Camping Chair Payout Dilema

I have a few camping chairs. A person sent me an IM letting me know that they camped out all night and i did not get any money from the chair.

I did not make the chair so I have no control over the scripts. I did not see them camping and cannot confirm that they were in my location let alone in the chair.

This is the first time someone has said this - or if its a griefer tried to pull this particular fast one. Usually I look in my transactions to see if the person got paid which in most cases they did and just overlooked the payment or had the payment notice turned off. However, this persons name is not in my transactions so I am wondering how to respond.

Should I try to compensate them for the time they "claimed" they spent camping?
Should I tell them to contact the creator?
Should I see this as a griefing situation?

What would you do?

I'd get rid of the camping chairs, do all your neighbours a favour, encourage people to learn a skill to make money instead of teaching them to suck the welfare nipple, and put some effort in to make your property popular without making zombies do it for you.

Lewis

If you're using your chairs on the Mainland, Lewis' comments are probably on the nicer end of the spectrum that I'd expect.

However, assuming for a moment that you're utilizing your camping chairs on a private island, where their use is less controversial - I suppose it depends on what the purpose of the chairs are.

If the customer is someone that you'd like to see come back, I'd drop them a token amount, and send them on their way. I'd also place some sort of sign for the future near your camping chairs, advising folks to use them at their own risk, and that the management is not responsible for glitches.

That said, camping chairs are viewed by many to be akin to blight. It may be difficult to get the answers you're looking for because of the emotions associated with camping chairs & their unfair resource usage.

Good luck!

One of the scams hitting merchants is a person claiming that they bought "X" and never recieved it and want their money back, or they want "X". In reality, they never did buy "X". I know of at least one merchant who has gotten a confession when she banned the thief, and the thief begged to be unbanned.

Has anyone else had a problem with your chairs?
Have a trusted friend do a 5 minute (or whatever your payout cycle is) test camp. Did they get paid?

If the test says the chair is working, and if no one else is complaining, then it's likely to be a variation of the above mentioned scam. But as a last test, you could ask the person to come identify the specific chair. If it were me, i would run a test on most or every chair first, to verify that they are working. If the person identifies a verified chair, then it would be even more likely that the person is a scammer.

Im not sure, but while scanning forums for info on the missing inventory bug, I think I ran across a bug affecting camping chairs as well....Might want to do some searching around here..

I'd be tempted to pay this one fellow just this once, then contact the chair maker and ask why it doesn't have a records feature to let you look back on who was there, for how long and when, with what pay-out. Records are invaluable for handling any customer situation, even the leechy customer situations .

Then, if the creator isn't willing to add that feature and upgrade you for free... find another maker who is offering one with that feature.

Surely the whole camping chair thing is dog-eat-dog enough that the customer has the greater advantage. Yes?

Just had a funny idea... I'm tempted to put out some camping chairs that don't give out any money. And watch the fruitless zombie efforts... sitting there for hours, having so much fun camping... but, alas I'm not that cruel.

I wold not be at all suprised to discover this has been and is being done by others.

Not only would that be hilarious, it would have the positive side-effect of making people less likely to spend time on camping chairs.

Thanks for your input which I find extremely valuable. After reading your comments, I think I'll (1) ,Ask the person to identify the chair, (2) Test it, and (3)Contact the creator as was suggested. Then maybe (4)Pay a token amount as Travis stated. Even if it is a griefer, I don't think I want it heavy on my shoulders thinking someone spent a lot of time thinking they would get paid and didn't. Then finaly I think (5)Posting disclaimer signs are a great idea to prevent this in the future.

Oh and to answer the earlier question, it's on a private island which I own...not on mainland.

Thanks again

Well, i started out poor (I ended up spending ~4 horus to get my cc hooked up to SL becuase originally it wouldnt work, so I went to walkmart, got an amex, waited in line for 45 min. (closing sale :, and to topit off, at the time, they didng have any cc's out... ) get home, clicked link upon link untill i had my card paypal compatible went to paypal, almost finnished, safari crashed... until I FINALLY got paypal hooked up, and spent 10USD on it...

well said Lewis

lmfao

Give them a bit of a break. Just learning a skill isn't enough - you need talent and ideas too, which can't be taught. And moreover, you need to spend time applying it - time that maybe the person wanted to spend doing something else in SL.

