Does it make sense for shops to ban all no payment used accounts?

I realize this may start yet another stupid flame war, however this is a serious question based on Philip's vision of SL policing itself via various groups banning people they don't like.

Since free accounts pretty much make banning individuals a futile exercise unless all unverifieds are banned as well, what does this mean for shops? Is it correct to a first approximation that if an account hasn't used it's payment info, it probably doesn't have any money? If so, then there's no loss to individual shop owners if they ban them.

Personally, I think it will be a huge loss to SL if this happens, and SL may well devolve into a hodgepodge of banning camps. However, if we're going to follow Philip's plan, this is the sort of question we need to answer for ourselves.

I'm sure there must be unverifieds out there that earn just enough L$ to fund their SL purchases, have no need for purchasing or selling L$, and so have no need for payment info.

You can't tell. I've had unverifieds who've spent quite a bit. And sometimes that unverified could be a premium's alt out shopping.

Plus I think, most start out unverified, some like it enough to end up verified, and when they do, they may remember where they were and weren't welcome.

Fade - interesting post.

I'm going to talk to some vendor friends and see if they can come up with some statistics on how many sales they make to unverified accounts.

I have a friend in-game to whom I've transfered about L$10,000 to buy clothes, hair, boots, a sword, etc. Another just joined and I'll likely offer the same to her.

There's been just one place where I was admitted and she wasn't, and that's a place that neither of us want to go anymore.

Many unverifieds have funds to shop.
Also they are major source of traffic for stores with lucky chairs and other promotions.

I believe tho that there should be at least e.mail verification, whilst not stoping the determined griefers, ( I had one yesterday that created 25 aaa <surname> to zzzz <surname> alts just to take the cash from a lucky chair ) at least with e.mail verification it would have made it a little bit harder for them to do that and further waste LLs manpower dealing with it.

I dont like the 2 tier class sytem that seems to be developing and i do not ban from my plot based on status but i can understand why some do.

peace

I regularly transfer money to alts for shopping, and in fact my alts often have more money on hand than my main.

Also, I make it a regular occurance to help out newbs in the PvP community that I hang around in, often giving them money to purchase community-appropriate items.

Unverified != broke, far from it. Many unverifieds are broke, but it's far from a surety.

But, of you categorize users into verified vs unverified, the unverified group almost certainly has more griefers, and that is why I do have an unverified ban on my personal land and at one of my stores.

Now, RobbyRacoon, that is one of the most mixed messages I've seen - you can't enter your own store when you're an alt?

I know there are unverifieds that have cash inworld so it would be limiting your sales for that reason alone.

Also, your wares could be the tipping point that make them say... "I will register my CC now because I must have that thing!"

On the other hand, as Fade said, if you ban them they may think..."If and when I sign up, I'm never shopping at the stores that banned me."

*shrug* Your call.

I can only understand banning unverified accounts for adult shops. Although SL is supposedly 18+, they don't require any age verification on signup. The CC info is a way to prove you're an adult.

Unfortunately, limiting access in such a simplistic manner does not work, for many of the reasons stated above.

People still have unverified alts that they transfer money to for shopping. They don't see any reason to add their credit card info to the alt, when only one account that they own does all their banking. In my own case, I DID verify all my alts, but my main account, Ceera, is the source of income for virtually all the others. The other accounts spend money that I give them, and occasionally earn money in-world, but never use their credit card info to buy anything month to month, or to buy L$.

People using numerous unverified alts and feeding them money from a main account is also a hang-over from the now-obsolete policy that stated you could only have 2 accounts on a single payment method, and a lifetime maximum of 5 at one mailing address. People with 5 or more accounts used to be in danger of losing their "excess" accounts, just because "they had too many" - even if all of them were well-behaved, upstanding SL citizens. (This limitation is no longer true, according to Robin Linden. You may now have as many accounts as you are willing to register and pay for.) So you would only verify the ID on an account that you really were attached to. Why use all your lifetime slots, when it might prevent you from getting a new account later?

While turning off access to "no payment info on file" accounts is sometimes a last-resort option in the case to returning griefer alt attacks, in most cases leaving your land set to ban all unverified accounts will lose business, as there are plenty of other places for them to shop that are not restricted.

The one case that makes sense to me for banning all who have refused to provide payment info is an adult-oriented business. If you insist they must have payment info on file, then either the person is of legal age, or they have identifying information on file and can be traced and proven to have lied on their registration form about being 18 or over. It moves the onus of proof of age onto the consumer, rather than the provider. You don't have that defense if you allow access to people who you know did NOT provide any sort of identifying information.

