A Heartfelt Welcome!

When recently shopping in SL, as I do, I was surprised by the lack of friendlyness in some SL shops. I happended to drop into Damiani Fashion Design. Man, those guys must have made really bad experiences, that every arriving potential customer is a threat. The official greating in the blue box is:

"Welcome to Damiani.In respect of other content creators we do inspect you.We do not tolerate content Theft of any kind.No nudity is allowed on the sim except in the dressing rooms found central of the main Skin Hall.No Antinspect allowed and no violence.Please Report us inventory offers of any Kind made to you.Skins and Shapes are no transfer,try demos before purchase as we do not refund. Your Damiani Team"

If you then proceed to accept one of their notecards, you get the following:

"-Damiani Policy
you purchase the right to use these skins but you are not allowed to alter any texures, you are not allowed to use any tools or software to save any textures of a Damiani skin to your harddrive.You are not allowed to distribute any of our work to other residents.
All skins are no Transfer,no exceptions
No Damiani Skin is sold outside of Damaini
The Skins are copy and modify,you may modify the tone using SL appearence, this does NOT mean you can copy a skin to your Harddrive to modify it ( from Linden Lab-The penalties for copyright infringement under U.S. law include damages in amounts up to $30,000.00 USD per work and in cases of willful infringement up to $150,000.00 USD per work.)
Damiani Skins are made only by KaoZ Koba and Pompeja Rossini. and only sold by these
-We keep all Transactions so we know at anytime who has purchased a Damiani Skin.save your Transaction to a notecard or Harddrive as we refund lost purchases to those that prove us to have bought a Damiani Skin-"

I do appreciate that there are losses in business in SL due to content theft. However, reading these notices, makes me wonder, if I am allowed to wear the purchased skins???

If they are that pissed off with their customers, why bother doing business at all?

Tipping shops!

It is a mystery to me how some things in SL just take on their own dynamics. Just think talking preggers bellies, spankers creating chat lines, F-button crazes etc. and we all think nothing about it.

One thing I recently noticed (it has probably been around for a long time, but I never paid any attention) are tip jars in shops. I do accept that SL is a weird and wonderful world and it is good that not all RL rules apply to it. After all, that is why we joined this nut house, isn't it? However, some rules still do apply for me. Especially when it comes to L$. Since I buy them with real money, I tend to spend them like real money. It never occurred to me, to walk into a shop and tip the owner of the shop, just for having a shop. I find this particularly irritating, when the goods are of minor quality (not to say, they are absolute crap).

I love the creativity of SL and am for supporting great creative minds for what they are offering our community in SL. Some shop owners do a fantastic job in supplying not only a shop but also a mood, an atmosphere, an experience and they deserve our gratitude.

All you other shop owners, please answer me this question: Why, oh why, would I tip you for having a shop, that gives me things in exchange for money??? I really don't get it....

Blog picture!

I would like to thank my best SL friend Berta Lilliehook, for creating this great picture of me, representing this blog. Thanks hun! She does the most amazing pictures, tying RL and SL images together. Check out her Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bertalilliehook/

Welcome

This is my first blog, so please bear with me. I have come across some great blogs about SL over the months/years. However, very few made me wish to leave a comment until recently.

I read an article about a couple in SL, who frequently upset other members of SL with threats and bullying. I felt the need to start my own blog to give those people a voice who have been bullied and who wish to speak out and warn others about what happened to them. Furthermore to threatening, they also cheated people out of money. So the other intention of this blog is to create a 'buyers beware' opportunity for everybody. And since we don't just want to complain, I'd like to publish names and shops that offer the opposite: nice people, great customer service and friendly support!

I hope this blog will find some takers and interest at least some of you.

If you have any comments, ideas, or would like to raise my attention to something that happened to you, please send me a message to cogarninetails@ymail.com. I am looking forward to them.