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To RODVIK - Request meeting with Merchants on CommerceTeam concerns


Toysoldier Thor
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In your original post's statement that "many of the Merchant of SecondLife use their sales of content into SL as a primary source of REAL LIFE INCOME for them and their families". I would've changed the word "many" for the word "some" and the word "primary" for the word "supplemental" to cover more bases but even your wording is essentially correct. It is also true that the Lab derives a part of its income from merchants activities: via the Marketplace commission, via merchants subscriber fees and probably most via exchanging real currencies for L$ which regular users must do to be able to buy merchants' wares.

Premises considered, some kind of a de facto association between the merchants and the Lab is hard to dispute. Perhaps sooner or later someone would come up with a precise term for this kind of association but it is not relevant for us in here. What is relevant is to state with specific particularity that no matter how real and how mutually beneficial this de facto association may be it cannot and must not become de jure.

The reason is obvious: our litigation society. While having superficial control over merchants' wares and business conduct the Lab has much deeper pockets than the merchants have and the cost of defending whatever frivolous lawsuits would be impossible to bear regardless of their outcome. Should the Lab devise a whatever scheme of executing strict control over merchants, most of them would not be able to comply with the terms.

Therefore the current business model of treating the merchants exactly the same as other paying and non-paying customers is the only one reasonable and moreover imperative for continuation of business. Those merchants who wish otherwise are pushing themselves on a very slippery slope.

Having said that, we must also acknowledge that the health of the Marketplace is a matter of concern not only for merchants but also for their customers and therefore for all SL users so merchants being the loudest in expressing this concern is not at all contrary to the above. There is nothing wrong with meeting with Mr. Humble but what a purpose would be? A mea culpa? I have neither desire nor time to listen to such and would not attend. I'm sure there are others feeling the same way and that is why I posited that the meeting request does not represent wishes of all merchants.

I have no inside information of the Lab operations and can only offer a speculation. In fact I have done it before several times in here as well as in the in-world merchants group. The Commerce Team is incompetent. There is nothing derogatory in this word's usage in my content. It simply means that they do not have the expertise. It would appear that at the conception of the Marketplace project its complexity was grossly underestimated. Engineers assigned to the project had no e-commerce experience because there was no one around with such experience. No management whatever brilliant can compensate for people lacking knowledge in what they do.

There are 2 ways to resolve such situation. Hire competent people is the fast one but the cost, considering contract wages of  no less than $100 per hour (contractors are hired indirectly via agencies which have a significant markup), would run into hundreds thousands if not millions. I'm not sure the Lab, which only a couple years ago had to lay off 30% of its staff, has sufficient money.

The second way is slow and tedious: let people learn on the job. I believe that this is what is taking place. We cannot speed up this process by emotional complaining. We can speed it up by timely and calmly reporting bugs. Neither can Mr. Humble speed up this process. So once again, what is the purpose to meet?

As for me "not liking you", this is simply preposterous. I have no idea who you are; as far as I'm concerned you are just your posts byline as well as I am from your end. Why would I dislike you? I read you :)

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Ela Talaj wrote:

Please see my reply to Toy. It is also a reply to you, but he's an original poster after all
:)

Fair enough. However you still haven't answered my question. I get that you believe a consortium of Merchants may be shooting their own feet off by pressing the issue with Rodvik, but that is after all our choice, not yours. I would also hasten to point out that should this come to true legal proceedings, the cost of mounting such a case could be crushing but .. and I say this with all sincerity .. would be remunerated in the awards after the decision goes for the Merchants.

Every day I grow more and more convinved that legal action is both advisable and would be successful. The actions and inactions of the Lab in the issues surrounding the Marketplace, and in fact their rapidly evaporating fiction about Linden Dollars having no value, are doing naught more than to pile more and more dirt on their own grave.

I do NOT want to go that route. Nor do I want to see the customers of Linden Lab continuing to be cheated, disrespected and ignored. I WANT Second Life to survive. But going on as they have been .. is sure to result in faster and faster decline into oblivion.

The water is up to the foredeck and rising fast. From here in the Crow's Nest .. I'm getting worried. Isn't it about time LL start accepting they've got holes in the hull and start patching and baling?

