Keeping Customers Honest (And Helping Good Causes!)

A fun dive into one of SL's nastier dishonest phenomena.

Because of the DRM mechanisms we have in SL, often times it is not possible properly emulate RL retail refund transactions. A no-trans item, once bought, cannot be transferred back. So refunding is an issue!

With honest customers, I'm usually pretty happy to work things out if there's a problem. But tonight, I had someone buy my product and claim he never received it, asking for his money back. I promptly dropped him another copy, but he insisted he never received it and so wanted his money back (even after my re-delivering). Just then I noticed in my logs that his copy of my product had requested an automatic update over three hours before this exchange took place. (There's no way for that request to happen without the owner actually having possession of the product.)

So, with the lie exposed, I refused to take any action that would result in a refund. He changed his story, used obscenities, threatened to take me to the Lindens, the whole horrifying shebang I've heard from other sellers here.

Not wanting his money, but not wanting to reward his dishonesty, I instead made a donation to The Shelter, which is the worthiest cause I know in-world. I think in all, it worked out okay.

Other vendors: How do you deal with this sort of situation? Is it enough of a problem that you've added mechanisms that ping you in some way to confirm delivery of a product?

Also, am I unique in that my pride wanted me to ditch the proceeds of that sale in the most urgent possible way?

make them......disappear.

ive been setting up products (that i sell and are more than a static picture) so that when it rezes it gets the owner key, runs llStringToBase64, saves that data in a discription feild (child prim) and emails me with the owner key, not becuase im paranoid or whatever, but mainly becuase i tend to release product abit prematurely. and it makes it ezer to delever updates.

Ive been doing this since the early days of my SL existance.. and it has saved my arse a cupple times with tards telling me that they never got the product, when i have a log saying not only did they get the product, but then gave it to someone else (yepper i log that too, old key + new key, again for nothing else but to keep track of who needs an update)

In the past ive kept the money, donated it to travis or NCI. depends on the mood i guess *shrug*

PLEASE dont stop buying from me becuase i keep track of my customers.. heh nevermind noone buys my prefab stuff anyways, its mostly custom, then i just write the name down in a notebook, becuase i have a tendency to forget names

En - I have what I call 'the grand gumball argument'

I had someone up and down threaten to take me to court (which indeed made me giggle more than anything else) over the same kind of thing..

My argument:

"well, apart from you being quite the grand bullshitter - which we've already establshed - looking up on Lindex I see the amount you wish to 'sue me for' is enough to buy a single gumball..... so unless your lawyer has a sweet tooth - I can't see this happening'

The great gumball argument also works on the 'I've used this and now I want to return it for something else or a refund' (which really makes me laugh - do I come across like I'm running a freakin library?) - I ask 'Did you enjoy it more than a gumball?' I usually get a confused 'well yes' 'in that case - you got your moneys worth'.

Honestly - folks who want to risk thier reputations (and that being the ONLY thing of worth in SL you have) sullied over the price of a gumball are the biggest tards living on the grid.

are you too proud? Not really - I've banned folks from my land to help them never buy my stuff again - back when I had vendors there was a list of folks whos money would be returned with the message 'your money isn't good here - go away'

I very much enjoyed your entire post, but this part is my favorite.

Thanks for the perspective, I definitely need to use that kind of comparison in the future.

Heh. You should have kept the money and deliciously, wastefully enjoyed it.

No transfer = no refund.

*sound of vault slamming*




100% of my REAL customers behave like classy adults and I owe every bit of my success to their patronage.

I've had civil dealings with real businesspeople in Second Life, some have some fairly decent, workable ideas (even if I didn't take them up).

But mild-mannered Desmond turns into can-o-whupass Desmond when someone tries to take advantage.




Many mistake civility for softness.


1) "My mouse was bumped and I bought this no transfer item by mistake"

2) "I cannot work in RL, knowledge should be free, GIVE me your rezzing script"

3) To an officer of my group who cannot see my transaction history: "It cost $L 950 so I paid the vendor $L 948 and then $L 2 and it took my money" (a lie, the vendor refund clearly recorded)

4) "I bought your house so give me all your textures" (they didn't)

5) "My cancelled alt bought your no transfer house last week, I need another copy - no I don't remember my name"

6) "I need your cabinet with the linked, rotating doors full mod, even the scripts for (BS reason X), sell me just -one- that way?"

7) "Your vendor messed up and did X" (which it didn't; standard HiroVendor and I know what it does)

"I need $L you have to buy it back" (sometimes nonexistent item)

9) "You need a manager, give me some land and I'll teach you." (oh thank you KINDLY Mr Beggar just *what* would I do without you!)

