Sellers get ripped off by Market Place and Lindens won't help!

[Pamela Galli]

The same thing happened to me -- $60 USD delivered in one day, not paid to me -- and I knew about it ONLY because the Magic Boxes reported the deliveries. 

 

I was told it was my fault because I was using Magic Boxes, which I should have known would do this sort of thing. And too bad, because Magic Boxes were no longer supported.

 

So now we have part two of the story, which is that our stuff is being sent out to buyers, and the money being kept instead  of paid -- and it is not the fault of Magic Boxes, and LL support is still unwilling to make good on their part of the deal to deliver AND PAY US for our products.

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Marcus Hancroft wrote:

OK...your explanation helps me better understand the "linden dollars are worthless" statement.  I'm not so adrift now, so thanks, Darrius.  

---

Im glad Darrius's explanation helps you understand why he thinks "linden dollars are worthless" but his explanation is not exactly correct unless I have been deceived all these years or unless Darrius was trying to be sarcastic about how Lindens are not worth anything (since I know Darrius is a very knowledgeable man about all things SL).

So this is how  I have always heard and understand how it works in LL (Dartagan might know the details even more great):

 

LL / SL's Linden currency is based on a Sinks & Sources model of which LL manages and also must abide by in order to get RL US$ from as much as we all do.  As such, LL does not get ANY RL US$ into their corporate accounts at the time that a LL/SL Customer exchanges $1 US for the about 248L$ he receives from LL when LL sells $Linden to him/her.

That $1US LL receives from its customer goes into a special in-trust account that LL manages but cannot touch.  The $US cash flowing in to this in-trust account are considered "SOURCES" to this special account. 

Therefore, LL has NOT received its value from the sale of LINDEN TOKENS from a customer yet - they have not EARNED this $US yet - they were simply playing the LINDEN $ Central Bank role for the Linden Currency.  The denominations of any currency even in RL are only "tokens" representing the respective currency but it doesn't mean the token has NO VALUE. 

Now.... lets continue this story...

This special in trust account of $US value/currency/tokens obviously will continue to grow as the sources feed it.  But, then the question is "how does any $US come out of this special protected account?".  The only entities (customers or LL itself) that can draw from this special account are those that have acquired a pool of $ LINDENS and wishes to exchange it back into $US.  This holds true for both the LL Customer population as well as LL.  As such, drawing from this special trust account is a "SINK" to the account.  But again, the entity has to have a pool of $Lindens that it has generated from the SL economy in some way in order to have something to exchange with $US from that account.

We all know how us SL Residents earn these Lindens.... being creator/merchants, having inworld service businesses, collecting tips from music or DJ or Dancing or Escorting or or or, from gambling, from gifts handed to them, or what ever means that another SL resident with Lindens hands you Lindens into your personal account of Lindens.  Funny - it works the same way in RL.

BUT.... LL has to earn these $Lindens as well in order to exchange their collected pool of $Lindens for $US from this special in-trust account.  How does LL do it?  Many ways including the 5% commission they receive from all MP sales, their Listing Enhancement fees for advertising on MP, their weekly inworld advertising fee, etc.

When LL has enough $Lindens, they exchange their Lindens with the special account and draw $US cash in return.  THIS IS EXACTY WHEN LL HAS MADE REAL US$ that they can put into their LL Corporate coffers.

 

Therefore, $Lindens do have value for all parties that engage with them - EVEN LL!  LL does not just pump worthless zero-value $Linden tokens for $US cash from purchasers.  They know full well that the $Lindens have value to them as well as us... even moreso than any of us.  They also know yet do not seem to care that in order for them to earn $Lindens, they need to provide a service that encourages its SL customers to give them $Lindens for the service.  LL legally states in the TOS that $Lindens have no value but if ever challenged in a court of law I am pretty sure their TOS position of $Lindens having ZERO RL value would likely be quickly dismissed.

So.... Contrary to believe, LL Commerce Team should care deeply about the Marketplace service they provide since it directly determines how much RL $US income the Commerce Team generates for LL's corporate account.

 

[Sassy Romano]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Hiya Honi wrote:

This WAS a Direct Delivery!!

