HisaDrug

They take 1L from your 10 L sales, too.

I believe less than the half of the cusomters in SL are aware of the complexity of how merchandise works... If they leave a nasty review, just flag it cos you've done enough to help them, you know? I understand your dilemma.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: So, if you know all about the tools we as merchants have to defend ourselves, what is your complaint? You go on and on about the problems that are in the MP, and then turn around and say you know about the solutions.... You realize that by showing all of the ways to do illegal things you are showing potential copybotters how do do them? First of all, it's not a complaint c'mon. I don't know why you're trying to pick on every detail I say to make a point. I support merchants and I think the best for them to handle certain situations. I'm here to share ideas. I'm not giving tips to copybotters here, and they already know what they're doing. I'm aware of all the ways that LL can give merchants to fight against some undesireable customers. But they can't touch on every problem, such as reviews. You flag them but the customer would do that again if he wants to. Such as failed delivery. I know this is the nature of forums and people always try to portray the negative part of the post, which is weird to me. The first several responses of the thread were the point I was making. You wrote one of them so you should know what I'm trying to say here.

Well, it's very tricky. Because I'm very polite when it comes to customers. But like I said, when people repeat the same process, buying a no-mod product and ask for a mod is a little too much now. Cos I do have mod products to balance out the audience. I have some returning customers in a long term and I try my best to keep them happy with the design. Sometimes some people wouldn't tolerate no-mod that's all. They become quite dramatic about it sometimes.... What should I do when they made a decision to buy the product and realized they didn't want it so contact the designer for a different one. Well....

The review thread is consequential with the respondants to the post. It's an additional argument to support my original topic about the MP in general. I know all about flagging false reviews, and the fact you can't copybot anything unless you actually buy them. That's why I said DEMOS. I know this. You didn't even read what I wrote !! lol Also I know LL will delete all the copybotted items if I file the report on the fraud. I'm just stating about the inter problems of what it's being seen on the MP. And I'm supporting all the merchants to be comfortable doing their business in somewhat tricky environments.