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Darrius Gothly wrote:


Toysoldier Thor wrote:

(snip)

OPTION #2:  LL encourage 3rd Party ecommerce sites to return to SL - open the DD API - Gracefully slide out

This would be hard to transition to but I think it would have the best overall value to Merchants and Customers. If this transition could somehow be orchestrated, competition is what is missing now and competition is in bad need !  

Maybe - to add incentive for LL to gracefully bow out of the market, the agreement would be that LL get 1% of all sales transaction from all sales as compensation for the 3rd party vendors having usage access to the DD API or whatever delivery mechanism. (snip)

I've lobbied for this option since they first publicly announced Direct Delivery. It would maintain LL's income stream for offline sales, divorce them from the majority of support costs and result in several competing sites that could challenge each other to grow better than anything else we have now.

I also like to think one of the features they could experiment with are methods of linking in-world sales with offline sales .. but this would also require having connections with in-world vendor systems and/or the SL Search and "Sell from a Prim" API's.

All in all, this opens the whole segment BACK up to the wonder of End-User Creativity. That's a concept that SL grew strong from, that they then lost and have been suffering from since losing .. and should strive to regain .. especially based on Rodvik's statement that he wants to implement ways to increase.

Ugg, I remember disagreeing with this and citing security risks. If not for trying to support M Lindens plan of attack at the time, I'd probably have agreed but they were at odds.

Pam had a point that it was too late, and it probably is, I think due to a shrinking customer base and ratio of buyers to sellers, speaking of independent sales sites. The situation now is fragile and fragmentation would be pretty painful.

Not that I don't think there's a better path involving trashing the Marketplace software completely, but of course we know how migrations tend to go around here.

I still like the idea of an API-ish integrated system far better than this external shopping cart software, and agree that if there's a way to give commerce back to us, it should be done, if it can be done without shrinking the merchant/customer ecosystem. That's really hard to do without LL promoting it as much as the Marketplace is now as their own property It's a shame that we may not be able to get a do-over and just keep the idea of a folder-to-folder delivery system and go from there.

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Ela Talaj wrote:

Darrius, with all due respect, I don't think you understood my post.

Well, I gave it my best. Perhaps you could explain in more detail what I missed .. and why it is that you push back against the actions of others to get our concerns heard by the "Top Dog"?

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This link was referred to me to add my comment. I lost most of my inventory that I used in my business and left Second Life around the first of August. Here's my story so you can add it to this open forum:

 I copied this from my blog: 

I was going to close the blog without further notices, but I thought it might be relevant to post my support ticket and some thoughts about my inventory loss that ended my Second Life business.


I worked 7 days a week, 8-10 hour days. I paid mainland tiers and I had premium account. Over the years I've lost items here and there with rolling restarts, or mysterious disappearances, but this wasn't one item, and as time went on, I realized it wasn't just my building folder (everything I make clothing with other than Photoshop imports), but a weeding out of every singe folder. It was as if I'd moved from my main avatar to some low inventory alt.

At the time I was using Phoenix's Firestorm, and Linden's Official Viewer. I suspect this jumping between viewers caused the loss. That said, assetsservers should be able to restore inventory regardless of viewer used.

To say I was freaked out, is very mildly put. And, my knee jerk response, pitted against the clear and concise reality that to regroup would be complex, time consuming, costly, really was a week of madness. Denial, grief...acceptance that my hard built boat was somewhat sunk. Could I reorganize, regroup and move on, the way I suppose many in Second Life have done after inventory loses. Yes, and no. First, irregardless of whether "I could do this," the fiduciary responsibility of my inventory was Linden Lab's alone, as they give us no ability to back up our inventory. Our inventory is 100% in their care.

Regroup option:

The truth of the matter was I wasn't making much Lindens in Second Life as a fashion designer, and the cost for me was far more than my earnings, in part by some mysterious change to Market Place. Pre mystery, I was selling regularly, after mystery, it was as if I didn't have "any" presence on Market Place. Unable to make a dent in tier costs on Market Place, I focused marketing inworld, and incurred expensive land fees. I joined one Hunt and Freebie group after another to bring in clients. Of course, they were non-paying clients, and I don't hold that against them, it's just a "take" mentality.  Once I gave away a wedding gown for a hunt. I had literally hundreds of takers, and not one bought anything else in my store. Amazing really.

