To RODVIK - Request meeting with Merchants on CommerceTeam concerns

[Arwen Serpente]

Toy,

I'm all for having User Group Meetings with the CTL. And, having those meetings echoed here in the Forums would afford those who cannot, or, choose not to attend, an opportunity to add their thoughts and suggestions.

I would say though, that from my experience with "good meeting" rules, setting the Agenda is key, and, not having the meetings too frequently is extemely helpful to all. Good meetings are much more than the actual meeting time. They require a lot of preparation, and, on the flip side, a lot of followup and accountability.

Here's my take on it -

Building a solid Agenda with deliverables and salient information is key. That takes time - a good agenda is worth its weight in gold. Obviously, there's a full list of outstanding issues from the JIRAs from which to build the Agendas for quite a few meetings. Managing the Agenda to what's "doable" in the given meeting timeframe (say an hour) is critical.  From my POV (even if it doesn't affect me), the Financially-related issues are the most critical (for instance, the checks and balances on transactions, or, the correction of the Listing Enhancement Billing situation). So, a meeting solely focused on the financial challenges currently on the table and the fixes that are being rolled out (and when) would be the first priority.  For those who cannot attend, or who choose not to attend, a Forum discussion could run in tandem/parallel. 

Meetings twice a month, or even once a month would be great (say there's a designated day and the same meeting is held several times to accomodate the different time zones). I say this because of the time that it takes to put together a solid meeting, inworld or on the forum.

I am also looking at the next 2 1/2 months (the rest of October through December). Due to the volume of transactions that occur during the holiday period, none of us (Merchant, Shopper, or CTL) wants to disturb whatever equilibrium we currently have. This is a period of time when traditionally any major changes to the MP have been put on hold until the New Year. So again, from my POV, if the "fix" has to do with financial transactions it needs to be a priority and implemented sooner rather than later. Other types of "fix" or enhancements (things like better reporting and analysis tools, or ways to customize a shop) should really be held off until the New Year when the volume of sales is lighter and the risk is lessened.

Just my thoughts on a Sunday night...

[Couldbe Yue]

Second Inventory is the only thing I know of.  It's a bit cumbersome to use but supposedly it works. ( I've only ever tried it to get my stuff out of avination and it failed spectacularly at that because of avination issues so I can't really say how well or not it works.)

If paying LL to back up my inventory (are they the only company in the world who don't back up a key element of their offering? I'd say so) is the only way to preserve it then sadly I'm all for it.  If Rod would like to offer that as a premium perk then I'm sure he'd find a sudden rush of new subscriptions.

[Pamela Galli]

Oh my yes, I would pay a lot to have my inventory backed up! I used to try to put stuff in boxes and keep those rezzed but that just got out of hand. Same with texture organizers.  I just have a flood of new stuff all the time.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

After having read Faye’s latest post, i have some thoughts that i d like to share here. Of course, Rodvick is not exempted to read too. On the contrary. :smileywink:

Faye told the loss of her inventory finally discouraged her totally. My first point is on how she already felt discouraged before because the competition is hard. At this point, id like to point out the fact a lot of creators are giving more money to sl than what they earn. Not because of the quality of their items, but you can have design skills and no skills at all for commerce. You can also be not able to enter the cheat game with mp reviews that consist in paying people for buying and writing reviews on your items. You have indeed some ways to make things a lil faster, with joining groups where you can send notices, but a lot of them allow you only for free things like mm boards, group gifts or freebie… That means, you will give away again and again, and as we all know here, on 100 pp that come for this purpose, you will get less than 10 that will purchase and come back. No need to say that you need regularity in this kind of work, if you want to keep having people coming in your inworld store and that mean at least 1 hour daily at least (and on top, its really not the funniest part of a creator job). You can also, in the way to boost your marketplace, buy enhancements, but they are really not cheap and when it happens that after paying you don’t see your items featured, well…. You know…

So what keep this creators creating is their passion for creation. They like creating, whatever they sell or not. But in this case, if its just a matter of passion, why not sell items for free ? Well, creating cost money. First, every upload cost money indeed. But then, you need also to invest in materials. Textures if you cant do them yourself, prims if your not a prim builders, meshes etc… + machines, scripts, packages, vendors etc…. The bill doesn’t stop here. If you are enough lucky for having an inworld store, you need money for the tier…. So at the end of the month, well, you still have to put rl money in sl. But well, still better than giving items for free, indeed, your sl incomes are not enough to pay all what you have to pay, but they help greatly, so yeah, you can limit the amount of rl money you put in sl.

