Misleading Ads and Creators who just don't care.

I am just annoyed tonite about creators who mislead the customers.
I just bought a house, that not only states on xstreet, but also on the notecard that came with the house, bought from the store... that its and I quote from the NC

"Welcome to the Jungle Pool House & Spa! 320 prims mod/copy/ no transfer
The pool measures 32 x 25 meters. mod/copy/no transfer"

I rezz the house thru a rezz box.. and pieces are not lined up and textures don't line up. I think maybe its my land.. so I derezz, flatten my land and start over.. same problem.. same place. I tp to the store.. yep the problem is there on the display house as well. So, I go home and decide to just try and fix it myself.. Well its NO MOD.. even though it clearly states its mod. So I contact the creator... who states he knows its no mod, but doesn't seem to care that he is misleading his customers, and doesn't seem to care that this house he made and sold is poorly made. I buy things from creators cause I don't create. If everyone created there would be no need for business'.

But I am a shopper..and I live on a limited budget and expect to get what I pay for and I also expect to get something well made.

So now I am stuck with a house I can not use.. cause the prims dont line up and the texture doesnt line up.. its no mod, even though it states that it is.. and a creator/seller who doesn't care cause why should he, he has my money already.

Have you tried contacting them, not everyone is on SL everyday please remember that and give them time to respond... But, to be honest I would never buy a house unless I could walk through it..... so I would have tped into the LM in the firstplace. But, I can see whay you are upset. But try giving them at least 48 hours to respond before you hit the roof...

She said she did.

Could be

A) A new builder that hasn't a clue and was limited by his skill level

B) A SL glitch that changed permissions

C) Or as the OP has stated

I feel it is choice A. His attitude and response when he responds to the customer complaint will determine what direction his building career goes in to.

If I read Tiara's post correctly, the creator DID respond, and was unfazed, and unrepentant, about misleading customers about whether or not the product was mod. I suppose, however, that it should be said that the problems with the produce should have been evident from a closer inspection of the display model?

Frankly, I am tired of the "caveat emptor" model of commerce in SL. I don't believe in regulation for the sake of regulation, but there are FAR too many snake-oil salesmen out there. The prevalence of this kind of fraud suggests that the idea that "word of mouth" will prevent creators from foisting crap onto their customers doesn't work; while the best retailers do enjoy the just desserts of a well-earned reputation, it's too easy for flight-by-night operators to make a quick buck selling shite, secure in the knowledge that word about their practices will filter out, if at all, very very slowly indeed.

But I'll shut up now before this becomes a rant on the evils of unrestricted and unregulated capitalism . . .

I create houses and I have a few thoughts on this subject.

1. Sometimes when you rezz a house, it does not immediatly rezz fully correctly. Moove the rezzbox and it will pop into place. If that won't work, the rezz system isn't the problem.

2. Often I get comments that my product is no mod, but they are looking at the rezzer in their inventory. The rezz faux I use is no mod for them. Also the positioner scripts are no mod. in such case, only after you Store or Save the house, and the scripts get deleted by doing so, will the pieces be mod.

in case of this story, where the creator is aware of his stuff being no mod, there is nothing more you can do than never go back to his store.

i am sorry to hear this happened. i have no similar product, otherwise I'd give you one.

My own experience tells me that good support and even sending updates when problems are found, makes people come back and buy more. Even in this business of structures.

Houses can be a pretty expensive purchase so personally I would say that previewing is essential.

If you bought on XStreet, first leave a message for the merchant there and ask for a refund. If you do not get a satisfactory reply within a few days then add a comment to the item - just politely explain what went wrong. Don't use bad language and make sure you are completely reasonable and correct in what you claim.

well if the creator knew it was no mod and still sold it as mod isn't that fraud and fraud is against the law in the U.S.. isn't there something about having to abide by the law somewhere in the TOS?
I would just get in touch with LL and find out..

it would be one thing if it was a glitch..but if this person knew and admitted to knowing.
Bleh some one some day is gonna screw over the wrong person and sh*t is gonna hit the fan.

She could also leave a Review on the XStreet listing, explaining the facts. This might both make her feel better, and save others from wasting their money.

I always read the comments on a product and they guide me if I can't go see it inworld. I think it's pretty effective.

If your sure the creator knew it's probably worth a clear, polite note in the comments,

Sometimes people just make mistakes though, I got a freebie from thsi girl, it was an awesome couch, heaps of great poses... the whole thing has been left open full perms, I IMed her to see if she knew and she had no idea what perms even where really. It was her first build. So we fixed it up.. Sometimes it's just innocent too.

