Merchants who charge for support

I am hearing stories about merchants who will only provide support for their products they sold if they get paid extra money from their customer in form of an hourly fee or a fee to join a support group. Whats the deal?

Is their tip Jar in their store not getting enough hits that they have to dive that low on the scumbag scale?

Well, it worked for Bill Gates.

I don't personally do this but I have considered it. As I am not particularly money-motivated why would I do this? The answer is in the support calls. Anything more than a little complex no matter how obvious you try to make it and no matter how much effort you put into documentation will result in (if popular) hundreds of support calls from people who cannot be bothered to experiment or read the documentation in order to make it work.
For some reason reading the support person typing in the explanation is somehow different from just reading the notecards for them.
Worse is that when people are having problems, and bear in mind those problems seem to be THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM IN SL FOR ANYONE RIGHT NOW (tm), want you to drop anything day or night, logged in or not, to come over to their place and sort it out for them.

Obviously 24x7 instant support at any time is going to cost serious money but most customers do not realise this. They didn't buy this kind of support with the item, it was not factored into the sale price as not everyone needs or expects it.

My approach is to tell people that I have an 8 hour turn around on responding to a request for support and that is reflected in the relatively high cost of my products. Anything above and beyond this is at my discretion and not to be relied upon. Site visits are considered to be a last course if I cannot talk them through the simple things to try that are commonly a problem.

This saves the customer money as I don't charge an RL price on 24x7xinstant support on my products and it saves my RL life as I don't have to be around for that time to provide support (which I would never be willing to do in the first place).

;0 lol can i see a picture of the 'scumbag scale'??

honestly, i can see where such an idea has its appeal... sometimes prospective customers simply cannot be made to read the text you've already typed out into a website or onto a notecard or even a textured sign right in front of their noses... ;0 instead a few will insist that you 'hold their hand' for fifteen-to-thirty minutes at a time and retype much of that info out again live, just for their benefit, in front of them.

and if your wears are less than the price of a candybar, it begs several questions: 1) would they interlocute an rl vendor owner so much if they were presented with so much prepared information? (and say that vendor was stocked with candybars, let alone the ipod vends they have in rl airports anymore) or 2) spend so much time of their own and the service rep's part if they knew exactly how much (or actually, how little) their time-slash-product was worth, in rw terms? (among several more q's i could think of later but not now, but this is the gist of it.

the funny/weird-not-haha part is when, i can only support returns for exchange/refund upon non-copiable/but-transferable products which, since they are no-copy, seem worth less than copiable items, which are -not- returnable for same said support. hence i have stated policy that copiable/non-transferable items do not qualify for such support... hence, the entire 'price-scale' is inverted. :\

i think i've heard of others charging the same middling-level for copiables and nons, finding that copiables sell more. perhaps doing so 'evens out' the scale for their support needs. (otherwise i've always been prone to charge half for non-copiables, for the sake that they are, well, not copiable.)

Depends on the nature of the support, I think. We don't charge for talking people through how to change and save the positions on our furniture if they can't be bothered to read the notecard, but if, as sometimes happens, this turns into, "can you can come and reconfigure all the poses for me and my pets?" then the answer is, "yes, but this is the hourly rate".

None of my current products require a lot of support, but as I contemplate releasing some that may require helping customers through customization I've considered charging an hourly fee for that. I can't really give you 2 hours of my time for a US$5 purchase. Particularly when the $5 will never ever compensate me for the development time.

I really wish people would consider how little money is changing hands before they feel entitled to a piece of my soul.

Could also be "merchants" who give away their products for free (open source), and only make money on the support/service.

Really depends on the specifics of the situation, I would think.

I suppose you could consider a merchant a "scumbag" if they charged rather high for their products, then gave no support at all unless you paid for it.

Still, I wouldn't consider them scumbags so much as "not worthy of my money", and will buy from their competition (or become their competition ).

Surely it depends upon the nature of the product and the support required.

I don't charge for land-related support...it's part of the job. However, I really wish I could charge for every time I get a question that is easily answered by READING the material I provide. At least half of the questions I get are answered in the land covenant. Another 25% of the time it's someone saying "I'm on a property, how do I rent it?" Well, you could start by clicking the giant sign on the land that says "Click this sign before you rent for important information and a landmark to the rental boxes." Oh yes, I get asked where the rental boxes are constantly too.

That said, I can live with stupid questions so long as the person asking is friendly and polite. "Hi, sorry to bother you, I know this info must be around somewhere, but I can't find it, how do I..." will get a prompt reply from me, and I'll like you no matter how obvious the answer is. Rudeness never gets you anywhere. I get very sick of people behaving as though their minor question or issue is a federal emergency, and pestering me if I don't reply within 10 seconds. I may be AFK, or helping someone else. I am not going to drop everything I'm doing to come fix your TV. You need to be contacting the TV maker for help anyway, not me. I, or your sim's manager, are very happy to help you with rental box issues, covenant clarifications, sim resets, terraforming, and other land related needs. We are not tech support for your tv, dance ball, or sex bed.

Oh, what timing. I just got this lovely offline, in relation to an affiliate product someone bought. I'm not the creator, and normally I pass on double payment issues and such to them, but in this case I'm tempted to just tell the girl to pound sand. My first and only message from her:

Stinky Litterbox[name changed obv]: Yes I bought some neko girl size ears tht was supose to cost $350 and u took $700 so unless i get my other 350 asaptht u took i will report u, asap, thts a promise

Like, I couldn't see charging for an LL induced texture repair on a dress. Fraggin heck, I'd like to charge LL when that happens. It is really painful when a texture goes completely missing from the data base, so all objects bearing it has "Missing Image," plastered on it.

