Word from a vendor to the public.

Hey Enabran that was a really neat and conscientious reply. The only customer service I've gotten of comparable politeness was when I called the Pringles manufacturer and asked how they made their chips.

Not once did they imply I was a crank.

Oh, absolutely, to be certain, I vastly prefer dealing with polite folks. There's no question that I would prefer everyone be... patient when addressing their concerns to me. But I guess my point is, even if a customer is a dirtbag to me, he's a dirtbag who helped me pay my cable bill, so I just need to swallow hard and do what I can for him.

Did they seriously walk you through it? That's pretty cool.

I always assumed they were taking ground potatoes, mixing them into a bit of a seasoned dough and then baked them in some kind of forms to make the distinctive shape.

How far off am I? Please tell the story!

Also, if I recall correctly, Pringles is one of the only food products made by P&G, who have a pretty big stick up their backside about being good to customers -- old fashioned, almost.

This is why I don't get into selling things to people. I don't come on to be obligated beyond what I promise by myself.

The only customer I've ever had in SL, I feel so guilty about not having provided him with a proper instruction manual that I feel like refunding him double. The internal customers that I deal with in FL, I don't care about at all, unless they sit next to me and/or can get me fired.

You're not far off....


The story goes like this: I was sitting around in college with a bunch of friends, and it is likely that a modicum of alcohol was consumed. We were eating pringles, and commenting how they were far superior to any other potato based snack. And wondering how they were formed into that shape and possess that little bumpy texture.

And then we noticed, on the side of the can, the fateful words: "Got a question? Call us!" followed by a 1-800 number.

In our, shall we say, mellow, state, this was an offer we could not refuse.

The woman who answered the phone noticed, I'm sure, that I was not in a completely sober state, but played along with me, putting me through to someone who could answer my questions (a potato chip engineer?).

The long and short of this is: Pringles flakes potatoes and then dries them out. After seasoning the dried flakes, they re-add water to the mixture and pound it into a loose dough (but they do not mix it too much....the flakes never completely blend together...which helps yield the bump texture upon baking I was told). At this point the flaky dough is cut into chip shapes and placed on a saddle-like thing that moves the chips into the frier. This is where the chip gets its overall shape. The chip is fried, seasoned some more, and voila, everyones favorite chip-like snack.

I am *so* going to try making me some pringles now.

This is fantastic.

I'm surprised, though, that they are fried. They don't have the greasy texture of so many fried foods. Go figure.

On that subject, what do you think of Lays Stax? I was a pretty big fan of Pringles for most of my life, but after some soul searching, I am forced to admit that Stax conveys a crispier, superior texture and a fuller flavor. I'm also delighted by its use of a durable plastic can that exhibits none of the fragility of its cardboard-based Pringles counterpart.

I'm talking about the full prim avatars, they're completely different in male and female. Well not completely, but all of the body parts are altered between the male and female forms. All the other avs come with male and female shape (And both parts if there's dimorphism related to the av.

It just seems to me that if people are going to spend a lot on something, they should read the whole ad. In addition, the buttons for the avs have the male and female signs on them, and most of the ads themselves SAY if it's male or female. A lot of the confusion could be ended if people would just stop, let the images rez, and read.

Now I do worry that the vendors are confusing, but I've never had anyone ask me about it before, so I'd have to say that for most people, they can figure it out. I had to deal with a REALLY confusing vendor the other day for a skin I bought, and I just about left the place to go elsewhere, until I figured out that you had to pay some far off prim elsewhere to get the item. Mine's easy as pie compared to that

Don't your vendors also have hovertext describing what the item is? Seems like people would know to look at that at least if they're too impatient to let the images load.

Yeah, they do. I can also set them to give a notecard with info about each av being shown.

I've been wanting to redesign them to make them easier to use, but for so many avs, I can't really think of a better way than it is now. They're kind of setup like webpages currently.

Maybe I should make "how to use this vendor" notecards

Haven't tried Lay's Stax, but will do so tonight, as its grocery night...

You could do what Whinge's vendor just started doing. After you pay, you get a dialog something like this:

"You selected the Ninja Weasel Male Brown Wolf Avatar. If this is what you want, click "Buy". If not, click "Cancel" and your money will be refunded."

Then you click "Buy" and it completes the transaction. I assume that if you "Ignore" the dialog or just wait it'll refund you anyway after a time-out.