What recourse do I have?

I'm not a builder, so I bought a prefab house for $3,500L. I tried to change the texture in the house and made a few mistakes. The house did not include the original textures in its packaging, so I IMed the maker.
No reply for almost three weeks. Then we finally talk, and he says that he doesn't give out his textures (understandable), but he says to send the pieces that are messed up, and he will fix them. I explain that, since I am not a builder, replacing a prim after he had retextured it would be very difficult for me. After a long conversation, and no agreement made, he said he had to log off.

The next time I saw him online, I IMed him, but he had forgotten our conversation. So I went through it all again. He finally came, replaced a few textures, then said he would come back to fix the rest later. I haven't heard from him since.

Since then, the house has gotten worse. We fall through the floor, and we are bounced from spot to spot. Lizzie Linden says it is because of the floors. I am very unhappy with this house and its maker. If this were the physical world, I know exactly what action I would take.

But in SL, what recourse do you have when you are unhappy with a product and can get no satisfaction from the maker?

You have no recourse. The only thing you can do without risking permanent banishment is talk to people inworld and spread the word that this merchant's customer service bites. They have no recourse against you for that either.

You can tell him what you've told us, send it back and ask for a refund I guess.. Or send it back and ask for a replacement.. Why didn't he offer you a replacement in the first place?

This is highly unlikely what you want to hear but ill say this anyway:

I dont think you should have even tried to fool with it to begin with, the item is sold as is and was in working order when you purchased it, right? why should the creator have to take a hit on something you fouled up? If its not broken dont fix it.

How would the creator be taking a "hit" on this if he replaced the damaged house with a new one for Katt? I doubt she will buy from him again, so he isn't losing that sale. Yes, she risked her investment when tampering with the original product, but it is not always explicitly stated as to merchants' policies on this.

The real "hit" is to fail miserably in customer service and see how that works out in the marketplace. I know of a number of merchants who freely and willingly replace items ruined in various ways throught the latest update. Are they required to do this? No. Could they have just said no and hope some of those people repurchase items they already bought? Yes. Whey don't they? Because, as an ongoing concern, their businesses will do far better by not engaging in that kind of merchant vs. customer attitude. Rather, they benefit most by fostering good feelings and providing a positive customer experience.

If the object is no copy, no transfer.. Then she can send it back and he can send her a new one.. No problems, Katt gets a new house, he doesn't "lose" anything..

If its copy no transfer, he can send a new one anyway, and it doesn't matter coz she can't transfer it, he doesn't "lose" anything again..

I don't see why one of these options wasn't taken in the first place..

If you decide to buy another house to replace that one, make sure you check the permissions on it. I don't buy any houses that aren't Modify and Copy. If you mess something up modifying it, you can delete the whole house and rez it again from Inventory.

As for recourse with this builder, you really don't have any. If you can't come to an agreement with him, the only thing you can really is chalk it up to experience, never purchase from him again, and spread the word.

Holy crap. $L3500 for a prefab?

Am I undercharging AGAIN?

Sheesh.

By the by, you work for an in-world journalism outlet... the next recourse of action in the real world, failing legal action, is to go to the presses...



LF

As others have stated, there is no recourse. SL is a buyer-beware environment. That having been said, I can't for the life of me imagine why this builder didn't simply give you a replacement house. It would have been a lot easier for both of you had he just dropped a new one on your profile, rather than wasting time on his half assed attempt at coming by to fix what was broken.

I can't fault him on his ethics entirely since he did make an attempt at rectification. I do however fault him on his intelligence. Not providing a replacement was just plain dumb.

Hello,

As a prefab builder, I do sympathize with folks that "mess up" and then want help to fix it back the way it came. If this builder is selling this as a no copy object, then yes, he/she needed to make clear his/her policy on "repairs." In general they are sold "as is" and you take the risk when you choose to modify it, or you make arrangements in advance to have it decorated as you wish before purchase. I have seen that option given.

As for the "falling through the floors." This is NOT the builder's fault. That is a problem on LL's end when a root prim will go phantom. The bouncing off the walls ...being pulled around wildly, is do the physics issue when a link prim has gone phantom. I had this very same thing happen to a custom home client of mine when one of the floor prims did this. Generally this is intiated when someone tries to edit an individual prim inside a linked group.

It was explained to me by the "bug hunters" at LL that is a Havok 1 issue that is suppose to be fixed with the introduction of Havok 2. We can only hope.

There are two work arounds for this problem.

1. Pull the whole house back in to inventory and pull it back out.

2. Unlink the phantom prim...change its size to 10x10x10 then back to this original size.

It is unfortunate you had such an upleasant experience. At any price over 3K I would expect full custom home treatment.

- Taylor

disclaimer: I'm the prefab builder's competition


Well, I took a look at the house after replying in this thread...

To be honest, texture replacement is the least of Katt's worries.

The home's prims are misaligned, built by eye rather than by numbers... the textures themselves are horribly misaligned, the script to reorient the house simply doesn't work...

It's a showpiece of shoddy workmanship from start to finish, and definitely isn't worth the princely sum being charged for it. I've built custom homes for less.

On TOP of that, the pieces are no-copy, which is practically blasphemy in my opinion; if a customer deletes a window, and has a duplicate window next to it, you LET THEM COPY IT SO THEY CAN FIX IT THEMSELVES. Der n der.

In short, the house is teh brokenz, and the original house should be set on fire in protest.

LF

edit: And the bouncy floor problem isn't the house's, it's the Sim's. Another shining example of 1.7. Wake me up when I can venture outside grignano.