I had this blog and a Twitter feed, a spot on Flickr and all the necessary social networks. I had bloggers blogging my items, and Penderest. Inworld, I was involved in fashion events, runway shows, and belonged to numerous fashion groups. But 90% of my creative energy began to be siphoned off by hunts. I found myself under one deadline after another for hunts expecting (sometimes demanding) exclusive or new items.

Thus, just before the inventory loss, I was burning out, a slow sizzle of discouragement to stay afloat in a rapidly changing Second Life fashion environment, and (for me) a defunct Market Place.  

Reason not to regroup -- Changes:

Then the introduction of Mesh changed the fashion landscape. If you don't know Blender, or some other mesh making platform, and rely on the mesh creators, what you have is an influx of same style different texture clothing. It takes away the uniqueness of hand drawn clothing that might set you apart. I became very adept at making ballroom gowns, but how many ballgowns does the average woman in SL need? Probably, one.

I can't be objective about how good I was or wasn't at making clothing. I do know my seams matched, but it's a difficult industry to break into even if you're exceptional. Just like real life, there are fashion cliques that are bound so tight that to be invited into any event is significant. Many times I just invited myself, and this wasn't always well received. Once, I asked in a Second Life Forum how I could find out about fashion events, and someone responded, "You'll know if they want you to know."

I don't want to flame out of Second Life with a grudge everyone has to hear about, and that's not the point here. I'm writing this to say its very hard to break into Second Life fashion even if you learn the skills. When you're barely in on the fashion radar, and then lose everything you've done for 3 years in one fell-swoop, you stand back and think, "huh, what the hell was I spending my money and time doing this for when it could all go up in a poof of virtual smoke?"

I don't know. Maybe the pure seduction of Second Life.

The most interesting, and terribly eye awakening for me the silence of the Second Life fashion community that a fellow designer could be put out of business by inventory loss. That begs why? Kakia Designs was a small insignificant designer? More business for us? That kind of thinking is folly. Silence is what Linden Labs banks on. Silence changes nothing.

Now what?:

I don't know. I miss Second Life. I miss my store. I miss my home and friends. Even if I never had made one Linden, I wouldn't have been discouraged enough to leave, lock stock and barrel. It was Linden Lab's arrogant attitude, and tough luck, "no warranties," stance. Can anyone tell me a business that operates in this manner? Who's the bigger fool, those of us who invest in this company, or Linden Labs?

There are 100's of not millions of online "games" and virtual worlds to take our attentions and money. Most come with satisfying customer service. When I lost some inventory on Castelville, Zynga sent me new items within 24 hours without question. They didn't ask me to do anything. No clearing of cache. No install new viewers. They just sent me the cows, and extra Zynga bucks for the trouble of losing a cow.

Linden Labs, had a paying customer who gave them $75 a month ($150 for awhile), and more through hundreds of uploads. Wouldn't they try to keep me sending that check? Their mentality is, "sorry." Sorry? Imagine if your cable TV went out and all the company said was, "sorry." Or your house burned down and your insurance said, "sorry." Is "sorry" a business model?

I did thank this one rep, who "tried" to help. I don't blame him. Whatever the abilities of customer service, they seem limited.

The divorce remains amazingly singular, as I've not heard from anyone within Second Life, or out, and even this blog has fizzled to nothing at all. Linden Labs will continue to reign power over our virtual goods until the residents rumble, strike, and demand safe controls of our virtual items, or the laws force them to get their act together. Until then, residents will live in denial it could happen to them, continue their building, selling, sexing, and false sense of securities, and Linden Lab will take their money.

(the actual ticket is on my blog... I left SL in August. No more Mainland Tiers, No prem account. LL didn't miss me or my $$. )

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Ela Talaj wrote:

 

The reason is obvious: our litigation society. While having superficial control over merchants' wares and business conduct the Lab has much deeper pockets than the merchants have and the cost of defending whatever frivolous lawsuits would be impossible to bear regardless of their outcome. Should the Lab devise a whatever scheme of executing strict control over merchants, most of them would not be able to comply with the terms.

Therefore the current business model of treating the merchants exactly the same as other paying and non-paying customers is the only one reasonable and moreover imperative for continuation of business. Those merchants who wish otherwise are pushing themselves on a very slippery slope.


I'm not sure that they do provide us with any more legal protection. We're on our own defending our content and LL isn't going to protect us or help us much.

