'Special Scammer' warning... or is it the scripts?

The single (and most) distressing customer experience ever?

Please bear with me on this, and I sincerely apologise if I have set a dreadful precedent for other Merchants:

This has been a HORRIBLE night for me in SL, and i just met the first unpleasant customers (S) in almost 2 years on SL. Half of my customers have become freinds, and i work with them on special commissions. So i feel abused and taken advantage of, by this unpleasant person and his accompanying alt....

A pair of customers just came and spent $L12,299 in my shop. I am delighted that they appreciate my work, but instead, I received a series of most aggressive and unpleasant IMs from the customer's male partner.

My wonderful Island Manager kindly went over to see them, and found them both extremely rude and unpleasant. (She is very protective of me and enjoys a good argument) She was entirely polite to them, as I trust her to be.

I had given her enough money to refund the entire shopping spree if needed, yet my Manager only refunded $L2000 for one item, in which the scripts were not working correctly. She felt that everything else had been a fair purchase.

After she had gone offline (having stayed up 2 hours beyond her normal bedtime, bless her), he continued to IM me. Threatening a massive publicity campaign against me in SL, and with filing a take-down order from the Lindens against me for breaching Terms of Service (on copiable items which were rezzing as no-copy, and selling goods with faulty scripts, etc). Eventually I said that I would add up all the purchases, and refund everything paid (they already had $L2000 returned to them).

This too annoyed him, and he wanted the money AT ONCE. He was trying to get $16,000 from me (although having only paid $L12,299).

It is interesting that they took no freebie full copy/mod/transfer items with which my Island is strewn...

Tomorrow I shall refund what they actually spent. But not at 4 am in the morning. Quite late at night tomorrow, I suspect...

I am so glad that everything I sold them is no-transfer, as all my items except freebies are no-transfer. I am suspicious that otherwise, such a nasty person could start selling copies of my designs.

During this time I was staying up until 3am especially to rez a $L 1 million commission, for which the gentleman had been patiently waiting since he ordered it at Christmas. This was my copy of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. During the rezzing process (which had worked fine when I practised it a week ago) everything that could possibly go wrong with scripts did so. I ended up locating all 1400 sections by hand, as the rezzing device had kept losing all the permissions and measurements.

I did IM the maker of the rezzer, with whom I had previously had a very pleasant and helpful dialogue, about my worries of rezzing such a huge build. Sadly, he was not online. I don't think it was his rezzer, I do think it was SL misbehaving with scripts and permissions at that time.

Despite my consistently polite and helpful responses to the Attacker, he continued to threaten me. I did explain that atm scripts were misbehaving in SL. I normally work UK hours on SL, with between 50 k and 72 k ppl online. At this time, 86 k ppl showed as being online. I have observed that over 72 k ppl makes it very difficult to build, with permissions and scripts particuarly badly affected. I cannot imagine how you US ppl cope in your own busy hours, but perhaps you are all blessed with a much faster internet connection than my very poor one.

Anyway, my query is: how can I legally warn other Merchants against this very unpleasant and unreasonable person? I am banning them from all my lands with genuine pleasure. I shall also 'mute' him, which I have previously only done to a noisy doormat. But as they have been so successful, in getting such a high value of free goods by menaces, they may go and try this scam on other Merchants too.

Also: Has anyone else had scripts go bad in the last 24 hours?

Also: I know I should have stood my ground, flown there at once and fixed the scripts, and dealt with them in my usual good grace. But JUST this once i was too busy (not to mention frightened by the sheer nastiness of his approaches). I may be just too inefficient and weak at 3 am to cope with SL at all. But I WAS polite and helpful. Did I do right, please?

This has made me cry. Thank you for listening.

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

Addendum:

Not quite 'naming and shaming' but now we have a visual description of the suspects, which I shall now post on the General forum thread which seems to describe these ppl again and again: Perhaps we should post a photo of them for other merchants to spot? Would that breach any privacy laws? Is that technically possible?

I recommend you to the thread on'Special Scammers' in 'the OTHER PLACE':

"Witness statement: (aren't that one really ugly and old(like born in 04 but still wearing system hair) gorean master and his freebie skin wearing slave, are they? lol I can think of one such couple."