LF

or

3. Unlink the prim that has gone phantom. Click on it and drag a "new" one. Delete the "new" one (which is actually the old one). The one left behind will be the exact right size, in the right place, and not phantom.

coco

It wouldn't be taking a hit. It would be offering good customer service. If a maker can't do that, he or she is in the wrong business. And as far as what I fouled up, I can fix textures. But I can't fix the gradual misalignments in the wall that I did not cause.

I have a good feeling this is the part where the Metaverse Messenger sets up a Consumer's Advocate Watchdog section.

Katt, don't hold back now!

Thanks Coco for that addition.. you are correct. I didn't include it as the house was set no copy. That said, that has been my work around of choice.

LF.. the sim issue may very well play a factor. The custom home client I had never was able to fully enjoy her home. After many Linden visits, we concluded it was haunted, but in that case it was Hiro Pendragon on "helper" duty that found the phantoming prim. Once "fixed" the bouncing stopped inside the home.

I can't speak for the workmanship as I haven't seen it. But would this not have been something visible to the buyer BEFORE purchase? I strongly advise folks from buying any home they have not seen full size.

- Taylor

In a world where raw materials are free, replacing a product is kind of a no brainer.

My friend had a different but similar problem recently with a different builder (I don't know the builder in question above, but ours was a woman). Spent about 4200 L if I remember correctly for a prefab... very expensive I know, but I have a house from the same builder and I liked her designs, and we liked the design of the one we bought.

The house comes no-copy though... and my friend did some sort of mistake where she "dropped" a texture onto the house and accidentally retextured parts of it. This wasn't something she intended to do... was just a mistake.

The builder responded within 24 hours but was rude and uncooperative. Again, as pointed out above, the easy thing would just be to take the old house back and replace it, but instead she berated my friend for screwing it up, blamed her for not "locking" the house after placing it where she wanted it, and offered to fix the texture problem for a mere 2400 L, half again the original purchase price. (Which didn't happen -- my friend chose to try and fix everything herself.)

My God, after paying 4200 L for a "compleate" prefab, this is the kind of customer service you can expect? I still think the house is well designed, but for those kind of prices I'd expect a bit more if the customer is having a problem. I was very sad that I had reccomended this person's work to my friend, and I will not make that mistake again. I've been trying to figure out how to respond to this, because I had an impulse to post a big thread about this particular builder and what lousy customer service she provides for such outrageous prices... but I didn't want to be too childish, so I didn't post anything (until now). But I want to reiterate what others have posted above, don't buy houses that are no-copy or no-modify, and don't overpay! You will probably end up regretting it if you do.

Seriously, what the fuck is up with the prefab housing market? I charge $L1000 for my homes, and they are mod/copy, but no transfer.

Now granted, I don't offer homes with 30 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, two dungeons, and swinging french veranda doors, but they ARE designed with SL in mind; big areas, camera friendly, open floorplan to allow extensive customizing.

And yet people are getting off charging $L4000 for a prefab? Shoddily done prefabs, at that?

What am I missing here?

LF

Was it definatetly built that way tho? I know you're completely competent LF, and I doubt you would have missed it, but I nearly approached a prefab designer in defense of an upset resident the other day. It appeared that it had not been built by the numbers. It was mod, so I tried to fix it for her. Every time I moved it to the correct number, it just jumped back. Upon closer inspection, I found that most of the prims had indeed been built to the numbers, and the only ones out were the ones that had been moved out of place by some bug.

That was my intitial suspicion, but the prims themselves are done in what is pretty obviously a "by eye" approach. IE, The dimensions for a wall would be 7.423, .363, 5.064.

If you're building by the numbers, you tend to round off the dimensions to make it easier to align.

LF

Yeh that definately looks to be the case. After that experience the other day tho (and I was close to clicking that IM button lol), I am now in future going to check their display model to be absolutely sure it's not something buggy.

I think this would be an excellent idea, and would like to see more things that solve this sort of issue. I bought a game for about 4 or 5k a while back that was ridiculous, it didn't function as soon as I took it out of the box, IM'ed the creator constantly and got no reply, finally I noticed that the creator's store had changed and they obviously were still active and just ignoring me. Sent the items back to him and sent one final IM, and gave up on it.

I know Infonet is doing something similar with a top-highlighted stores section and I'm hoping it takes off. A SL advocacy group or panel that ranks businesses would be very beneficial, or a "better business bureau" that would at least warn us of people who won't support what they create - Word of mouth is nice, but I spend too much time at home buildin and don't get out enough to be warned about all the shady business practices goin' on out there.

An improved ratings system would help here. Any system will be gamed, and not entirely trusted, but you can always gather some info from a ratings system.

We build by the numbers as much as possible, that said, there is a definate issue with how things get calculated. I have watched my carefully aligned prims warp by .01 rotation. You wouldn't think that was a big deal until you saw what round up error did to the whole build.

I have also seen where a house that I built on site was perfectly aligned. A copy was taken and placed in a box to deliever the contents to the owner, only to see the whole thing pulled back out of that person's inventory fully broken and warped.

After deletion of THEIR copy, I pulled a new copy out of my inventory to see it was as perfect as the original was. So we painfully went about "selling for L$ 0 every linked piece and door to make the transfer, making sure they took a fresh copy of each as we went around.

I would still be hesitant to declare "shoddy" work until one sees what the original house the copies were taken from looked like.

Now, as for bad customer service, that is something the buyer has experienced first hand, and would serve the builder well to learn from this incident to avoid another in the future.

-Taylor

Charging doesn't mean they're selling, or at most they're doing the same thing purveyors of expensive but useless products in RL do; sell to people with more money than sense/a niche.