"Brace yourself, my dear wallet! There's always another Sale - and Glitches!"
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I really love that pumpkin head figure that zips up to the top of the page when you start scrolling down. Kudos to the web page designer on that one! First time it happened it sure caught my attention! (If the store worked as well as some of their graphic design antics...)
Matty's store seems to be working, reproted RawArt's.
Amen! I don't know whether they have a refund policy or not, but in my opinion, every aspect of using their site and buying from their store is user-hostile.
As a new user, I had a problem with a Redz product I bought. I went for tech support, and the only option was site-mail to the vendor. So I tried that—and got an error message that as a new user I wouldn't be allowed to send site mail for 30 days.
I might go to Rendo to look if I get an email that says 50% to 70% off, but anything less just isn't worth the aggravation involved in merely browsing their store.
Interesting... haven't dealt with any sort of problem resolution on Rendo yet, but I am having an issue with one of the materials in one of RedStudioz hair packs that i have been meaning to write in about... That said, I was able to get some support for something I bought on Daz by contacting the rep through their account on rendo... which i wasn't able to figure out how to do on Daz.
Hivewire has potential, but doesn't seem to have a lot of content that matches my current needs... also sorting options are very limited... and the sidebar layout has to go!
My list so far:
- ability to have comments / discussions on product pages
- none of this sale orientated model, just steady reasonable prices
- if you have sales, list the prices in an easy to read fashion, cart juggling is not an ok form of figuring out if something is on sale.
- related to above, respect for customer time.
- good usability for sorting and filtering search results
- things not working perfectly in the store should be a rare event, not the normal.
- high standards for submission acceptance
- an easy return policy
- freedom for creators to publish content as they want, not limiting customers to "x" choices every day.
Daz hits a few of the good points, but it the worst offender for some of the others.
The sales model seems to be more of an example of learning the wrong lessons from the past, and carrying forward with lower quality, if not outright incorrect, knowledge. If prices are too high, and you have a big sale... people buy! Then prices return, and people stop buying... so you run another big sale... and it works again... woot! Problem is... people stop buying entirely until there is a sale. Heck... From what i've read in the forums, most senior members don't buy anything until it gets a 75%+ discount... or never goes on sale and finally does.
After a while, you get this shit show where you have to check the store every day, if not 2-3 times to see if something you want is worth buying yet... and what started out as a motivator to drive up some business turns into the biggest motivator not to buy something... Further, Daz now has to deal with the history of their sales... as people will want refunds - and Daz only wants to give those to people who catch them... so you need to make sure not to put things on sale that were hot in the last 30 days and play other games to avoid losing prior revenue... It seems to be a cluster**ck of hell for everyone involved... and it doesn't appear that anyone is winning from this formula when you take all the time into account.
On top of all of that... it leaves new users like me with a bad taste in their mouths. I made a bunch of purchases when I first started for full price not knowing any better... After a few weeks, you start getting a better feel for the sales... and realize that you overpaid... and that is a very close cousin to feeling ripped off. Then you learn about the browser add-on, and your wallet closes shut until the right sale. Doesn't seem like a very friendly way to introduce new customers into the family.
This leads to more and more people getting the add-on, and even less people buying when there isn't a super sale. What do you do? Stack discounts so that external monitors can't see them... and force your customers to waste even more time juggling items in the cart... and make it even harder for them to find out if they deserve some price protection credit. Even better, do the updates manually one at a time live, so that you can get a good 30-60 minutes where your store may as well be turned off because half the prices are wrong. Bonus points for changing the banner at the start of the update, but not changing the page it links to until about half way through the update... cause people really love sitting there pushing refresh.
What makes you think people don't buy when there isn't a super sale? I mean, are you simply going by what long-term hard-core forum users say?
ETA: I mean, if you look at what's Trending or Popular, it's clear some stuff is selling steadily even without any discount other than the basic PC+.
They do, they just buy a lot less or the main model wouldn't have trended to sale all day every day.
Beg pardon? I see nothing on those lists that hasn't been on sale very recently.
We know from what has been said over the years that the majority of customers don't use the forums so what is said here is little indication of what is actually going on.