In this particular topic, my point is how come this customer still questions no-mod when it's already on the description. The product page clearly states it's no-mod, and the model is human. So why is he still upset it's no-mod. That's my point whether or not I could give him a mod version. He could simply not purchase it when the product doesn't meet with his expectation. But he did anyway. And he makes it like it's the creator's fault within his patty tantrums. That is what I'd like to know. Did he buy it just to preach a merchant? In this story, he just didn't come off all nice and try to give the merchant a feedback. He overlooked the description of the product and justified his fault in the expense of the merchant. Not to mention, his angry reveiw. My premise on this matter is maybe because the MP is designed to blame the merchants, even though often times it's the customer's fault. There is no way but to be blamed for their mistakes. Many cases I offer them mod version of the product for free. Don't get me wrong, I'm very open about it. I try to please them in any way I can. But they do return with the same request. They buy the no-mod version first, and ask for a mod version. It's because they could write a bad review when the merchant refuses to provide them the alternatives. Therefore, there is not power in merchants' position whatsoever. And i believe it's unfair.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Iren Tinkel wrote: 3.4. recently i went into bad situation with reviews so i think there must be also opportunity to rate customers as i heard ebay does. so after a while people can see if person posts bad reviews everywhere because he is just as..h..le. I think it would prevent people from posting bad reviews especially most of cases it is their fault they are not pleased: did not read description, lazy to read instruction and not skilled enough to understand how to use, or just newbies, or was lazy to try in store. Some cases are really awful where you do all to please customer, send refund and so on and he forgets to remove his bad review. i agree review is good thing in some cases but i think mostly its just a tool to troll merchant. maybe it was even better if they could just rate without comments because comments sometimes are extremely silly. I think this is a bad idea. That would make it far too easy for merchants to slam bad reviews. I don't know what you guys are doing to get all of these bad reviews that are fake , but you must be doing something to attract them. If your products have less complication concerning large script count or delicate technicality, fitting adjustment skills that require instruction, you wouldn't go through so much trouble doing customer service. You could tell them what it is, what that does and they are happy with a refund. The problem of owning a Style stop where you carry complex accessories such as, hair, outfit, alpha, facial appendix, etc, is you are forced to deal with the variety of physics of customers' avatars. Not a single avatar is the same. Maybe size wise, but remember we have a particular audience called Furries, whose demands are always just so. Imagine a furry customer bought one of your hairstyles that was designed to be worn on humans. It's no-mod period, because it was the creator's decision to make that way for humans only. The furry customer is angry with your product. It doesn't fit on his feline head, not to mention it's no-mod. Now he writes you an angry notecard about no-mod. He complains you're supposed to make a hair modifiable. And the comparison with the other designers begins. He lectures you how to do business. He's asking you more questions about yer personal SL residency, and swears off your shop forever. Also he forewarns you you'll lose your business because he's going to tell people your customer service sucks. Just because you told him it's no-mod and you're sorry you can't provide him otherwise. And his angry review peppered with hate-speech that hints false facts about the creator's customer service appears, as if he was in total shock that the product was no-mod. Now, This kind of hassle with customers continues monthly basis. You can't help but become callous toward their common complaints. No matter how hard you hold your ground and business principles to do your artistic activities in SL, people expect you to be a professional seller and they think they can close down your business if you don't respond to their aggressivenss. And they can. All because merchants do not have the corresponding powers to protect their virtual business due to their inevitable position as Resident just like all your customers. We don't have alternatives to put a stop to their so-called tantrums. And trust me, as a customer myself, I have the mindset of a customer in SL from acknowledging merchants couldn't do anything if I threathened them. Other customers would look at his angry review, and you can't do anything about it. Even though it's unfair and aggravating. in common i agree with you. merchants are not safe at all. every as...h...l...e can copybot items and even listing and sell it and you will break your head down trying to contact LL, filling DMCA and so on. example is case when some people used hole in SL code and copied tons of no copy items and now they sell it as legal but 1/2 price cos there name of original creators. they even copied listings - photos, descriptions and merchants can do NOTHING about this cos it all comes as Limited Quantities (they copied enough no copy products). Also all these play with rates, buying reviews, bad review practice to kill merchant - its all awful and LL should work better to justify this 5% of sells we pay to them. actually i do not understand what i pay for if i dont have any safe or support (all support from them is links to blogs or wiki which i know). You can't copybot things from the MP unless you buy them. What safety do you need as a merchant on the MP? The only way they can copybott from the MP is if they hack LL directly. I don't see that happening. Yes they can, and it's possible with DEMOs. Demos are usually free, and I've witnessed so many demo products being copybotted and sold openly on double price. And what can merchants do about it, Nothing. You could write to LL to remove that account, which would take minimum 1-2 weeks, and once they ban the account there are other copybotters with your demo products. Nothing you can do about it neither. The copybotters usually have inworld shops to avoid publicity on the MP. They run in rented areas where Search option is off so you can't track them down easily.

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: It is certainly your right not to ban people from your land or MP store, but I reserve the right to decide who I want to do business with, as far as I am able -- which on the MP I am not. well dont worry, i still have a ban list in my land. Not specifically bec i dont want to do business with these pp but bec i know them as possibly annoying for me for all kinds of reason and i dont want them on my land. And yes, its my land, i do agree with you on this. For the mp i have to admit your point of view is a lil weird for me... i dont judge it btw, but im just saying it look weird for me what is different. i thought naively that when we agree with the mp TOS for selling there we also agree with the fact we propose our product to the whole sl consummers. If Mp team was doint its job correctly we shouldnt need any black list. Copybotters are broking the TOS, they shouldnt be able to log anymore in sl and they should be IP Comp banned. i dont think this kind of power given to merchants would be a good idea anyway. It will be the door open to a lot of all kind of downward slides. I think LL has just to make better respect their own TOS. What if I told you, one of the reasons why some customers would act this way is because they know there aren't enough ways to protect merchants. MP blacklist idea is a very strong option for merchants to nix out bad customers who would harm your MP shop with ugly reviews and hate-speech. I assume all merchants wouldn't ban somebody mindlessly on a very small argument, because every customer is valuable for their growing business. Banning bad customers would be their ultimate decision to carry on their shop revolving around regular and desireable customers. You may think Black list would affect your sales rate, and yes, it is a possibility, whereas it might become a handy tool for you to protect your shop when there are exceptionally mean customers with ridiculous threats, especially if your shop is growing larger every month where fresh customers as your new audience, you may have more and more exceptional consumers whose demands are dramatic and unacceptable. I'm narrowing it down to a very very rare case, not only have I been there several times, some of my other merchant friends have gone through the similar cases monthly basis. In the end, we all speak in one mind. Just some yellow card to put an end to harrassment. That's all.

