This is a new one on me

Transaction failures are quite common and, of course, it's easy for someone to get 2 for the price of 1 because of them. Today I woke up to an IM from someone who says that she didn't get the item, and that she's changed her mind and wants a refund instead. So now she could be getting 1 for the price of 0 - a freebie.

2 for 1 is easy enough to accept because I did make a sale, but a freebie isn't quite as easy to accept.

Depending on how much money is involved you may actually do it. A friend had one of these ... for a L$ 29 item he sold! He paid that back because that trifling amount just wasn't worth starting any drama about.

It's 200L and I'll refund it ok, but it's the idea of getting nothing for something she might actually have. When I get paid for 1 and they actually receive 2, it's easy to swallow, because I did actually make a gain but, in this case, I'll get nothing and she may have the item.

So maybe you'd rather redeliver and tell her that you are sorry but you have a "no returns" policy.

Sounds fair to me.

I could do I suppose, but I think I'll refund. I won't be doing anything until tonight, so I'll let it meandre around in the back of my mind and see what I think at the time.

It's a customer is always right scenario really. Linden Lab really need to work on a confirmed delivery system.

This would be a little difficult to swallow--although one can see how a customer could get in the situation of wanting a refund instead of a replacement. Say it was a couch: very often it's a lot more important to have *a* couch than to have *the* couch, so the customer scampers off and buys a replacement to fill that urgent need. (Obviously, a more advanced user would rez some freebie for the nonce, or just throw together some prims and paint it with a Library leather texture and declare victory, but most people buying most couches probably don't think that way.)

I *absolutely* agree!

The idea of getting something else in the meantime crossed my mind, and it may be just about possible in this case. The purchase was at 22:42, and she wrote that she'd changed her mind at 22:52 - 10 minutes later - so there was time to see and buy something else.

hmmm..just changing her mind is all she is doing?
is the item no transfer..being the creator can you change the item so she can give it back to you?
get mod rights for the item and set it to transfer and have her give it back if you can do that..
to me changing your mind after a purchase is very iffy..

Ask her do a search in her inventory on a word that is in the item's title, and then take a screen shot and email it to you. Just the effort involved in doing that may dissuade her if she actually has the item.

no, once the item is sold it will retain those permissions even for the creator.
ie, if phil sold her a no mod/no copy object, if she gave it back to him it would still be no mod/no copy.

Give her redelivery, an extra copy costs you nothing to make another, $200L cost you near a dollar and is something you can't create.

But wasn't her claim that she didn't receive the item at all? She paid and got 0. So she is the one that is out isn't she?

I think refunding would create good will and encourage her to come back..after all she chose your store first..and bring her friends!

When I hear all the issues that come up when selling goods and services in SL I'm glad that my flighty ways stopped me from ever actually trying to sell what I make. My hat is off to all your biz people...you sure work hard for your Lindens.

there is no guarantee she got nothing.

hence why a redelivery versus a refund might be more appropriate.

Well.

If you are making thousands of USD a month, forget principle and let her have the 75 cents, plus the Schrodinger's Cat item (I call it that because maybe she has it, maybe she doesn't due to the SL Inventory Uncertainty Principle).

If that $L 200 is going to make or break your store, get you turned out onto the mean streets of SL and leave you in a sandbox broke and dejected, in that case send her a new item.

Most of the time, when a customer says things like item delivery messed up, I believe them.

It's really difficult though, you can't prove it either way and the last thing a business wants to do is get involved in a slanging match with a customer, or a potential customer anyway.

Good will can go a long way in customer service.

Ya i missed for some reason that she didn't get the item..probably lack of my tea intake this morning lol

That is a tricky situation and one that yes should be attended to by LL for a way to make certain items are released from their box or container at the stores when a purchase is made..Maybe there is a script someplace that can do that..Because it puts you in a trust or not trust situation and in sl it is very hard to trust at times.. You could just give the refund then record this incident and look out for similar ones popping up in the future..
I know it sucks to just give away something to someone that knows it is for sale but there is the chance she didn't get it also..
Times like this you have to go on gut instinct and do what you feel is the right thing..
I think there are more honest people shopping than dishonest people..
You just have to figure is it one of the dishonest and is it really worth the headache..

Given the way SL was acting up last night, that particular 10 minute span would be difficult to actually go somewhere else and make another transaction. TPs were also very messed up at that timeframe. I suppose that she might have had a second item already in mind and did manage a succssful TP.

Heck a 10 min timeframe to me is not even enough time to make sure that the delivery really is not going to happen.

Having said all of that, I would probably still refund because in the grand scheme of things I think that the $L200 is not a huge amount compared to the view of maintaining good customer service - I think you make enough that the L$200 will irk you, but not be really hard financially on your store, though I may be wrong on that.

I just refunded the money. She changed her mind because she thought the sofa was a color-changing one, as some of mine are, but it isn't. And I don't have the particular texture she wanted in any pieces that change colors. So it was a reasonable change of mind in this case.

That's totally true. It would irk me to think I'm being taken advantage of in such a way, but the small amount of money isn't anything I'm bothereed about. I'm not mean (I give people extra items sometimes), but I don't like the idea that anyone can take advantage of store owners in that way, and I wouldn't like to think I'd fallen prey to it, but I believe what she told me so I'm a happy bunny

I think I gleaned somewhere that scripts can be removed even from no-mod items. Is that true? Seems a delivery confirmation email/IM script would be cake, but if it can just be plucked out, that's silly.

If you want to call it that.

Unfortunately, more times then not the customer gets the shaft.

1. Paying for items they don't receive.

2. Getting crappy items unlike what's being advertised. The pictures of the ads look sensational but the item itself sucks big time.

3. No responses from the person they brought from. The usual humdrum of "My IM's are capped, didn't get your IM." The one line that should be immortalized in sl history because it's repeated daily thru' out the entire server.

Refunding money which in itself is nothing being 200L is just pennies. Even larger amounts of Lindens should be nothing to shopowners but it is. The Lindens or the item itself shouldn't be a problem to replace by the vendor. You also need to remeber items can be duplicated just by the click of the mouse.

So what's the big deal when it comes to refunds or replacements?

HA!!! What's that they say? The pot calling the kettle black. I think it goes something like that I believe.

Quite an amusing line there, Deakins.

Well, it *is* challenging to run a business and look out for customers' interests, when the platform is so horrendously limited.

Btw, I expected somebody to mention it in the thread but don't see it: one of the items in a recent Linden-run survey of scripters about priorities for new features was confirmation of llGiveInventory and llGiveMoney. This actually was architecturally impossible before (not sure how far along the re-design has come yet), but without this primitive base for transactions, everything is just a wild-ass guess.

And it's not surprising customers don't understand that. It's damned-near impossible to believe.