If you have a problem with a product bought at Daz you contact support they are the ones that deal with product problems that is what the vendors 'pay' them for.
To contact support Go to Help at the top of the page, and then Contact us then Submit a help ticket and fill the form in choosing which department you want to contact.
It's true the Monday after a catch-up sale isn't the best time to check that. Still, I was thinking of people who can, say, expense their purchases, who don't need to worry about sales. I don't know if we really have a good idea of the makeup of Daz's main userbase, although I guess it's safe to say that enough of them are those who _enjoy_ shopping itself. I think part of the divide here is that some people like spending hours on a shopping trip and some people want to get IN and OUT as fast as possible.
That's a good point, there could be a lot of professionals not bothering with sales.
And if there are, then this is a great thing for Daz because they can sell to those pros at a higher price at any time, and on special occasions still sell to those of us who like deeper discounts.
and it doesn't appear that anyone is winning from this formula when you take all the time into account.
That handlebar mustache says it all. This man is on point.
I think the Daz shopper is broken into three (or more camps)
Pros, Intermediate and Beginners.
And there are business people, hobbyists and collectors.
Remember that stuff because THAT is I think drives the engine.
First, I will cede to your observations that new users/customers/beginners NEED a DAZ SURVIVAL GUIDE.
Somebody (maybe me someday soon) should write a pdf guide that explains how it works so the new user isn't left shaken after realizing they've been doing it wrong.
I too, wrote a similar HUGE ARTICLE detailing all the new shopper woes and pitfalls and most forum heads --
basically said I agree, but in time you learn and everything much was pretty much- very thin excuses.
These groups remain flexible and sometimes people slip from one to the other......
Pros/business people: Buy at WHATEVER price based on current NEED. They eat any costs depending on what they are hired to do.
Intermediate/hobbyists: Buy ALMOST everything that's on sale, thinking they'll use it someday and have SOME commercial return on their investment. Spend thousands --> make hundreds is okay.
Beginner: Dives into the hobby and is super excited just to be rendering and BUYS what they want and not need.NEEDS become a FORCED PURCHASE as they learn what's needed to get the most out of their DAZ purchases.
They learn the hard way about generational incompatibility-clothes. Morphs and REQUIRED PRODUCTS. HAIR and HEELS issues..Backgrounds, HDRI, domes, BLACK RENDERS...cameras in walls, render-ground-
3Delight verse iray, render times, render settings,post work, the (sometimes) misleading promo images. The holes in product offerings. AND also the good.
The Platinum Club. Probably THE MOST IMPORTANT PURCHASE once you realize you're really into this.
The rendering-rewards of creating! The community and ultra-helpful forum, their tech support and generous instant-return policy. SUPER-HELPFUL mods, quality of products. And once you've made a few KEY purchase s(auto-fit, shaders, morphs, faceGen, Pose-helpers etc) you mileage now doubles or triples.
collectors: This group is last on the list as it's basically composed of all the others. People that want to build a LIBRARY so that they can render anything. Anything.
Sure, there's a someday, but honestly, it's saved me so many times to have those weird items in your content library. So many times, I pop on here and search the store for an item I need and see that I already bought it some time ago, while it was on sale. Yay. That's when ANYTHING that drops to a certain % is a worthy investment. Some realize they'll be doing this for YEARS TO COME and everything is an enjoyable investment.
These people or those people are HAVING FUN with EVERY aspect of the 3D Daz/shopping experience.
If you do book-covers, you need every beach, sky,dreamy-fantasy,skin morph, figure-driven product.
If you do comics (me) you need all their action products...
Science Fiction, Science Fantasy...
Game Assets....
Pure Digital Artists....
Reference for other mediums....
Story boards...
There are so many users doing so many different things....
Almost impossible to cater to them all and get it right...
So there's a little bit of everything as ATI said.
A PRO doesn't have time to juggle or wait, so they use the PC+ discount and shop as they need.
An intermediate has a HUGE WISHLIST and checks that 'show me wish listed items only' and worries about that.
A collector is here at Daz midnight (when the server rolls over) and starts there....Checks Fastgrab and snatches a break.