Well, then, they ought to buy L$? Perhaps. But camping chairs give them at least an opportunity to taste the non-free content available. No post-dwell camping chairs really pay enough for anyone to live on, and they could be useful for "giving a little water to the pump".

Sorry but I just don't see it. You can wander round for days without spending ANY money, enjoying the content that othe people have created and provide for you. My land, for example, costs me $40 a month, plus endless thousands of L$ that I've spent on the things I have there or made myself - which, like many other people, gives you an idea of what SL is capable of, and what people do with it.

As a newbie, you do not need to spend thousands of L$ on a new skin, clothes, hair, AO's etc, to figure out whether perhaps you like the game or not.

I really have little to no sympathy for those who have a $2000 computer, pay perhaps $100 a month for high speed internet access, then claim they don't have $10 to buy some L$ on Lindex so they can buy something they want (not need, remember you need nothing in SL, unlike games like TSO where you have to keep your character alive as well as doing stuff). I recently saw an argument on another forum where a guy said he was stealing internet access from someone's unsecured wireless connection ... then bragged how much beer he was able to buy with the money he saved. It's all a case of priorities, and some people just don't seem to have them in the right order.

If you truly can't afford $10 a month for a bit of land and some spending money, then I'd really question whether you should be playing SL and perhps ought to be investing that money in something that benefits your real life a little more.

If you can't afford it, you don't get it; that's the basic premise of life, unless of course you throw it all on a credit card and get yourself in a mess that way. It happens to many people, and SL can have a similar effect if you go overboard buying unnecessary stuff. Sure, people want their avatars to look good, but at the end of the day you don't need anything to play.

I still think unverified signups were a bad idea - because at least then everyone coming in would not have that welfare mentality that feeds the camping chair use.

Lewis

Lewis, I belive you're spot-on right 'till here:I don't think that's what's fuelling camping chair use, exactly. Though I can't deny that free accounts exacerbates the problem.

The L$ incentive is traded for popularity, wich is in turn traded for increased business (ostensibly). There would be zero incentive to pay out those weensy sums of L$ if the popularity system worked like it does in RL... word of mouth. (Runs, ducking a pelting by various over-ripe vegitables.)

Not to add to the camping chair argument, we have a few out for newbs that dont pay alot, but its our answer to the money tree, which did not work well at all for us. But id suggest a reset on your scripts everytime a new version or patch for SL hits, seems weve had a few chairs that didnt pay rite around that time too. I send like $25L and thank them for letting us know. It doesnt happen very often, and we only pay out once to each person, the likelyhood of it happening to the same person is too rare, and i would consider them scamming if they came back looking for more $$ off chairs that usually work just fine.

This *CAN* happen, and *DOES* happen with some frequency.. but most people just shrug it off. I know that the first couple of times I "didn't get paid" I got a little annoyed.. but I soon began to determine a pattern and find workarounds.

One of the things that can happen, is the camper can be "Pseudo crashed".. or "red mapped". They think they're still logged in for hours and hours.. but in reality they aren't. Another problem is camp sites in extremely high lag areas (BabyDollz in Amsterdam being my own personal hell)... high paying pads are useless if after 15 minutes on the pad, you get dumped off SL and never receive your lindens.

One of the biggest problems with the most popular chairs out there, is that the payout action is triggered on unsit. If the server goes down, the chair isn't running when the user stops sitting. In some cases, if the user logs off from the chair, the chair won't pay because they never "stood up". The red mapping issue (above) also can result in a non payout.

The most camper-friendly chairs are the ones that payout at time intervals. And example is the ones used by SL Loonie in her casinos. They pay a paltry $L1/5m.. which is REALLY low.. but it keeps you in the casino, and encourages you to gamble. These campsites pay every 10m. You come back to the computer to 50 "SL Loonie has paid you L$1" to hit [OK] on.. which can be annoying in itself.. but generally I prefer it. I can see my lindens racking up, one by one... and it does encourage me to hang around and play the games in the casino (Ooh I just got a linden, I'll risk 2 on a slotmachine).