I think this had to be said. Because a lot of people doesn’t know, or have just forgetting how it was before they make enough sl money to bring it back to rl money.

That said. When we upload OUR creations in SL, I mean what we worked hard to create, we entrust them to LL for they store them in their server. LL can say whatever they wants in their TOS, imho, they are responsible about what we entrust to them. In RL, I manage a public library. In this one, we have a big room made for art exhibits. When we make art exhib, we are legally responsible of the paints and sculptures artists entrust to us. If sadly, one day, a hold-up happens, our insurance will pay the artists back for the damage. We won’t tell them : “ah sorry, you left your arts here, someone came in the night and stole all, and well, sorry, we can’t nothing for you…..” No, we won’t.  So why didn’t LL helped Faye to estimate the amount of the damage for her, looking in her inventory, and checking her old transaction histories and refunded her, at least for a part ?  This is not fair at all. And it wouldn’t be in any case, legal in France. LL, whatever you writed in your TOS, how can you be in peace with the fact that someone entrusted to you items she worked hard for, and because of a technical issue your servers have lost ? No matter what is in your TOS, this is just not fair.

So, Faye I understand you have been discouraged, but im an incorrigible optimist. We cant fix the discouraged feeling. But I ve recently heard about an argue between 2 famous creators that is now in courts. The one who has been sued needed a lot of money for paying the court costs. Some creators made a tribute event for this person and they deed all the money of the sales to this creator. So would you be ok, for such thing ? And creators that read here the thread would you be ok for joining it ? I have no idea about what it could be. But well, its an idea, maybe with the money we could do, Faye would be able to purchase back a part of what she lost or at least to upload again her textures (bec LL is not ashamed to charge her for this a second time). I know, its not our job to fix smth we are not guilty for. But, in rl, when govs fail bec they prefer to pay wars than give money to medical research, isn’t what civil society does ?

So well, just an idea. I know Faye is not a unique case, but at least shes the one we are aware now.

So just think about this.. it can be another way (for example, some of us decide to deed a percentage of our sales for a limited time, idk, lets just be creative ) .. but I think solidarity isnt a vain word. Whatever the way we choose to express it.

 

(since I think this topic is a lil different with the main one, but well, Rodvick told us he is reading this one, im not sure about posting here. So if you agree with the idea what about starting another thread on this specific topic ?)

(Faye, you don’t have in any case, to feel not ease with the solidarity idea I explained, what happened to you can happen to every of us… so if we do it, its also for ourselves)

[JoJo Aurelia]

I belonged to many groups, all the freebies, hunts, etc, Fashion for Life, Race for Cure, many benefit fashion shows and charities where I donated money and time. I was finalist in One in A Million Designers, showcases in Moolto.  I was doing 3-4 hunts a month and hunt organizers want more and more original exclusive to give away for free. I did have bloggers blogging, and not paid bloggers (though I would tip if good photos). I had paid employees to help me get out notices and manage groups. Big over head. I would get 25-50 or more visitors a day to my store. A lot of work to get that many. Unless you sell hair! My work load was very heavy, as is anyone who is involved in all of these events.  It's not a hobby, it's a job. It's many hours. I started at 7:30 and work till 5:00PM or longer every day. Not just designing, but setting up hunts, getting ready for events...blogging, Twittering, so many other things that go into it--on and lets no forget MP and the change from Magic Boxes that took a long time.  Without repeating myself, (but I will), the idea to regroup was overwhelming.