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: lol, indeed. but one friend just let me think about smth .... MP team are already mixing our listings and pics so i dont trust them for not mixing our blacklist aswell lol... another new toy for the dev team to play and put a lil more mess in the marketplace then lol.... Well, honestly I don't think they purposely control the mix of the relevence pages. I think they're arranged statistically, such as click counts, sales rate, etc... So if they really put Blacklist as an option, well at least we could expect a remarkable difference in shopping experience.... of course more commotion.

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: Well, in France, as soon as you consent to put something on sale you cant say you wont sell it to this person or this other one. an item on sale is on sale for everyone who will want to buy and and will be able to afford it. You can not select your customers and that s a really great thing. otherwise, you would have seller who wont want to sale to pp bec of their color skin, culture, language, hair color, fat/thin etc.... A customer is a customer whoever he/she is. Now i was about to considerate your question about known copyboters... but if you want to avoid also the customers with trantrum... well, i wont follow this path so... next step is the one for a pure customers race... its a dangerous and a slippery path. I know this is not your purpose, but this is how things can come when ones open this door. the customers with tantrums and silly questions are part of the business too. I know its time consuming, indeed. but its part of the deal. the thing to do is to be well organized, maybe have a staff for this kind of job, or just be firm and say you cant deal with this. I agree with your points Trinity. I think it's very wise of you to say dealing with difficult customers is a part of the business as well. And trust me, that's my initial mindset about business. When I'm challenged with difficult customers, the topic between me and them isn't about the product anymore. They usually attack the merchant on a very personal level, which is a wrong thing to do. They start lecturing on how to do things right, and in some cases they'd call merchants names, absolutely for no reason. And those people who would take drastic measures with merchants unlikely return to the shop... so black list might work out beautifully when business gets interrupted by unnecessary arguments over who is better and who is not all because they didn't read the description correctly but wanted to justify it by accusing the merchant. I'm not saying black list wont be used to get back at someone else, and possibly utilized in a wrongful manner according to the merchants/customers personal affairs. But once we acquire that option in hand, we would act more carefully toward each other, alot nicer and polite not to get on each other's nerve... And if copyboters can't see the products on the MP, how would they be able to spot the products unless they try harder with alt accounts to sneak away. That'd be a good solution to punish theives openly. It's just a thought....

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: .......About the Mp blacklist, idk, it can be sometimes usefull, but here in France it would be considerate as illegal to refuse to sell to smbody. , So well... This is worth prob to be thinked indeed...... I do feel sorry for feeling this way. I'm genuinely nice to everyone...and I'd like to be seen that way. And there are a group of customers who always push you up the wall to see how far you'd go with their tantrums. Dealing with them does have a limit in my expense because, just like any other designers in SL, time is money. I can't waste my whole day just to deal with somebody who has an impossible request.. And the MP contributes the mass industry sterotypes to consumers just like the shoppers on ebay or amazon, that they have every right to push their wants until it works. Designers in SL are consumers too. And unfortunately consumers wouldn't think this way with the designers.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: 1. LL is working to improve the delivery process. Personally i have never had a failed delivery to a customer, i have had a few purchases fail and i had to reorder them.. but that happens. 2. Perhaps you should expand your description to include the perms. Or have a description at all. If i just opened one of your items and didn't look at what section it was in, i would not have guessed it was a hair.. 3. Blocking someone from the MP will do nothing to stop copybotting.. They can't steal your items from the MP. In order to do that they would have to hack LL. They copybot from your inworld store. So a merchant that just sells on the MP is much less likely to be copybotted as they don't usually buy things to copy. 4. While i like the idea of having #of sales on an item, the review is a very very good tool. I have yet to see a review that was bad "just cuz they could do it." I had one once on a single prim ring that has an armor script in it for combat. the review was " wow, it looks sad and doesn't have a lot of bling or prims. poor wedding ring, sorry i bought it" I commented on that review that "the ring was a single prim that was textured. Had extremely low lag and was perfect for combat RP. " I then IMed the person and offered a full refund if they transferred it back to me. which they did. they wanted a wedding ring. not sure why they bought it, but hey.. i flagged the review and LL removed it after a few weeks. Yeah, I can literally relate to your stinker review experience. Some customers make a big stink about how your product lags their entire sim, when most of the other customers don't even have this problem. It could be the sim they're in for I know so many landscaped sims are laggy as hell. So you'd suggest your customers how to delete the script or do something to reduce the lag. But most of the times they wouldn't accept the possibility. They just assume your product lags the entire sim and crashes everyone, which is the known blame since they would point their finger at the designer so they can get a refund or be apologised for. And once they listen to you and moved to an empty land to try on the product, they stop talking in IMs. Because they have adequate reasons for apologising back to you. They are only a few once in awhile, the angry customers, and their insult-like reviews on your MP, even though you wasted 2 hours to help this person and listen to this person's complaints... Those very large shops in SL wouldn't return your request or notecarded questions because yup. It's more profitable ignoring them than dealing with them.

