Why do theme sellers and extension sellers require me to jump through hoops to buy their products?

W

wmarcy

Member
I have tried a couple of times now to buy themes and extensions from sellers not affiliated with Xenforo, but most are requiring me to prove my bona fides before allowing me to buy. What makes them think I should have to jump through hoops to give them money for a product they are eager to sell?

I don't want to have to hunt down Xenforo tokens or anything like that, I simply want to give them money for their product, why do they make it difficult?

Is there a reason I a missing? Is it that they are simply bad business people? I just don't get it.
 
Many vendors require a token to associate your account on their site with a XenForo license as an anti-piracy measure.

All that's needed is to sign in here and click the button in the lower right corner of your license:
screenshot-HKUYE4.webp
 
Jeremy P said:
Many vendors require a token to associate your account on their site with a XenForo license as an anti-piracy measure.

All that's needed is to sign in here and click the button in the lower right corner of your license:
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Sure, but, Why should I as the customer spend an entire weekend waiting for someone to validate a customer token so that I can buy their product?

I have zero interest in anti-piracy, I do have an interest in engaging in simply commerce with a company, preferably one that attempts to make my life easier, not some third party companies life easier.

Ie all feels anti-consumer.
 
If it's taking them a weekend, it means they are validating it manually for some reason. There is no reason for them to do that since it can be validated programmatically in realtime via backend API call. Probably best to just not buy from whoever is manually validating tokens imo. If they can't bother to make the process frictionless, who knows what else they can't be bothered to do.
 
Well, it's up to them if they want to sell something only to license holders or not. If the simple fact that they want you to validate that you are a license holder is problematic for you, skip them. Definitely don't do it if it's not worth it to you. Vote with your money. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
I can sympathize that anti-piracy measures often only add friction for regular consumers. Growing up, most movies I owned had unskippable pre-rolls extolling the dangers of piracy, which I can only imagine were cut out of the illegally distributed versions anyway 🤷‍♂️

But yes, many vendors perform the validation automatically. Otherwise I'd suppose they consider manual validation of greater importance than lost sales, but it's hard to imagine that being true in practice.

Forsaken said:
A lot of the piracy I experienced came from users who had licenses, and were then leaking them to piracy sites.
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I'm sure, but validation at least provides an opportunity to ensure it doesn't continue.
 
Jeremy P said:
I can sympathize that anti-piracy measures often only add friction for regular consumers. Growing up, most movies I owned had unskippable pre-rolls extolling the dangers of piracy, which I can only imagine were cut out of the illegally distributed versions entirely 🤷‍♂️

But yes, many vendors perform the validation automatically. Otherwise I'd suppose they consider manual validation of greater importance than lost sales, but it's hard to imagine that being true in practice.


I'm sure, but validation at least provides an opportunity to ensure it doesn't continue.
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Yeah, I was just pointing out why there is more verification done than just validating the license. I know a number of people will not sell if you use a VPN/TOR/Proxy, if you are from certain countries or they do a search for name/email/username to see if it gets picked up anywhere.

wmarcy said:
Sure, but, Why should I as the customer spend an entire weekend waiting for someone to validate a customer token so that I can buy their product?

I have zero interest in anti-piracy, I do have an interest in engaging in simply commerce with a company, preferably one that attempts to make my life easier, not some third party companies life easier.

Ie all feels anti-consumer.
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Not all developers are active on the weekend, so usually you get cleared by Monday or Tuesday depending on how busy they are (2.3 likely has many people busy).
 
wmarcy said:
but most are requiring me to prove my bona fides before allowing me to buy. What makes them think I should have to jump through hoops to give them money for a product they are eager to sell?
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I am always pleased when I find sellers who require a validation token. It means to me that they are taking at least some positive steps against piracy. Hence I have no problem supplying this and don't see it as having to jump through hoops which implies a lot more than copying and pasting a number. There's not really any hunting down involved for me, I know it is in my customer account area. You can make a browser bookmark to avoid the hunt.

digitalpoint said:
If the simple fact that they want you to validate that you are a license holder is problematic for you, skip them.
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I agree, it's not complulsory

Forsaken said:
A lot of the piracy I experienced came from users who had licenses, a
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I suspect that may be true, but still I can see the point in not wanting to sell addons to someone who is using a pirate version of xenForo. It could be a matter of principle or ethics, or it could be that someone who uses pirate xenForo is more likely to abuse the addon licence.
 
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Forsaken said:
Yeah, I was just pointing out why there is more verification done than just validating the license. I know a number of people will not sell if you use a VPN/TOR/Proxy, if you are from certain countries or they do a search for name/email/username to see if it gets picked up anywhere.
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I've had Paypal freakout multiple times and block transactions if the user was using knowns VPN/TOR endpoints and then followed by the user needing to wait 2-3 days before paypal releases the funds and the license can be allocated.
 
digitalpoint said:
Well, it's up to them if they want to sell something only to license holders or not. If the simple fact that they want you to validate that you are a license holder is problematic for you, skip them. Definitely don't do it if it's not worth it to you. Vote with your money. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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This.
 
Xon said:
I've had Paypal freakout multiple times and block transactions if the user was using knowns VPN/TOR endpoints and then followed by the user needing to wait 2-3 days before paypal releases the funds and the license can be allocated.
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One user on a site has spent about $50k in the past 3 years, and still gets flagged by Paypal :LOL:.

But Paypal will also let someone on Mars use your account if they can compromise it, and it makes no sense.
 
Xon said:
I've had Paypal freakout multiple times and block transactions if the user was using knowns VPN/TOR endpoints and then followed by the user needing to wait 2-3 days before paypal releases the funds and the license can be allocated.
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i use TOR.
but i do not do paypal.
usually i have a friend that will do the transaction for me and i pay him back.
for bigger stuff he allows me to pay him out over a few months since i do not have a lot of money coming in.
 
I've found that i've had to give over the validation token if i wanted to have something like an addon or even if i register as a user on a site.

I won't use anything illegal for my transactions.

That being said i don't use anything illegal anyway.

It's so that they can trust who you are. I know you might think it sucks but being an unlicensed member is hellish anyway.
 
wmarcy said:
I have tried a couple of times now to buy themes and extensions from sellers not affiliated with Xenforo, but most are requiring me to prove my bona fides before allowing me to buy. What makes them think I should have to jump through hoops to give them money for a product they are eager to sell?

I don't want to have to hunt down Xenforo tokens or anything like that, I simply want to give them money for their product, why do they make it difficult?

Is there a reason I a missing? Is it that they are simply bad business people? I just don't get it.
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Yeah but on here for example you need to actually be a licensed member.
 
Forsaken said:
A lot of the piracy I experienced came from users who had licenses, and were then leaking them to piracy sites.
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It was such a long time ago that I can't fully remember the details, but some vBulletin and XF 1 customers would buy a third-party add-on, download it, and then the PayPal account would be flagged as compromised and PayPal would reverse the funds.

I think for vBulletin I had to block unconfirmed accounts, deferred payments, and manually verify transactions to solve the problem. For XF 1, I did the first two but instead of manually validating, implemented the license key validation API and it worked just as well.

I don't remember this being a problem with XF 2, but the average ticket price of the add-ons was a lot higher.
 
Anyone who has a pirate forum will hardly buy a paid component! I also find this whole request for tokens exaggerated
 
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