The liability they skirt with the virtual currency may afford us some protection, because people aren't directly paying us with real money, otherwise we're on our own.

It could be said that in fact, they don't do enough to police and protect our content precisely because they do dislaim away all liability. There's a bare minimum of compliance on LL's part. They're covered, we're really not by much.

It's common enough to treat commercial customers as well, commercial customers, partners, affiliates or whatever you want to call them. Commercial customers are valuable in that they tend to have an equal or better finger on the pulse of customers and trends than the provider of the service.

The issue really isn't trying to get them to treat us better or as higher priority than everyone else, it's to get them to treat us as what we are: business people. That's what we do. In matters of business. We share many of the same concerns, issues, trends and profit and loss than they do.

As do land barons.

I think all we're asking is that a CEO act on concerns that their employees won't or can't.

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As you know Faye I was apalled by your inventory catastrophe. I have never been convinced that nothing could be done. The other day my susbscriber with customer list in it vanished off the planet completely and I filed a ticket.  Then Fred Allandale suggested a rollback so I filed another ticket for that, and within a couple of hours, I had the rollback and my subscriber back.

Two days later I get a reply to the first ticket which I had forgotten about. The Lindend said he was very sorry but after using every tool at his disposal he was not able to recover the subscriber. So I replied thanks, told him how the problem was solved, and suggest he ADD THAT TO HIS LIST OF TOOLS AT HIS DISPOSAL.

IOW if Fred had not suggested teh rollback, I probably would have accepted that nothing could be done.

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:


Ela Talaj wrote:

Darrius, with all due respect, I don't think you understood my post.

Actually Darrius... I think you might have mis read her posting.  Read it again.

Well, I have .. read it again and again again too. I'm still unclear why the fervent pushback .. but perhaps I'll have another go. Stay tuned!

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i do agree though that if the merchants that want to make a stab at TRYING to get a time to actually know rodvik heard our concerns... and then even if he says "thanks for telling me but it is what it is"... at least we know that right from Rodvik... that he doesnt care about the MP and that he fully understands that his team is not well suited to grow and run a Marketplace but its all he wants to do about it.

I guess I am a pitbull on progress and I personally cannot stand incompetance and ineffective solutions, systems, or people.

but at least if I hear it from the CEO of the company that he really does not care about MP and ecommerce in SL... then i can say "i tried".

 

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Just caught up on that full story, sorry to hear about it.

Probably one of the biggest points that they don't get is that they generate burnout due to their lack of responsibility with a stable product.

Had many of those moments, endless hours redoing things due to their negligence. Work that takes more time to research and work around the bugs and quirks than actually getting the job done, and on it goes. Thankfully I've never had an inventory loss as great as yours. I've had my inventory steadily chipped away to the point that I didn't know that it's missing until it's really too late to do anything about it.

They do burn people out emotionally, financially. To exist for 10 years and not be able to handle inventory in too many cases. You can't get them to give up their projects in favor of building a better product no matter how hard you try it seems.

Sometimes I wonder what they tell themselves is the reason for their decline. It seems to be everything but an all too often inferior product and a lack of responsibility to the people that pay them money.

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What is ironic - is that one would think the feeling among the Merchant community as a whole would see and experience what most of us in the SL Forums have known and been frustrated about for so long... yet I discovered on the SLU that there are still a lot of SL residents in an utter sense of naive bliss that things are not that bad and $L are only worthless tokens with no value!  This is coming from actual MERCHANTS!  Can you believe a Merchant would say that $L has no value?  So like... then why are they merchants??

Anyway... I know Ela that its an uphill battle to speak with Rodvik but if that is what some of us merchants want.... to climb the the mount and speak to the voice of God to hear that he dont care... then I guess  the question that Darrius was asking... why would you be against it?  If you are not for it... it wouldnt hurt you by us wanting to bring the issue to his attention.  Thats more of what he was saying.

Its 2am - time for bed!!  Night to all...

and I extend my hand and shake yours Ela

 

 

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(Try #3 ...)


Ela Talaj wrote:

(snip) ... There are 2 ways to resolve such situation. Hire competent people is the fast one but the cost, considering contract wages of  no less than $100 per hour (contractors are hired indirectly via agencies which have a significant markup), would run into hundreds thousands if not millions. I'm not sure the Lab, which only a couple years ago had to lay off 30% of its staff, has sufficient money.

