Merchants

[Fenn MacMoragh Honored Resident]

So, let's say a Vendor creates a product. And, the product requires certain things like access to the vendors server, now the vendor gets upset with you the user, actually a bunch of users, removes their access which makes the item they bought for a goodly amount of lindens totally useless. The vendor removes the product from the marketplace and stops selling it in world. Then a month later the product pops back up on Marketplace, oH and has a bunch of reviews from before it being removed. So, one or two of the people he ripped off decide to write bad reviews of the product. With in a day the bad reviews are removed. Not sure if this is fair, since the ones that are left are all obvisosly put their by friends and all 5 star. Is there any recourse, of course this situation has been brought to Linden Labs but as usual they are hands off. 

[Ariel Vuissent Advisor]

Creators can't just remove reviews willy nilly. They contacted LL, and LL reviewed the negative reviews and deemed them, for whatever reason, unfair, and thus removed them.

It's not an uncommon occurence for content creators to remove products on the marketplace, then relist, in order to dump any negative reviews. Or to have their friends come and give positive reviews. You can go back and write another review - there's nothing stopping you. There's also nothing stopping you from mentioning in that review that you left another review that was deleted. What's important is that you're fair, and polite. You can say "This product didn't work for me. The creator blocked me from his/her service, making the product unusable..." etc. But going on and saying "Hated the product, the creator sucks, no support, never buy this again, stupid waste of $L..." etc., or worse using strong terms, such as profanity, that will get the review removed.

There's really nothing else to be done that I know of.

[Ziggy21 Slade]

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Ariel Vuissent wrote:

It's not an uncommon occurence for content creators to remove products on the marketplace, then relist, in order to dump any negative reviews. 

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Just wanted to remind everyone that although it may not be uncommon, it is against the rules...

SECOND LIFE MARKETPLACE FEE AND LISTING POLICIES

Disabling and Re-listing Items. This is considered misrepresentation.

[Porky Gorky Member]

Yep, as ZIggy said it is against the rules. You should flag the item for takedown, choose the option "disallowed listing practices".

[Ariel Vuissent Advisor]

Good point.

It's not something I recommend, I was just saying it's done. With what you mentioned, though, I'm not sure that necessarily applies. How long was the product down for? Do you have a way to contact the creator and ask WHY the product was down? There are many reason for a creator to de-list a product, then re-list it at a later time, and they're not all dishonest. Perhaps the creator was having real life issues that led to him or her being unable to continue to provide access to the servers necessary for the product to function. Perhaps he or she was being harassed about the product and decided to temporarily remove it. Any number of things could have led to this. I would be suspicious if it was down briefly and then relisted - as in, for a few hours or a day it was down, and then after that short time period it popped back up again. But it was for a while, perhaps there was an underlying cause.

[Rya Nitely Member]

You can temporarily remove a product by making it inactive. There is no need to remove the listing.

Leaving another review is a good solution, and explain it in a polite way. Also flag it for delist and relist, which is against the rules as stated previously.

It is bad business practice to just dump the people depending on you, for whatever reason.

[Sassy Romano Member]

leaving another review on an item listed as a new item (bot just deactivated and subsequently reactivated) would require re-purchase of the item.

I'm not sure how ll follow up in determining whether an item is a re-list, it's all cloak and daggers and the flagging options provide no ability to submit evidence so I'm just not convinced there's much value.

[Fornicola Butuzova]

Rules?  Oh yeah, I think I remember rules.  Like in 2007, when SL Exchange ran the show.  Yeeeeeeah that right, its all coming back to me, if you broke the "rules", they they to action to fix it.  If you bribed reveiws to game the listing ranks, they deleted them and kicked you back down.  If you dumped a product for 1/10th of its price to collect insane rating, and relisted a week later at full price, you lost all your ratings and rank.  Yeah, I remember that.  Whatever happned to that?   

[AineMari Flanagan]

Here the issue in a nutshell,  the creator  deletes the bad reviews somehow-  folks  that left them come back and re- post, then  the item is taken down and relisted so it has to be repurchased- then flagged because its against ll rules to relist. Then  feedback is left and its taken down and reisted   with only the positive feedback for as long as it takes   the folks leaving negative feedback for  valid reasons to repost again. THEN  relisted as a new item for as lng as it takes to flag it again. 

Its a bad product,  its creator knows its a bad product , -shrugs-  LL continues to make their comission off the  sales either way.