10) "Why is autoreturn on? Shut that off, I just want to rez a few prims"

11) "You mean you don't like it if I stand here and try to sell things to your (obviously wealthy) stream of customers?"

12) "I'm involved in charity X!" (ah, just like the texture on the can says!)

13) "Let me join as an officer for just a moment"

14) "Give your $L to us, we promise great returns!"

15) "Isn't it funny to leave trash here on his business, how funny"

16) "You have all this I have nothing give me $L"

17) "I lost the chairs in inventory but I want the matching couch instead"

1 "Join with our companies Worthless Inc, Drossage Ltd. and Downtime Networking and we will all share group tier"

19) "I'm representing avatar X and (insert crazy story) ... need some $L"

20) "Will you do a custom? I'll pay you when its done, I have the money coming."

21) "Though we met just today, I have this horrible tragedy in Real Life and I need monetary help!"

22) "Ooh, autoreturn was off for a bit so I left my own items for sale here"

23) "No way will he notice this scanner just on / right nearby his land so high up"

24) - my most reviled of all, I suspect generally perpetrated by aging, unwashed virgin males living with their mothers - "I'm a beautiful woman in tears, only $L will help"


There's two dozen for starters.

Edit: I strongly suspect about half of them were perpetrated by the same person. Most of these were when I was very new, but I've had an incident as recently as last week.

I make things in SL as a hobby. Granted, the income helps pay my land tier. However, I see no reason to get greedy, even for someone who makes much business in SL.

I like to do something along the line of the Fog Creek Software company (the JoelOnSoftware.com blogger guy's company). They say:



I try to go along similar lines. If I see that the person bought stuff, but is having problems (or cannot use the thing), or erranously bought more than he'd needed, or he realized it's not what he wants, I'll give his/her money back.

Of course, if someone started doing that regularly, I would refuse after some time. And yes, if there was a blacklist or ppl. who 'game the system', I might consider using that. Though if that kind of buyers are only a very small, insignificant percentage, that's bearable.

PS: Oh, and yes, I even tend to give money back if the customer screwed up. Sometimes a person buys more 'cars' for my train engine, while all documentations state that currently only one car can be attached, so it's clearly the buyers error. However, I'd rather make the customer comfortable and maybe coming back to buy more later, than make him unhappy.

Since joining SL almost two years ago, I have purchased many items.

I have decided I don't like any of them anymore.

Please refund all my money so that I can clean out my inventory and buy more gumballs.

Thanks.

I guess I've just been really lucky in SL as I've never had a customer get all shirty or try to rip me off. Maybe I'm doing something wrong!

Selling everything for L$1 and having a tip jar does help with this problem. I've had people tell me that things they bought aren't working, which is good since I can then fix them, but people don't tend to demand L$1 back, and if they did it would give me more than L$1 worth of amusement. Also nobody has yet demanded free upgrades.

I understand that this is not a particularly viable long-term business model for anyone who actually wants to make money.

(It pays for the textures and sounds. Well, some of them.)

I don't think this is reasonable, although it depends on the circumstances. If someone comes into the shop, looks at a sofa, which is on the gorund in front of them, has a chance to check the poses, decides to buy it, that is somewhat different from someone seeing a heavily photoshopped picture of a sofa, deciding to buy it and finding it is borked in some way.

I think 99 per cent of people in Sl are kind, honest and not out to exploit anyone. I do not think that they should be treated automatically as though they were trying to rip people off.

I have bought skins and clothes which bore little or no resemblance to the picture on the box. I have bought items with poses which were misplaced, but no mod. In the real world if someone sells me something that isn't fit for its purpose or doesn't look like the picture on the box, I am entitled to my money back, and I do not see why SL should be different.

The seller chooses to make an item no transfer, not the buyer. I assume that anyone I tell I have deleted an item will believe me. In any case, I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt, and that's the way I treat people who shop in my store.

Although I have been asked to fix couches, chairs and in one memorable case, someone's girlfriend, due to sellers contacting me over things I make, I don't think anyone has ever tried to rip me off for a refund. I have had people sell free to copies, and had people try to make things like mine, but no-one has tried to exploit my refund policy, which will remain the same...if you're unhappy, I will refund/replace the item. I will not come to your house instantly to fix couch/chair/girlfriend, nor will I necessarily spend hours on IM helping you to do that...lol.

I think there should be fair practices for buying and selling in SL and these would include:
no reselling of free to copy items
only resale of one original from any items bought
no misrepresentation of items with too much photoshop skill applied
refunds where reasonable
Cali

It would be a nice feature to allow no-modify no-transfer items to be transferred to their creator.

Does anyone know what happens if you buy a modify-ok no-transfer object and put a no-copy transfer-ok object inside it? Do you wind up with an object with impossible permissions?

