Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Worst Experiences with Customers
Experience #2:
i know such questions as CH and DE, just make some aliases.
/mount /reply the pet has to grow before you can let it TRAIN to mount by a Creature Handler.
/name /reply you have to teach 4 different Commands to the droid/pet including the name. Example: "max store" after this, he knows his name... max.
thats a clear answer and nice... most time i execute these aliases ill get a "ah, Thanks!"
Neehivi wrote:i know such questions as CH and DE, just make some aliases.
/mount /reply the pet has to grow before you can let it TRAIN to mount by a Creature Handler.
/name /reply you have to teach 4 different Commands to the droid/pet including the name. Example: "max store" after this, he knows his name... max.thats a clear answer and nice... most time i execute these aliases ill get a "ah, Thanks!"
Macros ftw. Haven't had a use for them JUST yet so I'll write some when it's time to cross the bridge. One of my favourites was:
/r I tell ya, if I get ONE more complaint from an ignorant customer who doesn't know how to use their pet I will just scream. Some people are just so stupid that they don't realise that they have to get a CH to train it for them.
/pause 3
/r mt.
I was contacted by a person who wanted a Dewback, but said they were only a few hours old to the game, and only had 7k credits. I told them that I normally sell non-ch pets for 20k, and the normal whining/bugging commenced. I just happened to have a few CL10 templates on me, and decided to do my part in the help a noob program. I told him I'd sell the pet to him for 5k. He seemed happy, and we met up. I would have given him the pet, but he seemed pretty adamant to pay.
During our discussion a CH shows up and offeres to train the dewback. When the noob finds out that his new Dewback has to grow up before it can be mounted he asks the CH if they have a full grown one. They didn't, but had a kaadu they tamed last week and it is mountable. I told them both that I thought a kaadu was over CL10 and the CH told me I didn't know what I was talking about. The CH then offered to trade the Kaadu for the dewback I had made. The noob really wanted a mount now so he went ahead and traded the dewback. We he couldn't call it, the CH just used the starport to leave, and I suspect did the old /addignore to me and the noob. I ended up making a new dewback and giving the noob 20k just to make him feel better about the swg community (under the guise of trying to buy a mount from another CH), but it really left a bad taste with both him and me.
Adriaan wrote:
Well, in all of my mountable pet titles, I include that (In example, one of my titles would be Narglatch - Non CH - Mount Trainable).
Hehe, that's wrong on a lot of levels. But I'll let it go 
I think the "bad customer experiences" can be kind of categorized, and not surprisingly, most of them are independent of bio-engineering. I face many of the exact sameproblems as a tailor as I do as a BE:
a) accusations about "broken" pets
b) disputes over pets statistics vs expectations
c) orders that are never picked up
d) disputes over pricing
e) the obnoxious "is it done yet?" types
and of course the non-pet ones:
f) demands to make (free or otherwise) schematics
I think after a while you learn to manage most of these. (a) can get pretty ugly, like Adriaan said. It's generally just a matter of educating the customer, but in cases where the transaction happens annonymously through a vendor purchase, then you are "attacked" by the customer with all kinds of accusations and so forth, then at that point education becomes problematic. To be fair though, I've seen plenty of vendors selling "non-ch" huurtons and narglatchs for outlandish sums.
(b) can usually be managed pretty well by giving the customer approximate, and conservative estimates about statistics, then meeting or exceeding those, but sometimes they will pull some other criteria out ofthin airafter the fact(WHAT? only 10% resistance to stun? I just assumed it would be over 50%, it's completely useless to me now!!...this pet sucks!) which can be very frustrating.
(c) is also very frustrating when it happens, but generally just to make myself feel better about it, I ban the person from the store, put them on ignore, and put the pet that wasn't picked up on my vendor for at least 25% more than I was going to charge them for it. That way I can at least smile a little when the pet sells.
