Return to Vendor!

An opinion should reflect an understanding of the proposal in the first place. I'm more than happy to accept any amount of adverse opinion so long as it fulfills that criterion.

That clear enough?

Maybe, just maybe, you dont shop well.
Like I said before, most creators are willing to find a way to solve problems.. like Desmond said, theres more good than bad.. like other ppl said, and i will say about myself too, if there is a genuine problem with one of my items, i will do all possible to fix it, or return the purchase price if the customer wishes to return the item.

And though we see on these forums and in world ppl who have had bad experiences.. even those are not that common. Most ppl dont report good service, because its just expected.

But according to you, your whole experience has been bad. All goods have been shoddy, after service has sucked.

Have you ever thought that you should do a little more research before you buy? Ask other consumers.. maybe even only shop at places with demo versions of what you are looking for?

I understand what you are trying to say, but i dont understand how you can tar the whole world with the same brush based solely on your experiences. Mind you, based on your inability to understand where other ppl are coming from, and not being able to accept their varying opinions as anything of value, I somehow am not surprised that you cannot see anything more than you want to see.

Your plan is getting more and more convoluted... where a simple rating system.. a group or a magazine a la good housekeeping.. could be set up (even by you if you really cared) and ppl could report good and bad.. no scripting.. no waiting 500 years for LL to even begin to think about it.. no lag from overscripted .. overbusy vendors.. just simple.. plain and probably effective.

Many successful businesses in SL got that way by word of mouth. A satisfied customer is a repeat customer. Do yourself a favour and next time you want to buy something.. ask around.. do the research.. after all, you too have a responsibility in that you chose to buy something.. based on some sort of personal judgement system.. which hasnt seemed to work for you.

Let my assure you that I have definitely, most definitely shopped about as well and as thoroughly as anyone can in SL.

I will admit that in my newbie days I was quite easy to please. However, with passing time and growing experience of how SL works and what is actually possible given the tools supplied in-world and the range of excellent applications that have been developed in support of content creation, I have become less easy to satisfy.

* If an item of clothing is textured badly and works against the avatar mesh as opposed to working with it, then I do not see why the customer should accept it.

* If a scripted item is evidently causing lag or malfunctions for whatever reason when it is operated then I do not see why the customer should accept it.

* If the creator advertises a range of sizes on a no modify object and none of the sizes supplied will fit the avatar properly then I do not see why the customer should accept it.

Word of mouth is just as subjective as any recommendation from the vendor himself: it depends on who one is talking to, who that individual's friends are and what their taste is like in comparison to one's own.

I may be fussy and hard to please but that is my prerogative. So far on this thread I have read a fair number of groundless comments and generalisations that most customers are happy with what they buy and if not then creators are all too ready to help out. This happens but it is not the rule by any stretch and I don't think it is good enough to simply accept that as the way SL should work.

Neither do I think it is good enough for creator's to whine about protecting content (and I use the word advisedly to describe that persistent excuse). Any fule kno it is perfectly feasible for serious rip-off artists to snag every texture within drawing distance without even bothering to buy products.

The point of this option is to remove uncertainty and even the field between vendor and customer by offering the simple choice of accepting or rejecting the purchase for a refund with a minimum of fuss if the product proves unsatisfactory on delivery.

You still should give shoppers more credit ... many people make wise shopping choices.. and you should give creators more credit too, a good majority are not as bad as you make them out to be. Except for 2 occasions (one where the creator was no longer on SL and the other .. just plain no answer) I have always had positive experiences with claims on purchases that had problems.

I trust word of mouth for the most part. When i plan a big purchase .. same as in RL .. i shop around a lot.. ask around a lot... but in the end.. the choice is ultimately mine.

I dont think i would like to live (albeit virtually) in a police state where return of goods is unconditional and compulsory. This is my opinion.. you may not like it.. but it doesnt make it wrong...

But what i really want to know is what is lacking in a plan where, lets say creators opted for a satisfaction guaranteed program.. where they voluntarily join a group.. display a sign and keep the promise or have to leave the consumer group? Wouldnt this satisfy you?


we all know that your idea will always remain hypothetical. There is no minimum fuss about it...SL will not hold funds until the refund period is over. More scripting of overlaggy vendors (one of the things you yourself complain about) that would have to communicate with servers that record the purchase and time passed since purchase, undue stress on the already overburdened assetserver with items passing back and forth .. creators without funds to cover the refund.. goods being returned with parts missing... the potential problems are mind boggling. Bigger in fact than the problem of shoddy goods.

