TOS and Random Group Invitations question

I am planning to have a sale of a select line of items at my store soon. So I went through my records of residents who had previously bought from this line. Today, for the first time ever, I sent out a few random invitations to my group. As expected, some accepted, I'm sure others declined, and yet others are still floating out there.

But one resident in particular chose to IM me and proceeded to go ballistic about how sending out random group invitations is against the TOS and that she is filing an AR against me. She also compared it to spam in IMs and emails, which I do not agree with at all - there is no choice where those are concerned. We have even shopped at each other's stores and I am amazed and how she would speak to a customer, but I digress.

I receive several invitations as well every week. Invitations provide the option of joining, declining, or checking out the group, and then making a choice. No where did I see that you can IM the group owner and berate them over a period of time with threats, etc.

Finally to my point/request - I have searched through the TOS and cannot find any category this would fall under. If anyone can refer me to the specific clause, I would greatly appreciate it. If in fact, it is against the TOS, I am all about following the guidelines.

Thank you all. *smiles*

We've talked about this a little in the last couple of weeks - I'll look for the thread. But what it comes down to is that some people view group invitations as spam; that's where the practice of sending out group invitations could clash with the TOS.

In my own view, a quick personal IM before the group invitation goes a long way; you can just say "Hi, thanks for your purchase, I'm sending along a group invitation in case you'd like to join &c." I've done this many times myself and I've never once received a negative reaction. Not everyone joins but no one has ever expressed (to me) annoyance at receiving the group invitation.

ETA: Here is a recent thread where we talked about it: in it, some people explain why they find group invites so annoying, and there is a citation to the relevant portion of the TOS.
/327/28/248093/1.html

People who buy things are not then signing themselves up to receive assorted invitations in the future. That is what groups and mailing lists and so on are for.

Every time I receive an unsolicited group invitation, I AR the sender, personally speaking. Invitations certainly provide the option of joining or not joining, in the same way that spam emails provide the option of buying or not buying.

Oh thank you kindly Madhu. Much appreciated. I'll check that out. *smiles*

Okay, that was an interesting and enlightening read.

I have long held off sending random group invitations for many of the reasons given in the other post. As I said initially, the residents I sent the invitations to are all residents who have shopped in my store and purchased items from the same product line. I'm not picking people off the streets of SL.

I guess what I find most astonishing is how many people go to the time and effort to file ARs against each and every resident who sends them a group invitation and those who then take the time to IM the group owner with no doubt, choice words such as those I received today.

Let me just say that I am so grateful that I do not harbour such animosity towards my fellow residents. Nor do I have the time to file potentially 10, 20, 30, etc. ARs per week. On the few occasions I have had to file ARs, it was for what I deemed serious infringements against me. It seems that no one can really define group invitations as spam or solicitation - but rather personal interpretation. Is it any wonder the AR Team is so bogged down?

I have asked the gods of LL to tell me whether or not they deem group invitations to fall under any of these categories, given that so much is at their discretion. If I receive a definitive answer, I will surely share it.

Thanks again all. *smiles*

those kind of group invites are like sitting at home relaxing watching a movie then the phone rings and someone trying to sell you something..i unhooked my home phone because of things like this and just use my cell phone..
is it spam yes..is it bannable ..who knows lol

clothes stores i don't mind as much..it's the clubs amd the people that work at the clubs using thier friends lists and every means to get you in the clubs..i mute nowdays

I have a general IM I copy/paste in those instances pointing out the relevant section of the community standards. The reply is either apologetic (mistakes happen, SL messes group invites up for some random reason as well, no problem), or an admission that they don't care and do it all the time.

If it was intentional I'll copy/paste their response in the AR and the rest of the AR is pretty much boilerplate pointing out that it was unsollicated and intentional on the sender's behalf so it really doesn't take any time at all.

Pretty much everyone older than a day knows how to join a group, you can even explain the process in your store for those who don't know. There's really no need to spam group invites. If someone didn't join voluntarily, assume they don't want to.

Ginger

Do you have an option where as people that buy from you are able to join your group to receive updates and general information without having to be invited by you personally?

I guess I would separate things a bit more than others. I wouldn't AR you if I had shopped at your store and received an invite. Group invitations from stores I've shopped at in the past, or the automated ones that crop up when you teleport into a sim, don't bother me much. So I certainly wouldn't AR for that.

However, the other kind of group invites - from people I don't know, for groups I have never heard of, and are completely random, those I do AR. I sometimes wonder though how those people got my name in the first place. Spamming is a strange business.

I sent and IM to someone that sent me an unsolicited group invite asking where they got my name.
Their answer was, "You belong to a lot of groups".