The second way is slow and tedious: let people learn on the job. I believe that this is what is taking place. We cannot speed up this process by emotional complaining. We can speed it up by timely and calmly reporting bugs. Neither can Mr. Humble speed up this process. So once again, what is the purpose to meet? ... (snip)

Assuming this is your reply to my question about "pushback" .. I'll address these points. (And please .. for pity's sake .. if I've missed it again, just smack me and say plainly as I'm clearly suffering a synapse prolapse)

Your estimates for Contract Labor are, if anything, a bit low. My experience from several years ago was that basic hourly rates were in the $200 and up range for general programmers and a good bit more for people with specific skills. But that's really neither here nor there. The expense at this point to hire on temporary workers is one that should not be made. Why? Because Linden Lab does not need temporary employees. They need regular staff with the skills to perform the tasks required.

I'm going to use an example that is perhaps a bit over the top, but I think communicates the gist of my point. I've had pretty extensive experience with the medical community .. doctors, nurses, technicians of all ilk. Every one of the people that I have encountered has possessed a much higher skill level than the generic employee. People that are meant to draw blood are certified and trained to perform that task. Those who must interact with and be the primary care givers likewise have training that prepares them to meet the challenges they will face. This goes without saying, you hire the people with the skills to do the job.

The Marketplace, and by extension all forms of Commerce within Second Life, are critical components of what makes SL work. It is at least a significant link in the chain that binds Linden Lab to the income from their customers. Without the actions of the Commerce Engine within Second Life, the path and interest of most customers would be short .. too short to sustain SL for more than a week or two per person. I daresay that a very large part of what keeps people in SL is their own personal level of participation in the commercial process. (Buyer, Seller or both.)

Thus it is incumbent on Linden Lab to recognize the criticality of commercial activities and properly equip themselves to do it justice. That means not hiring "incompetent" or improperly trained people in the hopes that they can ramp them up to speed. It means they hire people with the skills in place.

Of your two options presented above, if you are correct and they are engaged in trying to train their people to do the job properly then they are also failing to perform that task as well. Training involves catching mistakes, correcting mistakes and teaching new skills by example and direction. To date they have not demonstrated any form of training of their staff. Instead they seem to simply go off doing whatever they wish .. perhaps with the guidance to "ignore the crankies in the Forums .. they're just whiners". But whatever the words behind the scenes may be, LL is failing miserably at the task of training or improving their staff.

Teaching people to improve is a much more expensive proposition than hiring pre-trained personnel. MUCH more expensive. Not only must you bear the cost of their mistakes, but you must also provide even higher paid people to manage and train them in situ. If LL has chosen your Option #2, this bodes far worse than just hiring people on the cheap because they needed to cut costs.

Why do I want to speak with Rodvik? So I can have the positive feedback that he is both aware and paying attention .. AND grasps the seriousness of ignoring the ongoing problems. Like you I am not interested in having him express any mea culpas. I simply want him to listen, acknowledge that this is a critical issue .. and then give voice to their plans to resolve it. That means not only attending the first meeting, but subsequent meetings, of instituting a regular schedule of meetings between the CTL staff and the members of the SL Community. And in keeping his finger on this issue until it stops being a daily exercise in dodging the bullets fired at us.

I've no interest in affixing blame. None whatsoever. However I DO need to see they are taking hold of the wheel and steering away from the cliff before we all plummet over the edge.

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Faye,

Before I go to bed... sorry I missed your post.  THAT IS TERRIBLE.... and sadly this is the culture and utter arrogance and lack of customer support within LL.  Sadly I do not think Rodvik is really much different - he has long since passed the 100 day NOOB ticket so his influence on the company to change the focus and be more customer service driven should have been noticed.  It hasnt.

In fact it appears he is so focus on creating new LL products for Apple that he just hopes SL will survive long enough for his other products to take over.

He has gagged the JIRA so that the new STEAM players do not see just how bug ridden and ugly LL is operating inside.  He has placed internal gag orders within LL as well.  Seems the Commerce Team is the most loyal to that order.

So.... sadly Faye, how they treated you fall completely in line with their TOS that they fully survive on..... "If we screwed up and you lose it all on our account - sorry about that now shut up and try again".

Maybe Rodvik is reading these posts but rumour has it he would rather read from the insanity at SLU.  He doesnt even believe in reading posts from his own company's forums.