There are many other alternative solutions.. many very easy to impliment. Why kill a mosquito with nuclear fusion when a good old fashioned slap with the hand would do it?

The avatar mesh is asymmetrical, and there are texturing issues (like the line you get across the belly, or the trouser-leg alpha problem) that no vendor can do anything about.

Even if it operated correctly when written, in the places where it was written and tested, and the problem is Linden Labs'?

Don't buy "no modify" objects. Get Linden Labs to remove "no modify" as an option.

Duh!?

Lamb's sakes, don't you think I'm aware of the limitations of the avatar mesh? That's why I stipulated "working with it".

And if you mean that pointy arrow issue at the hem of trouser legs, then yes, you most certainly can do something about it: make sure there is no alpha between the bottom of the trousers and the bottom edge of the texture.

Simple. And I would expect someone who takes money for their product to know that. Otherwise they are irresponsible to put that item up for sale.

Here's a proposal that might be implementable. I suggested this before, but I guess you missed it:

When you buy a product from a "guaranteed" for-sale box (ONLY, since Linden Labs can not tell how much you paid for an object you bought from a scripted vendor, and because this should not be applied retroactively to existing content) it is no-mod, no-copy, no-transfer until you "accept" it. If you attempt to copy it or modify it or transfer it, you get a dialog box asking if you accept the sale. If it was set to "next owner, copy" and you rez it in-world or move it into an object contents in-world, you get a dialog box asking if you accept the sale or if you want to move it into world or accept the sale. There would also be an "accept" and "return" option in the inventory menu. If the object is in-world, you would have to take it back to your inventory before you accepted it.

After 24 hours, it would automatically be accepted, the vendor would get the money and be notified of the sale, and you would no longer be able to "return" it.

This would not have a huge impact on the use of most assets as demos or props. Certain scripted operations in objects would fail (at the least, if they tried to rez something in-world).

In addition, when someone set a "guarantee" flag on the sale box they might be able to set a "rental fee" and set the return period, to use this mechanism for rentals or "rent to buy"... in which case the full price would be similar to a deposit.

There may be further issues with this proposal, but I believe that it would at least be technically implementable... which the original unrestricted proposal would not be.

You may be, but most customers aren't going to be.
If the length slider on the trouser legs (and elsewhere) was reliable I might be interested in buying trousers like that... but the only way to have anything less than full length trousers that don't look like crap, at least in any color other than black, is to have alpha at the bottom of the leg.

I would certainly see your suggestion as an improvement on the status quo. Anything that allows for the potential to reject a purchase after having adequate opportunity to examine it would be an advantage to the consumer.

Nevertheless, I can't see how that would be any easier to implement: many residents would quail at the necessity of updating large inventories of product and the vendors they use to distribute their products.

In virtually no case in the real world can a consumer make a unilateral decision, after a sale has been concluded, to return merchandise for a full refund, without the consent or involvement of the merchant. It just isn't done that way, and yet that is what you propose.

Even in the case of "Lemon Laws" that mandate a period in which a sale can be reversed, the customer still has to talk to the merchant to get their refund.

If you buy a dress, and it has a faulty seam, you go back to the store, talk to the merchant, show the flaw, and a reasonable merchant will give you a refund or a replacement item that is of similar or better value and does not have that flaw.

If you buy a car, and two days later the engine starts overheating every 2 hours, you go back to the dealer and ask their service department to fix it. A reasonable dealer will do so.

In each case, the merchant receives valuable feedback on the performance of their products or services.

Maybe the dress seller didn't know that the competent seamstress they had subcontracted the sewing work to had in turn pushed the work off to her less-skilled apprentice, and that the quality of the product had declined. Or maybe they didn't realize that they had been careless in their own efforts at aligning the pattern on the side seams. If the dress was returned for refund without merchant involvement, they would NEVER know why the returns were happening, and would continue to sell the lower-qulity items. But if they get a steady series of complaints about bad seams, they know it wasn't a one-time mistake, and they can act to correct the supply chain and improve the product.

Maybe the used car seller didn't know that their mechanic was "saving money" by using third-rate reconditioned parts from a scrap yard, instead of factory-approved parts. Or maybe they did know, but thought this was acceptable practice. Again, if you don't talk to the dealer, but just park the faulty car on their lot and walk away with a refilled wallet, they can't investigate and correct the issue.

Or maybe, just maybe, there is really nothing wrong with the product at all, and it is the consumer who failed to read and understand the manual, or who is simply regretting an impulse buy. If you talk to the merchant, the matter may be able to be cleared up, with all parties happy with the result. That's called "customer service", and most merchants pride themselves on providing good customer service.