Pure artists might use the gallery for inspiration and see directions they can go and hunt down 'used items' from the images...
Collectors and community members lead each other into sales and discover gems and also inspire sales...
Vendors become celebrities as their work rises above the norm- and you have favorites and love a chance to interact with them.
-------------------
It all adds up to The Daz Experience, but I do wish there was way to fix the growing pains and early hurdles.
It took me a long time to let go my early miseries.
Having run a few forums over the years... not sure that I would agree with that. I would agree that only a small % post, but I'd be willing to bet that a solid percentage of customers lurk semi-regularily.... especially since Daz won't give us commenting on products directly.
Luckily the PC+ was in my first cart... and I have renewed once already... but paying ~$30 some US dollars each for Vic & Mike 7 only to see them on sale for ~$10 just days later hurt... especially when I didn't know of the indirect 30 days of price protection.
Love the breakdown avxp! I can relate... mostly to intermediate now, though the pro decisions are coming into play more (Is $4 worth the BS?)... I fully appreciate the different audiences, and the use cases in how they shop... I just can't see how anyone but shopping addicts could enjoy what this "another glitchy sale" model has turned into. If they were at least able to execute them without doing it wrong every single day, perhaps there would be less anger towards it... but at this point, people are so irrirated that they're questioning how the person responsible hasn't been fired... that says a lot.
I am able to expense these purchases, but expenses are just a small tax break... and that makes no difference to still wanting to get the most out of each dollar. If anything, as a new small business owner, being frugal is even more important for being able to survive as you likely need to buy more assets than a hobbyist, and there is an opportunity cost to waiting.
By 'expense' I meant 'submit an expense report to the person paying you'. :-) The staff at Daz has declared repeatedly that the forums do not represent the general userbase very accurately; I don't think they have any reason to be deceptive there. As for questioning why somebody hasn't been fired... I'm not sure that's meaningful. Irate and entitled shoppers often call for some poor clerk's termination based on a single unsatisfactory interaction; it's a pretty common response for somebody angry about their experience as a consumer. But it doesn't mean lots of people ARE angry. After all, most of these glitches are only visible in the middle of the night.
Hehe, did you really think that last thought through. Trust me, global market place gets a whole new meaning then
I don't imagine the Tech-Sales-Guy is a slob munching on an doughnut and slobbering power-aide drinks onto his too-tight-stained-yellowing-nerdGEEKie-tee.
I imagine he/she is probably as competent a tech as ever, wearing a pin-striped shirt or golf shirt, loafers or keds and is dealing with A VERY ACTIVE sales engine and juggling all the tech support issues at once.
And it seems Daz is completely tied together. One thing glitches, everythiung glitches, Site, forum sales etc...must be a handful.
This PA month-long-sale has obviously been a beast to set up and run. There was a huge spike in problems.
Usually the sales are the same every day and pretty much glitch-free. One or two small concerns...
It's the more confusing multi-tiered campaigns that cause problems.
And those also used to be errors or versights that gave GREAT DISCOUNTS.
Every so often you'd get an item on sale in two places at once, with huge benefits for your cart and it's a feeding frenzy of buying. Yay for the buyer!
......not so much anymore....
I think this will get ironed out.
Must be confusing for the new people.
The vets know to drool at the new ads, but wait till later to pull the trigger AND if you see something that looks too great to be true JUMP ON IT!!!!!!
lol
Don't post a comment on the forum, do not submit a ticket, do not call a friend.
ADD TO CART/PROCEED TO CHECKOUT
So, I wonder what will the name of the new thread be, as we are fast approaching 100 pages...
Hopefully something easier to follow.
Going to have to be as wild or wilder than "Brace yourself!" That's been a fun one!
I did actually! I know both PAs and customers are from all over. But I considered the likely demographics of the entire customer base and decided to stick with it! Yeah!
I propose, re thread-title, "GITCHER FRESH HOT SALES AND GLITCHES!"