But... sorry again Faye for all the losses LL has incurred upon you ! :(

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Faye, I'm really sorry it ended like that but you're certainly not alone in your feelings.  For many reasons, primarily to do with the quality of the platform, marketplace and service which have all been contributing factors to a decline in my inworld sales,  I'm getting ready to close down all my inworld shops and get rid of the land.  Will LL care?  nope, like with Faye, they won't even notice. (btw Faye, LL didn't lose anything substantial by your departure, if you sold the land on then someone else is paying the tier (particularly if it went to a land flipper) and any money that was spent in your shop is very likely being spent elsewhere - literally the only thing that has affected LL by your departure is the loss of your premium membership)

The sad bit of this is that the people LL drive away (and people are driven away - Faye's story is more common than it should be, as we know) were committed to SL and it's success.  They were the ones who spent so much of their time creating items that add depth and interest to this world for others to enjoy and a lot of them would only usually break even or like Faye, would end up paying LL for the "privilege" of making this world of ours a better place. That kind of committment to a company should be respected as it's very rare anywhere else but in SL, yet LL goes out of it's way to avoid even acknowledging the effort those creators put in, let alone trying to help them stay by fixing the issues that eventually become insurmountable hurdles.

There's not really much more to say.

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Hello & Good Morning Faye,

I guess your story really bothered me enough that it bounced around in my head last night.

I woke up this morning with an idea which is a real long shot since it has been so long since this happened and since I would have to assume the LL Support staff already suggested this idea to you as a last ditch effort to salvage at least SOME of your creations / business from LL's failed untrusting asset database...

But its worth a shot to just go check...

Did you go log into Aditit (the SL beta grid) and see if any of your valuable business assets are still in your inventory over there?  Remember that I believe each week, LL makes a copy of every Avatar's inventory and places it on Adititi so that any Avatar that wants to do some beta testing, can go there and play with a copy of any of their inventory without it damaging the main grid and using TRULY ZERO VALUE $L Tokens.  ;)

Since Mesh came out, I frequently log into Adititi to upload me mesh model and look at it and make corrections and upload a few times until I am happy with how it looks on the grid.  THEN I upload the final model on the main grid when I know it will look the way I want.

I see all my content from the main grid in my Adititi avatar - except its a week old.

If you would have done this a day or two after you lost it on the main grid then the chance of your content being on the Beta grid would have been excellent.  You could either download the important files (textures sculpts etc.) or more importantly you could have asked LL Support to grab a copy of you r inventory from Adititi and placed it back onto the main grid.

It might be too late now but since your loss was a corruption of the asset server, a wild luck might be that the same corruption might have prevented your content from being removed from the beta grid.


Its just an idea..... but go take a look.

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I did go to Aditit within a day or two. I am not sure of the time frame but it was shortly after.   I went through all the known steps to recover inventory that SL and other members suggested. It was a series of things, including clean uninstalls, tried other computers that SL hadn't been used for.  I can't even remember all that I did. Many sent me info on ideas, but, sadly nothing worked.

I loved my life in SL, my land and store and I miss my butterflies the most.  I was partnered. I had a life here. But it all became too much after that--I really invested thousands into SL, and I honestly shouldn't have done that. I don't have expendable income like that--but I loved SL and kept paying into it-- So all that money spent and the help I didn't get--well, it was a wake up call. 

Since leaving, I'm writing again and just taking out whatever money my Market Place items still generate (I slashed prices with the idea of closing that too, but the MP is SLOW....Eventually I'll remove everything).  Thanks for all the thoughts. I didn't publish my store loss here at the forums when it happended because often this forum is contentious and I was depressed and didn't want confrontation.  I felt very beat up and alone...anyways.

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PS. On my blog there  you'll find the actual ticket reponse from LL at the bottom of the post.

http://www.kakiadesigns.com/2012/08/the-risks-of-virtual-business-in-second.html

Note: my support ticket was back and forth because at first I wasn't aware of what all I lost. I thought I could replace it, and some of it I did get back, but as time went on, at every turn as I'd start a new project, that item or texture would be gone. At first, you can see on ticket, I thought, fine, I'm going to be ok, but then, bang, I'd find another thing gone...well, it was all a rather manic experience.

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Faye, I'm so upset for you and wish there were a way to help you recover things. It sounds like you've tried everything.

