reselling goods for higher..

thats EXACTLY what i was thinkig about...and also...i sell my stuff really low priced to attract people to the other items in our store..

If someone came to me, with a problem and they were not in my transaction history..but it turned out they had bought the item for 4 times the amount from a reseller...would i be happy to sort it out ? No, not really..but i guess I would because it would be *my product* that wasnt right...not the person who earned more from it..

Better point out that i havent ~crosses fingers~ ever had an issue with anything ive sold lol BUT its a good & valid point...yard sales open up and close down all the time..so chances are people will look at the creator for help not the person who took their cash.

the reason this came to mind was i noticed people were bulk buying some items i had for sale. So ok it MIGHT be they are FABULOUS and they just want a whole bunch of them as gifts ..but hmm...10 bird baths? i think not !!

Whilst I agree...I could up my prices to make this not look so appealing to do..Im happy to charge an amount in line with how long it took me to make ...and yes, its a free world to buy & sell...I was merely curious how others viewed it..

Didnt know about the *show in search* scenario...ill definately do that

Thanks everyone..interesting debate

I've got a pack of items I sell trans that I've had picked up by a reseller or two. (Houseplants of Gor avatars) Doesn't bother me a bit. I'm not doing the research to find the perfect locations to sell them. Repeat business from their sale is likely to come to me (Hooray for the Properties window!.) If there's problems with the item and they come to me, I get more rep for treating a customer well.

While it's not to the same extreme, this really is in the same vein as selling freebies. Like the sale of freebies, if the nature of the business was transparent, no one would buy the items. The success of the business is based on a kind of deception. That may not make it illegal but it certainly is unethical.

Everything in SL is just a teleport away. So there's no justification for buying something and reselling it at a higher price. There is no service provided in reselling something.

If anyone would like to come to my store to buy lots of my reasonably priced stuff and resell it for higher...please dont walk, run to my store! I have no problems at all getting the price i want for my items. If you want to buy them and sell them for more...god bless you and thanks for the business....

In no way do i see this as unethical or illegal. In fact...i think what is unethical is selling a couch for 600L that is exactly like another that sells for 100L with the only diff being the creator. Lately ive been shopping for clothes in the asian stores....the quality and styles are just as good but i dont pay the ridiculous prices that some of the top designers in SL tack onto their goods...

just my two cents

I think I misread your post too ^_^

As a content creator, if someone had one of my products, and they weren't on my transaction history, I'd first make sure it wasn't pirated in any form. As long as it was legit, I'd be more than happy to help them out. Just because it's second hand doesn't mean there's any less reason for it to work properly.

And by it getting evil to help people, I meant if you sell item A, B, C, and D secondhand and have to help them all, when you don't know what causes the problem initially. It'd be like reverse engineering everything every time, which is silly to me.

Didn't mean I don't like helping people, I LOVE helping people ^_^

Anywho, thanks for the clarification!

I have a "Notice to Traders" in my store. It says that it's fine to buy items and sell them at higher prices. My prices are low enough for traders to do that comfortably. My thinking is that I get sales at my asking prices that I wouldn't have got, so I'm better off for it. I do know that some traders make use of it, and keep coming back for more. I've never had a problem with any of the items that were sold that way that I'm aware of, but I'd cover it anyway, because I got my asking price for the item. To my way of thinking, it would be just as good a sale as if the item were bought by the consumer from my store.

and that's exactly how customers will feel when they buy one of your items from a reseller only to find out later that they could've bought it directly from you for less.

That is contradictory and illogical. If it is unethical for one creator to sell an item that is essentially the same as another creator's item at a higher price then how is it any less unethical for a non creator to sell the EXACT same item at a higher price? It seems the only distinction between the two is that you as the creator derive some income from the process. That doesn't make it more ethical, just self-interest driven. It also displays a complete disinterest in the welfare of the ultimate consumer of your wares (the one that makes it possible for you to even get the revenue from this stream of commerce).

Er, well, surely the "self-interest" is the whole point here? If someone buys items for resale, that is no different to the original creator than someone buying items to put in their living room. If they copy them, that may then be an issue, as it means the original creator is then restricted from gaining reward for their work.

And that makes one ethical and the other unethical? Is that your defining criteria for ethics? That as long as it serves self-interest it is ethical? Or perhaps that unless it serves self-interest it cannot be ethical?