Original OP is about merchants getting meetings. I would be all for this because to go forward I would need some kind of guarantee that my issues would be addressed separately than the general support. Merchants do not have "general" problems. They have special needs.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

@Arwen,

I fully understand your reasons and also the fears based around too frequent of having SL User Group meetings, but I think a lot of you that have reservations about the overhead and prep of these UG's or the complications of scheduling UGs that allows EVERYONE to attend might not have actually attended the other weekly and even semi-weekly UGs from the other LL teams.

If you haven't attend one or took time to see how these other LL teams manage and control their weekly UG meetings, you will realize that we are boiling the ocean on the logistics of what is truly meant to be a perfect opportunity to start breaking down the communications barriers between CTL and the Merchants.

First of all I will re-post the current SL UG wiki.  Take note that this is the OFFICIAL LL page on User Groups.    It is something that LL formally endorses and actively has been operating successfully.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:User_Groups

If you notice in the weekly schedule, that one of the groups "Open Development" successfully holds 2 meetings a week and they do not have issues with too much prep time or overhead.  I personally started attending the Friday 4pm SLT SIM UG meetings (as its the only one that I can attend since I am not at RL work).  I can tell you several things from my attendance of these meetings that convince me that these meetings are CRITICAL for the CTL to engage with the same frequency.

 

1. Even if were not able to attend ANY these weekly meeting because it conflicts with my RL schedule, I would never say that these meetings should be cancelled since I cant make it.  Why?  Because those among the SL community that can make it most often share many of the same thoughts, ideas, concerns as I do.  And, if any of them dont, I would just contact one of those that do attend and ask them to bring the topic up.  AND the transcripts to the meeting ar posted so I can see what was talked about when i didnt show up.
2. If you go to these meetings you see that the weekly agenda is very established and even if the topics going into each meeting are not set for some of the groups.  For the SIM UG on Friday, 3 or 4 LL staff show up promptly at 4pm slt (I mean to the minute)... we all have some friendly 2-way greetings for a couple minutes then the Lindens begin by going through a status update on the things they are primarily working on and/or was mentioned last week.  This is about 15-20 minutes.  THEN they open the floor for any NEW BUSINESS.  Since these meeting are very regular... there is rarely any flood of topics to discuss - everyone often gets their topic mentioned and heard.  For the first Commerce UGs - this might not be the case, but topics are talked about until the top of the hour and the meeting ends.
3. There is auto-transcripting available so the Commerce UG could simply poste on the wiki the full 1 hour of transcripts in very shor order.
4. The agenda should be structured only in OLD and NEW business.  The idea of the weekly meetings is more so to encourage direct face to face interaction between the CTL and Merchants.  Get them to know each other again.  Start rebuilding a healthy business relationship.  And also to provide an avenue to get quick direct immediately dialog on any urgent issues (not wait 1 or 2 or more days for a LL posting on the forums or when their next blog is scheduled).

I would strongly suggest that the CTL initially establish two weekly 1 hour meetings.  They set the agenda of the first 20 minutes to have Brooke enlighten all attendees (and those that later read the transcripts) one what her team's primary efforts are behind and to provide a status on resolution of the biggest MP problems.  THEN - let the remaining topics be a free open discussion for all to speak on what ever topics bubble to the top.  See how that goes first.

I also completely endorse and repeat what Darrius stated as well that ANY PARTICIPANT at the 1 hour meetings that is there to be rude, or bully, or take over the agenda and is warned by both LL and the other Merchants on their behavior - that a LL land owner ejects them from the land.  Plain and simple.  If its agreed by both sides that the participant is not positively contributing to the meeting - I have no sympathies with the blunt ejection.

Finally, having the weekly meetings is not mutually exclusive to the forum threads that we would like CTL to actively participate on.  In fact I belive both should be deployed to enforce each other (i.e. to support those that cannot make the weekly meetings).  BUT the critical reason for the weekly meeting is to restore a damaged relationship.   Forum communications where the LL staff can hide behind a forum/blog are not as effective as face-to-face frequent communucations.