Some of those groups I belong to have open enrollment so my assumption was people join those groups and copy the group member list to send out invitations for their own group.

I totally agree with you. In the time it would take me to do all of that I could have long since moved on to something else and forgotten all about the group invite, and spared myself the raised blood pressure.

Ordinal: what do you mean by "unsolicited"? Do you reserve your AR'ing for invitations that really come out of the blue, or do you (like the US no-call list law) make an allowance for people you've done business with in the past, like a shop you bought something from?

I certainly don't think that having a customer make a purchase (or visit a cafe, for a more personal example) gives a shopowner a right to spam that customer. But I question the notion that a single group invitation, accompanied by a personal IM thanking the customer for her interest, rises to the level of ARable offense. I've mentioned them elsewhere, but here are my practices:

* I have a "request group invite" sign at the cafe. Several, actually. You might think that I would not need to send out invitations to people who don't click one of the signs, but given how well my invitations are received, I think it's safe to say that many people who might be interested in the group don't bother to read or click the sign.

* I check my visitor logs each day and only send invitations to folks who have visited more than once. That way I am selecting people who have already shown enough interest in the place to come back for a second look.

* I keep a record of everyone whom I've invited, so that if someone turns up in the logs again who hasn't joined, I don't send *another* group invitation - if they've declined the first one, I don't send another.

* Every group invitation is accompanied by a personal IM that says something like "Hello (name), sorry I missed you at the cafe - thanks for visiting! I'll send along a group invitation - if you'd like to join you will receive notices when I am having special events. Take care, madhu."

Ordinal, if you visited my cafe twice, and then got one of these IMs and invitations from me, would you AR me? I do not mean that as any kind of attack on your view of group invites - I genuinely want to know.

A corrollary question is: if someone *did* AR me, would I know about it? As I've said I've only received positive feedback from this (thank-you IMs and/or accepted invitations), or no feedback at all. I have not received a *single* negative comment, though I've sent maybe 100 group invitations according to the above practice; maybe more. Would I know if people were ARing me without sending a nastygram too?

I do Larrie, thank you, but I just installed it within the past month. I was so relieved to discover this script, because by nature, I'm not very assertive when it comes to my business, which is the main reason why I held off for so long sending out invitations to customers. I've had a few hits since I installed it which I am very grateful for.

Of course one of the big problems is the 25 group limit. You can't possibly join all your favourite stores and every new one that you discover. So I, like over 6,000 others lol, joined Fashion Consolidated for this very reason. You can become a FashCon Vendor so long as your creations are fashioned for the avatar. I am a FashCon Vendor, but the rules are one notice per week and only about new releases. Naturally, oodles of vendors ignore these rules, but I intend to abide by them and not send out notices about sale events only. I didn't want to take the time to do a new release now too, on top of buying new land, having a new store built, etc. etc., but I guess that would be a much better option than 'soliciting' my customers.

A word of caution though for anyone considering joining Fashion Consolidated: unless you are prepared to be inundated with notices every day, I wouldn't recommend joining. I believe at present there are over 700 vendors who are permitted to send one notice (uh huh) per week. Of course that doesn't mean all 700 vendors do so. But there are a lot of notices! LOL

Also in my plans, but not in my budget at the moment, is the subscribe-o-matic. A tool I use wherever available and that doesn't interfere with my 25-group limit.

Thank you Larrie

yes thats one of the first things i do is look at my calling cards now..if i find it is a club then i remove the card and person..if they are not in there i send an im asking how they got my name and the last one was a very nice girl and said i had been to her stores..
Something like that i do not mind..
most are sales anyways and i do shop a lot..

the random group invite or someone getting me in im's because we are in some group and they do a group spam or collect names from a seperate unrealted group we happen to cross pathes in..i mute and then express my thoughts with my shopping girlfriends as to where we will be avoiding from now on..
getting information like that from other groups is abuse of group ethics and stealing from other groups in my eyes..we didn't join th group so the other could spam us..god that pisses me off to no end..

I've wondered about this too. I'm guessing the only way you would know, is if the AR Team contacted you for more information, mediation, or informing you of any penalty imposed.

I find unwanted group invites to be extremely irritating. Is it any less irritating when the sender does not "believe" they are spamming? No.

I AR for unwanted group invites in the hopes that if enough of us do it, LL will take action against spammers. I used to send a polite but firm IM, stating that the group invite is spam and the sender is in violation of the TOS but I invariable get a reply that insists the sender is doing me a big favor by telling me about their wonderful product and/or I get verbal abuse, so I have stopped sending the IM, I just do the AR.

