To be clear, I'm not upset at the Vendor's...

I am upset with management.

I don't think anyone is upset at the vendors :) I am upset for those vendors who put their time and effort into this.

Well, my news letter announcing the free halloween items,  just arrived at 6am today, a day after all this happened. 

There is a link to my freebie in a thread I posted in the FREE STUFF forum. It can be downloaded and is available immediately.

It will also be available in a couple days in my FREE STUFF section.

I knew nothing about the $5 min until I arrived home late last night and, sometimes I can be slow, but never that slow. I recall mumbling to fiance over the phone..."Ummmm when did they tack on $5 for something I intended to be free?"

So I stayed up for the next couple hours getting it uploaded to fileden, to my free stuff section and to the free stuff forum. Ughhh.. I should've been in bed.

This was a very unwise decision by the powers that be. I have left mine in the "trick or trreat" section however, just so those who may wish to get it there can as well. It may also eliminate the possibility of my 5gb of bandwidth at Fileden from being swallowed up too quickly.

Thanks everyone.

~Will

Will, I read your posting and I appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness. I know you and others are also victim to the bungling, bumbling attempt by the powers that be in this Halloween "fiasco".
That being said, I'll take my leave and blow out of here this morning...

To all vendors and merchants, who are participating in this Halloween freebies events,

**Thank You!!!

**:b_smile:
**
**

Quote - Will, I read your posting and I appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness. I know you and others are also victim to the bungling, bumbling attempt by the powers that be in this Halloween "fiasco".
That being said, I'll take my leave and blow out of here this morning...

To all vendors and merchants, who are participating in this Halloween freebies events,

**Thank You!!!

**:b_smile:
**
**

Thanks TS, have a great morning. All is not lost LOL! Now just need my coffee and some donuts or something smothered in chocolate ;o)

~Will

@Gillbrooks

*My freebie is now on my own website in the Freebies menu

*http://www.digitaldesktops.biz/marketplace/

Gill, I tried to download your texture set for Brisa Azul and I get a page not found error. Could you check it out please?

Thank you!

I left this thread to go pick up Oliver for M3 in the Freestuff Section. I came back to thank the vendor who put it there but I don't remember who it was and in the Freestuff Section it only says KarenJ. So thank you! ;O)

since wizzle is being held and i asked for grunge brushes to be retired, you can find them here:

http://www.galleriesofdreams.com/Products/PRWizzle.zip
http://www.sharecg.com/v/29471/2d-resources/Grunge-Textures

hope you enjoy, it is sad that a cool idea like it started turned out so stressful and irritating for both customers and vendors

Thank you to all the vendors who were involved in this offer.
Thank you to those who are trying to keep a free item a FREE item. I appreciate it. I will try to hunt all of your offers down!
Too bad Renderosity handled this so badly... it should have been fun... now it's just made lots of angry customers.

I don't frequent these forums, but do frequent that Daz forums. I heard about this great Halloween fun from there. I came over here yesterday morning and was able to put a couple items in my cart before the servers just got too slow. I decided to wait a day or so to come back and finish browsing (had only seen page 1 of the 3) and load up my cart when things died down a little.
Another post at Daz later in the day alerted me to the fact that there was now a $5 charge for what was supposed to be FREE. Then sure enough, I got an email from Rendo advertising the goodies that came with a $5 charge.
This was a dirty trick Rendo played and I for one will NOT be paying $5 just to get items that were FREE from the beginning. If you have to PAY, the items are NOT FREE and should not be advertised as such.
I left a comment on the newletter page, but like many others, it hasn't been approved. Rendo only wants to show the good praising comments...who cares about all the customers they pissed off.
I wont go so far as to say I will never shop here because there are vendors here I absolutley love and will continue to support them when I can. But I will not be tricked into getting freebies for $5. Unfortunetly, that means I miss out on some great freebies and the vendors miss out on getting their stuff out to one more person.
I would like to thank all the vendors who so graciously offered up their hard work for free, and to those who are allowing alternate ways to get their items truely for free. I appretiate it greatly. It's not you who I am mad at, it is Rendo for pulling such a fast one.

I would like to second bakapo's post.
Thank you for your gifts and thanks for reposting them and keeping them free, I wish all vendors had done the same.

*hope you enjoy, it is sad that a cool idea like it started turned out so stressful and irritating for both customers and vendors

It is indeed! ;o(

Thank you for making your Halloween Freebie available elsewhere patslash!

A big Thanks! to all the vendors for all the freebies that were given for this promotion whether we get them or not.

Patslash, thank you so much for putting up the Wizzle morph.

:) you're all welcome!

Hi all,

We are working through this situation as I type.