If the item was bought from X-Street and it is being falsely advertised as mod when it is not, it might be an idea to contact X-Street pointing out you paid for the item and did not receive what was advertised, I assume X Street has some kind of procedure for this or what is to stop someone advertising some brilliant item and just delivering a prim cube with that name or something nothing like the picture or description.

Remember that on X-Street a percentage of the money you paid goes directly to LL so I think they have to take some responsibility for misrepresented items, I notice there is a "report item" option on the right hand side of all X-Street listings.

If the item is advertised as mod, and it clearly is not and the creator will not send a mod version or refund, I would say contacting X-Street is your best bet.

Sounds good Craig, and would have been true with the old XStreet. But now XStreet is in the hands of our almighty overlords at LL, I doubt it would help. After all, it is a dispute between residents.

Though I do love Second Life as a platform, and many Lindens do try hard, overall LL does not really seem to acknowledge the responsibility towards the people paying them

Finally: sellers like that won't make it. If you do not have a good customer service, you will not succeed in developing a thriving business in SL. People pulling of tricks like this might succeed in a few sales, but in the end they will fail. Which does not help the people who were scammed of course

I would never buy anything over L$50 on Xstreet without seeing it in-world first. I know that's not a popular view--indeed, the only things I sell on Xstreet at the moment are L$300 or more. (On the other hand, hardly anybody buys them so maybe it's a more popular view than I thought. )

I do think adding a review is worth your time.

Just because permissions are so damned difficult to get (and keep) correctly set,* I wouldn't too much fault the merchant for that being wrong... but being unwilling to correct it for copy-perm products already sold, and in the advertising copy if they really intend to keep selling it no-mod... *that* is nasty.

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*Disclosure here: In a product I recently started to sell on Zindra--my first for-sale prefab, coincidentally--somehow the permissions got messed up and the whole thing ended up no-mod. When first reported, I figured it was due to a funky packaging trick I was using, but it turned out the prims somehow simply were no-mod, despite my having tested it with my alt. I still have no clue what happened; I'm 100% sure it's my fault, not SL's, but I don't have any idea how to change my packaging and testing process to prevent it from happening again. So that's why I urge cutting some slack for permissions glitches.

We only have one side of the story but if it is as it sounds then the content creator should offer a refund or exchange. Unhappy customers are not good for anyone.

Tiara I offer you a solution.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34143061@N03/3927930077

Check out this flickr entry. I wrote about and posted a photo of some of the things that Tiny Seadog has.

Their "Maui" house has a pool, is majestic and is only ONE Linden.

It does come in pieces so if you want to reposition it, just do edit/shift, left click all the pieces while in Edit/build mode and THEN turn it and it will revolve in one piece. But hey. If you mess it up too badly just go get another one for another whole Linden.

Fact I will send you $10L right now to cover you.

Just to help clear things up here.... I sell houses on XStreet myself, using the Rez-Faux system. I had a similar problem with one of my customers. Thankfully I happened to be on-site helping her set up her house. Initially, the house rezzed as no-mod. In truth, however, it was only the rez-faux scripts in the root prims that was causing the no-mod flag to be set. Once she saved the house's position, the rez-faux scripts deleted themselves, and the structure showed proper permissions.

I'm not saying the merchant in the OP's case is innocent or guilty. Only that no-mod permissions can be falsely reported in cases where an automatic rezzer is used. Before hanging a merchant out to dry over misrepresentation of permissions, make sure you've cleared the structure of its rezzer scripts first.

He sent a new house, but this was his last words.

Please keep in mind, the ONLY perfect thing in second life is a 1 meter square wooden box


I still think that is a crappy attitude. I don't ask for much.. but I do ask for a nice product and to get what was advertised.

It IS possible that either the rez faux or SL went wonky that day and messed up the perms. It is not unheard of.

Depending how it was phrased he might have felt a bit defensive too - no one wants to hear their product is really crappy.

Just playing the devil's advocate a bit. Glad you got a resolution.

You know--There's another option to consider--Not for this case, but chances are nothing good will come of this incident, other than perhaps you'll be able to warn someone else away through an Xstreet rating/comment.

Learn to build. Building is approachable in SL. If you attend a few classes, torture a few prims, and start collecting scripts, textures, and poses--which can be free--You can learn to build things as good as typical xstreet merchandise.

You HAVE to learn how to manipulate prims to place your furniture, and get the prim based items of your clothing to fit. A modest house and simple furniture is not that much more difficult. If you want more than that, well then you have a goal.