If you havent been to one of these UG meetings.... make time to just attend ONE.

[Arwen Serpente]

When (if) they start again, I will definitely attend (as long as I'm awake and at my computer). In the past, while I did not attend them in person, I did read the minutes that were posted.

The first hurdle is word from CTL regarding the requests raised in this thread by a variety of Merchants. Once we know their game plan, we'll be able to move forward one way or another.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

Finally, having the weekly meetings is not mutually exclusive to the forum threads that we would like CTL to actively participate on.  In fact I belive both should be deployed to enforce each other (i.e. to support those that cannot make the weekly meetings).  BUT the critical reason for the weekly meeting is to restore a damaged relationship.   Forum communications where the LL staff can hide behind a forum/blog are not as effective as face-to-face frequent communucations.

 

ok, it seems that you know already a lot about this meetings and i will trust your experience. As long as the forum will be a second place for those who can't be there, i dont see anything bad in your proposition. I fully understand what you mean about the need to "restore the damaged relationship" and well, at least, it worth to be tried. Maybe you are right on the weekly regularity... maybe not.. but yes, why not try and see then ?

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Couldbe Yue wrote:

Second Inventory is the only thing I know of.  It's a bit cumbersome to use but supposedly it works. ( I've only ever tried it to get my stuff out of avination and it failed spectacularly at that because of avination issues so I can't really say how well or not it works.)

If paying LL to back up my inventory (are they the only company in the world who don't back up a key element of their offering? I'd say so) is the only way to preserve it then sadly I'm all for it.  If Rod would like to offer that as a premium perk then I'm sure he'd find a sudden rush of new subscriptions.

---

I've used Second Inventory, now called Stored Inventory due to the LL TPV changes a couple of years ago, and it worked well for me.  It is listed on the approved LL TPV site.  Many people I know back up their inventory with the Imprudence Viewer.  I have never gotten that viewer to run very well on my PC, but others have had good luck with it.

Those are the only two methods with which I'm familiar.

ETA: Since the changes in TOS and TPV policies to which I referred above, the *only* parts of our inventories that can be backed up are what we 100% create ourselves.  This means we cannot back up a build that contains full perm textures we purchased, for example.  Prior to the change, our builds could be backed up including the full perm items that were incorporated into the build.  That change is what prompted many merchants to quickly back up all their builds prior to the new policy going into effect and many merchants either leaving SL altogether or staying in SL but also setting up their businesses on other grids.  The one with which I'm most familiar, iirc, still allows 100% upload of builds containing full perm items purchased for the builds. 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

So now, Rodvik ? I think you can make already a list of what we like you do for the marketplace. So can you tell us, what are your plan ? Or will you leave this thread and our willings going to the forgoten crap ?

 

 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

 the marketplace is SL's Vietnam: they can't decide whether to bomb Hanoi or just throw in the towel and go home.  

...

I any case, It seems that LL bought Xstreet without a very clear idea of how much they would need to invest in it, both long and short term. 

---

Just wanted to acknowledge the Vietnam comment, because it's tending to veer toward an non win for an acceptable resolution.

Still some days left to this week, but it's starting to remind me of a little bit of attention Rod got on Twitter concerning the Lab's product with this tweet thrown in as a seeming aside to "SLers".

"And off to another meeting. Sorry Should be a new SL blog this week just fyi SLers."

Rod posted this on September 19th. Needless to say there have been no blog posts aside from the pic of the day since that date.

It doesn't have to be a non win, but because we're asking for deeds and not words and deeds that result in more than chipping away at low hanging fruit, indicators aren't good.

Personally I just can't get past this charging and refund nonsense in light of the new products and company direction. Now supposedly people that ask for refunds on multiple billing will get them, which is a positive except ...