Ha! Let's get this couple banned everywhere, lol! If we have enough photo evidence, then the Lindens can track them down, lol! That'll take some spare time off their hands!

Best wishes from Ainee

send them a fixed script copy pf the item. They wanted to spend the money to get the product - so send them the product. Send it to the purchaser - hopefully that is not the male in your post. Thewn your done with it.

I am not sure there are customer blacklists. There is a centralized web-based sim blacklists you can add them to. Someone may respond with that List information here.

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I dunno.

You have to understand, we are only getting no more than half the story. Not that I intend to say that you aren't presenting the whole story, as you know it, but there are always at least 3 sides to every story.

My suggestion? Refund them or not; personally, if they are having problems, offer support.

If you don't feel they are worth the hassle, then refund their money. DEFINITELY don't refund more than they paid. Then put them on mute and ban them from your store, if you want.

As for "spreading the word", I can't make a definitive suggestion, but depending on what happened, I would probably just write them off and forget about it.

Most vendors aren't going to see any kind of "warning" about people. You might try SLBanLink if you want to spread the ban love around to anyone who trusts your bans. Outside of that, I would just chalk it up to business misadventures and move on.

so she is protective, loyal, loves a good argument, and shes your point-person? $10 says your manager came off sarcastic, insincere, and condescending and only made things worse.

I know you want to settle everything and make sure everyone walks away happy..
but deal with each customer one at a time..if one purchased and is having problems and the other purchased and isn't having problems ..deal with the one that is having the problem..

in a situation like that one i would only trust myself to make sure it was handled the way i wanted myself represented..

i would have ported them to my place one at a time..split up the team work and you take away a lot of the extra added drama and get down to business a bit faster..
in most cases lol

Sorry I am gonna go a little of topic here: I dont have any advice on your problem, however I am very curious about the Sagrada Familia build. Is your customer displaying it to the public? I would love to see it!

refund them the exact amount that they paid, not a single l$ more, and mute&ban.

I think the perfect time to mute them is exactly when you offered to refund them. If you are going to refund them you have every right to refuse to talk to them, as they are no longer your customers.

Assuming that the story is accurate...

Because the items are no transfer, I assume that they are copyable, in which case I would definitely not refund for them, because they can't return them to you. You can't do "sale or return" on copyable items.

The one item that didn't work properly was dealt with. That's good customer service, even though those people will not think highly of you for it. If I were in your place, that would be the end of it. Their hot air can't hurt your business, but they can hurt you if you succumb to them - by telling their friends how to get freebies from your place. If you succumb to them, you could be making a bit of a rod for your own back. Right now they'll be having a laugh at your expense, thinking they've pulled a fast one in you. There is no way in the world that I would allow them to succeed.

Replace faulty / damaged / undelivered / incomplete goods. Check your transaction history and always ask the customer for some proof of purchase, such as the packaging box to be rezzed in your presence. Customer support for everything else up to and including walkthru's / configuration / setup if you have the time to spare. Only refund transfer and/or mod+transfer items. No refunds for copy+transfer and/or full perms items.

I was thinking the exact same thing when I read this thread .. I wanna see the SagradaFamilia build!

I had something very similar happen to me a year ago. It was a complete nightmare for days. I totally understand your upset, but you should NOT do more for them than you would for any other customer. It is a scam and the scam is to play on your kind heartedness with bullying. The more you bend over backwards the more they will want. I would not refund them the money for anything that was not defective. There is no reason in sl to be unpleasant, threatening or anything else in a business transaction.

BTW when this happened to me, once i did do what they asked, they sent in a fleet of friends who started the same mess all over again....buying and then asking to be refunded even tho the products were fine and correct.

I am sure you offer the best customer service you can. Please do not be intimidated by thugs who threaten all kinds of harrassment. They really have no leg to stand on and cant hurt you.

Hugs...jojo

Personally, I would refund ONLY for the item they claim isn't working. If you return all that money, you'll be a target for every scammer in SL, because believe me, they'll tell everyone (including their alts).