But I could see charging a fee for making a house call to fix a scripted object that the user borked, by deleting the scripts. Or for failure to read the manual and thus walking them through it. I mean, it's done in RL, though usually it's considered a diagnostic fee!

Is a renter of land still considered a merchant?

* Main Entry: mer·chant
* Pronunciation: \ˈmər-chənt\
* Function: noun
* Etymology: Middle English marchant, from Anglo-French, from Vulgar Latin *mercatant-, mercatans, from present participle of mercatare to trade, frequentative of Latin mercari — more at market
* Date: 13th century

1 : a buyer and seller of commodities for profit : trader
2 : the operator of a retail business : storekeeper
3 : one that is noted for a particular quality or activity : specialist a speed merchant on the base paths

— merchant adjective

I can't count how many times I've wanted to retroactively charge for time spent on support, when it has turned out that the customer has not listened to you *at all*, and has not even tried the very first thing you suggested, and have not even read the instructions that came with the product. I've thought about calling it the "RTFM Tax"

.

That's quite the outdated dictionary you have there o.o

To qualify what I said in my first post somewhat:

I would always provide the basic support for free.
By this I mean the ability to contact me and tell me that something is not working correctly and to the best of your ability you have read the documentation to avoid you just not understanding how it works. If the product is broken due to LL changes or a bona fide bug then I will fix it free of charge and issue a replacement - no matter what the effort.
I believe this much everyone gets as part of the price.

It is the people who are obvious time wasters and expect immediacy from you that I would consider charging by the hour.

Mirriam-Webster online? O'Rly.

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=6&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.merriam-webster.com%2Fdictionary%2Fmerchant&ei=SdKESsP0PMGN_Abi8onABw&usg=AFQjCNH9RTqk45vMnDCxxrFzDATgZnayUg

Exactly, the majority of time that I spend dealing with support has been with these kinds of people. I would have to spend only a fraction of time on support if people listened, heeded my words and read the documentation.

Or call it the PITA tax. And it increases the ruder or entitled the person acts.

My support will be free, because honestly, I don't have a complex item to support. And usually, if it's something that needs fixing, it's either a mistake on my end or LL broke it.

I have a friend with a small boarding kennel. Their home is on the same grounds. Numerous times, though they were told that dogs could only be picked up during 'open' hours, owners would come pretty much any time they felt like it to pick up their dogs. After being interrupted at dinner, breakfast, and even late at night to sign out a dog because the owner thought it 'wouldn't be much trouble', they finally started charging an extra $50 for off hour pickups. Suddenly the owners found they could wait until the kennel was open to pick up their dogs.

People will take advantage, and it is even ok to a point. But sometimes you just have to do something to make it a disadvantage for them to do so.

Its called greed.. just shop with thier biggest competor.. and let evenyone ya know know what that merchant does lol watch thier company crash

If its a true support question then its freebie. If the info is in the note card "support" will cost ya.

I believe it depends on the product/service provided and the reason for support.

I do not see anything wrong with a vendor charging for support or customization based on time spent. The same happens in RL.

Whenever I contact a creator in world with a request for a modification or similar to an item, I expect to pay for their time. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised when I am not charged (admittedly this is good marketing as well). Other times I pay. And sometimes, although very seldom, do I pause and think "Okay, THAT is gouging, I really don't need xyz that badly."

Also, people will sometimes charge as a means of weeding out -- those who pay will be far more attentive to the vendor than those who do not pay (I believe someone already mentioned RTFM tax).

And finally, there are people, such as myself, where time is money and I'd sooner pay someone for a certain customization or aid simply because it helps me out (I have limited physical abilities on the computer). Vendors should not feel taken advantage of because if they do, they'll grow bitter and stop creating... and I wouldn't wish that given that SL is as a result of the wondrous variety and creators.

I view support as socialising, however my support is usually down to people misunderstanding that the box an object comes in doesn't have to be the same permissions as the object inside it, but now I usually set the box to the same permissions to stop that. But daily I have 'friends' ask questions on all aspects of SL and I help them if I can, I don't really see much difference if a total stranger asks for help, it's just the same time, if it's a customer, I would have thought help is more important.

I was not talking about customizing, as that is extra work and charging for it is obviously ok.

I am talking about basic support - land ike in the post above, that can also have some social value as well. If someone is sincerely interested in your product you should at least talk to them.

There are some good points about people who refuse to read the enclosed Notecards and the few who expect you to just do it all for them while they are too busy for you - having cyber cartoon sex or are too busy for you because they are in IM's with their friends while you are trying to explain to them what they missed when they didn't read the sales descriptions.

I once tried to contact a creator of scripts about buying his products several times and received no response. I found out later that he only talks to people who pay him 5K to be in his support group. Funny thing is that people in the group also complin about not getting support and are shoved off on useless incompetent assistants who then try to charge a fee for helping to make some extra cash on the side.


My point is mainly..if people pay you for your product they might have a question and if you take their money you owe them an answer. to their question.

Yeh, of course!

Pep (If I have problems with Exchange Server I always ring Microsoft and demand a response from the software author. )

I go out of my way to help people with my products, but if I ever got someone who acted like they were owed an answer just because they paid me 50c or $2.00 or whatever, I'd just give them their money back and fire them as a customer.

Hasn't happened yet, but... just sayin'.