Exactly. Some of my most regular customers started out visiting my store when they were unverified and have come back since registering.

That said however, hoping they'll spend is not why I won't ban unverified accounts. I won't ban them because I'm not going to punish new residents who are just testing the waters because I don't approve of LL's policies and I won't support a class system that treats one group of people as if they are less valuable than another.

LL told me and everyone else when we signed up that this was an adult only environment. They have to take responsibility for this statement. I run an adult club along with my other businesses and I keep my eyes open and report underage people, but at the end of the day it is still LL's job to keep them out and they have to accept the responsibility when they fail in my opinion.

And ironically when I visited with a "no payment" account to see what the restructions really were... I was not able to find a single adult business that refused me access. I found lots of parcels that required payment info, including some that were completely empty, but very few if any were shops and none of those were adult oriented businesses.

I'm not sure that's wise if you run an adult oriented business... but I have to say I approve heartily of this sentiment! That's exactly why I will not ban based on payment info under any circumstances I can currently imagine possible.

In the TOS LL clearly labels itself a service provider which as far as I'm aware shifts the responsability from making sure that minors don't get access to something they shouldn't away onto the person actually providing/making the content.
I'm quite sure that LL covered its own liabilty but don't assume that the marketing speak necessarily means that they're looking out for your liability as well.

As far as I know, the expectation (from a legal point of view) isn't that you go to extraordinary measures to make sure that everyone is an adult, but that you do however can show that you made a reasonable effort. In LL's case that may mean that as long as they respond to every report of alleged underage residents they're in the clear but they're also not providing content that is inherently of an adult nature.

No.

Wow thats really know reason for stores to do such a thing Linden Lab need to step in and perhaps do something....

Linden Labs made it possible to do this to begin with, Jeb. They added the option to ban unverifieds on your land.

To me, it doesn't make sense to ban many people due to the actions of a few. However, according to the answer I received from my post on Linden Answers forum, that is precisely what we are meant to do.

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I guess I'm qualified to answer the question, since the Dark Delights shop has operated both with and without such access restriction. I closed our premises for unverified accounts as soon as I heard of the open registration. I kept it that way for months. The sales numbers looked fine, I didn't have much griefer cases and I didn't need to worry about exposing possible minors to our adult wares, so I thought I made the right decision.

However, I received about 10-30 IMs every day, many of them sounding rather upset. Some examples:
- "I'm new and need some stuff, but I don't want to give out my cc info, I made some bucks camping"
- "My Dom gave me money and told me to buy something he'd seen at your shop"
- "I'm an alt and can shop with my main account, but what about no-transfer items"
- "Hello, you just lost 3 customers with money in their pockets, we will spend that on XC... products instead"
- "How dare you advertise in the classifieds and restrict access?!?"
I could see that I was possibly losing sales. No shop owner likes that. In addition, the only few cases of griefing we had were folks covering our shop in prims, standing in an adjacent sim - out of frustration that they couldn't get in.

When the big yahoo run on SL started, I finally had enough of our shop policy. What do I care about some teenagers in my adult shop when hundreds of adults can't get in? Even if they had no money right now, they'd get to play with my wares and possibly see a reason to add payment information to their account in order to buy some L$. Can hardly get a large target group interested by banning them. Dark Delights' doors are open for everyone again - I had a website with erotic artwork and trusted a mere disclaimer to keep the kids out, so why do I need more security on the 3D web?

Result: Traffic went up to more than 200%, the sales increased by approx. 15%. Not all that much, but it's still money. I often take random samples from my transaction history, and some of those spending large sums of 2k and more are unverified accounts. Griefing still isn't much of a problem. This weekend I had to deal with 2 cagers, one of them on a verified account. With the traffic doubled, it's quite normal that I have twice as much griefers around too. All in all I can only say: don't restrict access. I was pretty much the only one doing it and practically forced many liquid customers to take their money to the competition. You only hurt your business volume and get drowned in IM complaints.


PS: A tip for dealing with griefers. Instead of banning them right away, send them a standard IM stating that you run a griefer list together with a few hundred other shop owners. Therefore you'd really hate to have to ban anyone, since it means that person's shopping days are over (threatens them a little). Add something like: You wouldn't like to ruin the game for anyone just for goofing out a little or playing a practical joke (makes them feel understood by you, not outlawed), but they had to understand that you try to keep up an undisturbed shopping experience for your customers in order to pay your land fee (appeals to their common sense and shows that you value them as intelligent persons).
Doesn't have to be true, just needs to sound convincing. It works in most cases, and you avoid making an enemy. If you swing the ban hammer right away, they only come back with a an alt and a grudge.