WADE1 Jya wrote: @ OP: i agree with your points. except getting rid of reviews. reviews are great & present much more usefulness to customer making purchase decision. i can't see any negative big enough to cancel out the great usefulness of reviews. ≡⚆ ⥿ ⚆≡ purr... meow! Sometimes they are definitely useful to make decisions. And some times we buy goods based on a good review, and realize it's not bad, but wonder how come this reviewer is a fan of this designer when his/her MP has only a few. Those kinda reviews surface at times.

Shaodie Parx wrote: I would have agreed with that before, but now LL allows reward for review services. I no longer trust buying from anyone that has over 100 (sometimes over 1000) reviews for a product because I know those reviews were bought. Yes. I've been in a group where almost 300 members joined and the owner constantly gave out notifications to rate their products on the MP based on 1k L win and their exclusive Christmas sale Gift card. The actual product costed about 500 L and the reviews were adding up day by day before Christmas by compliments and praises of the designer. I thought it was illegally arranged. My other acquaintances have said it's kinda acceptable now since LL promotes wider advertisement through the MP, so perhaps do something with reviews to boost sales up. The boundary is blurred. Customers would prefer the MP even more when there is a reward. In effect, designers would pay more to advertisement such as featured items, cart item page advertsement, etc. and it'd bring good results. I still go over the reviews before I make my purchases and ever since people have spoken of the intentional reviews, I can't wrap my mind around those cheerful and positive reviews anymore. As a consumer myself, I've grown to distrust the fancy package of a designer's MP and their wonderful reviews. And now I believe No-Review = Possibly-Good-Product.

Dear hardworking marchants. I decided to write this post about doing business in SL where your audience is from all around the world, and the frustration stemmed from keeping a store. I'd like to think SL business can be as serious as RL ones, only with more fun part of design to it. However, recently I've concluded that there is no way you could satisfy every single customer who would come by the shop no matter how hard you try to help them, especially when they already have the nagtive mindset about merchants in general. I've had several customers who had sour attitudes toward merchants, and when that happens, I feel like my apology and sincere gestures are so aimless. The common sense would be customers should come first and I do agree with that, because they admire your design by purchasing your products. But what about those customers who abuse the system to get what they want? What about threatening for terrorism or copybot, or personal attack for absolutely no reason. And what can a merchant do at the advent of the nutbusters? Nothing but apology.....even though it's not really the merchant's fault to begin with. You gotta keep your shop going no matter what. So you apologize. Damn. I'd like to think my customer service is attentive. I encourage people to speak to me about my products. I like communicating with people and fixing problems for them at all cost. But I constantly have pissed-off customers who already have growing resentment toward the merchants in SL, because they automatically assume the merchants would ignore customers when there is a problem. I reassure them that that's a silly assumption. But they say that they are being abused for being customers so much and their money don't worth a **bleep** anymore, and the agony of necessary measures to contact each merchant for the problem as if it's become begging for help. I have a theory of my own why those customers have such bad atittudes toward merchants. And I believe the problem can get better in merchants favour once LL reinforces the CS system with new alternatives. 1. Marketplace Delivery This whole Marketplace business is creating more conflicts between merchants and consumers due to its frequent delivery failure. Recently LL charged sellers and customers double due to their maintenance problem. I've never had so many incoming requests from the customers that they didn't receive the items, yet were charged twice. And in some cases, they'd fire at the merchant for inconvenience. Does it really have to be the merchant's fault every time LL fails to deliver goods for us? At this point, Yes. It's our fault. 2. Marketplace Description A big mistery. Even though a product indicates its copy, no mod, no trans, they still get mad that the product is unmodifiable. I don't really understand this because they should be prompt about these things when they buy the products.... but ok. Maybe the product page is not clear enough for customers. Maybe the indication should be in a bold neon bar so customers can't miss reading it. Do merchants have to note about the products on the description again? Is that our responsibility to double check with every single person if he/she read the descriptions right? at this point, I guess it is. 3. Marketplace Blacklist I've shared this idea with my other friends who also have shops and I'm foreward about MP blacklist. Maybe this would reduce copybot threat or patty conflicts with some customers who try to grief a certain merchant because of whatever reasons they have. Also customers can put a merchant on their blacklist so their products won't show. Inworld can eject and ban somebody so why can't the MP. That'd be one solution to avoid tedious argument with disrespectful people. 4.Get RID OF THE REVIEW I strongly believe in review myself. They are good sources for customers, but how about put the number of the sales instead? And the customers can express their anger toward merchant personally without affecting the whole shop by their faulty accusations as it happens alot. If Mouth-to-mouth reputation is so crucial in SL world, customers can do that on their own. But there are so many innocent merchants who get attacked with bad bad and faulty reviews just because the customers can and can do it at unsatisfactory. When the actual product is bad, of course fair play. But what about cases where customers giving merchants wrongful accusations? I feel like the MP is teaching customers distrust in merchants and I have no solution but try my best to keep customers happy. There are so very little a merchant can do to protect himself as opposed to customers who have powers to speak up and threaten and accuse shops. LL promotes hundreds of new products on the MP every month, shop growth, big bills and high quality virtual shopping experience but feel like they don't want to get involved in the actual money making merchants business and I believe that's how they're losing touch with so many artists who stopped and left SL for good. Thank you for investing your time to read my post.

