Raising prices on "once a freebie" items

Okay, this happened in world, and I'm not going to name names here.I'd like to get some community consensus on this issue in general, and see what the best course of action is that people can come up with.

Okay there's this guy, we'll call him "Guy" He's got a shop.. and in order to attract people TOO his shop, he's created this given object, we'll call it a widget. Anyways, Guy puut a lot of work into his widget, and it's really superior to all the other "free widgets" out there. His has all sorts of gadtey extras, and really it's an uberwidget. Since creating the uberwidget, his store has grown into a very large concern, and really is quite the high-end thing now.

So, he was giving away the uberwidget for free.. but it was no transfer. The perfect "Loss Leader". Inside the widget, he put a little thing, that if you click the widget just so, it says "Come to GuyLand to get your own free uberwidget!" Surely, since this widget was so awesome, and so superior to the lame widgets out there, plenty of people will come for the uberwidget, and stay to see what else this guy makes.

Now, these uberwidgets are REALLY popular among the noobs in the sand. They find their lamewidgets all over the place, use them every day, then they see me with my uberwidget, and they ask "hey can I have one of those?" I tell them sure, but they have to come with me to Guy's Land.

Well today I popped into GuyLand, to TP a couple of friends in to pick up the uberwidgets for themselves.. and I find that Guy has started charging $10L each for them.

Now, on one hand, $10L is a pretty nominal fee for a paid account holder.. or even a small time retailer like me. Anyone playing for recreation, with a creditcard and a few bucks to spend each month, can sneeze that $10L with no concern. But the noobs in the sand, most often have $0L.

My concern, and I voiced this to Guy.. is that this is tantamount to "Bait and Switch".. or selling a product for other than the advertised price. He's clearly advertised the uberwidget for FREE to anyone who touches an uberwidget out there in SL.. in perpetuity. And that's where the problem lies.

1. He can't go back and retrofit the hundreds of thousands of uberwidgets out there, to remove the "free" statement.
   
2. Apparrently his land development was uberexpensive, and GuyLand isn't paying it's own keep, much less making a profit. Tagging a 'nominal fee' on the freebies might help slow the bleeding a bit.
   
3. He really is unwilling to still offer it for free, And has thought of just removing it from public availability... but if he removes it, hundreds of emails a month will come, asking where the uberwidget went.
   

Unfortunately, my concern is that people will TP to GuyLand, on the good faith beleif that they're going to pick up a really cool uberwidget, and what a cool guy Guy must be.. and when they get there they stop and go "WTF! What a jerk! Well forget this guy, and his store and his land." Guy's loss-leader totally backfires now, and he starts getting a bad name, as word of mouth spreads about his dirty sneak charging $10l for something he called "free". (before you say camp, many places.. it's take nearly an hour and a half of camping to earn that much, and if the noob has no anti idle.. it's a HUGE imposition to just "sit" someplace for that long just to get an item they expected to be free.

How can Guy handle this situation? what should he do?

Should he put up a big sign at the telehub stating that the price has changed? Should he just suck it up and live with the decision he made howverlong ago? Should he package up a "new and improved" UltraUberWidget and then charge for that? Should he leave his vendor set to $10L and then refund the money/give a free widget to whomever complains?

Ideas? thoughts? I'd really like to know what the community prefference would be on something like this.

I feel the free Uberwidget item that is now 10$L should be replaced with a notice why Guy is now charging along with a new 0$L item for people to take in replacement of the Uberwidget.

Guy should not have included in the item the notice that this uberwidget is forever free, make it for a limited time 0$L and if needed Guy can always add/change the Uberwidget to justify the additional cost.

It really is ultimately Guy's choice since they are the ones who created it. Sorry but that device is no longer available for free.

Oh well... I have not made an Uberwidget yet so I am not sure what else to say until I heard feedback....

My advice: Continue to offer "Uberwidget 1.0" for free, and offer an upgrade to any "new and improved" versions for the L$10 price. If the upgrade is worthwhile, he'll soon get upgrades from ALL his existing Uberwidget customers! Those who want one free can still get the old model as advertised, for free. Those who see that they can also get the new release at a nominal charge may well opt for the upgrade.

In the long run, this provides far better customer service, and far greater profit potential as well!

While I think that's really crappy of someone to do, I suppose you can do whatever you want with your own items. 10 L isn't something I would be concerned with as an older resident now, but when I was new I wouldn't have bought it.

If it had been me, I would have made a new version, leaving the old one free and charged 10L for the new version. This kind of thing is just bad for business, it's not cool.

Personally, 10L is so irrelevant, I wouldn't bother to sell anything for that much in my store. I'd far rather just give it away and be a nice person.

All in all, though, I don't think he's done anything that is actually wrong.

