Return to Vendor!

An impulse led me to vote in Joshooah Lovenkraft's poll, Ginsu Knives & impulse buying in Second Life /327/c7/301628/2.html#post2282617 and before I knew it, I found myself thinking in a public forum about the entirely unsatisfactory terms we have as consumers in SL.

Eventually the notion occurred to me that it would be good to have the option to return goods within a limited period of time if they are found to be unsatisfactory. I'm not at all skilled at programming but I suspect that it would be possible to configure a Return to vendor option within the SL viewer that would effectively delete an item from inventory and refund its cost in lindens.

* The option would, have to be limited to a reasonable period of approval - say 24 hours to a week - in case the Grid is playing up or the customer required assistance or advice from the vendor (creator) before deciding whether or not the item is fit for its purpose.

* Lindens spent would have to be held in escrow so that the sum may be refunded if the consumer chooses to return the product or transferred to the vendor's account when the approval period has elapsed.

* Some other controls would be necessary to prevent abuse: it would be quite easy to scam a new outfit every day, for instance, without effectively spending a linden cent so I guess there should be a limit to the number of times within a given period that the same account could return items.

* An option to specify the reason for returning the goods could be very useful for product development in the long run: if too many of your customers complain that your textures are crud, then you would be a fool not to brush up on your Photoshop skills.

I believe the inclusion of a Return to vendor option would raise the stakes in-game since nobody likes to find they have spent real or virtual cash on rubbish, creators will work harder to ensure that customers accept their products and the process of buying and selling in SL will become all the richer for it.

I have set this up as a poll because I intend to open a JIRA on the issue.

I can think of two ways this will be abused without even trying hard.

1) Free "rental" of expensive products for one-time use. Buy it, use it, return it. People pull this stunt all the time in real life with everything from clothing to 50" plasma screen TVs for Superbowl Weekend. At least in real life Best Buy can hit them with a 15% restocking fee. Who wants an open-box Sexgen bed? Only used once!

2) Freebies of any no-transfer/copy item that you want. Buy it, make a copy, press "Return to Vendor". Boom, you got the item AND a refund.

See /327/d4/302237/1.html