It's a bit hard to believe that LL has absolutely no way to track multiple billings for ads, identify EVERYONE that should get a refund and do so without any reports from customers. If there are cleanup issues AFTER that on individual cases that slipped through the cracks that would be more understandable in reporting them through an unspecified method (is it duplicated Jira's now for a known bug, support tickets, email?).

There are many people who don't know what they were charged for, can't figure out what they were charged for or are unaware of the extent of these issues that just get banged on recurring. These people that should get refunds .... won't. A mass reset of all advertising has been completely ignored.

But right, it shouldn't take long to see if these are token solutions or a real attempt at providing quality services to customers or whether we're off to fight another war with new products and waiting for the announcement in 2013 that no one wants to hear.

Virtual Vietnam indeed.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

So now, Rodvik ? I think you can make already a list of what we like you do for the marketplace. So can you tell us, what are your plan ? Or will you leave this thread and our willings going to the forgoten crap ?

 

 

---

Thanks Trinity...

 

I was going to send the exact posting into this forum tomorrow to honor Rodvik's statement where he wanted to give the Forum thread a week for Merchants (and customers) to voice any further idea.

But the fact that the thread has slowed down tell me that the Merchants are now saying to LL, Rodvik, and the Commerce Team ...

"We have given you all the information and requests you need.  its clear what our initial primary requests are for Rodvik and company to address.  Now Rodvik, the ball is in your court.  What are you and your team going to do about this?  When will you start answering the questions that we asked you directly in this thread?"

 

As you noticed Rodvik, there were issues and questions directed to Brooke and her team, and there were questions directed to you as you are the only one that could answer them (i.e. the gagging of the Resident JIRA).  I really do hope that we will now hear from you and Brooke very shortly. 

Confidence requires words being backed up with actions.

[Couldbe Yue]

---

Rodvik Linden wrote:

 

Welcome. I think folks have already mentioned a lot. Maybe just adding to this thread would be good. We "don't mean the royal we, but either myself or someone form the team) will stop by and let folks know we have read the extra feedback sometime early next week.

All the best

Rod

---

Go on, define "early next week".  Are the concepts of "early" and "next week" something relative to the mayan calendar?

My only concern here is that you don't give into pressure from certain areas to do things that are outside your business plans.  I shouldn't need to say this but it's your business you run it how you see fit (but I will point out just how spectacularly successful that hasn't been in the past few years).  None of us know the full story, as we don't work for LL so don't have access to all the information needed to make rational choices about the best use of resources to deliver features.

All I really want is for LL to stop giving up poor quality, partially featured crap* software.  Just give us things that work and we can work around your limitations.  It's when you add the rubbish like failed payments, enhancement misadventures, relevance that isn't and all the other features that are broken in some way, that people start to disengage.  I'd hazard a guess that delivery and general slm issues down the last 12 months have been to a noticeable degree responsible for a decline in both slm sales and the average price paid.  Pity people have nowhere else to go since inworld search has been screwed** since early last year and the method v2 uses it seems to compound the difficulties. (or it could just be that people are tired of paying premium prices for what looks to be alpha software and are going to other easier, and cheaper, entertainment platforms).

 

* a technical term that sadly is completely apt.

** another technical term.

 edit:  added the n't to should..  even I believe LL has a basic grasp of their business, despite their best efforts to show otherwise..

[Trinity Yazimoto]

ok so let s have some fun ...

this morning while i was coming with my chocolate and milk cup in front of my laptop to check my emails and my transaction history, i almost throw my chocolate on my screen lol.

This is what happened.

My transaction history displayed a refund of 399 l$ from the Market place. Since i dont have ANY enhancement on for now (bec, 1 of the one i paid for this summer never displayed, and after happened the mess with enhancement billings in september, i prefered to stop them for now and wait this is fixed). So first question : what 's the hell is that refund ?

Since ive mentioned here ive paid for one enhancement this summer and it never displayed, and since Rodvik said to us kindly that he read this forum  (but obviously can t post here), i thought "ok, they are refunding me for this enhancement they never displayed.