As a maker of products in SL, and as a business owner in real life, I want to have that feedback, and I want it to be my informed decision to grant that customer a refund or not. I would not want it to be a unilateral decision on the part of the consumer, without my involvement or consent.

In Second Life, there is nothing prohibiting you from talking to a merchant and reaching an amicable resolution to a dispute. You don't need coded-in rules and safeguards for that. You just need to communicate with the merchant. And if, after a good faith effort on your part to contact them, a particular merchant fails to provide good products or good service, or will not talk to you, simply buy from someone else! There are plenty of alternatives. Those who provide shoddy merchandise will always exist. But they won't last long in a competitive market, if people actually behave like wise consumers. But if you expect coded-in safeguards to always protect you, then those shoddy merchants will stay around much longer, simply because they don't get the feedback that the consumers think their products are not good enough.

Linden Lab generally will NOT get involved in resident-to-resident disputes, even when a clear case of fraud or deceptive practices can be shown. The odds of getting them to code in some sort of "consumer protection legislation" that a majority of us would find acceptable are incredibly unfavorable.

So I voted no. I neither think it should be done, nor that LL is the least bit likely to do it in an acceptable manner.

FYI - I make a wide variety of content in SL, including clothes, furniture, textures, scripted items... up to and including creating entire sims full of custom content. I am also a consumer, buying a wide range of items from many merchants. I also own and operate several real-world businesses unrelated to SL.

This. The "girl on the street shopper", just want stuff that looks nice. I don't care about the how's and why's of it all.

Technical:
* It doesn't require Linden Labs recursively track pseudo-ownership of multiple copies of rezzed objects, assets in object inventory, assets transferred to other accounts.
* It doesn't require modification to the sim software, other than tracking an additional chunk of per-object data.
* It doesn't involve implementing some kind of mechanism to track sales from scripted vendors (I'm not sure that's even technically possible).

Political:
* It doesn't take anything from existing merchants.
* It gives existing merchants a benefit, the ability to rent assets.
* It short-circuits "user damage" and the "borrowing" problem.

Add me to the list of "No." I like working WITH my customers on resolving issues. This would take me right out of the picture. And please, don't say they can add a "description" section for describing the issue! As someone who rarely fills out crash reports, I know people will just hit the "return" button and get their L$ back. And even if you make the section mandatory for clicking the "Okay," people will simply put in something that might be three letters long and have nothing to do with the item.

Given that most of my customer service issues tend to be either reasonable issues like a texture failed to take on a prim and I didn't catch it to "This isn't mod/copy/transfer! I need this to be able to give out copies to all my friends! Send me one that is!" I'd rather fix the issues with the former and keep the money of the latter, since my perms are listed on Xstreet, Onrez and on a sign in my store.

Plus, this doesn't begin to cover some of the related issues such as Xstreet, Onrez and vendors that can send items as gifts. Would the person buying it be the one to return it? Because it'll be their name that shows up on my transaction sheet with LL. Or will the person who received the gift be the one to return it? And if the receiver, would they get the L$ spent or the buyer?

Honestly, this is entirely too complex an issue and I'd rather they work on more important things, like neck attachment points or allowing land owners to return items that encroach onto their properties.

Besides, being allowed to return an item is a privilege, not a right. Even in RL, companies do not have to accept returns unless the item is proven as having been defective upon purchase. Why should SL be any different?

I can think of numerous cases where I have returned goods that were unsatisfactory in RL and yes, I can see how the merchant or his or her representative would be required to be aware of the fact. In the case of SL, however, there is no question of *having* to discuss the matter with the merchant since the sale would effectively not exist if it were possible to delete the item and have money refunded by an automated process.

Personally I would like to have the option of informing the vendor why I was returning/refusing the product, but part of my reason for opening this thread is that I have been stung by too many careless or negligent individuals who would not consider responding to my inquiry or complaint. In full view of the fact that quite a number of merchants are prepared to follow-up on customer complaints, I still do not think it is sufficient to leave the matter up to their discretion.



With all due respect, I'm seeking the opinions of residents in this thread. When I require a response from the Lindens, I will open a JIRA or contact them directly. I don't think it is appropriate to speculate what their position might be on the idea at this point. It occurs to me, however, that if it were possible to modify the client with this option, then Linden Labs could save themselves a lot of trouble dealing with complaints about business dealings in SL.


It certainly is a complex issue but it is not enough to just leave it be in the hope that it will go away.

