paid for the shopping trip). It's an idea that sounds much better on paper than it usually ends up being. That's why mystery shoppers in general(in the real world) have diminished greatly. They were simply not an effective tool.

If I have to ask for reviews, how can I attach any worth to them? Yes I love them as much as the next merchant but I want them to come unsolicited not because I'm paying someone for them. Not to mention if you want to review a no copy item and I don't sell that item as no copy, I'd have to make a new listing for it or simply allow you to keep it. One could certainly get a lot of free stuff that way, if they wanted to. I don't mind sharing free stuff with folks, in fact I do it quite frequently. But I can see how other merchants may not want to travel down that road.

---

Hello Tari!

I am an actuall customer who wanted to buy a nice wings few months ago. I went on the marketplace, typed wings and I don't remember how many results I got but now if you type it there are 7110 results. In the first few pages I found some wings I liked, compared them and bought one. Thats it, I don't need any more wings. But I am aware that somewhere amongst those 7110 results there are many wings as good as the ones I bought, maybe even better (all content creators work with same stuff, the difference is how they use those stuff to create the actuall wings). I just don't have time and patience to click on the "Next" button the whole afternoon.

Then yesterday one girl contacted me and sent me a pic of the wings she created, and who knows on what page are her wings, I don't really care but if she wants me to try her wings I will. And I will give her my honest review. Thats it. 

And about you not wanting to give any more money to LL, I can review free stuff too lol, only thing I care about the price is that I don't want to try expensive things, in case the creator doesn't want to refund me at the end. Sure I will choose a creator who is willing to give me a small fee for my time but if I have time I will go through all notecards I got and try all stuff. Feel free to send me a note in world, and say "Here is something that is free and you won't get anything for it, I just want you to review it" I will lol, but just one item please because at some point I do care for my time and I don't want to get any idea of someone using me and my time.

And about the mistery shopping, I wouldn't compare it with this because I am not hired by someone else, there is not a third party involved. When you had a business rl, did you asked your mistery shoppers to come and evaluate the things you had?

If you insist in me proving that I won't keep that folder in my inventory I will send you a pic where you see that folder in my trash box, with the actuall number of items i have in my inv, and the pic of my empty trash box with the number of items in inv. You just need to count lol. I don't need, for example, 5 different wings because I allready have the ones I love. (but maybe I do delete my old wings instead if the new ones are better lol)

Thanks for your reply, I am happy to see that there are people interested in what I do atm, in one way or another:)

[Tamara Artis]

---

Patnad Babii wrote:

I like this idea, but at some point you might get swamped by the demand and might not find it much fun anymore after a while. 

 

I think tho you put your finger somewhere that the marketplace need to do more work on tho, it should solicitate more the people who actually bought items to review them, its not all that easy to find actually and not intuitive to most of the people.

 

I remember the way Xstreet had it a couple of years ago and it was really working better. When you login, it should show you a list of the items you recently bought, then give you fast access to vote on each of them and give a review, easily. I used to rate every object and review them in the past, even freebies!  Now i tend to forget about reviewing because its so deeply hidden in the marketplace.

Just my 2 cents!

---

Yes so true Patnad, when I browse through pages and put different things in my cart, then buy all at once, its hard to go back at the actuall items and give a review. Its the way marketplace works now, and most people are too lazy to go back and search those for items again just to post a review. I know I am lol, so if no one tells me "I want your review" usually I am not bothered with it... Sad but true.

Thanks for your cents, every word matters!

And about the first thing you pointed at, yes there is a possibility i get swamped and even sick of all that shopping and reviewing, then I think I will just make a post and say that I am taking a break lol, or maybe ask a friend to help me? Hmmm good idea lmao

[Tiffy Vella]

---

Tamara Artis wrote:

---

And about the first thing you pointed at, yes there is a possibility i get swamped and even sick of all that shopping and reviewing, then I think I will just make a post and say that I am taking a break lol, or maybe ask a friend to help me? Hmmm good idea lmao

---

*grin* yes..Can I be your shoe department? Everyone send me all your shoes!! (just joking)

 

But more seriously, I do wish shoppers would take the time to leave reviews. I don't think anyone has left one for my items since Xstreet ended. I do get feedback from inworld customers, which is always appreciated, and reviews from fashion bloggers..all wonderfully helpful of course, but you'd never know from my Marketplace store that I'd ever sold anything.

 

[Tamara Artis]

Its a shame Tiffy, I think I counted like 4 or 5 of them on all 14 pages. Looks like you don't really sell stuff. And I am just thinking could I help you.... what to try there? Does your feathers fall off after a while?

sorry i had to lol

And yes you can be my shoe department, I will send you all demos so you can try them too lmao

 But if you want to do same as me with reviewing items just post here, or anywhere lol (maybe people start to do them more without being constantly asked)