[Removal of "Gift To" On Large Ticket or No Copy Items]

4 hours ago, Klytyna said:

As a 'Professional Cynic' I feel obligated to point out that your link points to a commercial website run by a self proclaimed "lifestyle guru", who hopes you will buy his books and sign up for his "online leadership courses", backed by the testimonials of  two little league pastors and a woman with a phd in "practical theology", which should give a clear idea of the kind of material that's involved in "taking back your life" and learning to "live with hope".

Speaking personally, as a cynic, I'd rather examine the problem, determine the fact, and formulate a workable real world solution, than shell out dollars to some self hyped liberal arts conman, in exchange for being told that "faith that sticks" and "living in hope" are the answer.

Do what real businesses do, learn how to correctly calculate your operating costs, invest in business insurance, stop demanding that the rest of the world should financially compensate you just for being online.

/thread
 

/thread.

 

Praise the Gods.

 

[Removal of "Gift To" On Large Ticket or No Copy Items]

10 hours ago, Klytyna said:

First of all... a Cynic is not the same as a troll... Buy a dictionary.

It has become increasingly obvious over the last 15 years on multiple platforms that most MMO amateur hobbyist small business operators, have no clue how a business operates. 

Removing the gift option from gacha sales WILL NOT STOP phishers using stolen accounts from ripping you off. They will just BUY the items, and 2 mins later manually send them to a selection of other accounts, 1 of which will be their alt.

Refusing service in this case is pointless, useless, and clueless.

Refusing service to people who are not payment registered, is also pointless, useless, and clueless, accounts with no money don't buy expensive gacha.

Refusing service to non-premiums is pointless, useless, and clueless, all you do is destroy your customer base, kill your own sales and put your business into financial trouble.

The closest analogy I can think of in FirstLife to the gacha reselling trade is the 2nd hand book business.

I collect books, I have nearly 4000, This a trade I've seen close up. 

Book dealers buy up old books in places such as house clearance sales, usually in bulk, and sometimes by weight. A book dealer might agree to pay a $1 a book for an entire private library of several thousand volumes. This is similar to you 'pulling' a gacha machine hundreds of times.

Amongst those thousands of books, delivered in crates, there may be 'sets', a complete multi volume novel series, or an encylopedia. Sets sell for more money, so our book dealer spends time going through the pile sorting them by titles and publishers and category etc., just as you sort your gacha.

When a book dealer drops $1000 for 1000 2nd hand books, if they happen to find a RARE 1st edition in good condition in the pile, they DO NOT claim that THAT ONE BOOK cost them $1000, because it did not, they bought 1000 books for a $1 each and got lucky on one, just like you did with your gacha.

Selling the other 999 books... Well some might have a resale value of more than a $1 especially if they can be grouped into sets, but there will be some that, frankly are worth less than a $1. A Professional book dealer KNOWS this and factors it into their calculations, it's a risk you take when buying books in bulk without examining each one first.

Now for your sales strategy.

If an item doesn't sell for years, that is Nature's way of telling you that you are charging too damn much.

If you are STUPID enough to think that rare item cost you $1000 (with 999 not rare items thrown in free, whose resale value you myopically refuse to remember when costing) and claim $1000 as your 'costs' on that rare item alone, do not be surprised when somebody SMARTER undercuts your sale price on the same item. Being undercut is Nature's way of telling you that you are charging too damn much.

Do not assume your time playing as "business toddler" is worth whatever hourly rate you get in your day job in FirstLife, do you deserve compensation, sure, can you realistically expect ME or any other customer to pay you your FL hourly pay scale for sorting a pile of gacha? NO.

A professional 2nd hand book dealer sets the resale price on that lucky $1 find of a rare 1st edition, to cover the slight loss on the worthless pulp items that also cost a $1, but also realises that many of the other 999 books also have value, and factors their markups accordingly, especially as those low to mid range priced books will sell faster, thus returning the book dealers invested capital that much faster.

Most of you gacha dealers seem to work it backwards, you try to reclaim ALL your operating costs on ONE super expensive item, and leave the rest to rot in your stores for years.

Professional 2nd hand book dealers run businesses, which in most countries generally means having business insurance, both to cover losses from theft, fraud, fire, bookwork, red rot etc., but also to cover 3rd party liability.

You gacha dealers seem to want to be business people without understanding how businesses operate and without ANY of the obligations of a real business. You have unrealistic expectations.

You do occasionally run across a 2nd hand bookshop that operates like a gacha dealer, weird little places in quiet country towns, with windows so dirty you can's see in, that open maybe 2 hours a day 1 day a week, run by elderly eccentrics who desperately try to prevent people from buying the books, at least until they go bankrupt or die, and a normal book dealer comes in and buys their stock for a $1 a case...

But I'm tired of this, your problems are not mine, I did try to point out how the system actually works, I even suggested a possible partial fix for your problem, based on the solutions used in FirstLife, but ultimately, you've made a rod for your own backs, and you will continue to bleed for it because you refuse to wake up and listen.