---

Oh HOLY CRAP! It was?!? Oh now THAT's not good. The number of incidents where this sort of failure happens for Direct Delivery are much much lower .. almost non-existent. To find out this happened with a DD product opens up a much bigger can of worms.

Because Direct Delivery uses a direct "Database Copy" operation to deliver a product, it is supposed to be completely immune to these sorts of failures. The Marketplace should be completely able to detect that a database record was copied, but apparently in this case it did not.

In this case, I'm at a loss as what to say .. other than to contact the customer and hope they recognize your loss. But the fact that this happened for Direct Delivery? Yeah ... not good at all!

---

It happens Darrius simply because the whole purchase/payment/delivery/reconciliation processing chain is NOT an atomic database transaction but a loosely coupled series of handoffs to the next bit.  As long as one has completed it's assumed to have worked, then off we go to the next bit, "oh delivery... lets have a go at that and mark it up as delivered"... Process Fail for whatever reason, database taken offline who knows, but got delivered anyway... meanwhile back at the payment reconcilation table... "oh look, wasn't delivered so back that out and refund the customer".

See my earlier JIRA that I linked in this thread regarding the very nature of this transactional fail.  Expected behaviour, broken is expected and all running normally.  Will not change.

If only they'd have removed Pickpocket Commerce Linden it would never happen.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

The same thing happened to me -- $60 USD delivered in one day, not paid to me -- and I knew about it ONLY because the Magic Boxes reported the deliveries. 

I was told it was my fault because I was using Magic Boxes, which I should have known would do this sort of thing. And too bad, because Magic Boxes were no longer supported.

So now we have part two of the story, which is that our stuff is being sent out to buyers, and the money being kept instead  of paid -- and it is not the fault of Magic Boxes, and LL support is still unwilling to make good on their part of the deal to deliver AND PAY US for our products.

---

 

And when all is said and done, they've only gained a small amount in the reliability of Direct Delivery over Magic Boxes. This was sent out in an email and posted in a couple places by the commerce team:

"Direct Delivery purchases are successfully delivered more often (2.5% greater success rate than Magic Boxes)"

The main benefit they claim is increased speed of delivery, not reliability, thus the reason why we still don't have Direct Delivery for unique items. And why we still don't have a receipt of confirmed delivery that has been asked for.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Pretty much on target, while it can be argued whether L$ are currency, the monetary value is there for LL.

Users buy $50,000 worth of L$ ... LL has $50,000 in the bank.

The more sinks against that $50,000 the less users cash out and the more of that $50,000 USD LL gets to keep.

Best way to understand it short of studying up on game models such as free-play and game monetization strategy is to do a simple example on paper, pretending you're running a game with simple purchased currency and sinks and let your calculator tell you how much you get to keep when people purchase your funny money.

Currency aside, L$ are real money value to both LL and users.

[Pamela Galli]

---

Sassy Romano wrote:

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Hiya Honi wrote:

This WAS a Direct Delivery!!

---

Oh HOLY CRAP! It was?!? Oh now THAT's not good. The number of incidents where this sort of failure happens for Direct Delivery are much much lower .. almost non-existent. To find out this happened with a DD product opens up a much bigger can of worms.

Because Direct Delivery uses a direct "Database Copy" operation to deliver a product, it is supposed to be completely immune to these sorts of failures. The Marketplace should be completely able to detect that a database record was copied, but apparently in this case it did not.

In this case, I'm at a loss as what to say .. other than to contact the customer and hope they recognize your loss. But the fact that this happened for Direct Delivery? Yeah ... not good at all!

---

It happens Darrius simply because the whole purchase/payment/delivery/reconciliation processing chain is NOT an atomic database transaction but a loosely coupled series of handoffs to the next bit.  As long as one has completed it's assumed to have worked, then off we go to the next bit, "oh delivery... lets have a go at that and mark it up as delivered"... Process Fail for whatever reason, database taken offline who knows, but got delivered anyway... meanwhile back at the payment reconcilation table... "oh look, wasn't delivered so back that out and refund the customer".

