SL Boutique

I have been examing the SL Boutique web page ( http://www.slboutique.com ) run by the Electric Sheep Company. It appears to be an easy out-of-game way to shop which makes me eager to sign up; but I am also somewhat leery.

Can someone please shed light on 3 questions I have?
(1) Is Electric Sheep Company/SL Boutique owned by Linden Labs or a separate entitiy?
(2) When you REGISTER with SL Boutique, do you use your regular SL name and password, i.e. the same ones you use each time you sign into SL?
(3) When you purchase something at the SL Boutique web page, is the purchase you make delivered into your INVENTORY, or do you take delivery some other way?

Even though I have been a SL resident since November, I still seem to be full of newbie uncertainties and questions. Any answers gratefully received!

1) No, they aren't the same entity.

2) You use the same SL name, but you should use a different password.

3) It goes into your inventory when SL is stable and running properly. It works by having rezzed vendors to send your items to you. Do NOT set yourself busy while shopping and make sure that you haven't had your IM's cap.

I've been using them for a while and usually, they resolve issues within a week. Proof they aren't LL

ESC and SLB are very reputable, I might add.

P2

Linden Labs and SL Boutique are two different entities, SLB just happens to rely on SL for its business.

The way the sign-up process works is you first "register" in world, then you assign an email and password on the site, but never use the same password you have for SL on any third-party site, ever.

It's delivered different from simply buying (you pay and it's automatically in your inventory), but the same way any vendor works in world: you'll get a little notice saying so and so would like to offer you this and that, with the "Accept", "Decline" and "Mute" buttons.

When I was new I frequently used SLB and SLex, but since then both sites have become overcrowded and I find it near impossible to still find anything and you can find the same items in-world cheaper due to the commision.

One suggestion I would give is that you simply e-mail them with those questions and see how long it takes them to get back to you. If their customer service is helpful with those questions/concerns (another good question would be "What is your policy on refunds if the purchased item doesn't get delivered because that resident's vendor no longer exists?" then they'll be helpful when you encouter a potential problem as well.

SL Boutique is a company owned by Players - other residents of SL. It is not part of Linden Lab. There is a similar, seperate company called SL Exchange, with similar services.

Merchants who sell through SL Boutique are independant contractors. Each is a subscriber to SL Boutique's services, who used SL Boutique as a means for doing business. Think of SL Boutique as being the owner of a large mall, while the merchants are the individual stores in that mall.

You must use your SL account name to register with SL Boutique, so it knows who to deliver your purchases to in-world. But definitely use a different password! The registration process involves signing up on the website and then having the avatar in-world interact once with a SL Boutique ATM, to verify identity without exposing your SL password.

I sell through SL Boutique. I have a 1-prim vendor that I have to keep rezzed somewhere in-world, to enable product delivery. As long as that vendor prim is rezzed, any purchases you make from me will get delivered to you anywhere in-world, as an inventory transfer. It looks very similar to when someone drops an inventory item on your profile to give it to you. So you buy on the web, then in-world you accept the item transfer, and it goes to your inventory.

Like any other in-world inventory transfer, sometimes SL may glitch and have problems making the transfer. SLB keeps detailed records for the merchant of who bought what, and when. If delivery ever fails because of server load or other SL glitches, a merchant can always tell that you really did make the purchase. Most of us are pretty good about replacing a failed transfer.

SLB also allows you to designate another avatar as the one to receive the merchandise. That alows you to give any SLB merchant item as a gift, regardless of transfer permissions. It goes straight to the recipient that you designate, and they must accept it in-world.

You add cash to your SLB account via L$ transfers from an SLB ATM in-world. I am not sure if you can add cash to your SLB account by any other means, such as PayPal or a credit card.

SLB used to charge merchants a small commission, about 10% of sale price, on each sale. They no longer take part of merchant profits, as they are supported now by ad revenue from their website.

As Ceera Murakami pointed out, commissions are gone.

They may be residents by the sole fact that they logi in and have accounts but I'd hardly consider them players as their entire purpose in SL has been to sell out to whatever corporate wants a presence in SL and has the cash to pay them to build and PR spin a place for them and to say/think that they have any other use in/to SL is niave.

Edit:: If for no other reason than I'm using a specific definition of resident and player I know this will be an inflammatory post (not trolling just inflammatory) and that definitions of both player and resident vary from user to user.


Edit 2: These comments don't apply to real world sheep who are quite nice farm animals and my apologies to any real world sheep enthusiasts who may be offended by the above post.

FlipperPA has a sticky in this forum for new players, plus he's created stuff like SLTrivia. I wouldn't say their entire purpose in SL is to sellout to corporations. You sound bitter, are you jealous of them?

I'm jealous of very few people in SL and they aren't one of them... unfortunately due to LL's forum rules I can't list the ones I am jealous of though the queen of Dreamland is a hint of who one of them is and I have unfortunately neither the time nor the capital to build up what she's done.

