Merchant Outbox

[Huraina Valiant]

So, as a long time merchant of SLife, I am flustered beyond imagination at this "Merchant Outbox" that is not at all working for me.

So here's the deal. My "Merchant Outbox" wants me to make a new account only I have one already. Obvious issue, the thing wont sync with my Market Place account.

Shall I jump through hoops? Yes! Lets!

Log off, log on, log off, log on. I've played that game in many sequences and patterns to no avail.

Buy a goofy magic box burning bear, check, done it logged out, logged in, Notta!

Search and restore the "Merchant Outbox" folder, restore it, log out, uninstall, reinstall, Fail!

Try different viewers, I've tried them all.

How about clean installs, well you just can't get any cleaner, I've deleted everything on my machine.

So what's next? No I mean it, what's next?

Not only can I NOT use the "Direct Delivery" system through the "Merchant Outbox", items sold on the "Market Place" are starting to disappear, unassociate, become unavailable, or unlisting themselves which has come to 80+ items poofed.

I... am at my whit's end with goof ball, hoop jumping, bad ideas that to fix this stuff and it not working. I have never had issues with listing, selling, or delivering items from the "Market Place" until this "Merchant Outbox" thing was introduced. I understand that it is providing better service to some, in fact I'll be the first to say the delivery is way faster and nice when I don't always have to open boxes, sadly however, I am not one of the "Merchants" that can use this feature.

Does anyone have any more hoops I can try? I really want to use this feature and it is becoming quite upsetting that I cannot.

Thank you.

Huraina Valiant

[Czari Zenovka]

You may have already done all this, but many have found this very easy to follow guide by Darrius Gothly invaluable in setting up their Merchant Out boxes.

I don't use DD yet so I can't offer any suggestions other than the above.  Good luck to you.

 

[Huraina Valiant]

Thank you Czari for the link. I am sure that it will be a very well appreciated once I get the "Merchant Outbox" to work. I've also sent it to a few friends in-world as they too have had questions on "how-to".

Still in-search of the "Merchant Outbox" sync.

Again, thank you.

Huraina Valiant

[Arwen Serpente]

Hi Huraina! There's a very similar thread from September here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Merchant-Outbox-keeps-telling-me-to-create-a-store/m-p/1672875#M27378

If you read through it, at the end, Darrius Gothly provides some help. Maybe it will work for you. I hope so.

[mtwtfss71]

I'm not sure if all of your hoop jumping happened in one day or over a long period but I've been using the Merchant Outbox successfully for several months now but last night I tried to upload to it and it would not sync to my store. You may be trying to do it while there are issues. I'd advise to try again over the next few days in case it is a system error.

[Huraina Valiant]

Yeah this hoop jumping has been a few months going right now, that's why I resorted to writing a thread. I really don't know what to do from this point.

I check daily, some times a few times a day trying get my merchant outbox to work.

[Cerise Sorbet]

If you have a marketplace store already, but the viewer is telling you to make a new store, then the trouble is always the same thing.

There needs to be a specially marked merchant outbox folder in your inventory. EIther it is missing, or there is a folder called "Merchant Outbox" but it is not correctly flagged. Regular viewers don't have the ability to make one.

I have found that it is straightforward to create a client that can fix this problem. There is a proof of concept using libopenmetaverse described here. 

I have tested that and it works, but I am also very much not interested in distributing an executable SL client.

You could, on the other hand, point your favorite TPV maintainer there, and ask them to add a feature that does this.

[Couldbe Yue]

when you mentioned you were going to test this the other month I wondered if this would be a fix.  I was hoping that it was going to be as "simple" as deleting the box and then adding the xml back in..  What a shame it's not that simple and that LL won't provide it as a fix.

Well done for cracking it though

[Jen Oskan]

My merchant outbox stucks in  initializing , i also cant use DD.

 

[Cerise Sorbet]

---

Jen Oskan wrote:

My merchant outbox stucks in  initializing , i also cant use DD.

 

---

Stuck in the initializing state is a whole different problem. If on Windows or Mac you can try viewer roulette an might get lucky. On Linux the viewer needs to be patched up with old SSL and crypto libraries, because the ones LL ships on that platform don't actually work with their viewer.

[Huraina Valiant]

Well I have done the few things that were suggest in reply to my thread post and still I am at a loss. The "Merchant Outbox" will not work at all. It is still the same.

So I am wondering if I figure out a way to delete my Market Place store all together and start completely over, would that work? Is it even possible to delete or get rid of an active Market Place store. Because I am running into a new problem. My items are starting to drop off. Ass of today I have 428 items on Market Place only 270 are listed and active. I'd rather dump them all and start all over again then try to go through all this stuff that has dropped off. I don't even know why they have done so. It's like one day they are there, then next they aren't.

So yeah, it will be a ton of work to list everything on Market Place all over again, but this is the route I would rather take. Can anyone help with that one?

[Arwen Serpente]

Huraina, even if you delete all your items (relisting by the way is against the MP Rules), the store will still exist. One avatar = one store.

If you've done the whole clean reinstall with the SL Viewer and/or Firestorm, then the only other thing I can think of would be to try another viewer like the Cool VL Viewer if you haven't already.

I had heard reports of difficulty listing items this week, so your troubles could be related to that. In any event, I would file a support ticket at this point to get some help if you haven't already. It's one issue to not be able to use the Merchant Outbox, it's a totally different issue to have your store vanishing before your eyes. I'd make sure support knows that you have both issues (and the vanishing store is more urgent than anything).