If they were truely verbally abusive to you I hope you AR them.

SL is messing with permissions and scripts a lot lately.
It is not your fault.

Correct the issues in your products and send them another copy.
If the sim they are in is too laggy then you can not be blamed either.

If need be post a texture or floaty text statement explaining the issues with SL and that you are willing to help as best you can.

Support is everything.

Hi Ainee,
I had problems last night too, although NOTHING on the scale of your situation, but just to point out that it may indeed have been SL hijinks. I had a skybox rez in pieces, the rezzer wasn't working properly. I've rezzed it before with no problem, but last night, it just couldn't pull itself together. I have some custom earrings, the creator is a popular jewelry maker; the earrings are big hoops with my name across them. Last night, instead of my name, the word said 'SEXY'. LOL. oook. The earrings were L$900, but I am not going to freak out over it, I will give SL some time to settle down, try the issue again today, see what happens, and then ask the creator nicely if she will fix it. Sometimes it's just how you speak to people that makes all the difference. She may refuse to fix the earrings, as I've had them for a few weeks now with no problems, this new thing just popped up. We'll see.

Everyone isn't like those people you dealt with, Ainee, take heart, refund, (or replace) mute and ban. I have never met a creator who would not replace their item. I always wanted the item anyway, not a refund, which is why I bought the item in the first place. Good luck.

Gosh, thank you, all!

Now that I have had a sleep and calmed down, I shall follow your good advice. I shall only replace the scripted items - with no scripts in. They have already been refunded for the main item. Thank you for confirming that scripts HAVE been playing up!

There are 2 Sagrada Familias in SL, one is not yet open to the public, but on my island mine is at the SLURL below. Please put your draw distance to max to view it: on minimum it is not visible from the arrival point. Then it is a HUGE surprise!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hermetic%20Palaces/118/119/26

Enjoy!

Best wishes from Ainee

This happens to us once in a while and it's something that we spend a lot of time dealing with, when it happens. We had one very irate customer that started threatening all sorts of heinous things when a building she bought from us didn't rez properly. It turned out that it was an SL issue, but she wasn't to know that and really flew off the handle at us. We went to her place, saw the issue, and, because the builder wasn't available, I said that I would get in touch and arrange a time quickly when we could resolve the issue.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to calm her down, but she had a legitimate complaint (something she bought from us didn't work). IN the end we sort of tag-teamed it - when the developer g0ot in-world I went with her and I talked to the customer while the developer fixed the issue (so that she could concentrate on doing it, rather than dealing with the customer). Turned out well, we returned some of the money for the inconvenience caused (I think it was 10%), and the customer said she was happy with it.

We had another that insisted on getting all her money back because not everything shown in the picture on XStreetSL was in the package, even though we explicitly stated in the description what was in the package. This one felt more like a scam to me, but she swore blind that she knew a whole bunch of Lindens and was in touch with them. When I suggested that she tp one in so that we could get this resolved, she couldn't, for some reason, and then threatened that she had "lots of friends" who would essentially picket our landing point, handing out notecards to our customers describing our "shady business practices". We ended up refunding some of her money just to make her go away - we didn't need to deal with our customers getting harassed, even though we could AR each of them for harassment....

In your case, the person bought the items. I would make a commitment to them to come over and fix what was broken, and that's it. I wouldn't refund all their money if most of the items were fine, and this person either had buyer's remorse ("HOW much did you spend on that stuff?!?!?!" or was trying to see if they could get the items for free. I most certainly wouldn't start any "naming and shaming" program against them - do you really need that sort of drama in your business life?

Dealing with bad customers is the price of doing business, I'm afraid. Sad, but true in RL as well as SL.

Ditto, big Gaudi fan! (So was Gaudi, to his demise ...)

Wow I'm very much impressed by your Sagrada Familia build! You started this around Christmas????!!! You sure work faster than Gaudi ever did lol

I'm so sorry to have heard this.

You refunded for the misbehaving item; cool.

And, with the first round of threats, I would have muted, banned, and AR'd them without a second thought. Pleasing customers is one thing, dealing with butt-munches is quite another. You are not obligated to put up with abuse.