See my earlier JIRA that I linked in this thread regarding the very nature of this transactional fail.  Expected behaviour, broken is expected and all running normally.  Will not change.

If only they'd have removed

Pickpocket

Commerce Linden it would never happen.

---

I have heard Sassy say this so many times, for so long, I actually understand it.

 

Which always makes me wonder why the marketplace devs don't.

[Darrius Gothly]

Just to clarify one point Toy .. I don't for a second buy into the "L$ are worthless" clause of the TOS either. My explanation was to try and provide perspective as to why LL wants to maintain that fiction. Like you and most others, I hold fast to the opinion that L$ are very worthy and have a functional value that is easily determined just by referencing the LindeX, Virwox or any of the other exchange services.

[Darrius Gothly]

Having dug into Spree a bit more, I can see how it has been constructed as a series of loosely inter-connected modules. That architecture makes sense considering that their goal was to provide an "end-all/do-all" platform that could be used by many different types of eCommerce applications.

However I also see how Spree has provided mechanisms for validating the entire transaction from end-to-end. It appears from my observation of how the Marketplace works that the Devs stepped outside those mechanisms to wire in the L$ and User Account Balance transactions.

It also appears as though they may have designed Direct Delivery as an extension to the already kludged Magic Box delivery method rather than as a completely new rewrite. In other words, rather than build a brand new "Delivery Module" for the Spree platform, they simply adapted the existing Magic Box module and replaced commands to the Magic Boxes with commands to the Database Copy engine. This would also explain why the "Failed delivery with refund" problem that occurs with Magic Boxes also can occur with Direct Delivery.

All in all, I'm just aghast at how poorly integrated the basic Spree platform is into the Second Life environment. It seems that rather than use the inherent flexibility of the Spree design, they invented new extensions to accomplish the task in the shortest time possible. It also appears that they removed a massive amount of the Spree functionality, even those modules and functions that would have made a significant improvement in the Marketplace's suitability to the intended use.

[Madeliefste Oh]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

Just to clarify one point Toy .. I don't for a second buy into the "L$ are worthless" clause of the TOS either. My explanation was to try and provide perspective as to why LL wants to maintain that fiction. Like you and most others, I hold fast to the opinion that L$ are very worthy and have a functional value that is easily determined just by referencing the LindeX, Virwox or any of the other exchange services.

---

I think it is a legal issue, it is in the TOS to prevent that LL ever has to pay USD for once purchaised L$. As long as residents do agree (and they have to agree, because without excepting the TOS, you cannot be a resident) that the L$ is just 'play-money' then for example in a case of bankruptcy there is nothing to claim for all those who are holding L$ in their account.

Not only on the Lindex but also on the marketplace is LL valueing the L$. You don't have to pay your purchases with Linden Dollars, you can as well pay with USD. LL keeps the USD and the seller gets the play money (which most likely is going to return to LL in the end as well, in the form of tier).

The problem might even have to do with paying in USD. Something in the proces from paying out the merchants in L$, while the customer is paying LL with USD might go wrong... This is just speculation, because we simply don't know why or where this is going wrong. This just should not be possible in any way.

[Ciaran Laval]

I think you're over complicating matters, sinks are destroyed Linden dollars, they vanish from the economy, the purpose of this is to keep demand for new Linden dollars in other parts of the economy. LL don't stock Linden Dollars, there's no need for them to do so as they can print as many as they want.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Hiya Honi wrote:

This WAS a Direct Delivery!!

---

Oh HOLY CRAP! It was?!? Oh now THAT's not good. The number of incidents where this sort of failure happens for Direct Delivery are much much lower .. almost non-existent. To find out this happened with a DD product opens up a much bigger can of worms.

Because Direct Delivery uses a direct "Database Copy" operation to deliver a product, it is supposed to be completely immune to these sorts of failures. The Marketplace should be completely able to detect that a database record was copied, but apparently in this case it did not.

In this case, I'm at a loss as what to say .. other than to contact the customer and hope they recognize your loss. But the fact that this happened for Direct Delivery? Yeah ... not good at all!

---

The chuckling you hear is coming from a certain redhead.