Right now, while many Merchants are trying to make the switch to DD like you are, the magic boxes still work. The Commerce Team has not announced the date of their retirement. Given all the problems that people are still having with the transition, I don't think DD will be mandatory for a while yet (my opinion/observation).

[Couldbe Yue]

---

Cerise Sorbet wrote:

---

Jen Oskan wrote:

My merchant outbox stucks in  initializing , i also cant use DD.

 

---

Stuck in the initializing state is a whole different problem. If on Windows or Mac you can try viewer roulette an might get lucky. On Linux the viewer needs to be patched up with old SSL and crypto libraries, because the ones LL ships on that platform don't actually work with their viewer.

---

 

Have you had a guinea pig with the initialising problem delete the merchant outbox and replace it? or isn't straightforward enough to do?

[Cerise Sorbet]

---

Couldbe Yue wrote:

Have you had a guinea pig with the initialising problem delete the merchant outbox and replace it? or isn't straightforward enough to do?

---

I actually forced the problem with an alt. I signed her up as a merchant, then went in with an old viewer and intentionally deleted her Merchant Outbox folder. (This kind of deletion with an old viewer is exactly how some people ended up with this problem.)

After the deletion, sure enough there was the message about needing to create a marketplace store, and it wasn't possible to upload DD items.

After using the modded TestClient, correct behavior was restored, and I was able to move stuff to the MP inventory.

-----

I then tried the same thing with yet another alt, but this time she didn't really have a marketplace shop. There were no real ill effects from adding a merchant outbox to her inventory, except that the missing store (this time for real) wasn't caught until after I tried to transmit inventory from the outbox.

-----

But, neither of those have much to do with the initializing problem. That error is separate, it means that the viewer wasn't able to establish a connection with the MP servers. The presence of an outbox folder only determines if the viewer tries to connect at all.

[Pamela Galli]

And the Commerce Team has announced Magic Boxes are no longer supported.

:matte-motes-sour:

[TheBlack Scorpio]

Thank you for this note. I will keep an eye on this thread, because I have trouble sending new listings to an existing store too.

[Couldbe Yue]

I remember what you did last time and I suppose my point is that it might be used as a work around for this.  There's something in the viewer I think that is partially or wholly contributing to the problem, I know that some people managed to fix it by flipping the viewer language to english and I had to once log out of the mp account on IE and log in again in firefox to get it to work..  (logging in with IE didn't fix it) so I'm just wondering if somehow the oubox processing has become corrupted on these viewers and so a replacement might work - or not.. 

it's grasping at straws but since LL don't seem to want to fix this problem, the only thing we have is straws.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

And the Commerce Team has announced Magic Boxes are no longer supported.

:matte-motes-sour:

---

Did I miss an update somewhere? 

[Arwen Serpente]

Czari, they aren't "supported" as in, support won't help with magic boxes any more (at least from some of the responses that have been posted here). Magic boxes work, but if you run into a glitch, it's up to you and whatever help you can get from the community to solve it.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Arwen Serpente wrote:

Czari, they aren't "supported" as in, support won't help with magic boxes any more (at least from some of the responses that have been posted here). Magic boxes work, but if you run into a glitch, it's up to you and whatever help you can get from the community to solve it.

---

Ah ok, thank you Arwen.  The last I saw posted from CTL was that they were still working on several issues with DD and until they were corrected would not shut down MBs.  Thus far mine continue to work.

[Pamela Galli]

I was told in an email that MBs are not supported (when the Marketplace started giving out expensive furniture sets for free), and then after that there was a public announcement, but I can't find it.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

I was told in an email that MBs are not supported, and then after that there was a public announcement, but I can't find it.

---

Thanks Pamela.  I was mentally confusing "not supported" and "shut down." 

[Pamela Galli]

Okay it was in the email they sent, and it says this:

 

Why should you update to Direct Delivery?

Linden Lab has already started to phase out support for Magic Boxes. In order to ensure uninterrupted service to you and your customers in the future, we strongly encourage you to migrate as soon as possible. It's easy to do - and worth it for both you and your customers.

 

So "started to" phase out support -- I don't know where they might be in that process atm. But given that some merchants have to use MBs because of some bug, it does not seem right to me to begin discontinuing support for Mbs.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

Okay it was in the email they sent, and it says this:

 

Why should you update to Direct Delivery?

Linden Lab has already started to phase out support for Magic Boxes. In order to ensure uninterrupted service to you and your customers in the future, we strongly encourage you to migrate as soon as possible. It's easy to do - and worth it for both you and your customers.

 

So "started to" phase out support -- I don't know where they might be in that process atm. But given that some merchants have to use MBs because of some bug, it does not seem right to me to begin discontinuing support for Mbs.

---

Oooohhhhhh yes.  I remember that email - I received it as well.  Thank you for re-posting it here.

 

I agree - people who cannot use DD due to their own RL issues is one thing; people unable to use DD due to issues LL knows about and acknowledges is quite another.  Until the known issues are resolved LL should be continuing support for MBs.

[Cale Alcott]

This might be a dead topic, but i have to sayi have still trouble with the merchant box, literalyl sine months i try to go all over to direct delivery, but my outbox is stucked in iniitializing for ages and now in april they gonna shut down the boxes, what is a mess as i will not be able to list items anymore on marketplace.  Im more as frustrated because of this issue going on for a lont time, is there anything done by LL at all about this problem? Im sureim not the only one having still issues.