Please hold tight and we will be posting soon with a solution that will be beneficial to all.

Thank you.
Stacey

Thank you Stacey for coming here. Somehow I KNEW it would be a woman! ;o)

Thnaks for the updae patslash - I grabbed the grunge brushes :o)

Kudos for stepping up to the plate Stacey.

Thank you for making a statment  Stacey! I do hope the freebies will be back up and *free :)
*although most of the items I wanted are either reposted somewhere else as freebies, or just gone altogether, lol.

Please get my freebie here, if you want to:
www.varnayrah.de/rero/MB_RenFairExp.zip
It was ment as agift and such it should stay... The item will also appear in the regular freepozitory.

Thank you Varnayrah!

Thanks, Varnayrah.  And to all the others who pulled the freebies and put them up for free.

Stacey - thanks for posting - I sure hope they will make this right.

There's not going to be an easy fix for this one.
 People have already made a five dollar purchase to get freebies, so to retract that sales pitch is just as unfair as retracting freebies.
 So I'll be very interested to see how this one plays out.
 I've spent a lot of money here, spent quiet a bit, just the day before this started, it would have been easy to wait one day to purchase my items and get the freebies, with a purchase I planned on making anyway, IF only I'd known ahead of time.

For those who wanted my freebies, I've set them up at MediaFire.
http://www.mediafire.com/?dnlizzzwmtu

Please enjoy them as intended...

Please see the information posted in the Front Page article link below regarding the Trick or Treat event.

http://www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=14285

Thank you

Stacey

That is WONDERFUL Stacey. I was just thinking the same thing as a solution to make things right for everyone, even those who did pay the $5.

Thank you for caring!

This is excellent news, thank you.

Thanks Stacey, for stepping up and posting here...and thanks for the great news!

all the things in my cart are gone, lol, will they be back??? somewhere??? anyway, I'm glad it's worked out this way, hopefully all the goodies will be back and everyone will be able to get what they want for Halloween, rofl

thank you very much for all the beautiful things and for the efforts to keep the freebies free

hugs

I have no doubt that this post will have little to no impact or impression on the people who run Renderosity, but I feel personally that I should make clear how Calida Productions (Khory_d and I) feel about the debacle of last night. I also realise that in an unregulated, online market such as this (using the term very generally, and not just referring to the Renderosity MP) that misconstrued, opinionated and antagonistic forum posts can have an adverse affect on individuals, companies, vendors and buyers.
That being said, I would like to behave professionally and offer our own 'company line' on what has happened, how we feel we have been treated and how we feel our broker, who relies on us for income, has behaved.

1.  We were offered a wonderful oportunity to showcase a free item as a way to advertise and draw traffic to the site. It seemed like a good idea and we assumed that staff knew enough about the way the site functions that it would run smoothly, and without complication. We did not however intend that money should be made from those free items. They were free, a combined gift, thank-you to the 3d community in general, and a bit of advertising.

1. Changes were made to how our free advertisment was made available, -without- consulting us, in -any- way even though we were both at the computer and logged into the site ALL day, keeping a close eye on how things progressed. These changes also affected customers mid-shopping.

2. Renderosity it seems did not plan ahead for the promotion. They were not prepared for the extra load on their server either in terms of bandwidth or their SQL database hits. Instead they took an executive decision, went over the heads of all vendors who had generously decided to participate and made a decision that not only annoyed customers, but vendors as weell, not to mention the extra work that they amde for us trying to deal with the fall-out.

Bad (or just zero?) planning. Bad implementation (I doubt any vendor has seen sales, let alone extra sales due to the site being crippled). Bad treatment of the people who make you money, customers and vendors. Just bad all round.
And worst, for the community at Rendo, -just- as Daz launch their own major new free product and promotion. They must be laughing themselves silly. The reputation of Renderosity as a community and a broker both has been tarnished and without some serious effort to make reparation, I doubt people will easily forget.
Just a statement as we see it. We felt it had to be said, even if it means our products take an extra week from now on to hit the marketplace ducks

Vincent, Tech. Director, Calida Productions.

PS for those of you who haven't seen our posts elsewhere, our Trick or Treat freebies are available on our site.

Hi Cimaira

They won't be in the marketplace in your cart but instead be on the Front page (like the Annual Holiday Giveaway)...

Please give us til this afternoon to get them all up on the Front page then you can download all the freebies from there:)

Thank you all for your patience and understanding throughout this situation. 

Well said Vincent. I have nothing to add to that and that's a first!

I have posted this over at Daz as well, but place it here as a convenience for you all:

I don't know how long it will take to implement the new set up and I'm still debating whether to put mine back up in the new system. I suppose it's not fair to NOT put them back in for people who don't frequent the forums and had no idea this was going on. Opinions on that?