MadamG, talk to the scripter, its not too hard to write a script to record AV names and duration they spent in the chair, it triggers and starts recording when they sit, could be set up to your AV key so when you touch the chair it will report names and durations.

If the chairs are mod then any scripter could write such a script for you to place alongside the main one inside the chair, would not only instantly resolve this kind of thing but would also reassure people who use them.

Im pretty sure this is an answers forum so I wont attempt to flame camp chairs, I hope this helps

Hear hear!

Too bad the system in RL mostly works by throwing millions of advertising dollars at prospect customers, instead word of mouth. But let's assume this little fact unmentioned.

Not ignoring advertising, just sayin' that there isn't a universal rating system in RL

I've always worked on the principle of "If I have to pay for popularity, then it's simply not worth the bother".

I would rather have traffic of 100 from people who are enjoying and appreciating all that I am offering, than 10,000 traffic from zombies who are only there because I am paying them for their time.

I saw payouts ruin Sims Online over 3 years, and I'm seeing camping chairs slowly eroding away quality in SL too. Who cares about good design and a quality experience if you're just sitting on a chair staring at a blank wall?

There is an ever increasing 'dumbing down' of SL and spirit of "every avatar for themselves", and I don't like it one little bit.

Lewis

kk, agree twice in one day with Lewis (scaring me *grins*)

Though I have a slightly differnt view. I really don't care if a person puts out "camping chairs" to attract buisness or to help new Residents. That's thier buisness........as long as they are conciderate to the rest of the sim.

Some of those camping scripts are very poorly made and quite laggy even without avatars on them. Then avatars use them loaded with poorly made, high-prim, scripted attachments and sim performance goes to hell. I'm not saying this is the norm. Anything in exccess in SL can be bad. Even private homes.

There is a corelation between lag and camping devices, clubs, and certain types of vendors in mall-like environs. One of the biggest texture dealers in SL recognises this and distributes a free "shop at home" vendor to ease the lag of thier store. (Hundreds of textures all in one small area is hard on most client-side PCs).

The "popularity" numbers are meaning less and less these days. Personally, if I see a traffic number over 15k, I usually avoid the place. Number that high usually mean laggy area. Wether from all the people, or otherwise, I don't want to deal with that much lag.

I look at the "Popular List" as more of a list of places to avoid.

~Jessy

Talk to shaft jackson over at South I.He knows all about paying objects AKA dance pads etc........He had a time which the game was crashing left and right and had tons of problems.........Put up a sign in your place saying "PLEASE HOP ON AND OFF" to make sure you get the funds...ANd You are not respoibities for left avies on the chairs if AFK"

everyone has said about everything...

people camp at their own risk in my opinion. its not like you have a sign that says they are garanteed anything.. also I had a friend that got all these dance pads and when the sim crashed and reset, people would just come and collect the money and the campers didnt get anything. it was a bad bug in that script but the club owner had no idea until after she bought them

popular list seems like more of an ego thing to me, though it increases the cost of their rentals and malls when they can say "you should rent/gamble/buy/ect here because we have very very high traffic" (even though most of the traffic isnt increasing commerce on that end.

as far as the fake camping chairs... well, I don't see it as mean... in fact.. for a few weeks, we had a box at my store that said you "could" win 300l once the person sat on the box, it gave them a long notecard to read at the end of which it said your friends have been laughing at you. while the victim was reading the notecard, they were placed in a very awkward position. most never realized.. so we would snap pictures and send it to them. I also sent them a polo shirt I give out as a freebie to ease their pain. hopefully they got a chuckle. I do know, they brought their friends and the joke went on and on. it was a good time. no one ever wrote me about how pissed they were though I got a few im's about how funny it was. after awhile the joke got old and took up alot of prims, but it was worth it for that time. got more new traffic from people bringing their friends to propogate the joke.. it was truly punk rock and soo funny

my neighbors land is listed in some noob list as a place that has a money tree.. though he doesnt have one and the land is his private home. he built a stump with and axe that read the tree is dead and gave a notecard that basically said this is a private home, you're welcome to visit, say hi and don't be rude, but there is and never will be free money here.

I think too many people take money waaay to seriously, when a really good day of camping might equal to about 1 USD :~/
theres so much more to do and see in sl that making a dollar a day hardly seems worth it