Delivery Partially Failed Resolution

[Hobbz Tigerpaw]

For those merchants who have had orders delivered to customers but never received payment - Jira ticket 4592 was opened months ago (here's the link)

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4592?

 

I asked support when we would expect to see closure on the issue.  A kind support agent finally provided a direct answer:

*******

I am sorry for the inconvenience that this issue has caused.

I have heard back from the Marketplace team.

The Terms of Service does state that Second Life and all Second Life services are not warranted to be error-free.

The Terms of Service also indemnifies Linden Lab against claims for compensation or refunds in the event that there is a problem.

We will be unable to accommodate your request for credit for the sales of the products that show as failed.

 I apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

 Thank you for being a valued resident of Second Life! Have a great day!

*******

Sooo... what that means is that we're out money and LL refuses to accept responsibility for the issue even though they made no effort to notify the community of the issue.  Even though it's still "currently under investigation", it sounds like there will be no effort made to compensate for lost sales.

::shrugs::

 

 

[Rival Destiny]

omg & these transactions are documented!!!

what a rip off.

[Czari Zenovka]

I am speechless!

Using my new favorite adjective for CTL - this is outrageous!!  Amazing how the TOS works -  a merchant cannot be paid for documented sales but let a Premium member of SL not pay their fee and their entire account could be wiped out. (I was hearing of accounts of this on the old Resident Answer forums years ago.  From what I gather, if one does not pay their fee a reminder email is sent then after a period of time (maybe 3-7 days...I'd have to go to the archives to find the info), a 2nd reminder is sent then if the fee is still not paid the account is shut down - inventory gone, etc.  VS Free accounts remain on LL forever even if the person signed up one day and never returned.  I don't mean to turn this into a Premium vs Free account discussion as I've been both, but it's the best example I can think of to illustrate how "creatively" the TOS "works.")

 

 

[Sassy Romano]

(not a reply to Czars but to the OP)

 

This isn't new. I posted this same response both here and in the general forum.

 

It's beyond low though since the money hasn't gone missing but is transaction logged and merely stuck as a result of poor architecture. My proposal was documented in http://jira.secondlife.com/web-4508

 

Had that been implemented, it would be impossible for such failure to pay to occur (due to this reason) but my jira was closedss "will not implement" which basically states that it's ok to have faulty software by design even if it's ok that it acts to the financial detriment of the paying customer.

[Ashy Calcutt]

Goes to show you who LL cares for.. themselves.....  Now you can't tell me that they can't Help On situations like this?..  Shame Man Shame

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Greed at the expense of the Merchants.  There is no reason they can't pay them since there are transaction records.  A simple comparison and matching of buyer transactions vs merchant transactions would easily show who is owed money.

[Paul Hexem]

This is why I've started doing my MP shopping with PayPal. Law overrides the ToS in that case, and filing a dispute through PayPal's system gets you refunded.

 

The only downside is LL is liable to ban your PayPal account after they have to refund you a few times.

Which is sort of ironic, but we won't get into that.

 

And unfortunately, it doesn't help on the merchant side- best solution? Offer demos only on the MP, and do sales in person, in-world (or have a store).

 

And make sure to put in the description why you do it that way.

[Sassy Romano]

Actually, being the pedant that I sometimes choose to be, one can easily argue that this quote from the TOS does not apply since it is there to indemnify LL from claims for compensation or refund in situations where someone would be claiming $ for loss of service of the platform.

 

No claim for compensation for that is being made here, what is being asked for is for the completion of a transaction for which logged data clearly exists.

 

I wonder how that works in RL...

 

" yes LL employee, I *know* that your bank statement shows that you should have the money but here at the bank our software can sometimes accept funds from employers and then although the transaction logs show that employees should have been paid their salary, it sometimes doesn't work. We know it's bad, in fact its so bad we even ask that you agree that you might not actually get paid so I'm sorry but in this case, while we know that your employersent us money and we know you were supposed to receive it, we just can't help but hey, do have a great day!"

[Darrius Gothly]

And therein lay the crux of the issue. The bank is regulated by various state and federal laws and they are required to meet certain standards of performance. LL isn't. They are allowed to set their own operating laws because the legal system hasn't caught up with the Internet.

I find it interesting that they are required to declare VAT and other taxes, yet are NOT required to obey other financial transaction laws. Must be good to have it that easy, huh?

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

And therein lay the crux of the issue. The bank is regulated by various state and federal laws and they are required to meet certain standards of performance. LL isn't. They are allowed to set their own operating laws because the legal system hasn't caught up with the Internet.

I find it interesting that they are required to declare VAT and other taxes, yet are NOT required to obey other financial transaction laws. Must be good to have it that easy, huh?

