Greed in Stores

By Theonlyjohnny Resident

    Yes, I know greedy store owners are not a new thing, however some of them have gone above others and have reached almost the pinnacle of greed. These store owners have basically been using their customers, just to get more linden. Whether by a so called "discount group," selling upgrades, or through other means.

    One store, which I will not name, I have visited, has lots of avatars, weapons, and avatar accessories, for extremely high prices. These prices are so high, they will turn people away at the first sight of them. However, rather than lower the prices, the owner of the store simply made a group, and gave a 90% discount on everything in the store, to all group members. A lot of people would have been overjoyed, if it wasn't for one small problem. To join the group, it costs L$ 3000.


This is a problem for quite a few reasons, one of them being the fact that most people will only buy one or two items from a store, unless it's a well known store with low prices. This means that people would actually be paying more for the product, at this store, since the prices are too high, and it's not really well known, also only a few products, at this store are decent. The second problem being the cost to join the group isn't the only fee. There is also a L$ 1000 weekly fee to stay in the group. This would be ok, if it was going towards the store, which, not surprisingly, it isn't. In fact I doubt the owner of the store has spent any of it on the store, considering the fact that I have watched this store for a while now, to see if the prices go down, and after 2 months, there hasn't been a single change. It makes me wonder where all that linden is going, seeing as how the group is getting about 5 new members a day.

    Another store sells avatars, and clothing. Of course, these products use scripts and they do require upgrades every now and then. However, unlike most upgrades, which are free, these upgrades cost, for the first upgrade, the same amount as the product, and then the price is double the previous price, for each upgrade after the first. A lot of these upgrades shouldn't even cost anything, since most of them either just replace invisiprims with alphas, or they upgrade the coloring, slightly. If the upgrades added new parts to them, or added new buttons to the hud, that would be worth paying for. However these charge people a lot of linden, for a small thing that they could do themselves.

    I guess these people, and others like them, believe that everyone else is around, to provide them with linden. This is just a tip, you may want to do research about people before you buy from them. If it seems too good to be true, it most definitely is.

Theonlyjohnny Resident