Most of the time (d) is handled before the pet is made, and it is quickly resolved. If they are unwilling to pay my price, and unwilling to barter, then they are free to go elsewhere. Occasionally though I've had cases where there are disputes *after* the pet is made. You agree to a price, the pet is made, and then they want to reneg on the deal for one reason or another ("oh, I'm sorry, I just bought a brand new set of composite and a new gun and I'm broke, would you accept less for it and help me out?", or "oops, I justquit ch, can you make me a non-ch pet instead?").
(e) really really annoys me, and I have very little tolerance for it. I generally give a conservative estimate for when a pet will be completed, but sometimes a customer will pester me relentlessly before the date that I give. My kind of "silent policy" on this is that each time the customer asks whether it's done before the time that I gave, it delays it by 1 more day. If I'm working on his pet when he asks, I'll move on to somebody else's pet and his goes to the end of the queue. Also I'll refuse to make custom pets for that person after the first occurance.
(f) usually this is resolved quickly and amicably by a simple "no" followed by me pointing them to a stocked vendor of another BE on my server. But occasionally it degenerates into a demand by the "customer" (is he really a customer if he's looking for a free schematic?), followed by a refusal by me, followed by a statement about his entitlement to one and an inquiry about why I am standing between him and his schematic, followed by an explanation by me of my right to refusal and my reasoning behind it, followed by some derogatory comments about myself and my mother, followed by me adding him to my ignore list and banning him from my store.
I should say though that good customer experiences probably outnumber bad ones by 20-1 or so. I believe it helps to excercise some good judgement when it comes to working with people. If someone starts babbling in l33t ("Can u be me a kimo plz m8, thx"), it's all over, and 99% of the time I won't even bother responding because I know it's going to be an uphill battle. Also if someone makes it real clear that they are in a huge hurry ("I really need a pet bad, how quickly could you make me a ..."), and start being pushy, again, it's over before it starts.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 03-22-2005 10:18 AM
FlyMoe wrote:
PlainWhiteSocks wrote:
I had an interesting "bad" experience lately.
I was contacted by a person who wanted a Dewback, but said they were only a few hours old to the game, and only had 7k credits. I told them that I normally sell non-ch pets for 20k, and the normal whining/bugging commenced. I just happened to have a few CL10 templates on me, and decided to do my part in the help a noob program. I told him I'd sell the pet to him for 5k. He seemed happy, and we met up. I would have given him the pet, but he seemed pretty adamant to pay.
During our discussion a CH shows up and offeres to train the dewback. When the noob finds out that his new Dewback has to grow up before it can be mounted he asks the CH if they have a full grown one. They didn't, but had a kaadu they tamed last week and it is mountable. I told them both that I thought a kaadu was over CL10 and the CH told me I didn't know what I was talking about. The CH then offered to trade the Kaadu for the dewback I had made. The noob really wanted a mount now so he went ahead and traded the dewback. We he couldn't call it, the CH just used the starport to leave, and I suspect did the old /addignore to me and the noob. I ended up making a new dewback and giving the noob 20k just to make him feel better about the swg community (under the guise of trying to buy a mount from another CH), but it really left a bad taste with both him and me.
Do you happen to know that CH's name that ripped off the noob? That's a huge pet peeve of mine. I can't stand it when someone takes advantage of someone new to the game. Anyway, if you happen to remember his name let me know. I'll ban his a$$ from my house so he can't use my vendor as well. If we get enough BE's to ban him, then he won't be able to find good pets or stims for a long time, especially since there's a shortage of BE's on Kauri.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
I think the "bad customer experiences" can be kind of categorized, and not surprisingly, most of them are independent of bio-engineering. I face many of the exact sameproblems as a tailor as I do as a BE:
a) accusations about "broken" pets
b) disputes over pets statistics vs expectations
c) orders that are never picked up
d) disputes over pricing
e) the obnoxious "is it done yet?" types
and of course the non-pet ones:
f) demands to make (free or otherwise) schematics
PlainWhiteSocks wrote:
I had an interesting "bad" experience lately.