So 2nd step i log in my MP page.

Go in my enhancement page, assuming i would see here something about the refund.

Here's when i almost throw up my chocolate....

my enhancement page, says that i have 1 enhancement on. I cant remember if this is for the same item precisely that the one has never been displayed but well, this one has been uploaded in the same period so i guess its this one. (my great memory, seems to say its not this one, but well, i can be wrong. so ok, lets say it was this one.)

Right away, second question : why if you refund me, you have made this enhancement as active ? I wasnt aware that in commercial relations, so kind things could happen. But well. I wont complain for this indeed.

then, i noticed i cant settle this enhancement to be not renewed. In fact i cant make anything on it.

after checking my item page, i saw it was written as not renewing enhancement.

So third question : What page may i trust ?

So i checked the category said and yes my item enhancement is now displayed... (3 monthes after i asked for it....awesome...).

So, i hope that you, LL , wont charge me again and again, weeks after weeks, for something ive asked only for 1 week in july or august. If you not aware, let me tell you, that we are now in october and i have new products, i dont need anymore to advertise for older products. 

If this a fix to replace the non displayed enhancement and on top you refund me, well, thanks for this. But i would like you send me an email to tell me, instead of making this a braintease for my breakfast.

Due to the actual Mp situation, i m now worried to get stuck with having to pay this enhancement i dont want anymore for long weeks. 

This doesnt restore my trust for your enhancement system at all. and you will understand i will still wait some weeks before paying for another ones.

Of course i filled right away a ticket asking for some explaination. But you see, LL guys, its not enough to fix a bug, you owe explaination too. Its already enough complex to manage a business with you, but if you refund/charge pp, then settle or not features, without explaination, since we are not soothsayers we cant guess what is your purpose. A simple email, explaining, you are fixing the not displayed enhancement and to apologize you even refund it to me, would have been really more clear than this braintease.

btw, of course, i checked right away about my wrong displayed pics and well... these ones are still here and of course, in the 2 first pages, because they have special dispensation for relevance classification.

Again, Rodvik, if this is a fix, im not complaining and i thank you for this. But your fix would have been really better with a lil explanation. You have to understand, that without it i cant guess for now if its a fix or a new bug. Without any explanation from you, only time will tell me. Your lack of communication is one of the biggest problem we have already pointed out in this thread. And see, maybe you have offered to me a fix for my enhancement issue, but i only can be suspicious about it, i cant believe it fully, just because i cant do it without any information. There is long time now, i dont believe in Santa Claus anymore. 

[Linden Lab]

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks so much for all your insights. We've posted an update on many of the issues you've brought up and if you'd like to read more check out the update here.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Thank you Commerce Team for beginning to list and respond to the issues mentioned by your Merchant community.

A few initial points from the October Update :

You state:

Direct Delivery should email Merchants notification of sale. Linden Lab response: it does for each sale. If you are not receiving emails, please file a JIRA.

What Merchants actually have been asking for is email notification of DELIVERY of a DD sale.  We know that we get email notification of DD sales.  What we want is the ability to audit that when a sale was made - there is an email that confirms that the delivery has completed (after it is actually confirmed that the delivery completed).  THIS does not exist - unlike in MagicBoxes where this does exist.

Secondly, you listed a lot of detailed specific issues but you did not mention at all the bigger fundamental things Merchants were asking for:

 

1. We want Commerce Team to establish weekly Merchant User Group meetings inworld with an active two-way communication with Merchants that attend these meetings
2. We want Rodvik to explain why he decided to gag the Resident Jira
3. We want Commerce Team to commit to revealing its current priority list of what is being planned or currently under development for MP.
4. We want Commerce Team to commit to collecting Merchant features and fixes and placing them on the priority list along with the secret list of LL priorities.

Please address / respond to these points - both Rodvik and Commerce Team.