---

That's it in a nutshell, Outside the laws with the "virtual" aspects in too many areas.

My "last straw" moment was when we exceeded the amount you're able to cash out, and we applied for more. After getting an obvious run-around to discourage that from happening, support tickets, requests, etc., (As if we had to qualify to get money we earned) told my wife to give it up, this isn't business. We're both no strangers to doing collections in RL, and this was literally more like collections than doing business with an up-and-up company.

That precious little bit cost them $300/month in tier for an island we no longer have.

But right, ludicrous prices on tier, the scaled tier increments, money charged when you get fake money, when you sell fake money, more fake money taken out at every turn (texture uploads, mesh uploads, group stuff, ads, 5% of marketplace ... all designed to take back even more of money that was already double purchased).

And of course they have no consumer protection, liability or accountability.

Most every company we deal with works off of an "if in doubt, refund" policy. It generally doesn't get out of hand and it pays off.

And of course now we know they manipulate things to keep product prices down to a level they think draws in newbies. More likely that it also means more spending goes to LL, not its merchant users.

And Rod is wondering why they can't retain users with an overly heavy product they can't develop fast enough to keep up to date, with insane pricing.

So now he's asking users that have to go through this nonsense to help get more users. Which as someone pointed out, isn't the goal to retain them, the goal is how do we retain them long enough to get them to spend money. And that's ok, that's business except for trying to sell people on the idealism of it all.

Because a sucker born every minute just isn't enough.

Content creators need a union and a non-profit watchdog kind of thing these days. Seriously. And some spiffy new laws to cover virtual goods and "fake" money. And audits, lots of audits.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

---

My "last straw" moment was ... <snip>

That precious little bit cost them $300/month in tier for an island we no longer have.

 

---

I know this will never realistically happen, but I wonder if a few days of a merchant "blackout" protest would wake LL up - kind of like when many websites went "black" to protest SOPA. 

Merchants mark all their products "not for sale" in world and MP for say 2 days and clearly state why in their stores/MP.  This would result in many angry residents (especially the ones for whom SL is one big shopping spree) who *might* contact LL, although that is a stretch.

Anything that would dry up LL's income for even a few days I would think would give them enough of a financial "hit" to crawl out of their holes to see what's up.

Again...I know it's too far-fetched to implement...just musing...

 

[Paul Hexem]

All I know is, LL is in for a shock when the laws include virtual currency and microtransactions. Just a matter of time.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Gadget Portal wrote:

All I know is, LL is in for a shock when the laws include virtual currency and microtransactions. Just a matter of time.

---

I'd be willing to be it's us that will be in for a shock .. because the day the law requires them to obey financial transaction laws and submit to audits .. is the day they close the doors on SL and shut it down for good. At that point it will no longer be profitable or "Fast, Easy and Fun" (for them) .. it will just be "business".

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Not sure LL has listened to a mass outcry in quite a while. I remember years back when people did the first "open letter" after LL seemed to do nothing but let problems pile up for a couple of years. They did respond and communication improved but I haven't seen that kind of response since then.

They're already declining and they're doing the other ventures as insurance against SL failing (just an opinion), so I'm not sure they're threatened even by a protest that'd hit them financially unless it was a large scale thing.

Most merchants aren't going to sacrifice their income I don't think, and I don't blame them.

Agree with you though ... "if only".

Something needs to be done though, and I think that needs to be off-SL. As in forming some sort of group that can eventually have some legal help at their disposal. Contacting politicians may help. They're always looking for a new torch to pick up to score points with and this is juicy in that it brings more revenue to government, theoretically.

[Josh Susanto]

I'm choosing to put up with an environment where LL routinely steals from users because, in spite of that, I am at least making some kind of money, and I appreciate the activities of users on the whole well enough to want to keep offering stuff they can use to accomplish results and effects they want to accomplish. 

But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about the stealing. 

I keep thinking we're eventually going to discover some way to plug one of LL's vital legal loopholes, and that they'll have to start being more proactively fair with people who will then represent to LL the possibility that they are vulnerable to legitimate punishment in ways they haven't anticipated. 

Of course, I'd prefer to see LL start to straigten out its act before that, of their own volition.

I can dream, can't I?

[Spica Inventor]

What if it's being done deliberately? I mean if you think about it, say one out of ten items at a 100% cut would mean double the profits. ;-)

[Josh Susanto]

Bickering over whether or not we should believe it's deliberate is pointless.

The fact is that we know it's happening and we know that LL knows that it is happening and they know that we know and they know that we know that they know we know. 

Everyone knows that everyone knows that it's happening.

And LL does nothing about it.

WHY?