Why Buy A Home From ABC Home Sales - Part Three

Hello, my name is Debbie Bulloch and I am back doing one of my favorite things to do: writing about the great company that I work for: ABC Home Sales. In Part One I related my early home buying experience in Second World (SL). In Part Two I wrote a little about the home buying experience at ABC Home. Now I will go into what can happen after the sale is made, why post-sale customer service is so important and why I chose to become an ABC Home sales representative.

Here is what may be a typical buying experience. After shopping for a new ABC house, paying for the new house and installing (or having installed by a sales representative) the new house, the customer can sit back and relax while looking at SL’s new gorgeous sunrises and sunsets.

So what could possibly go wrong in this virtual little corner of heaven? Plenty can go wrong. Let me tell you about my experience.

The first house I bought from ABC was the lovely Nevada home. The first version of the Nevada home is a simple, two story home. What made the Nevada very attractive for me was the view from inside the house. There are windows everywhere in the Nevada house and there is a second floor balcony that adds to the view--from anywhere inside this house the homeowner can enjoy a great view.

My first problem with my new home was when I tried to install it on my land. Like an eager noob, I raced through the easy to read instructions (instructions for products in SL are not always easy to follow), put the rezzer box on the ground and OPENED it. Big mistake! Had I taken the time to carefully read the instructions I would have known that ABC homes have an easy to use rezzer system that opens the houses on the parcel in one short, easy step. All you need to do is left click the rezzer box, follow the options on the blue dialogue bubble and take it from there. But because I had opened the house instead of rezzing it, the pieces came out all wrong and my dream house looked like a bad Salvador Dali painting.

I had a friend with me during the rezzing disaster. He saw how stressed out I was, so he kindly offered to help me fix the house. By that time, however, I was angry, upset and in tears—I was in no mood to fix the house. So I did what most desperate new homeowners do—I sent Mickey Geest, the Sales Manager, an urgent SOS (yes, like in the song by Sting!). Within minutes I received a response from Mickey: “Just TP me and I will be there!” he said. I TP’ed him and in seconds this cute, blonde surfer type guy (Mickey, if you are reading this, you know all the girls think that you are cute!) showed up on my land. Remembering my previous experience with the other home builder (see Part One of my post) I braced myself for a bad experience, or at least getting yelled at for being so dumb. Instead, however, Mickey’s first words were: “No problem Debbie, I can fix it for you!” WHEW!!!! I was so relieved.

In minutes Mickey had deleted the old house, had me set a new box on my parcel (remember all ABC homes are full copy, which means you can rezz as many copies of the original as you wish) and then walked me through the proper rezzing procedure. WOW! I saw my new house materialize, like magic, out of the thin air. In minutes I had a beautiful ocean-view house. Mickey gave me a few additional instructions and then got ready to leave—another customer was calling. I offered to pay Mickey for his services (the other home builder charged me a huge sum of money to fix the house I had bought from him) but Mickey refused my payment. He told me that after-sales customer service is part of what all customers receive when they buy a house from ABC Home Sales. He added that no payment was necessary and then he left. Needless to say I was very impressed.

With that initial disaster out of the way I settled into my new house and, like most new homeowners I began to decorate the place. That is when disaster struck again. I was happily moving objects inside the house when I hit the delete button when I should not have. All of the sudden, one huge chunk of my house disappeared into thin air. YIKES!
I was in tears (well, I am a girl so I can cry if I want to and no one can say a darned thing about it) and so I did what I had done before--I sent another SOS to Mickey.

Like the first time, Mickey’s response was swift—“TP me please,” he said. When he showed up I was feeling so stupid for deleting a chunk of my house. Mickey laughed (a nice laughter) and told me not to worry, that everyone makes the same mistake at least once. Then he got to work, restoring the missing chunk of my house. In a few minutes my house was back in one piece and ready for me to move back in.

TIP TO NEW HOME OWNERES REZZING THEIR OWN HOME: Once you have rezzed your house, if the house comes in sections, and you are happy with its location, be sure to go around the house and “lock” all the pieces. This will avoid accidental deletion of one section of the house. To lock the different sections of the house do this, right click anywhere in the house, go to EDIT, click the MORE button, open the OBJECT tab and then put an X in the LOCKED box. Depending on the size of the house, and how many sections there are, you may have to repeat this procedure in different areas of the house, until all the sections are locked. If you wish to modify the textures, or delete features of the home, like interior walls or stairs, you need to unlock the sections. Just be sure to lock them again.

Once again I offered to pay Mickey for his services and once again he refused. I told him how impressed I was with the after-sales service offered by ABC Homes. He chuckled and said he heard that from many people. I also told him about my experiences with my new home and Mickey became visibly upset when he found out how rude the first builder was and how much he had charged me to fix the house.

It was right there and then that I decided that if there was ever an opening at ABC Homes I would ask Mickey to hire me!

So there you have it. There are many good reasons for buying an ABC Home. For me, however, great customer service is the number one reason for buying one of our homes.

And, if you are lucky like me, you may even end up with a job selling ABC Homes. Maybe you too will become a team member!

Debbie Bulloch
04.07.2008