Guy's "mistake" was to not include "Limited time offer" on his "Come to GuyLand to get your own free uberwidget!" notice.

He can fix the situation by putting a sign in his shop stating "Sorry, the free uberwidget is no longer available."

As far as "bait and switch," well, that hardly applies here. It takes (for all intents and purposes) no time or effort to TP to GuyLand. Finding out the offer of a free item is no longer valid has not caused any legitimate harm or inconvenience to anyone.

It takes an hour and a half to earn L$10 by camping? And that's a "HUGE imposition ... just to get an item they expected to be free" ??? Big deal - plenty of other ways to earn money... tell the "noobies" about the money trees, games, contests, etc. etc.

From: someone

Unfortunately, my concern is that people will TP to GuyLand, on the good faith beleif that they're going to pick up a really cool uberwidget, and what a cool guy Guy must be.. and when they get there they stop and go "WTF! What a jerk! Well forget this guy, and his store and his land."

Guy doesn't need to concern himself with those people. They would never buy anything else from his shop, even if the freebie was still offered.

Guy's real mistake was to expect SL users to have common sense.

Very true.
I have many people that come only for free things. I give away free things because I am nice, not because I HAVE to. If I were to decide to take down a free item for whatever reason, people that only came for that free item and never bought another thing hating me for it and never coming to my store again doesn't really concern me or affect me. It's honestly their own ignorance if they want to get upset over such a trvial thing, and it isn't going to affect my actual business at all, minus the small ammount of traffic these freebie finders gave me.

It costs REAL money to run an SL business. While that ammount may not be that much, it is still money out of the business owner's pocket. I see nothing wrong with trying to ease that money burden by selling things that you made. However, a formal sign or notice that he stopped giving it away for free is the appropriate thing to do.

You can pick up a newspaper from 1963 from a library, and see an add for a 10 cent cheeseburger at mcdonalds, it doesn mean they're going to honor it today.

Even if said newspaper had some kind of historical value and was reprinted in modern times as a collector item or some such.

Just because something 'was once sold for X' does not mean it must forever be at the value X... Heck theres not even a guarantee that next month it'd be sold at all.

Things are transient, ever hit a dead link on a website? same basic principle. If he is actively *NOW* releasing advertisements in the forums or some such saying 'come get my free thing' and then you go and its not free, that would be something else entirely...

Just because someone made an object a while ago tho that said something, does not like 'forever and ever and ever' mean its set in stone.

If i was him i'd put up a little sign saying *WHY* the thing was not free anymore, and basically hope people would understand that things can and will change, over time.

There is a good chance if SL lasts 10 years, that there will still be 'uuberwidgets' floating around in some people's inventories saying 'come to x and get it free' and he won't even *BE* in SL then much less still offering the device.

That all said, it is kind of a lesson to content creators, and coders in general, things you make will last out there FAR longer than you think they will and you should not include sorta 'temporary' or 'transient' information in them, i.e. specific locations, costs, etc, simply because its going to make you look silly an piss people off if it changes.

Hmmm. I remember being penniless and camping/dance padding. Granted that these are less common now but they exist.

10L überwidget? Worth time on a dancepad while you IM/do your inv? Only the person knows if they want it enough.

Not worth time? Can't be that big a deal. Sorry, but there it is.

(heartless am I? regularly help out newbies with little items that make their life easier and cost nothing to pass on)

Here's my take on it.

I'm edging up on 3 months old now.. still a child in comparison to the business moguls out there. I'm a script hacker... a "Sandbox Pirate" as it were. Find a freebie... rip it to pieces, comepletely remodel the thing with my own prims, tweak and mod the script till it works the way *I* want it to, add features, subtract features, whatever.. then I scrounge for textures (often making them myself when I can't grab something useable off the web or in a freebie pack).. Then, if it's becomming more cool than "Teh Suck", I take my super-spifified model, and whatever mechanism that was once someone else's freebie, polish it up, write a manual and some copy, box it and slap it in a vendor for cheap. I'm not breaking even or anything, but it helps slow the flow of lindens out of my bank account.

What I make is good. I know it.. it's not the greatest in SL, but I've got a good attention to detail. Problem is, I suck at marketing, and I'm too poor to advertize or rent store spaces... end result is that I don't sell much.

But I also make freebie items. Again, hack and slash items.. Like the wineglass.. my own model, powered by that great "drink me" script in a million little freebie food items. Same with my holographic keyboard. 30 minutes in photoshop, then a hacked "free keyboard".. and voila! My holographic keyboard.

Now, I've sold chairs, and I've sold jetpacks, I've also given those away to friends.

I've NEVER sold the wineglass or the keyboard, and I won't. I will happily GIVE someone one if they ask, or if someone is nice to me I'll ususally drop a couple of my freebie items on them.