Get them now if you want:

For those who wanted my freebies, I've set them up at MediaFire.
http://www.mediafire.com/?dnlizzzwmtu

Please enjoy them as intended...

I will leave the other download link up at Daz until I see it affecting any server performance on my end. So far so good, but please use this one if possible.

You're all gonna have a Happy Halloween if it kills me! I'll post this in the relevant threads here. Thanks for your support during all this mess. It's most appreciated.

zai

Quote - @Gillbrooks

*My freebie is now on my own website in the Freebies menu

*http://www.digitaldesktops.biz/marketplace/

Gill, I tried to download your texture set for Brisa Azul and I get a page not found error. Could you check it out please?

Thank you!

:b_upset: 
Sorry - I seem to have gone and lost it!  
I checked my servers and stuff I burned to CD but havent' found it yet.
If I do - I'll pm you

Thanks to the staff for addressing the issue and coming up with a three-quarters decent response. and for admitting it was a mistake.

I'm still hoping that it can be worked out so that we can have freebies in the RMP - I love that idea.

Thank you Gil!

This is a good solution - thanks for making it right for those who had not downloaded and those who paid $5.  I'm surprised it wasn't handled like the Holiday freebies in the first place, and I certainly hope the executive decisions in the future will be looked at more carefully before being put into place.

30 lashes with a wet noodle! Someone was human and made a mistake! Break out the torches and pitch forks. Thanks for straightening things out Stacey. Hope we haven't stressed you guys out too much over this. I'm just glad it happened on a Monday instead of a Friday! You guys would have the villagers at your doors with the pitch forks and torches by Monday if it had! :tt2:

Thanks to all the vendors.  :)

I just got the word that things are being fixed.  My freebies and all whom want will return to you soon.  Sorry again for all the sorrowful things said.  Glad to have Renderosity step up to the plate and fix this.  Sharen

Thank you again, everyone who participated and Renderosity for hosting them :)

Okay the new article is up with the freebies!!

http://www.renderosity.com:80/news.php?viewStory=14272

Enjoy

I am surprised to see that the offer is a $5.00 gift certificate. surely it should have an option for those people who paid to get their money back? Not just the ability to buy something else here? 
I also noticed that when I went to look at the article I did not seem to be able to leave a comment although I saw that others had. Have you closed it to comment? 

The new article might have accidentally been set to not recieve opinions, I'll go check.

Also the reason we did the $5.00 Gift Certificate is those customers that purchased did get a purchased product, it wasn't just them having to pay us $5.00.. They bought an item so they have it downloaded on their machine now and if we refunded it would cause issues with the vendors and the product they bought being on their machine, etc.

Thanks

Hey Bea, I just checked and I see the field to add an opinion post to the front page article and I just approved some pending ones so I'm not sure why you wouldn't be seeing that field?

Please try again and let me know.

Thanks

Thanks Stacey I can see the comment box now for that but I was sure your link went somewhere else to begin with? 

I may have misunderstood but I thought I saw somewhere at a different site that people said a charge of $5.00 was being added at checkout if they had not bought anything else?  But I guess that comment could have been wrong? 

Yes, it was a straight "Pay a random $5.00 to get freebies".. Our minimum price for a product in the Marketplace is $5.00 so they had to at least buy a $5.00 product in order to complete checkout.  This was in place from about 5:30 last night til about noon today when we had discussions in the office and decided to offer the freebies like we normally do on the Front Page...

So this $5.00 Gift Certificate is for anyone that bought and had freebies during that time period.

Hope this helps explain a bit.

I did post a different link earlier in this thread that was the statement from JeniferC on the front page and then after we got the new article with all the freebies in them done, I posted again with a different article link.

Thanks

So those who bought something worth $5 or more on top of their freebies just got an EXTRA $5 to spend on something else! VERY COOL!!! Too bad I waited. LOL! Thanks Stacey!

:m_wink:

Well when i got to it last night everything was working so slow that i decided to come back later.. As far as the freebies last night stood later never happened because i got up to all this, I can definately understand why people got upset especialy the folk who offered all the brill freebies and applaud those who pulled out in protest, I also understand why some did'nt and hung on and waited to see what rendo would do ( I guess you had faith that they would do something)  I'm glad to see Rendo has sorted it out in a way that seems fair to all I'm only sad that the ones that pulled out now arent part of what was a very exciting event and can only hope you will make your freebies available somewhere else. For those that dont have websites there's always shareCG you know ;) 
I just want to thank everyone that did offer  freebies, from what i did manage to see last night they were great !!
SAMS3D You faced the angry mob alone at first ;) you have my respect :)