I've been pretty lucky, too. After about 1,000 sales in the last year, this is the very first time I've had anyone try to pull this crap.

Heh, that's quite the litany of deceitful maneuvering you'd had to deal with. As for no trans = no refund, I don't quite see it as that absolute. There are some circumstances where a refund might indeed be in order, but none of those circumstances is initiated by a customer lying to me.

But as for keeping the money, I appreciate and respect all of my customers and there's a lot that they do to make my life easier. I never want the bitter taste in my mouth that this rat gave me, nor do I want any comfort from someone who I don't respect. I like Yuriko's remark about cleansing the bad luck. That's how it felt to me.

I deal with such things on a case by case basis. I once was in my shop with an alt and witnessed two people discussing how they were going to say they didnt receive something so they could both get one. When they IMed me I replied back with my alt and they felt very stupid.

I am curious what people update on their products? Update scripts? The entire product? Etc.

Depends on the update. My latest update included both script updates and changes to the base object itself.

So if I made a vehicle I could have a script check and see an update is available and have it replace the entire vehicle with a new one?

Remeber when a particularly avid gambler was asking casino owners to add their prim and alt avs to ban lists to help them curb the habit?

That's really funny, made me laugh.

What Zonax and Cali said. This is just a self supporting hobby for me and most of my customers really are just looking for items to create their own environment. If the odd scammer picks up an extra tree or a bogus refund, it's no skin off my nose.

Although I say this having never been marked that I know of. Maybe it's just pure luck. I do scan sales every single day so that I can refund monies to people that have bought duplicate, copyable plants. So I do know who my recent customers have been and would like to think that I'd know if someone were trying to fleece me; but I might not. I do get asked for copies of textures occassionally, I usually just end up building them a custom copy of whatever it is they want.

My primary support issues are taking payments to drop copys of the copyable/notrans plants on people as gifts and scripts not resetting properly when items are copied from each other. So far with gifts, everybody's just paid and trusted me and it's worked out okay. I did have one very new person that wouldn't accept anything from a stranger for fear of being griefed. After telling them that was wise, and allowing time for them to talk to their friend, that worked out too.

Enabren, nobody can tell you that you're guilty for keeping dirty money or too proud for giving it away. Buyers should always beware and understand that once they part with their money, they're not likely to get it back no matter what happens. I suppose it might confuse people that we don't just drop textures or modable copies on them. The permission system admittedly doesn't make sense to the people who wrote it, much less the rest of us, much much less to new resident shoppers.

I don't make clothes or skins, I have literally *everything* on display.

So not too many customers buy something only to suddenly hate what they were just looking at.

A lot of sim owners, major and minor land barons shop at my place. People who are generally intelligent, well mannered and so forth in any world.

Real disputes are very, very few because of this.



I suspect that *much* of what I've gone through had to do with one or two scammers using different characters figuring I was a good 'mark'.

I suppose if you are a scammer, you go for folks selling $L 5000 houses before bothering with someone whose most expensive item is an $L 300 dress.

So yes, it's not only obvious but painfully obvious "U refund mE my AlT bought from U not lyeing ur account histry wrONG" - something at that level - and they get the bum's rush to the door.

Yes - but you can only really safely do it if the objects are no-transfer, since otherwise, the customer can give away the old non-updated version to someone else (who can then rez it and have it update itself, then pass on the non-updated version again, etc.)

I've been trying to work out a safe way of doing it for transfer-ok items. The best I've come up with so far is to have a no-copy "license key" which is included in the object; when an update is sent out, the license key isn't included in the update, so the user has to transfer theirs into the updated version (or give them a command to transfer it). If the license key is missing, all the scripts in the updated version shut down completely.

Okay. I need to say right off that maybe reselling items to a person that doesn't understand resell permissions and settings might have been a bad idea.

The Maverick and SKlunker (two half-arsed inventions of mine that I sold because I was young and needed the money), need scripts to be turned ON in order to run (don't they all), so this person, who apparently needs me to make 'vender' copies for her, left the vehicles which are intentionally scripted for Open Flight Permissions running where people could hop in and drive/fly off.

Well, she disable the script, people bought a COPY, so the script was disabled in their copies. And naturally they still IM me.

One asked for a refund. I sent him an 'untested beta' device that, when rezzed on his home parcel, TP

I still get people IMing me letting me know she's selling my crap. I tell them I know. Some have berated me, but when I direct them to the post where I offered the items for sale, she was the only taker.

Absolutely. Well, not so much replace as give a new copy. There's some cleverness available where you can have a script replace itself with a different script, but I just send a new copy. (My HUD has a button that lets the user check for updates. Saves lots of IMs!)