I see no ethical dillema in occassionally making a gift of one of my retail items. I ususally do it around the time that the friend says "How much are your jetpacks again? and where is your vendor? I have them the landmark, and then the packs... because I don't need $L50 so bad that I need to squueze a friend. But I have sold things to people who later became friends... and rarely returned their money. I have also charged some friends and not others for things... but it ususally depends on how hard up I am for cash at the time. (I just spent over $L1500 on 2 dresses, some hair, and an ao... MAJOR RETAIL THERAPY! - depression sucks.)

I do see an ethical dillemma in charging people for somethign I made with the express intent of giving it away.. or for something that is in it's heart, still so close to the freebie I hacked, as to only be sideways development (the keyboard for example, is a 1-prim version of that godawful dayglow "Yadni's keyboard".. "difference is, I make this look good".).. as such, it's just a simple remodel.. I didn't DO anything to the script, soi I don't feel it's "mine-enough" to feel good charging for it.

And besides, I made the keyboard because I got mad when I saw someone selling a 1-prim holographic keyboard for $L75.. and was like, Oh hell no, I'll MAKE one for $L10.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the 1.0 model should remain free until such time as Guy makes a 2.0 Ultrauberwidget... Then a quick sign expressing his regret for the misleading wording, and explaining that the new and improved widget is only $L10 or whatever. For that matter, he could just retexture the old model, and rename it 2.0.. and list a series of ficticious bugs he repaired.. which would of course be a lie, but whatever. Who would know? "Fixed a couple of annoying bugs and removed the picture of a furry due to customer complaints, updated documentation." who knows.. who cares?

Or frankly, he should get off his laurels and make a product that even sandbox noobs will want to buy bad enough, that they will willingly lose a weekday evening to babysitting their av on a dancepad so they don't log off.

It seems scummy, like RadioShack advertising a $5 radio, but when you get to the store, it's $15. There are places where the LAW states that the advertisement is a contract.

Of course, SL is at best a game, and at worst an economic SIMULATION.. and Lindens aren't "real money" they're a limited liability liscence or somethingorother... so there's no recourse for a burned customer to pursue action against the retailer who shafted and lied to them. Can't sue soemone for "cheating in a game".... and there's nothing in the terms of service that says you can't be a crook or a bad businessman.

But if Guy is just out for a fast buck, and will even turn on the noobs who give him free advertising every time they use his widget, just to try and make a lousy $10 of each of them.. Well it really makes me want to just leave his land, without giving even a glance at the other retail shops on his land... and hack together my own version of his widget... and give it away free.

I doubt I'll be back there, and I doubt I'll extoll the virtues of his widget anymore.. because yes, it's only $10... but in actual application, My friend waited 3 days to ask me about it, and *I* told my friend it was free, and TP'd her out there.. only to have the situation unfold as above. I won't be bringing friends back to his land, and people who rent shop space from him.. just lost a number of potential customers.

Not because of the principle of the thing.. but because at the end of the day, I'll remember that he was irritated and snotty with me when I asked him what the deal was with charging for something he advertised for free. If he's that way when someone contacts him asking about a situation he KNOWINGLY CHOSE TO CREATE.. what's he gonna be like when some other whatsit he sells breaks or gets lost or doesn't fit? If he's not prepared enough to at least have a "Sorry I had to put a price on them in order to help pay for whatever.." then I can't trust that his customer service is going to be worth snot on a tissue.

A few points...I don't think charging $10L for an item is the same as trying to make a fast buck. $10L is nothing. Even for a new resident, $10L is nothing, they probably just don't realize that yet. Money trees are scattered all over SL, making $10L will take you one trip to the right money tree. You can spend less than $5 USD to get $1000L. Doesn't really make much sense to even spend that time camping for an hour to make $10L, does it? New residents just don't generally understand this yet, for some reason. They want everything for free...not realizing $10L is pretty much free.

Secondly, I spend real money to advertise my products in the classifieds, so losing a couple of people who only wanted handouts using my things doesn't hurt me. If I'm a good business with good products, I'm going to make my money regardless of whether some noob got mad at me for not giving away my once free item any longer.

The cool thing about SL is that you are completely free to make your own widget and give it away free if you want to...but getting mad at someone for making a choice with their own product is kind of stupid, IMO. If you don't like it, make your own, which you obviously already do

Plenty of advertising remains in existence after it's redundant (eg magazines), and prices change relative to previously advertised prices. I don't see how it amounts to an "in perpetuity offer" personally, it didn't say "touch me for a free thing forever". I'm not sure a time limit is required to be stated, it's generally understood that prices and supply of products changes with time. What if he decided not to supply the item at all at some point for whatever reason, would he have to post a notice then? I think it's his choice entirely. It's his product.