Marketplace Is Just Awful

[Jennifer Boyle]

I have myriad posts by merchants about how bad MP is.  Let me tell you that it is terrible from a consumer's point of view, as well.  Yesterday I was helping a friend outfit his avatar.  What we were buying was inexpensive, and the easiest way to get it done efficiently was for me to buy the no transfer things he needed as gifts.  There was no in-store option for buying as a gift, so I used MP.  ALL of the g0dd@mned deliveries failed.  We wasted a lot of time waiting.  Today I re-purchased the same items.  Again, all of the deliveries failed, and we wasted more time waiting, and didn't get to use the things we wanted to use.

Can someone tell me how a company that controls ALL of the software involved in these transactions and employs professional software developers could produce something that works this poorly?  It seems like they would have to be trying to make something that wouldn't work.  Why can't they make their own two products talk to each other?

[Tahiti Rae]

I rely on Marketplace quite a lot and it often comes through for me, but once in a while i will buy some things 3 or 4 times and they still never arrive so I have that issue as well.  I just go buy them AGAIN in world LOL

However, my biggest issue with market is right now I can't use it at all because i ended up getting the items i wanted in world instead because there were too many for my cart.  But now they are still in my market cart and IT WILL NOT LET ME REMOVE THEM FROM THE CART.  I've cleared temps, cache, relogged, been several days now and they are just stuck in there...about $3,000 worth that I do not want to spend.  Remove from cart gives me "ERROR ON PAGE" and has given me this error all week.  So now I can only purchase in world until I clear cart (and some things in the cart I do want to purchase as they are only on market and not in world so I dont wanna dump entire cart.)  Any thoughts on how to clear cart of specific items when all it does is spit out an error?

[Richie Kanto]

This issue has been going on for some time now, since at least Valentine's. It's annoying to shoppers, but, now imagine you're the business who needs marketplace sales to keep paying tier to keep your shop going (LL has trained / advertised to / & convinced most buyers to use marketplace for all their shopping needs and has broken in world search to a point where no one can use it anymore). A large number of merchants have already left... with more leaving all the time as sales continue to stay anemic.

What does LL say... "there's a small percentage of failed deliveries affecting very few merchants". At least they could be honest. This was predicted by many when LL started to move the marketplace from an in world "magic box" system to direct delivery; but: burying their head in the sand, refusing to listen to those who actually know best (their customers), and thinking if they tell people some spin people will believe it and it'll come true ~ has become the new way of dealing with everything in LL's little bubble of a world.

[MoiselleErin Teardrop]

Yeah a couple days ago I tried to open a store, of course I have to use the magic box cause I cannot use V3 on my computer.

Well to test deliveries and how the products would actually work to the customer, I bought my own junk using an alt.

Had delivery failure problems with SOME products but not others. No big deal, at least it was ME losing my own money instead of angry customers losing their money. A lot of customers tend to assume it is the seller's fault if deliveries fail. 

And yes, it seems to be a nightmare trying to set up crap. I just decided to unlist everything until I can pan out if I am doing something wrong or if it is really a MP issue.I would love to make a buck or two from things I have built but if MP is failing, what is the use?

 

Plus yeah, the MP set-up seems to be a nightmare. One really has to dig for info on how things work

[Tahiti Rae]

I just spoke with a Phoenix Firestorm volunteer helper, and we discovered my problem so sharing it here in case it helps others.  My stuck items in my cart were giving me "error on page" ... it's an IE issue !!!!  ...an IE script error.  Marketplace in my in-world browser does let me remove them. Once i removed them thru the in world browser, and purchased the few i did want, then my cart out in IE is now empty.  Problem solved.

 

On an unrelated issue, but maybe helpful here also, I just upgraded to new Ph/Firestorm and even tho my fps was hovering around 17-20 it felt like 2 LOL.  Everything shaky with unbearable lag.  But yesterday I tp'd home and my BRIDGE fell off.  It said "bridge detached" in local chat and i did not take it off...happened on the tail end of my tp home.

But today that bad shaking lag is back.  So I manually took off my firestorm bridge and the lag is gone!!! (well it's normal now lol)  So far everything works ok, inventory, tp's etc.  Very strange.  I check "phoenix" in the login screen of firestorm so maybe i'm not needing the firestorm bridge??? (even tho my new login reattaches it)

[MoiselleErin Teardrop]

Not to slightly derail but what is that bridge used for anyways? I never thought about it til now...

and with my own MP problems, I use the magic box or tried to, and I use firefox for the web.

[Sassy Romano]

Just to add a general comment.

The Magic Box delivery process is "unreliable" in the sense that the overall processes involved are so disjointed that it's more good luck that it works in the first place.  I'll avoid the boring detail but it's sort of covered here https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4508

Merchants and customers using the Direct Delivery process experience next to no delivery failures.

How can you spot the difference?  If the listing says on the right, just above the permissions something along the lines of "You can use this product now/requires land/requires unboxing" then it's a direct delivered item.  If that part is absent, it's coming from a Magic Box.

Magic boxes are due to be phased out 1st August but that date has slipped and slipped and will do so again.  CommerceTeam Linden has stated that there will be at least 4 weeks notice before it happening and we're just about to enter that 4 week period so it should slip a day per day at least.

There is no need to use Viewer 3 to upload to DD.  Cool VL also has the merchant outbox although this does require SSE functions in the processor so won't necessarily run on an older PC anyway (this is what i'm told, I haven't personally tried).

Opening a store now and choosing a Magic Box could be a futile experience depending on how long that box lasts for.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Sassy Romano wrote:

 

There is no need to use Viewer 3 to upload to DD.  Cool VL also has the merchant outbox although this does require SSE functions in the processor so won't necessarily run on an older PC anyway

(this is what i'm told, I haven't personally tried).

 

---

This is what is stated on Cool VL's website:  http://sldev.free.fr/

Pertinent snippet is: 

 

What operating systems and what hardware are supported?

You will find Linux and Windoze builds on this site, and MacOS X builds can be found in the

Latest MacOS X Releases

section of the forum (they have been built by Hyang Zhao in the past, and Guru Coyote is now providing builds: thanks and kudos must go to them for their contribution).

As for the hardware,

the Cool VL Viewer uses SSE2 (because the Mesh code requires it); it won't work on CPUs without SSE2 (Pentium 3 or Athlon XP, for example).

The supported video cards are the same as for the official Second Life viewers (i.e. OpenGL v2 capable and better graphic cards, with Nvidia or ATI chipsets). Some Intel chipsets might fail to pass the requirements and are known to be too slow, most of the time.

 

To MP shoppers - Most merchants (I know I do!!!) want to know if their customers are having difficulty getting their merchandise. I would highly recommend contacting the merchant before attempting more purchases of the item. As stated above, sometimes merchants see "failed delivery" notices in their MP transactions, other times nothing is noted.