I was contacted by a person who wanted a Dewback, but said they were only a few hours old to the game, and only had 7k credits. I told them that I normally sell non-ch pets for 20k, and the normal whining/bugging commenced. I just happened to have a few CL10 templates on me, and decided to do my part in the help a noob program. I told him I'd sell the pet to him for 5k. He seemed happy, and we met up. I would have given him the pet, but he seemed pretty adamant to pay.
During our discussion a CH shows up and offeres to train the dewback. When the noob finds out that his new Dewback has to grow up before it can be mounted he asks the CH if they have a full grown one. They didn't, but had a kaadu they tamed last week and it is mountable. I told them both that I thought a kaadu was over CL10 and the CH told me I didn't know what I was talking about. The CH then offered to trade the Kaadu for the dewback I had made. The noob really wanted a mount now so he went ahead and traded the dewback. We he couldn't call it, the CH just used the starport to leave, and I suspect did the old /addignore to me and the noob. I ended up making a new dewback and giving the noob 20k just to make him feel better about the swg community (under the guise of trying to buy a mount from another CH), but it really left a bad taste with both him and me.
Do you happen to know that CH's name that ripped off the noob? That's a huge pet peeve of mine. I can't stand it when someone takes advantage of someone new to the game. Anyway, if you happen to remember his name let me know. I'll ban his a$$ from my house so he can't use my vendor as well. If we get enough BE's to ban him, then he won't be able to find good pets or stims for a long time, especially since there's a shortage of BE's on Kauri.
I haven't had a bad experience in awhile. If you want to count this as a bad experience, maybe about 1 month ago I had just gotten buffed and was about to go hunting when some dude asked me to make him a Rancor. I told him I didn't have the DNA to make him a good rancor and that it would take me a day or two. He then told me it was just for decoration. I didn't want to make it for him, but since it was just for decoration I told him I would, since I only had to get some yard trash, which was no big deal. Anyway, I got the yard trash, went to my house, and made the Rancor. I sent him a tell, letting him know it was ready. Of course, he logged off and wasn't online. I sent him an email with the waypoint to my vendor and I let him know his rancor was in there. To this day, the Rancor is in my vendor. Pisses me off, since I took 10-15 minutes out of my hunting schedule to make it for him and he never picked it up. Needless to say if that guy asks me for something else, I'm going to /addignore him.
customer: "I can't tame it! It said I don't have the right skills"
me: "It's a bug... try it again and it will spawn"
customer: "aah yes... there he is"
When will the devs fix that ;P
When i sell a pet i always ask the customer if theyt realise that they are buyin a pet-deed from me that has to grown from the point you tame it to rule out any confusion after the buy. Had a guy once that spawn his cupa for the first time as a baby after i sold it to em and stated:
"Dude! Look at em! How am I goin to ride that! That would be pure cruelty!" ;P
I also had a Chef last week that made an order for several crates of tissues. I told him i had find the recourses, make the crates ect. The next day before i could get the crates out of my fact I got a mail that the deal was of and he found another BE to sell em the crates. Told the guy that that was the last time I made an order for him.
I grabbed some scrap DNA in my bag and whipped up a crappy template and then applied it to a Rancor skin. When I made the prototype, I named it "Rancor - CL10". Then I put it up on my non-CH pet vendor (I have 3 different pet vendors: non-CH, CL11-CL39 and one for CL40+) for sale for 900k. When I listed the item for sale I wrote in this for the seller's comments:
-----
"LET THE BUYER BEWARE!!!
It is impossible to make a CL10 Rancor, Kimogila or Grual (and many others too). Even if we could, it would be an aggressive creature which only a CH could handle.
I placed this pet on this vendor as a warning and a notice because I get a lot of requests for CL10 versions of these pets - it can not be done, sorry.
Krayts are not craftable at any level, nor can we sample their DNA.
Have a nice day!"
-----
I'll be interested to see I get any comments from people who see this, or if (heaven forbid) someone is dumb enough to actually buy it. I figure 900k is high enough that most people will read through the details to see what makes it special, but not too high to be obvious. The evil part of me actually wants someone to buy this and then complain because they can't tame it. I'm probably being too harsh.