 

http://careynieuwhof.com/take-back-the-internet-how-good-people-can-beat-the-cynics-and-the-trolls/

[Removal of "Gift To" On Large Ticket or No Copy Items]

On May 5, 2017 at 4:03 AM, OxfordLennox said:

That would be nice if the purchasers were alts, only the people who get the items are alts. Buyers are stolen accounts.

Folks, why are you feeding the troll... it clearly states in her title, 

• Professional Cynic

She's sending you scenarios and going off topic and coming up with rigmarole, it's not the gacha business model that is being brought up here, it's ANY business model in SL - regardless of "pulls" or whatever. If I paid a licensing fee to use a texture or likeness on a tshirt. That came out of my pocket. If someone bought that with stolen funds LL is not protecting me, the seller, from fraud.

The right to refuse service. The right to point out the loophole and asking to tighten it.

Plain.

Simple.

Enough coming up with grandiose plans or "Exposing schemes" or "raising taxes for protection" scenarios.

Stop feeding the troll.

 

[Removal of "Gift To" On Large Ticket or No Copy Items]

4 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Useless, pointless, clueless.

Here is how it works, pay close attention,

YOU pay 50 ls for a gacha 'pull' and get "Cool Outfit - Panties - Red" net value 50 ls. YOU decide that this is a valuable item easily worth 5000 ls, and offer it on the MP as such.

A payment registered premium account gets borrowed by Phrank the Phisher, and he buys your 5k gacha, and 4 others and sends them to 5 different people, 1 alt of his, and 4 innocent bystanders to serve as a smoke-screen.

2 of the bystanders wear the panties, 2 bystanders and Phranks alt sell the panties for 1000 ls in yardsales, 1 of the yardsale purchasers wears the panties, the other 2 put the 'valuable gacha' on their mp stores for 4500 ls.

The owner of the borrowed account that payed for all this complains, LL recover their money, but they don't recover your 'valuable gacha' because the damn things have passed through the hands of 20 different people, and tracing all that takes TIME, time that LL pay for, some junior Linden Clan member on $20 an hour, an extra hours work tracking down 5 gacha panties with an official replacement value of... 50 ls each on a gacha machine, 1 us$ the lot.

YOU say you 'lost' 25,000 ls worth of valuable mechandise, but what you actually lost was, a dollars worth of gacha. LL won't spend $20-$40 recovering your 1$.

Sorry but those are the harsh economics of gacha resale .

 

The point is that people who put the items up paid to purchase Lindens in good faith.

Regardless of the "value" of the item for sale, we paid LL real money to be converted in "Lindens." - a banking transaction where we are also charged "a fee."

So if it's 50 cents to 5 dollars, it's still stolen.

The method for reimbursement by LL is 0 to the seller. They took a transaction fee to get a cut of the sale, a transaction fee to get a bank charge to purchase the lindens we used to buy the items in question and if it's cashed out back to real money - another transaction fee. With all of this they make sure they are satisfied, if I put together a set and it costs me, in pulls, 50L a pull for 40 items - regardless if it's rare or has an inflated value.. I still used REAL money which amounts to 10 dollars US. Have that happen over and over and basically being told "you are SOL?" No Bueno.

 

Those are the harsh economics of LIFE.

 

 

[Removal of "Gift To" On Large Ticket or No Copy Items]

With increased frequency amongst store owners I know on the marketplace, as recently as the past week but extending further, purchases have been made of no copy items and gifted to others. The ORIGINAL purchaser was then found to have committed credit fraud and the funds removed from the Marketplace store owner's account - the no copy item, which was purchased by the marketplace store owner with valid funds, not returned.

In the "real world" when we enter an agreement with a credit card company and make a purchase they guard us from credit fraud. If someone gets a hold of our credit info and purchases a jungle gym from Amazon, they don't go after Amazon - Amazon took that transaction in good faith and the onus is on the credit card company.

Unfortunately, LL does not protect the seller. If a buyer with fraudulent funds makes 40k in purchases and gifts them to someone, it is not LL who processed the transaction that is out 120$, it's the seller - the stock is gone and not replaced and Linden Labs makes you go through an endless chain if "Sorry Charlie" support cases quoting TOS.

As sellers we enter an agreement, LL acts as a intermediary and gets a cut of your product - not just a stipend or a fixed amount - a PERCENTAGE. The more you make, the more they make.

I've discussed this with others who sell no copy items and this is a pattern with no end in sight, I propose that on a per listing basis we be allowed to turn off "gifting" on no copy, transferable items - it's becoming increasingly sad what people will do to steal 1000Ls that in the real world costs less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but if you keep piling it on - that grift becomes thousands of real world dollars that we, as merchants, are getting pick pocketed and the authority we have to report to are telling us "oh well, you didn't need to carry a wallet/purse, have a mint."