Commando Archive
Thread: What have I done???
Ok, as I posted I finally reached master after 2 months of toiling as a novice tailor. Up until this point, my tailoring experience has mostly been wonderful. Polite, appreciative customers, great bazar sales, good sales in my vendor, a good amount of "free time" without answering tells etc etc. Life as a tailor has been good. The only downside at all has been that for the longest time, I'd get requests that I could not fulfill simply because I lacked colors or schematics.So it'll only get better as a master right? Well, so far, the answer is "no" it has been much worse.
I played for about 1 hour last night with my master tailor tag on, before changing it to "geneticist". I couldn't take it any more. The customers were SO RUDE, I wouldn't have believed it. I got several requests for training, which having paid for all my training I somewhat resent, especially when I'm at my shop and they want me to meet them in town. Another demanded that I make him a schematic for synthetic cloth, and deliver it to him. When I explained to him that I was busy (with 3 customers in my shop) and that if he liked he could meet me in my shop and I'd do the schematic for him for a nominal charge of 5k for my time, he got irate and told me he'd "take his business elsewhere". I'm not sure how you take your business elsewhere when you're not prepared to pay anything, lol, but oh well. Then some of the customers I had in my shop, oh man. "make me this... make me that, I hate this, make me something that looks good". I also had a couple of customers come up to me, rudly tell me to make something very specific "black suit jacket" (not sure I heard a single "please" all night), only to try it on, hand it back, refuse to pay, and ask me to make something completely different (and equally specific). One guy actually repeated this 4 times before I refused to make him anything more.
While I had experienced each of these things before in isolation, they were few and far between, and certainly a tiny minority of customer experiences. All this stuff happend in a single hour of play last night! So now I'm wondering... is this typical? Do customers really treat master tailors that much worse then novice tailors? Or was there a full moon out in Coronet last night and this was just some horrible abberation? *head still spins from last night*
nah, it's not typical. So far I havn't experienced anything like that. Tho I dunno, sometimes I think I look mean or something cause people don't bother me, master tailor tag and all. Heck I can walk into the cantina in coronet and not get a single request.
Tho yesterday I did have someone do something annoying. Wanted a bone crest in a specific color, and when I gave it to her to try on she traded me her old one and took the new one and left. guess she figured some old bone crest by some other tailor was payment enough 
. I got a good snicker out of the incident tho so I didnt mind too much.
Sre'dni,
I just noticed that you and I are on the same server, and serve the same city, lol, cool. I know there are quite a few master tailors in the region. Seems to be plenty of business though to go around. I'm sure I'll see ya around.
And I'll make you a deal, you can have all these troubled customers if I can have all the well behaved ones ok? is it a deal?
i answered this but the boards seem to have eaten my reply.
DONT EVER go to someone to train them, that is so rude of them to ask. They just saved 8. I plan on giving my trainer some resources when i get some good ones.
Kick out the rude people, and my BEST tactic for dealing with lamers is I tell them I have no more factory crates of parts to make it, or I gotta go AFK to walk the dog or something.
Thanks Starphire, I guess I need to bone up on these sorts of tricks now. I have no dogs, but I have cats. "I have to go walk my cat now" ROFL, I'm gonna use that 
My experience has been the opposite. Yea, I get the occasional annoying customer, but most of them are great. The other day whenI made a twi'lek noble crest for someone and I was told that I was "amazing" just because I colored it based on how I remember she looked, that carried me through the whole day. Now that I have all the master colors, it is a great experience when someone walks into my shop with a vague notion that the want some cool looking clothes, and by the time they walk out they are really excited about how they look. That more than makes up for the annoying people. Anyway, in general people seem to be really nice. I rarely get a "please", but I almost always get a "thank you", but I am a pretty casual person myself. Yes, I occasionally get a jerk who thinks it is "gay" that I won't give them a free duster, but that is pretty rare.
I know I'm considered rude but I don't have those problems at all. When someone /tells me for training, I immediately tell them back where I'm at, and that I charge for training. I don't charge very much, but the rude ones balk at this. Then their true colors show, and I didn't have to waste any time meeting them face-to-face. This is precisely the reason I paid for every tailor box myself. I don't need apprentice XP, training someone else is exactly zero benefit to me and all benefit to them. If someone demanded that I come meet them somewhere I would instantly put them on ignore, never to be heard from again. I'm so rude!
I've also had amazingly few "bad" experiences. About the worst I get (and it's usually not all that "bad" as they tend to spend money) is the "finicky customer" who wants to try several items with slightly different shades, etc.
Every once in a while, I want to dodge someone sending me a subliterate "can u make cloths?" tell, usually by directing them to my shop and vendor, with a "Take a look at what's there, and let me know if there's anything you'd like that you don't see there." Usually I'll wind up with a new customer that way, as browsing a well-stocked vendor really *is* a good way to go from "i want cloths" to figuring out exactly what you *do* want. At worst, it keeps 'em busy for a while.