[Darrius Gothly]

Critical to myself .. and I suspect a pretty large number of fellow Merchants .. is the "Work List" that has already been decided for Marketplace. One of the most disruptive behaviors of the Dev Team is adding a "Feature" to the Marketplace that forces different practices or in some fashion changes in a very basic way how we use the Marketplace.

Clearly the Dev Team has a work list already laid out before them. There is no "Competition" for LL to protect their plans against. We need to know what is coming down the road at us.

It gives us a chance to express to the Dev Team the overall community response to any new feature or function. So many things have been done that not only do not address current issues, but create new issues that further push us away from being able to manage our Stores and Sales.

Communication .. clear, honest, two-way communication. If we have no idea which way you're going, we won't know to follow .. and every change will be met with torches and pitchforks. TELL us what's going on, what you're planning and why .. and you will see great progress in us all working as a TEAM, not storming the Castle calling for your heads on stakes.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

i must be missing smthing....

 

you say : 

"

In addition to the above, the community raised the following issues which we are either investigating or evaluating the best way to address.

• Enhancements for “charging, cannot edit.”
• Price change problems with the cart.
• Listings that have the wrong photos.
• Merchants should be notified when a review is written.
• Categories should be reviewed and updated.
• Make preview image larger when editing a listing.
• Centralized reporting.
• Better association between a demo and a product.
• The ability for Merchants to merchandise their stores.
• Better sharing of products.
• A more detailed explanation of how search works."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        For a lot of this points on the list, isnt this the same song you are singing to us since several monthes now ? What is new ? Except you added some new points in the list, i dont see anything new on the deeds we are asking to u ....   And  your last sentence "    Again, we appreciate your feedback!"    sounds even as ironic to me.... If this is the way you appreciate our feedback, i think you didnt get the point .                                                                                                 

[Pamela Galli]

To reiterate what Toy said:  We know we get DD emails. We want confirmation when something has landed in someone's inventory -- a receipt upon delivery.  I believe the reasons are clear, given the ****storm that erupted over Magic Boxes alerting us to deliveries that were never paid for (among other things).

[Darrius Gothly]

I'd like to put a slightly clearer focus on the Email issue.

We get one email when a sale is made. This email is sent when the customer's money is taken and the product is scheduled for delivery (as far as we know, there has never been a complete description of this chain of events). This email is sent for all purchases, no matter what. Assuming there are no glitches in your email sending process (as there were in the past) that one email is received, but it only indicates a purchase was begun.

What we request .. in fact require to ensure we have positive indication of delivery .. is that the email be sent AFTER the entire delivery process is completed and the item is successfully placed into the buyer's Received Items" folder.

The Marketplace is a massive multi-threaded beast. it's entirely within the realm of reality that the purchase process could be interrupted at any point along the chain. Thus it is our concern that the confirmation email be sent as a proof of delivery, not as proof of purchase.

Furthermore there have been numerous requests for the ability to disable purchase emails for some products .. on a product-by-product basis. Adding the Delivery Confirmation email presents another option that needs to be included. Thus a FULL description of what we need is:

1. Send an Email when product is copied into the Buyer's Received Items folder.
2. Send an Email when a Customer's Purchase is Credited to our Account.
3. Add an Option on the Product Listing Edit page to Enable/Disable the "Delivery Confirmation" Email.
4. Add an Option on the Product Listing Edit page to Enable/Disable the "Payment Confirmation" Email.

It is absolutely critical that these emails be made Optional, thus my inclusion of points 3 and 4 above. Adding these options would allow us to disable the delivery and payment notifications for Freebies, Demos and other items we do not care to have acknowledged. This will also cut way down on the number of email sent by the Marketplace as we all know the majority of sales are L$0 items.

As others have pointed out just above my post here, this is an issue that has been "on the books" for quite some time. Right after Rodvik posted, I warned that just giving this Lip Service would result in a backlash the likes of which you've not yet seen. I think you can see that backlash is beginning as you've not actually DONE anything other than clean up the mess you created earlier.