One thing that might help replace at least some of your building supplies would be to contact the creators of those supplies and ask if they would redeliver. If you kept all your SL transactions by month, you could sort by expediture, so you would have "proof" that you had purchased them. It takes time to contact the other creators, but I bet lots would help restore what you've lost.  I've done it for my customers (I had one woman in tears in im's having lost all the dresses she had ever bought from me over the last 3 years - I just looked up her records and restored everything).

Just a thought...

 

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Arwen Serpente wrote:

Faye, I'm so upset for you and wish there were a way to help you recover things. It sounds like you've tried everything.

One thing that might help replace at least some of your building supplies would be to contact the creators of those supplies and ask if they would redeliver. If you kept all your SL transactions by month, you could sort by expediture, so you would have "proof" that you had purchased them. It takes time to contact the other creators, but I bet lots would help restore what you've lost.  I've done it for my customers (I had one woman in tears in im's having lost all the dresses she had ever bought from me over the last 3 years - I just looked up her records and restored everything).

Just a thought...

 

I started doing that, first by going through MP purchases. It just became so depressingly slow. Some responded, others didn't... just how much time was involved to get them returned. Some things I bought inworld. I had no record of that stuff and it was really expensive--animations, for example, many many full perm objects, like furnitures, because I built many thing. At every turn, I'd find another thing GONE. As I mentioned in my original post, I just had to make a decision. Plus I lost the textures I'd paid to upload! Thousands of them!!!!! at 10L each! Again... I had to make a choice. ;-(

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What still boggles my mind and is simply not registering with my comprehension of the how instant and absolute your loss could be and LL had absolutely ZERO CAPABILITY to recover these specific lost assets???

I might ask Sassy as I bet she would know the details as to why but havent seen much of her - so Darrius or someone else in this forum with some stronger understanding of LL's SL architecture - can you explain to me how this scenario Faye is describing could be surgical in nature and so utterly absolute to the point that LL had NO ABILITY to restore/recover?


Again - this is what Faye said happened to her in August:

Over the years I've lost items here and there with rolling restarts, or mysterious disappearances, but this wasn't one item, and as time went on, I realized it wasn't just my building folder (everything I make clothing with other than Photoshop imports), but a weeding out of every singe folder. It was as if I'd moved from my main avatar to some low inventory alt.


So someone try to explain to me that some - not all - of Fayes inventory went poof. 

Then explain how LL had no backup of her assets - especially in light that the impact from this LL faux pas meant the complete destruction of a LL Customer's entire business.  And also in light that any normal person would think LL would take extra effort to restore, not only because its the right thing to do to service a customer but also to get her business back up and running.  A healthy running Merchant business means she conitnues to sell on MP and generate more MP SINK for LL -  not to mention she continues to stay as a premium SL customer in good standing.

Then explain to me how these assets could also have been POOFED so quickly from the Adititi Beta grid as well?

So if LL had no abilities to recover data from something so severely Customer Impacting as Faye has described, what does it tell you about the overall fragility of the entire SL Grid to be corrupted & lost with no abilities from LL to recover?

Anyone with tech deep smarts on SL's design?  Help my mind grasp the logic.

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@Faye,

 

With regard to your current strategy in light of the mass destruction of your business with no recovery ability by LL, I am a bit puzzled why you would reduce your price on MP and plan to shut it down.  If you have decided to end any plans to restore an active SL business, why not simply leave all your content on MP at its original price and simply leave it selling on MP indefinitely?  Just let your products continue to sell until market demand & time slowly reduce your sales to zero.  They would be stale content in that you will not be updating the content - so what? 

If a customer finds your product and wants to buy your product - even if its 3 years from now - let them buy it.  Your avatar is still alive and you can still respond to any customer calls and help them if you are able to.  If not, simply tell your customer "due to a major LL failure - I am unable to assist you on this request".  If they dont like it... ohh well... you really dont have a business to maintain anyways.  You might want to place a small comment on each of your items explaining the situation you were put in because LL lost your inworld content so "be warned".

In fact, here is what also doesnt make sense, can you not regain your assets from the MP DD database?  At least you have the full perm copy of the content you are selling on MP.

But I surely would not take a strategy of actively closing your MP - let them all sit there and let them all collect as much revenue as you can from MP until they sell no more.

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