Broken enhancements... Broken service

[tilly Kiranov]

So, I know this isn't a new problem, far from it!!!!

I have about 50 enhancements which are 'Charging, cannot edit right now.' My sales have taken a nose dive over the last 6 months since this has been happening, and MP takes no responsibility for the situation, just shunting me to file a JIRA, which generates the auto responses that it's a known issue.

There is so little support or care for merchants, we are treated with pure apathy.

Has this affected anyone else? Has anyone had this problem resolved?

[Trinity Yazimoto]

well the only thing i may tell you is that mp enhancements are not working fine since this summer.

first, mp enhancements are a lucky pot.. that means you pay the price but depending the ammount of other enhancments in the same category as yours, others merchants will buy, your enhancement will be a lot displayed or will be displayed rarely... still, you have paid the same price.

Secondly, this summer (in august if i rem well) mp started to act up. so it charged several time merchants for the same enhancement. then they gave free enhancement to apologize. then it happened again. then enhancements couldnt be not renewed and some merchants has been stuck with enhancements on to pay. some of us have been lucky enough for benefiting of free enhancements that none of us have asked for... 

Well as you can see... no serious managing for mp enhancements.

i dont use them anymore... just because of this.:smileywink:

[Porky Gorky]

The commerce team do not care about this issue. If they cared they would have disabled enhancements a long time ago until the issue was resolved. Instead they chose to take our money whilst exposing their customers to a system that does not work consistently for everyone. It sums them up imho

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Agree, and oddly enough had just finished a semi-related article: http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/18/developers-choosing-conscience-over-profit/

I liked the "makers vs. takers" bit as it applies to the over monetization here and the imbalance of features that are good for the company as opposed to its merchants.

While the economy here suffers they invest in new products rather than being content with the core product, and stabilizing for a currently non-growth market, because it's the millions that matter.

Not being able to cancel anything recurring is a farce.

Or to get biblical on them: "By their fruits ye shall know them".

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Even when MP enhancements are working properly they are a pot shot at best.  Now they are only a way to take money from you that you'll never see again.

Merchants should just stop buying any enhancemetns at all until this is fixed and the pricing actually reflects the number of impressions that are guaranteed.

[Flew Voom]

It's not just SLM that has issues. I am waiting for 10 days to get my cash-out to my paypal account. And it's not like 3 dollars I am waiting for to appear on my paypal account.  So after 8 days I filed a ticket and no response, check for live chat support and it is offline 24/7. And now I entered day 10 waiting for my earned money to appear... I need to like pay bills and stuff, but LL is sitting on my money without any form of help so far. 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Same here with the cashing out delays.

If they double the payout timeframe they effectively double their cash flow or cash on hand, which gets invested in new products.

Not a new or particularly clever trick, but there it is, at the expense of people who provide them with said cash flow in the first place.

Also agree with what Amethyst said about the over-selling of advertising in general.

[Flew Voom]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

Same here with the cashing out delays.

If they double the payout timeframe they effectively double their cash flow or cash on hand, which gets invested in new products.

 

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Pretty desperate times then for SL if they have to fall back to this tactic. Anyway, just got somone at livechat finally that gave me standard responses as expected. He said he will 'escalate' it to the billing team, will see how many more days that will take, no doubt I will be placed on the bottom of the pile of 'escalations'. And ofcourse I got the response in the end 'thank you for being a valued secondlife member' . So great to have support that just copy paste pieces of scripts into the chat window. Probably some callcenter dude in India.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Right, not so sure that it's an act of desperation so much as a way to gamble on the LL's new products earning revenue before the piper needs to be paid, because at some point that cash that they're holding back needs to be paid out again in full.

They are selling the new products in a fairly unfinished (and beta) state before they're actually ready for prime time, with the intent of further monetizing peoples "creations" later. If the new products pay off, the gamble worked. If not, then it has to come out of the profit of the company, which is probably enough to cover the bet.

Either way, they should be gambling with their profits, and not by increasing cash on hand by delaying payouts, which only yet again contributes to their decline as they erode trust.

Of course we can't see their books, and even at the height of their statistics and quarterly reports they never showed real financials such as company gross earnings, net revenue and the real effect of their sinks as profit. Or how the Lindex is not auctually a "dollar for dollar" correlation that makes it a true exchange ... the Lindex has always been doctored and seeded and tweaked enough to be just another liability dodge by claiming that it's a user-to-user trade.

Just that it's a likely candidate, and coupled with their other business practices of broken recurring billing, steep tier doubling on land parcels, the dodge you get to apply to take out money that you've earned if you exceed the base limit, the way they double and triple monetize on the same currency, and promote the marketplace with new tutorials in the same breath that they claim some of these snafu's are "bugs", it's all the same flavor.

Their whole system smells pretty bad though, as opposed to straightforward pricing and fees and responsible handling of users goods and funds.

Lumping it under, if it smells like sewage, and if it's squishy like sewage, and has un-mentionable bits floating in it, it's probably sewage.

[Porky Gorky]

Good post!

[Flew Voom]

Sorry for the late reply, don't check the forums regularly anymore.

You are spot on with your comment. I would like to comment back in detail about the state of SL and LL, but this an LL forum so I think it would not be wise to leave uncensored criticism here. I will say this though, If LL and SL want's to survive they have to do big realitycheck on how they run their business, their services, their pricings, policies and so on. A business mostly made possible through user made content.

Personally I have moved my focus away from SL (for the moment) and only still login to keep my main products up to date and to provide customer support.  I have moved on to creating indie games and game mods  (and hopefully for sale on Steam in the future) instead of being dependent and at the mercy of LL, their support where you can only ask for support in twitter format and where you get scripted anwsers that does not help you in return. And not even mentioning how lousy our IP is being protected in SL (as everyone can sell anything) and the other numerous ongoing issues on SLM and inworld.