Pegasus, that's a really rude thing to say, and wholly uncalled for. The staff of ES is comprised of many people who have been incredibly active participants of SL since its earliest days - likely long before you'd ever even heard of SL. In fact, if you're a recent arrival, chances are good that you heard of Second Life in the first place because of one of their projects, or the projects of similar developers. If you don't like the fact that many people have turned SL into a career you're certainly entitled to your opinion, and free to not visit the in world sites of their clients or give your patronage to their projects. They are as much residents and particpants in SL as anyone, and also damn nice, talented folks. SL is big enough for everyone and if you can't live and let live you might be best served by keeping your insults to yourself.

Actually your making a very big and wholly incorrect assumption, first that this is my main account, it isn't it's the one I use when I'm on a public computer so I don't have to use my main password, and secondly that I'm new here actually my main account has been around since before Electric Sheep existed... also criticizing a company can hardly be considered rude and your wrong to think that I am criticizing the people themselves outside of their roles as sheep though I can see how my above post could make it seem that way. Outside of their roles as ES employees they have definitely done many great things including several ES employees being part of the Secondcast podcast which I used to listen to religiously until it recently degraded to spending most of it's time announcing and promoting their ES projects (one of the reasons though not the only reason why I don't like ES)... so I apologize if you interpreted my above post as a personal attack on the people it isn't.

You were very clearly attacking the people, not just the company in general. Besides, how does it make any sense to attack a company as "sellouts?" Isn't the purpose of a company to make money?

Interesting - apparently this Pegasus post has entirely disappeared.

How does that happen?

coco

bj, i have been using both slexchange AND slboutique since about may of last year. both are great. if you are looking for something specific, their search functions certainly are better than the search in sl.

and i have NEVER had a problem. even when sl itself has screwed up and my purchases never made it to my inventory, the sellers on those sites have been more than happy to re-send my purchases.

I deleted them since I didn't want to get into a flame war and this isn't the place (as people noted above) to get into discussions about the Electric Sheep company and even less so the place for me to put forth my opinion on them.

I deleted mine too, Pegasus

I have bought from both SLBoutique and SLExchange with no problems.

I sell my clothing designs on both. I have had no issues with this either.

My observation is that both are very crowded with products and this makes it hard to be noticed (and also to find what you want)

IMO the SLBoutique search functionality is the weaker of the two sites.

As has been noted SLBoutique charges no commission. SLExchange charges 5%.


So bottom line go ahead and use the sites. Odds are you'll be fine.

Woah - I didn't know you could do that!

Learn something new every day!

coco

If SLBoutique's search was better I'd probably use it exclusively. Sellers pay zero commission, and their UI is a fair amount nicer.

Something I wish BOTH SLExchange and SLBoutique had was a way to search for items by seller. The way it works now on both sites is you have to successfully locate an item that the seller makes by doing a product search, and then click the link to see more things by the same person. Would be great if they just added a 'search by seller' thing on the front page.

Thank you to everyone who answered my questions so informatively. I know how things work now and feel confident about registering and shopping at SL Boutique. Whoa! Now I can shop while at work in RL!

What I do is enter the seller's name in the search. SLB will bring up the items by that person if there is only one person with that name, or items related to the name. SLX will bring up a link to the seller and items that are related to the words in the search. Like Raudf Fox will bring up a link to me, or items that are Fox related.

While on the subject of SLboutique and SLexchange, I was wondering which site has better products. Are they all the same? Which site has better prices? I started out trying to use SLboutique but I had problems with it; perhaps because of a browser problem. I have thoroughly enjoyed shopping at http://www.slexchange.com Whenever I have a problem and an item is "lost in the mail" the administrators will send another copy for me. SLexchange sure could use some more skin designers though.

From the seller's perspective, SLBoutique seems most attractive because there's no commission. However, SLExchange appears to have many more items available, and seems to get more business.

Prices are identical between sites. That is, if a seller lists something on both sites, you, the consumer, will pay exactly the same at each site- as well as if you track the seller down in world and buy from her/his shop. The seller COULD charge more when listing at those sites, but I've never seen it happen.

There are some sellers who will only list things at one of the two sites. Some sellers go with SLB because of there's no commission (even when there was commission, it was still lower than SLX), and some only use SLX because it's bigger.

Personally I always go to SLX first because you can do Google-style searches to narrow the results. For example, "+bear +poofer" will only return items with both of those words in their description.

Damnit.



Double damn.

I find the SLB site more pleasant to use and faster, but there are two annoyances: one is that if you want to browse through recent items, you'll get entire pages of the same item in different colours. Spring Frock in Burgundy ... Spring Frock in Azure ... Spring Frock in Gamboge ... enough already! The other is that if you search for a specific item and start paging through the results, after you get alittle way back the pages start repeating.