I check out the new items every morning, put what I want but don't absolutly have to have right now in my wish list and Arti's email lets me know when it's at a price I'm willing to pay for it. Very little time waisted.
here in Australia, we don't have 1c or 2c coins any more - they phased them out quite a few years back. So our smallest coin is a 5c piece. However, prices for ANYTHING still end in .99 - like, $3.99 for example. And there is no way at all of giving correct change for something like that. So, everything is rounded up or down at the checkpoint. (If something comes to $29.97, you pay a full $30 with no change back). It used to bug me cos it made no sense. Until I found out the psychology behind it - for some reason, people STILL think $4.99 is CHEAPER than $5. Even tho we haven't had 1c and 2c coins since 1992 - 25 years!!!!! a quarter of a century!!! - it still feels like $69.99 is a BETTER deal than $70...even tho that $70 is what you are actually paying.
I think I'm burnt out on the PA Sale... couldn't find a single thing I "just have to have" today. I'm just not big on the whole Halloween themed stuff, or horror, demons, monsters, and so on. I'm probably going to be bored for the next week or two. However long it takes for the PC Anninversary sale to start. I sure hope they do the "Build Your Own Bundle" thing with PC+ items like they did last year. That was fun. And I know I spent more because of it.
LOL love reading everyones comments on "their" experiences/wants/needs as if it applied to eveyone. I don't have any issue with glitches. I have gotten some of my best deals because of them and have found Daz wants to fix things as soon as possible when reported, so when I have had an issue it does get fixed.
I do hobby work and commercial work and do buy items at full price when I need them
Other than the site loading slower than here, I buy over half my items there and have never had a issue, other than with a couple of vendors which got resolved by them.
I like this thread because I have learned a lot about shopping here. I don't post a whole lot here, because in reality there are certian times of the year I am so busy I just don't have the energy to do anything but just take a quick peak. I sort of catch-up in the winter. I am pretty darn sure I have missed some really good sales on stuff, but that is ok too because my budget just could not handle it. I have not gotten to the point of my hobby paying for itself yet.
When I first really started getting into and buying was not the same year I joined. I had a huge learning curve to figure things out and lots of buying mistakes. Sale glitches and cart jenga I think someone said once. Well....It has its headaches and even some in the past for me great buys. I don't get any sale notifications from Daz and just have not bothered to figure out why either. I am glad for Ati's web browser add-on and the email notifications. Thanks!
I wished there were lots of things Daz could do better on. It would make things way easier in the long run might even get them more patrons in my thinking. My partner said, It has only gotten harder for him to utilize DS and shop. I guess he started with Daz years ago on DS 3.0 something. Weird as it sounds I have helped him more in learning how to shop and use DS then he did me. I think I am starting to get the hang of it now. lol
Yep I'm over this sale. I'm just waiting for the PC one.
Well compared to how it was when the upgrade took place (2011 I think), the current problems are minor. And it took a good while before things were somewhat straightened out. That they subscribed to CloudFlare at the same time just complicated things more because of CloudFlare bugs/limitations back then. Many people said they wouldn't shop here anymore because of the problems. "Purchased" check broken and corrupted downloads were some of them, some of us wrote apps as workarounds for some of it.
BTW, there's currently checkout problems, maybe another Magento update?
since the change to magento (i always have to stop when i write that, it comes out 'magneto' to me), every single day has been glitches. Occasionally good glitches that we like HA , but every day something is wrong with discounts, prices and now....checkout problems.
I agree about the waste of time - if you don't have anything else to do it's fine, then you can save some money, but if you had used the same time to do some work and make money from that instead, and purchased at full price or at a low discount, the result would probably be the same, economically. And the vendors would probably earn more. Plus you have actually produced something = making the world richer.
Personally I'd prefer reasonable fixed prices instead of discounts, would save both buyers and sellers a lot of time and work. Sales and discounts also add to the price - the people who takes care of the sales, the developers of the software that's necessary etc. also need to be paid.
Speaking of glitches, anyone know if the coupon works with the bundles where there are free items yet? Daz does give me my $6.00 back when I email them, but I'd prefer to use the coupon when I buy the pack..
No. It's a known glitch that has been happening a long long LONG time and nothing said about if it will ever be fixed - or even if it can be fixed.