I agree wtih Phil. Why is it that some folks are trying to hold SL commerce to higher standards than RL? This makes no sense whatsoever. In RL, I can buy anything i want and sell it to anyone i want. i can choose to make a profit or take a loss. Why is SL do people feel like it is their job to save the SL world from some retail evil that doesnt exist?

I create things. I sell things. If i get my price im happy. You can buy 200 and resell them for less even. if you buy them from me i still benefit. That is commerce. you can resell them or bury them in your backyard for all i care. it does not impact my income at all.

Why is it unethical to sell things at a lower price in a yard sale in SL and not in RL? Why is it unethical to do biz in SL in the same way as RL? If we restrict what people can and cant do with their items with some erroneous belief that we are protecting either the buyer or the creator, what we are in fact doing in killing business.

I also began in SL reselling things i found in yard sales...buy low, sell for a profit. My customers loved that they didnt have to run all over SL to find interesting stuff and they loved how i took things from diff designers and put them in various furniture and room arrangements. To say that that is illegal, immoral, unethical or otherwise is just and amazing stretch of fantasy in my mind.

SL is too big for folks to naively think these kind of self serving tactics to try and restrict commerce do anything positive. I can go to sears and buy a white tshirt by hanes or i can go to walmart and buy that same hanes tshirt for less. hanes got the price they wanted when they sold them to both sears and to walmart and im betting they charged sears more. SO WHAT??? Are we now going to say that is illegal, immoral and unethical? Hanes is happy, sears is happy and walmart is happy. they do these transactions of their own free will with full understanding of the situation. i dont see commerce in SL as being any different.

I do however see ALOT of creators in SL thinking they should be protected and above the rules of commerce instead of working within them to benefit everyone. Restrict who can sell what to whom and you restrict profit...pure and simple.

I see nothing wrong with it
if a seller did not want their stuff resold, then mark them as no transfer

as for what price the seller wants to put, that is up to them

as a creator I do not care what happens after I sell it, if they want to try to get more for it then good for them, who am I to say if they can charge more or not

in a situation where one might be buying with the purpose to resell and an agreement has been made with the creator as for pricing, then that would be a different ball of wax

This is simply a parody of my statement and I shall ignore it. Shame on you.

I agree that it makes no sense. Linden Lab aren't selling to me at cost for a start.

well then, i'm going back into the yard sale business. it was rather prosperous on a "slow nickel" basis.

There is a big difference between people saying they find a certain business practice to be unsavory and saying that they don't think it should be allowed. Additionaly, from the consumer POV the situation the OP described simply cannot be duplicated in real life as an actual business so there is no real life standard for comparison.

In your example above there is an element of transparency that does not exist in the scenario that the OP gave. It's not just all the vendors that do this with a full understanding of the situation. The consumers do so as well. By and large consumers are not paying more for the t-shirt at Sears because they are ignorant that it costs less at Walmart. Sears might be closer, or might be in a location where they can do all their shopping at once and save time or they just might be so affluent that they don't care. (Ok I had stop to laugh at that one because it made me picture Donald Trump buying his tshirts at Sears.)

Those kind of motivations generally don't come into play in SL. Factors like distance, getting all your shopping done in one place to save time etc. are not relevant factors in motivating shopping choices when you can teleport to any location in SL in seconds. (Ok I had to stop to laugh at that one too given how the Grid has been performing lately.)

I think some of the people posting in this thread are tunnel visioning on the ethical implications with regards to the original creator's rights with complete disregard to the deception that the reseller is depending upon to get the CONSUMER to purchase their wares. That is what I am focusing on when I say it is unethical. Even then I'm not equating the resellers with baby eaters or something of that nature, but it is clearly not dealing straight with the reseller's consumer when they are marking up the price and relying on the consumer's ignorance to feed their profits.

When they changed the perms to transfer during the final sale, I figured she did it for that exact reason....wanting people to buy multiples for resale. I have seen some of the Last Call stuff up at yard sales and re-sell stores already, I didn't check the price but I'm sure it's likely more than 100L.

Good luck...I cant get anything in my inventory over 6 months old to even rez so I can sell it.

Ebay is one example of the scenario the OP described.



People don't go TP'ing all over the grid though and they do have preferred places to go shopping, people will only look for so long. However as someone pointed out earlier, in theory if an item is no mod people can simply search for that item via search and do a price comparison, the interface however isn't user friendly in that regard.



This is how RL works, as was pointed out items can cost less store to store. The consumer either doesn't realise they can get items cheaper or they can't be bothered with the hassle of looking, that's the same in SL too.