What is needed is ACTION .. and that ACTION must be to fix the items that have been broken or missing since the day the Marketplace was first turned on. It's well past time, and it's also critical that you focus on adding those features that are NEEDED.

We've seen you modify the Product Listing edit page for your own purposes, so we know it's possible. We've seen you add options to each product (for such things as Mesh for example) thus we know that is also possible. We NEED you to do these things for OUR benefit now, not just your own.

Please .. do as we ask .. and stop forcing us to have the impression that we are of no import whatsoever in your business. I promise you .. we are a MAJOR factor in your business.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Furthermore there have been numerous requests for the ability to disable purchase emails for some products .. on a product-by-product basis. Adding the Delivery Confirmation email presents another option that needs to be included. Thus a FULL description of what we need is:

 

1. Send an Email when product is copied into the Buyer's Received Items folder.
2. Send an Email when a Customer's Purchase is Credited to our Account.
3. Add an Option on the Product Listing Edit page to Enable/Disable the "Delivery Confirmation" Email.
4. Add an Option on the Product Listing Edit page to Enable/Disable the "Payment Confirmation" Email.

 

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+1 to this. This really is a "need" not a "want".

[Perrie Juran]

 

Well here I go again sticking my nose in a Merchants thread.  But don't discount me because I am just a consumer.   Without me there would be no need for a Market Place.

This needs to be fixed in Search.  There are TWO TABS in search, one for ITEMS, one for MERCHANTS.  When I am searching for ITEMS I should not get results including MERCHANTS by that name.  This adds terribly to the difficulty of finding what I am looking for.  I want Martian items here, not Merchants with the name Martian.

Along with this, we need improved ability to filter out what we don't want.  I'll state a couple of examples.

I wanted a horse to ride but NOT a Breedable.  I knew exactly what I wanted and was pretty sure it existed.  It took me close to twenty minutes of playing with search terms to find it.  If I could have simply filtered out Breedables, it probably would have taken me less than two minutes.

Here is another example.  I wanted a security orb for my parcel.  Try it yourself.  I typed "security" in search and the results were pages and pages of Land for rent or sale.  If there is a way to filter this out it eludes me.

Likewise with DEMOS.  We need to be able to filter them out or as may be the case to view only Demos.

While I can only guess at it, my guess is that the ratio of the number of sales to page views is pretty dismal.  I know I have abandoned many shopping attempts because of how poorly search works.  It is too onerous and time consuming.  I'd just wind up deciding to do with out what ever it was that I was looking for.

[Pamela Galli]

Agree -- a search for "house" brings up every store called "House of Whatever".

 

It was not this way on Xstreet. I remember the howls when we first saw what SLM search was like -- howls of outrage but also hilarity because the results were so bizarre -- but they were ignored then, and ignored ever since. 

How freaking hard would this be to fix, since we already have the data separated by merchant/stor

[Irene Muni]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

 

While I can only guess at it, my guess is that the ratio of the number of sales to page views is pretty dismal.  I know I have abandoned many shopping attempts because of how poorly search works.  It is too onerous and time consuming.  I'd just wind up deciding to do with out what ever it was that I was looking for.

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As a consumer, totally agree, absolutely agree, deeply agree.

 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

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Irene Muni wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

 

While I can only guess at it, my guess is that the ratio of the number of sales to page views is pretty dismal.  I know I have abandoned many shopping attempts because of how poorly search works.  It is too onerous and time consuming.  I'd just wind up deciding to do with out what ever it was that I was looking for.

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As a consumer, t

otally agree, a

bsolutely agree, d

eeply

agree.

 

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As a merchant that is also a consumer (who isnt ?) i agree 200% lol. i can even say it in different languages if needed. 

Actually this is what im wondering everytime i come in the mp for looking for something. As a rl librarian i work on softwares all along the day with great performance in search, and everytime i come in the market place is just like im in a prehistoric search engine.... I just cant believe this one comes from USA lol....This is quite something unbelievable for me....:smileylol:

So yes, Rodvik, add this to the list too pls