My Sister is Scum, and not allowed to shop

Sent one of my sisters (alts) out to shop, so that I don't get distracted with IMs last night, and was using Xstreet, then following up with an inworld store visit to preview prefabs. She was not able to gain access to two places....which incidentally had the most likely choices for the final purchase.

Message says..."You do not have proper payment status to enter this region." And verified that land is checked to not allow for NPIOF, so it wasn't a matter of the store being set in the adult continent, and these were prefabs, not adult content items.

She would not be making the final purchase....I would....but she most certainly would be doing the legwork and hours of previewing. They lost a sale, and many more, because I was going to use the prefab as a display home for product to customers, and the free advertising doesn't get much better than that. Pretty sure I know what the reasoning behind it is.....but if you add up all the NPIOFs that are alts, or people who do not need to purchase lindens....seems like it's shooting yourself in the foot, big time. Not to mention, it was a wee bit insulting.

Does this happen often? Or were these isolated cases that apply only to prefab stores or stores with higher end sale prices? Do you think that the store owners have a clue that people who are NPIOF make large purchases? or in the least, send a NPIOF to preview?

Is the reasoning behind it....that NPIOFs don't have lindens and aren't worth fooling with? Is it used to cut down on some kind of hassles or abuse? Like what?

Stupidity. I'd IM the owner and ask why. Then I'd spread their name as far and wide as I could, and tell everyone I can to not patronize them.

I don't really see a reason why anyone wd do that. I had a customer the other day that left TF about 2.5k poorer on an eyelash spree... she NPIOF- glad I didn't have those settings!

Agreed, for a business to self-impose limitations is like committing suicide! One only has to look at the number of businesses struggling on Zindra and adult rated sims to know that the vast majority of SL users are still NPIOF and not age verified nor PIOF.

I know several businesses who prevent NPIOF entries, out of fear for Copybotting.

I've only encountered one such store, and I'm willing to bet it's the same one you went to. I went to shop there with an alt, too.

It didn't bother me too much, since I have PIOF alts, but I'm not sure what the reasoning for blocking NPIOF residents from the shop is.

I know that theft is a legitimate problem, but it is a fact of SL. Of all the NPOIF's out there, I'd love to see the number of thieves as opposed to regular people who would otherwise be spending money in your shop. Just because they haven't given LL their info, which truthfully isn't such a bad choice, it doesn't nean they aren't spending money.

I'd say the odds are with you, sometimes you have to just roll the dice.

It's content theft paranoia that does this, I know of one business owner on the blogrum who sets parcel settings this way, completely oblivious to the fact that you don't need to be piof to shop on Xstreet.

It's not seeing the forest for the trees.

I sent notes, just saying they had lost a sale, but have not heard back. I had forgotten about the copying issue. But no sense in continually writing off sales in advance of something that may or may not happen. If they truly did have something stolen, then they could get it back on sales to NPIOF. No numbers to speculate with....but there's also the bad PR thing going on, as well....which might have more of a negative impact than copying (which may or may not happen)....PR is sure to happen.

Yes but if nobody is seeing the forest, does it actually exist at that time?

Exactly. RL stores factor in theft, both from customers and employees as a matter of routine. People like this are just being shortsighted and paranoid, with a little arrogance thrown in for good measure. Please, send me a not with the name of this shop. I 'd love for it to be one that I patronize so I can send them another loss of sale missive.

It depends on where their draw distance is set.

I know someone with a very old, poor, slow laptop that barely 'gets' SL. Things rez poorly, or not at all. She loves SL vehicles and is always driving or flying, something. She routinely ends up at the bottom of some body of water or other; because she never saw it, it hadn't rezzed. Still, there she is, at the bottom. Therefore, yes, it exists even if you can't see it.

Let me give them a day to respond...maybe they just don't have a clue. If it's a snotty response - you'll get a name.

I agree...i can't be bothered getting my pants in a twist about copybotters.....what will be, will be. Most of my customers are NPIOF anyway (Avatar related products)...i'd only be hurting myself.

I've never seen this, and yes, it is moronic. I did see something yesterday that compares, though. I was a nice clothing shop (on a hunt, BTW) and I saw a message in chat that came from some sort of scripted object just inside the store. It was directed at another resident (whom I didn't know) who entered the store at the same time I did. It said something to the effect of "Resident's Name, your age is not sufficient for you to gain entry to this store." I checked real quick, and it was a PG sim, so it oculdn't have been anything to do with Adult Verification. So I looked at the av's profile and he was a total noob, day 0. It made no sense at all to me, but now I'm guessing this is also some sort of copybot protection measure. But how effective is this gonna be?

If its prefabs (Roman, middle eastern, medieval)....i probably know who it is. I have spoken to her many times about it i.e harming her own sales. She has however had her stuff copybotted on numerous occasions.....i still encounter some of her builds on my travels that have now been adapted and with different Creator names.

Except for the laptop, that sounds a lot like me.

Naz - I would think that if you were selling skin or shapes, that would be just plain stupid. But going farther....clothing, land, homes, accessories.....a lot of that happens in the first 30 days....I see it every time I check someone's profile, who purchased something. These are not alts, either. They generally need skin, shapes, clothing, land and a home, before they get to my place...so if they get to my place in the first 30 days...someone's missing the boat, if they have their land set to count for the age thing, too.

Yes, there's a script that you can ban people coming onto your lands depending on their age....which you can manually set within the script. I gave it to my residents, but that was a big mistake.....as it wasn't confined to their parcel only! It ended preventing people access on neighbouring plots. We had to withdraw those....was too much of a headache.

Maybe they had a spate of griefing. I have known people to turn on the NPIOF restriction after determined griefing because it keeps them from being griefed by a slew of throw away alts. Usually a griefer will not go through the bother of putting payment info on file.

Well, I feel this. At the club I work at, we had/have a determined griefer who has crashed our sim(s) dozens of time over the past year and a half, by overloading it with scripts. We knew who he was, but we've also seen him with a zillion alts. We've moved 3 times to get away from him. We don't dare ban him, because it just p1sses him off. We've got an island sim now, and that helps a lot.

this I think, more than copybotting... but you'd think if someone needed to do this, they'd at least put up an explanation sign.

on the thought of NPIOF vs copybot reseller, you are actually making it easier for the copier to get away with what they are doing, not harder. it reduces your exposure, and therefore you brand recognition, allowing the reseller to have longer to collect on your work before someone notices it.

It's stupid because there's no reason for someone to use the NPIOF alt when they're ripping stuff from the store, it's only when they want to re-import it that they need to use the disposable account.

Slightly off topic, but a similar Catch-22 situation:

I found myself interested in a large roadside chunk of mainland for sale (not in Zindra) but for some unknown reason the land was set for age verified. I thought I was already age verified, but it wouldn't let me in. When I followed the link to become age verified there was no day 3 of the month to select. I checked every month. I became a bit paranoid about it -- not that I care or really need to be age verified.

So everyone born on the third day of the month is SLOL? Needless to say I didn't purchase the land.

[Update: Day 3 is now present. I went and checked. But it *wasn't* present then!]