Would you buy from someone who is 'Gaming the System'?

As far as what I mean by 'Gaming the System', the use of traffic bots, camping, search manipulations etc...

Simple Question, no particular reason to add personal opinions of what is and is not 'gaming the system', or if it allowed by LL or not, but if you want to... post your heart out )

If someone sells something that I want, I'll buy it. Otherwise I'd be cutting my nose off to spite my face

No. I refuse to buy from anyone who thinks that they need bots, campers, or anything like that.

The one exception I do have is if they have one or two lucky chairs... these can be lovely things, and in that small a number don't warrant invading armies of newbs.

Also, bots used to show off the product, such as models, are fine as long as there aren't too many of them.

Yup I'll buy from people who game the system, I won't buy from people whom are content thieves if that's pointed out to me but traffic bots, camping bots, genuine campers yadda yadda yadda don't put me off. What does put me off is horrednous lag caused by any of the above, that's likely to send me shopping elsewhere.

I still do look for quality first when I shop, so if someone feels the need to buy a higher ranking, I don't judge him/her for that. Having so many bots/campers it makes the place laggy as hell is a reason to TP out immediately though because that's no shopping experience, that's torture.

That said, I found that the places that do offer high quality merchandise rarely seem to feel the need to game the system. Interesting.

Personal opinion... virtually everywhere I've seen uses some combination of these techniques. The least intrusive is probably listing a dozens popular search terms in their description, which can sometimes be to the customer's benefit, often not. So it's pretty hard to find places that don't 'game' in some way.

That said, if I TP into a horde of campers, or it's clear there's a big bot farm somewhere on the parcel, I'll often move on.

When I was looking for some really killer shoes, I had heard that someone made some near exact replicas of a great pair of hi-tops. When I searched, I found a few locations and TPed to the top result. I couldn't get in because the sim was full. After 8 tries, I found it was a rented space in a mall that was PACKED with camp-bots. Nice shoes or not, I simply left with my monies in hand. (>_<

Gladly, the same shoe maker had their own store site somewhere else. I not only bought that pair, but the Xtra-hi versions as well. Being darned well sure that the transactions occurred on the non-bot gamed land. (=_=)

Yes, I do turn away from stores when I see a grid of green up-arrows in the minimap. Enjoy your lost income, people. (^_^)y

access to the shop, low lag and good load times impact my decisions...i dont go around analyzing somenone's marketing methods in order to decide if i will shop someplace....however if they spam me...i will not go there.

If the product is good, and their gaming doesn't interfere with my shopping, I don't care.

I don't use the "Places" search anyway.

my option is not there...

basically if I know for a fact that they are gaming the system, then no I won't

If I have no knowledge then well, yeah if they have what I want, I will buy it.

(as for why... no comment)

if i go there because of a keyword saying they have the item and it's not there ..chances are i won't be buying it and leave
so in that sense no i wouldn't lol
if they had it then yes

I not only won't buy from someone who is gaming the system. But I won't buy from someone who is rude, obnoxious or a jerk in their forum posts either. Its amazing the number of people who advertise their business in the signatures of their form posts and are rude or a jerk at the same time. Do they really think that is good advertising?

No.

If i see traffic bots up in a box somewhere on their prpoerty i'm most likely not going to do any shopping there, because they're compensating for not being able to sell a decent enough product to have real traffic.

Bots are irrelevant.

I shop by use and quality. If i see bot's i keep on shopping.

Doesn't matter to me. There is zero correlation between "gaming the system" and quality of product. Logic doesn't support that conclusion and the facts don't bear it out either.

On the other hand as others have said, with regards to trafficbots, if it affects the sim performance that would be a disincentive to purchase because it hampers the ability to view the product and purchase it.

The survey answers by the way make little sense. "Yes" and "I don't care" carry the same meaning in this situation unless the OP means something ridiculous like "Yes I will buy it because they are gaming the system regardless of quality".

was i being rude? more of an attempt at humor about false advertisers exploiting the keywords.i guess a bad attempt at humor from the sound of it.
i sure didn't mean to be or come off as rude..

i was just being honest and trying to be light hearted about it..if i ported there for something and saw all kinds of bots..
am i supposed to leave and not buy what i came for? i have already took the time to make the trip..

if they advertise what i am looking for and don't have it i am leaving right away..
i am not gonna shop there and chances are would not be back..

is making fun of false advertising being a jerk? if so then yes i am the biggest jerk in sl

That's the way I look at it, people try different things but to me it's the quality of the product that matters, with the exception of stolen content, I won't knowingly support that no matter how good the product is.

As for people not doing business with me if they don't like what I say on a forum, well that's their choice and they have a right to do it but I'd rather someone didn't do business with me than stifled my opinion. Having the right to free speech is more important to me.

Quality , price and my need or desire for the item are all I concern myself with. "The system" is a joke anyway, I don't pay attention to how a particular merchant uses it. I don't use traffic numbers when I search, I alphabetize the results and start at the top. It doesn't matter, what gets me into a shop, if they are selling crap, I'm not buying it. As for forum posts, I don't take what someone says out here into account if I meet them inworld, the same goes for their business. I've experienced enough cases of people who would be deemed abrasive here, who have been absolutely charming when met inworld.

I buy what I like, and can afford. If I think the quality is good, the price is right, the prim count is right, then I don't really care. I won't rent a spot in their mall but that won't stop me from buying their product.

Agree with that too, if a mall if full of bots and campers the traffic count is meaningless to me so I won't rent there but I'd still buy products there if they appealed to me.

generally no.

if the seller has a unique item, either unavailable elsewhere, or that I can't reasonably create myself, I might make an exception.

funny how that almost never happens though. I guess makers of unique and quality goods don't need them so much.

I game the system back by shopping at the least popular places.

I won't say that I'll refuse to shop at a place that uses bots or otherwise games the system, but it's certainly a negative. For most everyday stuff, there are so many choices that you're not giving anything up by avoiding the places that game the system.

Without hesitation.

When searching for a common popular item, I always skip the first page of search results and usually most of the second as well. I would think almost all the results from people using bots to inflate rankings would be in that first page or so that I skip. I start considering places who's ads appear AFTER the big keyword gaming ones and whos ads are reasonably priced.
I would buy from someone who uses a couple/few traffic bots if I stumble onto their store and what they sell meets my quality concerns, but probably not from someone who runs their own little herd in a box, reguardless of quality. The way I look at it is.. High traffic implies high popularity of the items they sell, and high popularity of those items implies that they must be good quality if people keep buying them. If it turns out the store has massively faked traffic numbers by tons of bots deceptively hidden away in a box somewhere, I get suspicious of how far they might go just for a sale. How can I trust that the vendor pics weren't doctored up to hide big product flaws as well? IMO I really can't, and it's not like I really NEED to buy anything at all.. so I shop elsewhere.

I didn't game the system when my store was open and my store came up in the top of the rankings for most keywords I would use. You can't assume all of them are gaming the system on those first two pages.