I think most of us are irritated by too many advertisements, too many telemarketers, door to door solicitors, billboards that spoil the scenery and email spam. The group invite is unique in that there is a sender's name. I can send a message back to the person who decided to spam me. I can file an abuse report. Do you really want to be the spammer with your name and SL account on your spam?

Yes, the hopping from group to group fo the purpose of stealing their group lists in order to spam, etc. is indeed infuriating. Professional spammers. Grrrrrrrrrr

It's not that much time or effort to file an AR. What I don't do is IM back with choice words.



It's not animosity. It's I don't want spam to become any worse than it already is. When I AR these things, I don't do it angrily. I do it hoping other people are as well. Then I hope LL puts the smack down on them to make them stop. First time, a warning should hopefully work. If not, then a banning.



I wouldn't be so sure of that. I'm pretty sure I've seen unsolicited group invites in the Incident Report (although I don't see any at this particular moment).

http://secondlife.com/support/incidentreport.php

--Hugsy

Good question Sylvia. If I shopped at your store, and you sent me a invitation to your group, I would not think of you as a spammer. I would think of you as someone who appreciated my business and hoped that I might return when you had new items available. I have IMed several people whom I've shopped from and explained that as much as I might want to join their group, more often than not, I am maxed out on groups and so am unable to.

The groups which I do belong to, I appreciate when they send me notices of new items I might be interested in. That's why I joined them! LOL

Sylvia, can you please tell me whether you would AR me for doing what I described above (sending a single group invitation with an IM to someone who visits my cafe twice or more)?

Comments like yours are of a great concern to me. I do not want to irritate potential return visitors. I want to monitor my procedure and the reaction to it to make sure that I'm not alienating people. I don't "believe" I am spamming (scare-quotes yours) - not because it's convenient for me to think that, but because I've put a great deal of thought into creating a procedure that's personal and not random. You say "unwanted" group invitations are irritating, but I can't read my visitors' minds. The fact an invitation is not specifically asked for in so many words doesn't mean it's not wanted. In my case, I only know that most of the people whom I invite do join.

Let me try to pose this in a less long-winded way: is any group invitation spam if it was not preceded by request for an invitation (i.e., touching a sign)?

I direct the question especially to the people who have said in this thread that they AR for "unwanted" or "spam" group invitations, but I am interested in the views of all and any.

Okay, but I'm still not convinced that I'm spamming my customers. If I sent an invitation to you Hugsy- yes, of course, that makes sense to me. *sighs* Again, I think there is a distinction to be made between customers and random residents, but I appreciate not all make this distinction. (geeez, how I wish I hadn't used that word random)

As for cruising the incident reports, haven't had time for that either. Last time I looked it was right after the ad farm policy came out, lol. Guess I'll cruise the incident reports a little more often. *smiles*

i would say yes because if you look at it as say looking at your mail you get in the mail box..it would fall under thejunk mail section because it is a form of advertising and not a group that was joined to be mailed.or you can look at it as you would a phone solicitor..calling a list of numbers..
spam is basicaly using information obtained without getting it from the source to solicit.

And spammers used to say "just hit delete". My domain gets so much spam now that if I "just hit delete" I'd have a full-time job for three people to "just hit delete". I get multiple spams *per minute* 24/7. I get so much email that I've had to implement filtering that reduces the usefulness of my email, and my ISP is complaining that my email and my filtering is causing trouble for the whole server. I may have to give up the domain and lose the benefit of *years* of use.

So, you see, I'm a bit touchy when someone tells me I should just ignore group-join spam because it's easy to decline. I see a future of SL communications being rendered useless by il-formed filtering, just as spam filtering has rendered email far less reliable than it was years ago.

You are not doing me a favor letting me know of your latest wares. You are using my time for your benefit.

I can certainly see what you're saying in the first part. Okay, I'm trying to wrap my brain around this last part. Are you saying that a customer who comes into my store, more than once, purchases items, is not the 'source'? I'm just asking for clarification.

I would probably not AR if I REMEMBER buying something from your store and if I was pleased with the product. My memory is not what it used to be.

But that is just me. You have already gotten an unpleasant communication from a customer who got your invite. There could be others who were annoyed. Some might not IM or AR but be irritated enough to not shop at your store again. Those who get irritated with unwanted invites are already getting several a week or more and might not make the distinction between a store they've shopped at and the rest.

I think the safest bet is always an opt-in product announcements system. I know there is a limit on groups. There are, I believe other opt-in announcement products available for SL.

Me, too.

Riiiiiiight. Noted.

Sorry to hear you're having so many problems with your domain.