Dishonest vendors

It's almost criminal the way a vendor can go unpunished on sl for selling inferior products,taking your money and not be responsible for anything
LL should come up with some system to resolve vendor/customer disputes
I had bought a huge yacht and when i it rezzed a great many parts were missing.
For over a month i tried contacting the vendor,im's,notecards,pictures of the missing parts.
Eventually i gave up
I had put a negative review in my profile of this vendor and someone else who had the same problem contacted me telling me they had the same problem when they bought one.again all contact to the vendor was ignored by him
Last night i was contacted by yet another person who had bought the yacht and only half rezzed,again any contact with him was ignored,they asked me what they could do,i told them nothing
I have dumped that yacht and bought another one from Star Bay Yachts,a beautiful yacht,and when i recently lost 2000 items from my inventory star bay gave me another
I obviously can't name the bad vendor here but i have decided to use my avy.profile to expose bad vendors and also praise good ones.
Everytime anyone searches the bad vendors name in search my negative review of him comes up too
I also advised the others to put a bad review of this vendor in their profile,the more that have it the more the word will get out and be warned about this vendor
If LL won't get involved with vendor/customer disputes then it is up to us to try and do something
This bad vendor continues to sell a bad product and gets away with it.

I just went there. They have 17 bots in a skybox.

*stokes the flames in the fire pit so it is ready to light up the torches*

Only 17? Well that will change soon, eh?

well it might be humorous to you but when people pay thousands of lindens for a product and don't get what they pay for and cannot get any satisfaction and just have to suck it up as this vendor keeps taking thousands upon thousand of lindens from residents for a faulty product,well that's not right and nothing to laugh about

Make sure when you add the place to your picks for the bad review that the LM you effectively create in there is NOT pointing at their land. In the web search algorhytm, a link to a parcel counts as a boost in the rankings for it (much in how inbound links to a web site improves that site's ranking in google).

So - if you want them to not get a boost in ranking, despite your bad review, go to an infohub or neutral area to create your picks.

Good idea,thanks

Only 17? Heck, this vendor can't even do a bot farm well.

Over my SL existence i have spent enough to buy a nice used car, and am still paying...

What you are describing is the Linden Lab to SL end user experience...So yea, by now it is funny.

Take a torch and roast some marshmallows, i also brought graham crackers and Hershey's chocolate bars...SMORES TIME!!

I can name things i paid for that were total crap, and paid thousands of Linden for at that. Bunk sculpty packs, seamless textures that were not seamless, $3000L texture pack with all alpha'd textures that should not have been alpha'd rendering the textures useless, I also bought SLoft (what a waste that was), i have an over kill AO for $1500L, Ive been stung numerous times by things labeled MOD, only to find out they called it so because it has resize scripts, and for all intents and purposes is NO MOD.

We ALL GET BURNED SWEET LUMPS...Sometimes we can get restitution, most times we cannot.

Lol

Good point!

Did you know that by having a pick with a landmark to the seller, you are helping them in search? You may want to change the location to something neutral like an infohub.

I am in no way justifying THIS vendors behavior. But there are a few things that need to be kept in mind before starting action against a vendor.

1. Check to see when the last time that vendor was online. This often can be done through their groups in profile. It might well be that they have basically left SL either temporarily or permanently. In which case it might be better to warn folks in your writeup that this is an absentee vendor. That way if they DO return and actually get your message (remember caps on things) and try to make good you haven't totally destroyed them.

2. IMs, Notecards etc DO get capped. Make several attempts over the course of time (weeks please not hours).

3. Approach them reasonably and calmly. If you begin on the attack they will become defensive and much less likely to try and work things out with you.

When all else fails do as you see fit.

I agree we all get burned,sl burned me when 2000 items from my inventory went poof,probably over a thousands US dollars up in smoke,LL tried but could not recover them
I agree we all get burned but it;s not right when a vendor keeps burning people over and over
and gets away with it
Tis normal to get burned once in a while but its not right when a vendor can have free rein to cheat residents and they have no recourse to obtain the missing parts or get their money back
And no its not funny when someone can hardly afford to buy the yacht and they scrape up the money to get it only to get cheated as happened to one of the people who contacted me
I dumped mine and got a much better and bigger one
But i wish someone had warned me,hopefully the bad review in my profile and the fact that bad review shows if you bring up that vendors name in search might help
Maybe if we all did'nt accept this as business as usual in sl and post bad vendors in our profiles word might get around

So? Its acceptable? Not for me. Whether it is 1 or 100, it is still cheating.

I tried for over a month to contact the vendor with im's ,notecards and textures (pictures) you can't tell me he does'nt get i m's in his e mails and he would get the notecards when he logged in
If this is the way he runs his business then its his fault for not being more dilligent
With all the complaints coming at him i would think his ims would be capped
As for me i don't care i dumped his yacht anyway but i keep getting im's from others who got cheated,they ask me what they can do,all i can say is nothing except to bad review him

when IM's are capped they cease to be forwarded to emails.... and also cease to exist upon login.

when did he last log in?