*Runs to hide* :matte-motes-silly:

[Anaiya Arnold]

I think you are over complicating the matter. 

 

If it does not violate any end user license of the carnival ticket, I can onsell it to someone else who wants to use the ride.  If there happens to be a regular and entirely legal market trading large volumes of these tickets at relatively stable prices, it's a matter of fact that the tickets have value.

It's possible to sue a neighbour for ruining your view, and to receive monetary damages if you prevail.  If a view can be construed legally to have a quantifiable value (and it can) it's not really debatable whether something that is routinely traded in large volumes at a stable price point, all in compliance with all end user license have any monetary value. 

Lindens not only have a value, they have an easily quantified monetary value.

[Paul Hexem]

The real issue is the amount of money lost.

Not whether L$ are worth money (they are) or what the TOS says (those are tossed out of court all the time).

The fact is, nothing in SL is worth significant amount of money except for regions (and you notice you get support if you have problems with those?), which means unless you have thousands of dollars to spend over an issue worth just a few dollars (2,000 L$ is only 8 dollars US, after all), LL knows you won't be taking them to court. So, they bend their users over, without so uch as a reach around, with this knowledge in mind.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

Gadget Portal wrote:

The real issue is the amount of money lost.

Not whether L$ are worth money (they are) or what the TOS says (those are tossed out of court all the time).

The fact is, nothing in SL is worth significant amount of money except for regions (and you notice you get support if you have problems with those?), which means unless you have thousands of dollars to spend over an issue worth just a few dollars (2,000 L$ is only 8 dollars US, after all), LL knows you won't be taking them to court. So, they bend their users over, without so uch as a reach around, with this knowledge in mind.

---

It is pretty sad that the conversation needs to be about nitpicking over the details over where actual value and worth lie. You'd expect a company to protect themselves and the occassional mistake or bug isn't the end of the world.

The real conversation is that the company doesn't respect the people they monetize (in time, dedication to LL's product and a host of contributions) or the products that LL does not own that they monetize as if it's their own, disclaiming away all responsibility for anything that doesn't benefit them directly.

By respect I mean enough of a give and take to build reliable systems which cater to the needs of the people whose goods they sell in good faith that their funds and products will be handled by a responsible company.

Were this a company in the "real world" it wouldn't last a New York minute with lack of proper reporting, mishandling of funds, overbilling on advertising, etc.

I don't think it's possible to have the real conversation. To LL it's a minimal exercise in lip service.

The only conversation that it seems likely to provide a marketplace as responsible and reliable as any other real world reselling service is one of legal issues and legislation.

By the way, thousands of dollars to be noticed is correct. You agreed to arbitrate for anything under $10,000 USD. So according to LL, it'll cost you more than that to see a court room. In fact, for anything under $10,000 you get to do it over the phone far removed from those pesky courts.

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

Thankfully there's more to the law than a document some company whips up.

[Rya Nitely]

Maybe Linden Lab just don't have the manpower to take on these issues. There would be so many. Not only cases like this, but also other disputes like missing content or items not as described etc etc. If they made themselves responsible it would be just too much work for the monetary value of it all.

And as for taking them to court ...a bit like chopping off your nose to spite your face, or biting the hand that feeds you. What I mean is most of us have invested too much of our time in SL to see them lose. It is in our best interest to see LL go on strong, and not be weakened by losing court cases and the subsequent changes in policies that it would necessitate.

And really, the item is copyable so what monetary loss is there? In RL it would be the loss of the materials and work used to create that one item, which is not replaceable. In SL we have the luxury of making something once and it will sell over and over again. So just pretend the sale never happened. If LL were to compensate you for your 'loss' then that would be a monetary loss to them. Or if they were to put manpower into an investigation then that's a loss in human resources that could be spent elsewhere. It's not worth it.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

---

Rya Nitely wrote:

 

And as for taking them to court ...a bit like chopping off your nose to spite your face, or biting the hand that feeds you. What I mean is most of us have invested too much of our time in SL to see them lose. It is in our best interest to see LL go on strong, and not be weakened by losing court cases and the subsequent changes in policies that it would necessitate.