Damn, I just bought Joan Rivers Jewelry. Is this the beginning of the curse ! :matte-motes-silly:

Oh no, I don't even think of them as an enemy. I love Second Life and I think it's the best virtual game there is. I'm just complaining about this particular update because it changed my whole experience in SL. I had a good time enjoying the high quality photography and so many other options, graphic wise, and just one update it took and I can't bring it back. So I'm just wondering why they had to shift this to the other. I'll just stick to the 3rd party viewers now like the old generation in SL.

Oh yeah I'm sure they try their best to fix the major issues in SL, and I'm very happy about that. But now that they forced me to update my viewer to bork my graphics in the game, I can't even use the official viewer anymore. I'm forced to use 3rd party viewers though their attempt to make this better. I guess their priority is to fix problems than to create more users who can't afford the new graphic cards.

Yeah, I can understand the reason behind their changes, but cmon, such drastic shift of the graphic cards doesn't make sense to me at all. Isn't it supposed to be user friendly? Esp, when they build this thing on Mac and knowing its graphic card can't be easily replaced to the other. I really don't see the point of even having the download factor for Mac users in the first place when they're going to create problems like this. And I'm not alone with this thing.

Yea yeaaa please judge me for grasping on LL's viewer (haha)... I'm only using it because I'm so used to the viewer and I think it's quite convenient to keep up with the latest system in SL but again, LL forced me out of the usage this time so badly, I don't think I'll ever download their official viewer knowing the risk is at my cost.

Nope nope. No beta wotsoever.

It seems like update is a ritual that I have to go through in order to enjoy the game, which is a huge letdown. Do you know what versions still keep up with the old graphic requirements? I tried some of the old versions but I believe one time it worked, which was 3.3.1. I downloaded it and the graphic was back to normal but then i toggled with the preferences and it went right back on gritty ugly graphic once again, and unfixable ever since. But it did work for me the last time. I downloaded an old version and worked like a charm so I'm still hopeful that this problem could get better without having me pay for the new graphic card that LL wants me to have.

No. I'm 110% sure LL made this mandatory. Because the last time the update happened, i was be able to skip it as the pop up menu floated in my viewer where I could just click (x). And this time, nope.

Yeah I mean, I've done that also. Switch to manual updates, and it still forces me to install. I don't know why it won't allow me to log in without updating, and that was the first thing I checked. Do you have any suggestion what I should do?

I'm not sure if you read my post carefully or not. I'm frustrated about this new update because it forces me to install the new version at the login page. If i can get away with it, of course I would overlook the new update and never bother anyone else about the following issues. And what a nice way to say it's my problem alone when some other people go through the similar issues (please google some of the issues aformentioned cos you'll find those easily) and I'm not just standing by my own, I have a number of friends in SL who have the similar issue, that's why I'm volunteering to write this post to find a reason why I (and we) keep having this issue within the new updates. I'm not ticketing this issue because I know LL is aware of it before I am. And I'm hoping they'll notice this small post and try to fix this for the next version.