Content protection privileges are a myth in SL, as far as I can determine, because there are many perfectly legitimate ways to circumvent permissions on an object given that the software is open source. If you met me wearing a very familiar pair of pants tomorrow that I did not pay you for, you would have no recourse but to ridicule me for plagiarising your material and I suppose ban me from your shop, which I wouldn't need to have visited in the first place of course.

That scenario is not going to happen with me - I take pride in the quality of my own work and I don't see the point in copying the work of others - but it's a very real possibility in less ethical residents and there really is not much that you can do about it short of badmouthing the guilty party.

Yet it appears we would prefer to bark about content theft like it's a genuine DRM issue while ignoring the other side of the linden coin, which is the myth of consumer rights.

If we are going to persist with the myth of content protection, we need to balance the game and recognise the myth of consumer rights: the software attempts to protect one so it follows that provision should be made to protect the other.

Like Linden Labs removing the ability to break no-mod content you own by deleting contents?

This used to be possible, and I used to use this in builds by pulling the scripts out of no-mod vehicles to use them as props... which is often not practical otherwise because of the lag caused by scripts. This is no longer possible because someone convinced LL it was an "exploit". I consider the current situation an exploit because it allows people to bypass the "everything is either copy or transfer" rule. Linden Labs removed that rule from the documentation along with the explanation of the balance between creator's rights and consumer rights that led to that rule.

Posting in the forums can be frustatingly fun huh? lol

I am both a casual content creator and avid shopper in SL and your proposal is an interesting one. I can empathise with your frustration with having made purchases that did not live up to expectations. One of my worst experiences in SL was when I was relatively new and researched buying a good AO. The vendor promised free updates via a scripted mechanism built into the AO. A few weeks later, I logged on to find that my AO was spamming my screen incessantly making it unuseable. The content creator's webpage stated that the AO had been copybotted and as a result he was disabling ALL the AOs via his update mechanism. Even though I could prove I bought an original from him via transaction records, he ignored all IMs from many very pissed off customers.

Having said that, I must concur with Desmond Chang's statement that the overwhelming majority of content creators will try to work with you to ensure a satisfied purchase. I've experienced many instances of this from failed transactions to instances where I asked for something beyond what they were obligated to provide and was met with above and beyond service. However, if given the choice of somehow being able to choose between 2 similar products of which one had the ability to be tried and returned if not satisfied, I would most certainly choose the latter.

While I may see some merits to your proposal, I must concur with the majority of respondents to this thread in that it unnecessarily bureaucratic, difficult to implement,and open up a host of issues of a legal nature and the potential for abuse. While nice in theory, I think the cons most certainly outweigh the benefits of your proposal. Many have offered other less convoluted solutions that make much more sense rather than having it implemented from the level of LL and allow both content creators and consumers the choice of its implementation as well as where one might choose to spend their lindens.



Your quote above also seems to imply that your return to vendor proposal would encourage a spur of economic activity and growth to Second Life based on my stats about how the majority of residents that had logged on in the last 30 days had not spent even 1L. I don't believe that it would in any way improve these numbers and would in fact slow down economic progress as legitimate content creators would be more negatively impacted than the bad ones, and in turn dampen creativity and overall growth.

SL has its steep learning curve, high technical requirements, irresponsible policy changes, and a frustratingly unstable platform. In my opinion, using the limited resources of Linden Labs to focus on these priorities would go much further in improving the SL economy than the proposal you suggest, so my answer would be a resounding no.

I've done a little of this and that. Sold a few items and scripts to folks.

If they had problems or requests about the products I worked with them to resolve them. In one case rewritting the entire set of scripts for someone because they were gender neutral on the vendor, and adding personalized ones to them. Just because I dislike an upset customer.

I've helped someone redo poses on a set of my benches and walked them through making backup copies.

But the return option is too easy to be misused, and consider the most popular spots in sl are the freebie havens... it would be misused a lot

apparently the OP thinks we are drooling idiots unable to understand what he is proposing so on that note....


I will just say that I, as a consumer, would rather deal with the merchant if I have a problem.

I, as a merchant, would rather the consumer come to me if they have any problems.

I do not want some automated system that could be so abused that it would drive out all the content creators.

on that note, I am done.

Return to Vendor is one of my favorite Elvis Presley recordings.

Two for two today although the surrey was your best work yet.

Hmmm.... And since this is LL, the next line is, "UUID unknown!"

Lol

attach your pet on my shooooooulder....

Keep setting them up, I'll keep knocking them down.

Brlliant.