I wonder if location is another factor? Both in the general nature of the local population and its size? I was kinda expecting to be in constant "tell hell" once I made Master, but it hasn't materialized. Closest thing I get is lots of tells from chatty friends just shooting the breeze - which is fine and all, except when I need to concentrate on some mindless Merchant relisting drudgery, but that's not their problem. And they're good customers who spend lots of money and are fun to talk to.
I think the real situation is that there's a non-tailor community that colludes to "haze" new Master Tailors, but in a variety of different ways. For me, I still chuckle over the fact that my first new "walk-in" customer as a Master Tailor wanted a Ribbed Shirt and Casual Pants....
SueDenim wrote:
For me, I still chuckle over the fact that my first new "walk-in" customer as a Master Tailor wanted a Ribbed Shirt and Casual Pants....
It's a shame they didn't want a cartridge belt with that too, lol.
Negative customer experiences are veryfewfor me, I don't really remember one actually...There have been my shareof lukewarm ones (no thank yous, etc), but generally most are well-mannered, don't demand,and I have never been burned. But will would not hesitate banning and ignoringanyone that is rude or mistreats me.
I have also trained many people, but they all were polite and said their thank yous. None of them ever tipped me tho, but I don't seem to mind that even tho I paid for all my training as well. Perhaps when I do get a bad one for the first time I might start thinking twice. But recently, I don't train alot anyway as I haven't wornmy tailortitles in a month or so.
Ebon's Big List of Excuses to Give Bad Customers!
10.) I'm sorry, that item requires factory-crated materials of which I currently have none.
9.) I'm sorry, that item requires exceedingly rare component X which doesn't/has never existed on this server.
8.) I have an agreement with another tailor not to make that item.
7.) I'm not from around here, and I don't want to sell anything on another tailor's turf. (Only works outside your shop, obviously.)
6.) I left my crafting tools at home. (Make sure to put away your tailoring droid before using this one.)
5.) I have a backlist of ten other orders and it wouldn't be fair to the people who came before you to make your item before I make theirs. I'm going to be working on this quite a while, I suggest you try another tailor.
4.) This is my night off. I don't take any orders on (insert day here).
3.) I'm sorry, I don't provide service for (Rebel Scum/Filthy Imperial Dogs).
2.) That item can't be made by players. It can only be gained as a mission reward for the final mission of the Gungan Theme Park. Here, let me give you the link to the Gungan Secret Place.
And the number one excuse to give to really, really annoying customers is:
1.) Oh my god, I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding, call 911! Oh god, it's everywhere, it's.. send.. help...
Use them well, young padawan.
Most of my bad experiences with customers were early on in my career; later you start to be able to detect the warning signs. Awful, childish humor, terrible spelling, "make me look k00l" requests, and the general attitude that you're in service to them, rather than that they're asking you for a favor.
I think part of the transition is realizing that you'll be fine without a particular customer, now and forever. It's ok to just cut your losses with someone. I have an /ignore list of over twenty players because I developed a very quick reflex when people started to behave rudely. Lots of the tips above assume you have to make an excuse to someone behaving obnoxiously toward you; I think as a rule, tailors tend to be a very tolerant crowd, and put up with too much. I regularly tell people "no" when they ask if I can make them something, and they usually say "oh, ok," which is fine with me. I've found being firm from the beginning--letting them know who's boss--helps me avoid a lot of the awful conversations tailors have reported here.
With customers who raise any of the warning flags, I don't hand them clothes, I just put them on my vendor to be bought. This gives you merchant XP too, but I don't bother with that excuse anymore, nor do I ask the customer for his/her permission. Sticking it on the vendor allows you to (a) set the price in a seemingly permanent way, avoiding haggling, and (b) remove the real-time trade that can become uncomfortable with problem customers. I won't make more clothing for someone if they don't buy what was previously requested, and I'd probably kick them out.
In the end, I find that the well behaved customers tend to buy more, know what they want, and come back frequently. It's not worth it, at least to me, to put up with crap from people just to make a few thousand credits... thisis a game after all!
VEXA
Itinerant Master Tailor, Flurry Server
I must be incredibly lucky, I have some of the best customers around. They are patient, pleasent, and generous. When I throw in a freebiee, they are appreciative and try to tip me for my time and effort.
It's actually my fellow guildmates that are the horrible customers, but it's really my own doing. I have always had an open "I will make anyone in the PA anything at no charge" policy, namely because I get thrown fiberflast and metal and inertpetrochems and hides whenever they have it. It's not even my entire guild, it's actually just a few, but they drove me batty enough that now, unless you catch me in a generous mood, expect a standard 20% discount and that's it. Oh and if you want a Master item, make it a 10% discount.
Too bad, the annoying ones still pester me to no end.
A-Ti