With everything else said, before spending big money on a product, try sending a question to the creator, any question will do, and see if they respond. A good merchant will answer, a not-so-good one will not bother, or is not around much any more. Of course their IM's could get capped, and I guess there is no way of knowing... If they are also on xstreet, then you could also send the question there.

Buyer Beware applies here too, except it can be much more difficult to have customer satisfaction, let alone a refund for a poor product.

First off I started by saying I was NOT justifying THIS vendors behavior.

What I was doing was providing a list of things to try to reasonably go about things.

As for IM's to email, not everyone has this turned on. A newer person might not KNOW to turn it on. If the vendor is truly absent he probably isn't checking the email for his act either or the emails might pile up until yahoo or whatever dumps em. Also I HAVE had notecards fail to deliver to me before. The first I heard of someone with a problem is the 3rd or 4th card they sent.

If you realy want to start a procedure to hold vendor accountable then you need a reasonable set of rule from which to work. I was makeing a few suggestions on how to write up those rules that ensures you are actually holding to account a bad vendor and not someone that for whatever reason has no clue you even have a problem.

I just checked his groups and last log in is unknown,but how many people have to keep getting half a yacht when they pay thousands of lindens for them,i ;m sure he comes in sl for some reasons,and if he does'nt well thats all the more reasons to warn others not to buy his product,i can't see any justification to find reasons to justify his poor business practices
Are people to keep getting burned and not get what they bought in whole and not half a yacht
Ims capped,notecards capped,he does nt come in sl,there is no justification for taking people money over and over and they cannot contact him for satisfaction

With IM caps and notecard caps he could be logging in every day and not know you have a problem. That's very different from not logging in at all. If after a few weeks and multiple tries you have no response go after him by all means.

If he hasn't logged in, The by calling him an absentee vendor you 1. Give him the chance to make good should he ever return and 2. Still warn people to buyer beware without totally trashing his name.

In nay case it is becoming more apparent to me that you simply want to rail over THIS bad vendor rather than seriously work up a method to hold vendors in general accountable. So I will stop here.

you are being closed-minded. you say last login is unknown. if you insist that they are purposefully theiving, then you need to discover the facts behind their absence before you passs jusdgement. maybe he had RL issues and hasn't logged in because he CAN'T. if you can't log in, you can't change your inworld sales .... until your $$ runs out. find out what groups he's in, join one of them and deternine when he last logged in. then come back and tell us what you discovered.

Actually...I just checked and his last log in was 3/3/09. If you have tried to contact him after that date this may explain why you have not heard from him.

~ Desi

Yeah, I bought an outfit once that was so bad that the creator had left the template layer on, so the areas that were supposed to be transparent were actually the template instead. Fortunately the outfit at least came with a really good hud that has really good particle effects in it, and I've been able to combine that with another outfit (whole avatar actually) which really kicks ass. So, the combination of the new avatar and the hud from the bad outfit makes for a really cool avie. However, I couldn't believe that they actually put an outfit up for sale that was so poorly done that the areas where you should see skin were template instead. It's a buyer beware market for sure. What SL needs is an SL Better Business Bureau where business owners could submit a product for review, and receive a rating.

Very good idea,there needs to be some kind of accounting to protect sl consumers just like in the real world
A place for residents to complain and a follow up if complaints begin to accumulate
Any Tom,Dick or harry can start a business on sl and residents have no protection
As for buyer beware ,where does one go to check up on vendors and who has the time to check and check before they want to buy something
My buying experience on sl has actually been very good,i would say 99% i have bought from and dealt with are honest and if you do contact them they try to satisfy your concern

I bought that yacht in 2008,i m guessing aug 2008 so all my attempts to contact him were in 2008 and here we are april 2009 and people are still experiencing the same problem i had
I'm over and done with him,i don't own his product anymore but i feel sorry for these people contacting me asking what they can do because they rezzed his yacht and they only got half a yacht or rezzed it and all the furnishing inside are missing and they can't get any response from him
I hear all the reasons to justify why he does'nt contact those who try to contact him,but how many people have to keep paying for a bad product,at what point do we say he is negligent
Other vendors seem to want to satisfy their customers and surely at some point he realizes people are having problems with his product
I'm not "out to get him" i'm done with him and even if he saw the light and offered me another one i would not want it
I just feel sorry for these people who contact me with their stories of paying thousands for the yacht and don't get a complete product
In one way i should thank him,one of the people who contacted me told me about the yacht i have now,they also liked it but it was much too expensive for them so they bought this vendors yacht only to get an incomplete product and no way to rectify the situation
Anyway if a vendor is going to be away from sl one would think he would have someone to oversee his business while he was away,and make a note in his profile to contact that person should anyone have any concerns with his products
When i lost 2000 inventory items,my new yacht folder being one of those items,i contacted the vendor,sent my proof of purchase and a copy of my dealings with support and he was nice enough to replace it right away
Thats how a good vendor operates his business,