 

---

yeah.... and i assume we have to be happy and thanks LL for their amateurism in the way they manage the mp. 

we should even pop up champagne and chears to them !

im sorry actually, SL is really not the hand who feeds me.... on the contrary i give to them money, my rl money,  every monthes... 

so i think more that they are the ones who are biting the hand that feeds them.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

---

Rya Nitely wrote:

 

And as for taking them to court ...a bit like chopping off your nose to spite your face, or biting the hand that feeds you. What I mean is most of us have invested too much of our time in SL to see them lose. It is in our best interest to see LL go on strong, and not be weakened by losing court cases and the subsequent changes in policies that it would necessitate.

 

---

yeah.... and i assume we have to be happy and thanks LL for their amateurism in the way they manage the mp. 

we should even pop up champagne and chears to them !

im sorry actually, SL is really not the hand who feeds me.... on the contrary i give to them money, my rl money,  every monthes... 

so i think more that they are the ones who are biting the hand that feeds them.

---

This ^^

[namssab1nad Piers]

No matter what the TOS says, LL is legally responsible for the operation of their own Marketplace.  Many companies will put such things in their TOS knowing full well it would never stand up in a Court of Law.  They are relying on the supposition that a person would not take them to court over such small amounts of real money.  However, if all the merchants that have had such an issue as this got together and filled suit as a group, you can bet your sweety bippy (whatever that is) LL would do an about face.  Chances are it would never get to court.  LL would be more than willing to settle out of court.  The hard part would be getting them to change their TOS and plainly state that they are responsible for the operatioin of Marketplace and any losses incurred by a store owner on Marketplace.  The excuse that they cannot track everything is hogwash.  There is an electronic footpriint and trail of every transaction, product delivered, and Lindens paid or not paid and to whom.  You have to understand, the top management of LL are all computer people.  They are not true businessmen in the sense that they know where their legal rights end and yours begin.  Of course, you can also get the RL names and addresses of the Board of Directors and write each of them direct explaining the situation and that they or top management is not doing their fidicuary duty in making sure that the company is not setting itself up for a lawsuit.  That usually gets their attention.  Even though all companies carry insurance on their boards and top management to protect them in case of a lawsuit from a poor decision, it does not protect them if it can be shown that the decision was made knowing full well that the decision goes directly against the law of the land.  In other words, they are on the hook themselves. It would also make it more difficult or more expensive to acquire such insurance in the future.

[Porky Gorky]

Doing business in SL is fraught with risk. It can be an unstable and unsupportive environment in which to conduct business. As a merchant you are prone to having your business affected without notice by policy change, prone to loosing work due to server issues, prone to loosing business due to griefers, prone to loosing market shares due to content thieves and prone to loosing income due to MP and inworld techinical problems. You need to accept all these issues as a part of doing business here and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

My advice, suck up the loss and get on with your virtual life.

[Herkimer Highmist]

---

Porky Gorky wrote:

Doing business in SL is fraught with risk. It can be an unstable and unsupportive environment in which to conduct business. As a merchant you are prone to having your business affected without notice by policy change, prone to loosing work due to server issues, prone to loosing business due to griefers, prone to loosing market shares due to content thieves and prone to loosing income due to MP and inworld techinical problems. You need to accept all these issues as a part of doing business here and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

My advice, suck up the loss and get on with your virtual life.

---

/sarcasm on/

 

Leaving your house is fraught with risk. People are rude, noisy, and smelly, and you can  have your pocket picked - or even worse, be mugged. As a human, you are also prone to thieves, murderers, arsonists, and rapists. You need to accept this as a risk of living life and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

 

My advice, suck it up, and get on with your life.

 

/sarcasm off/

 

What I'm pondering, is if the IRS took an interest in Linden Lab's new source of income, would they accept the Lab's TOS justification for not making this right and keeping all those lindens these many months? Or would they be thinking more along the lines of filing federal charges of theft & wire fraud, money laundering, and of course, tax evasion?