That being said, things go wrong in SL all the time. Glitches pop up that change permissions. Things work differently for different people, or in different places. There are a lot of non-intuitive variables, such as permissions, ownership, state of the grid, and simple SL borkiness to consider.

There's no need to torture any prims - only manipulate them. My understanding of torturing prims is applying actions on them that they aren't normally capable of; e.g. twisting a prim when the edit box doesn't offer 'twist' for the particular prim shape. It can't be done with the edit box. I'd explain more, but I can't do it - I've merely read about it.

I came across "I was torturing some some prims" not too long ago in the forum, and I wondered if the person knew how to torture prims or if she misunderstood what torturing prims is. I suspected the latter. I also suspect the latter this time, but I may be wrong

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I'm glad that you got the mod house in the end, Tiara.

Yeah, I too suspect the usage is informal, rather like the statistician's creed: "If you torture your data long enough, eventually they will confess."

A more "formal" definition of prim torture is as you state, although most of it can be done in the Edit tool, through a sequence of operations involving changing the prim type. I understand there are still some torture operations that require scripts, but some of those have been broken over time. For example, there used to be an easy way for a script to emulate what the newish "Slice" Editor setting does for cylinders and boxes, but that doesn't work anymore (and there's no PRIM_SLICE argument to llSetPrimitiveParams() either, dammit!).*

On the other hand, there are some really clever and surprising results that can be achieved without "torture". The XYText prim, for example, has five faces all on the same "side" of the prim. (There are actually at least two different prim types that can do that; before XYText adopted the prism, I'd been using a very distorted box to the same effect--and thought myself ever so clever. ) I also find cel-shaded prims (Editor-hollowed and -twisted spheres and torii, at least) to be pretty unexpected.

_____
*On second thought, that's not a great example because "slice" was one thing that *could* always be performed through Editor torture, not only by script.

lol....sorry for laughing, but yeah, that's a crappy attitude.

I don't buy prefabs unless I can walk through them first. There is a HUGE difference between the worst and the best.

Even if a creator does not have a huge display area, you can ask them to rez a particular model somewhere for you....even if it is only for a day, they usually have a place to do so. If they are too busy to do so....then someone else who is going to go above the call of duty will get my business, and there are plenty of creators out there like that, to give your business to.

Last year, started reading profiles before I purchased anything. I will not purchase from someone who has a real snotty profile and crappy attitude right up front in their profile. Because A) would rather give business to someone who is gracious for the business B) would rather give business to someone who is energetic and excited to be in SL creating, and C) it's an indication of how they will treat you if you have a question or concern after purchasing.

I agree fully with you, Mickey.

Which is why on my profile it says 'DO IM me!' - I encourage people to 'friend' me if they want to catch me to speak to me, to IM me, to email me or to hoot at me on skype - I am easy to find, I am Elgyfu everywhere, heh.

I just don't understand why so many merchants seem to have this 'I am better than you' attitude towards their customers and potential customers. It sucks and is just not good enough.

Selling things is a two way contract. The merchant would like the customer to pay (obviously) and to be polite in contacting them if they have any queries etc and in return the customer expects to get the item which was advertised, for it to be well-made, fully functional and reliable and to receive prompt, friendly and useful customer service before, during and after the purchase.

If either side is not really interested in keeping their side of that simple balance, then it isn't going to work - and as the merchant has more to do to keep their side running smoothly, they HAVE to work at it.

Is the new house correct, prims lining up and mod?

I went to a clothing store I hadn't been to in a long time, couple years; she's remodeled and now you're greeted with a 10 mile long notecard, I mean a million rules and regs with the repeated admonition "I gave you this notecard, if YOU choose not to read it, don't come complaining later!" type of thing. I mean it was long. I read about halfway through, got bored and left. I was in the mood to shop too; Is that her loss (store owner) or mine? Both I suppose, but there are plenty other places to go.

Give them a very bad and detailed review on xstreet and slapt.me. If you are allowed to post chat logs there - post one of what the designer said in response to your request for help. If not, just summarize it.

What is curious to me is that you say you saw the same problem with the one at his store.
- Which means two things:

1. It wasn't the lag or other issue with your rezzer or rez attempt.
2. You should have gone and looked at it inworld before buying - so you could see the flaw for yourself before buying.

Number 2 has saved me a lot of lindens, and also led me to buy things I was disinclined towards at first, but curious enough to make sure (my skybox before making my own was this - I was pondering cutting it from my saved items list on xstreet, went in world to look, and ended up buying it).