Ok my response was sarcastic and mean spirited and I apologize for that but you completely ignored the point of that post when you responded to it. The ethics issue has NOTHING to do with the rights or interests of the creator. The only issue in the scenario (if one even considers it an issue) is the ethics issue it creates between the reseller and the consumer. Also even without taking that into consideration, Jojo's distinction between a difference in price between two similar items from 2 different creators being unethical makes no sense if she is going to say a difference in price charged by the creator and someone else for the creator's item is not equally unethical. There are no creator's rights at issue in either one of those scenarios that distinguishes them other than ones that might make the latter an ethical issue or require clarification as to why it is not. My use of parody was prompted somewhat out of frustration because your response was a straw man refutation of what I stated, but it was unnecessarily sarcastic and mean given that you are one of the most polite people on this forum so again my apologies.

Love the debate btw...smile. My reference to it being unethical to sell the same item at a higher price is based on this....I know how long it takes to make certain items even if you are slow like i am LOL. So when I see a very simple item in two diff places for two extremely diff prices, i feel like the seller is overpricing. Ive seen gowns sold for 1200L that i dont think are any better than some ive bought for 200L. But as a new person in SL, i DID think there was a huge diff. If it is truly a unique product and the market will bear the higher price...good for the creator. So to me, the creator selling a dress for 1200L is getting an unnecessarily high price for a similar lower priced item.

However, it is the CONSUMER's responsibility to be informed, shop, etc. And it is very simple to determine what is made by who. Many times i have seen items for sale in a yard sale, bought the inexpensive item and then tp'd directly to the creators store in order to get the coordinating items. In that sense, im sure many folks benefit from having their items resold all over SL rather than in just one store. Free advertising at no cost whatsoever to them.

If i didnt want my items to ever be resold, i would simply make them no trans and be done with it. But, when i have people come in and clearly buy extras of an item to either sell or give away...why should i limit that income?

I love to see the discussion and feel very strongly that less legislation of commerce is better than more. And i also feel that one persons idea of ethical is far different from another.

It is not analagous. There is no transparency issue with markups on eBay (people know that they are paying significantly more than the suggested retail price) and there is a supply and demand factor that exists on eBay sales that does not exist in the scenario that the OP described.

True enough, but it's not about teleporting all over the grid. The mere fact that you can teleport is what takes out the factor of travel time (and gas) that influences real life decisions to purchase at a closer location. What you are talking about is people getting tired of comparison shopping. What I am talking about is people already knowing the price difference at different shops and deciding to go with the higher price because of convenience of geography. That kind of situation doesn't exist in SL because geographical distance has no influence on travel time and it doesn't motivate people to pay the higher price.


It's not quite the same. In real life the consumer is generally aware that they can get items cheaper. Ignorance of lower pricing is generally not a key factor motivating the merchants to set their prices in real life either. In SL ignorance is the primary if not the sole factor in motivating a reseller to markup the price of someone else's item. The reseller is taking advantage of the consumer's ignorance and it is similar to selling freebies to new uninformed players. Any business model which relies primarily on taking advantage of the ignorance of others is not what I would call an ethical business model but maybe my standards are too idealistic.

I see a few different scenerios here.

- If I sell an item at a yard sale and manage to sell it for more than I paid, I think that is fine - truthfully, I could see me doing this by accident just cuz I seldom remember what I pay for things.

- If I have items that are no longer available -- like Last Call clothing -- then I can do my best to make a nice profit on them. This I see as no different that RL stocking up on something that will soon be out of supply.

- If I go buy a bunch of an item and simply turn around and sell it for more money to someone unaware that they might be able to get it cheaper, while the original creator is still selling the items also, then I am a bit of a shmuck, but I should still be allowed to do it.

I understand your ethical issue here but my point is that the same issue arises if someone overprices an item that is not his or her own creation. If it is unethical because it is overpriced then it is unethical regardless of who is pricing it.

With regards to SL commerce I share the same sentiment. LL cannot really promote the appeal of a "your world, your imagination" virtual environment unless it takes a minimalist approach to rules of conduct within it. I am not saying that SL should make it a violation of TOS for every conceivable action that preys upon the ignorance or in some cases the stupidity of some its residents except as it already exists in the TOS. I'm just saying that people who do this are going to find themselves regarded in a bad light by me (oh no! how will they get by! ) and some of the rest of the SL population for doing so and I think that is part of what the OP wanted to know, i.e. would reselling someone else's creations en masse for one's own profit be regarded in a negative light in any way.