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Rya Nitely wrote:

Maybe Linden Lab just don't have the manpower to take on these issues. There would be so many. Not only cases like this, but also other disputes like missing content or items not as described etc etc. If they made themselves responsible it would be just too much work for the monetary value of it all.

And as for taking them to court ...a bit like chopping off your nose to spite your face, or biting the hand that feeds you. What I mean is most of us have invested too much of our time in SL to see them lose. It is in our best interest to see LL go on strong, and not be weakened by losing court cases and the subsequent changes in policies that it would necessitate.

And really, the item is copyable so what monetary loss is there? In RL it would be the loss of the materials and work used to create that one item, which is not replaceable. In SL we have the luxury of making something once and it will sell over and over again. So just pretend the sale never happened. If LL were to compensate you for your 'loss' then that would be a monetary loss to them. Or if they were to put manpower into an investigation then that's a loss in human resources that could be spent elsewhere. It's not worth it.

---

All of this is true. There are risks and challenges and hurdles that come with selling in the Virtual World. But ...

There is a very clear dividing line between "the unforeseeable" and the "incompetent". Server glitches, griefers, random stray ions from space ... all of those things are events and incidents which happen to anyone at random and have no reasonable defense.

But we are not talking about random events or known problems that have no fix. We are talking about a known failure with a specific cause. There are many (1000s) of examples of sites that can and do perform the delivery of a purchased virtual item, over and over again, without this sort of failure. However the Marketplace has a bug which DOES cause it to make this type of failure. Apparently that failure was not fixed by moving to Direct Delivery either.

So while I agree that there are things that we just need to suck up and accept, I do not agree that this particular issue is one of those.

[Rya Nitely]

---

Porky Gorky wrote:

Doing business in SL is fraught with risk. It can be an unstable and unsupportive environment in which to conduct business. As a merchant you are prone to having your business affected without notice by policy change, prone to loosing work due to server issues, prone to loosing business due to griefers, prone to loosing market shares due to content thieves and prone to loosing income due to MP and inworld techinical problems. You need to accept all these issues as a part of doing business here and learn to roll with the punches. It's not perfect, but it is what it is.

My advice, suck up the loss and get on with your virtual life.

---

I agree

 

As for me, the only real concern I have is if LL goes belly up, taking with it my 5 years of work and a part of life that gives me so much satisfaction. Short of that, I will put up with the problems and be grateful for its existence.

But if others want to take up a fight with them about this or that, then go for it. I'm quite happy to roll with the punches.

[Medhue Simoni]

I agree that the whole process is backwards. First, there is no need for an Escrow account. Whenever a purchase is made, the money should go directly to the seller, irreguardless of delivery or not. The merchant can sort things out from there. That's all the MP has to do, as far as I'm concerned. So, to me, it's ONLY job is to take the money. Whether the product gets delivered or not, is for me to deal with, if the MP doesn't function as expected. It's just a shame that the MP people don't understand what their primary job is.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

LL can look at a persons inventory and see if they have an item and when they acquired it.  They can look at a persons transaction records to see if money was paid and then returned, or paid and not returned.  They can also see if money was paid to the merchant.

All their excuses are just that, excuses.  I don't think the value or non value of L's has anything to do with it.  They just don't want to have to take the time to look at the records then make the payment and they have the TOS to cover their *ss.

Just asking....  If $L's have no value than why do they take some as 'commission' on the marketplace?  They can just let us list for free if they aren't making RL money.  They just want to have their cake and eat it too.  Doubt that it would hold up in court if challenged.

[Ignatius Lytton]

You are absolutely spot-on Amethyst. Hiya and myself have said exactly the same thing; especially in relationship to Lindens current bout of 'Ostrich syndrome' regarding this particular case.

In respect to an earlier posting mentioning the possibility of Second-Life going 'belly up', LL are effectively promoting their own, slow, eventual downfall by inaction and indifference to those they are paid to serve. In the five-plus years our Group has been active on Second-Life, we have seen many who contribute RL finances to LL leave for good, - this has been especially apparent since the appointing of the current CEO. It makes no economic sense at all, for LL to be 'happy' to lose long-term Creators, who are, after all, the backbone of Second-Life's economy.