How do I get a refund from a Marketplace seller who falsely advertised?

[Dilbert Dilweg]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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The OP doesn't want real money back, and the OP has made LL aware of the fraud, so, at the very least, LL should refund their share of the illgotten gains. It wouldn't soothe the OP but it would be something.

Imo, LL does not have a leg to stand on if they don't accept that they are part of the fraud, and act accordingly.

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Yes exactly. I would hope they would at least refund the commission they got from the sale if they were unable to recover the money stolen from the other avatar.  So many say that LL takes the position this is a resident dispute and they will recover 0 from the complaint. I think that's kinda BS too since their system was used as a vehicle to commit fraud. They are and have been aware of this kind of fraud but take any steps to correct it? / me wonders if they do since we have seen nothing.. Free accounts able to set up a MP at will , anonymous names ready to swindle. No verification systems in place.

[Phil Deakins]

When you describe it like that (and I do agree with your description) it's a disgrace on the part of LL. Turning a blind eye to fraud that is perpetrated on their system is nothing short of disgraceful, and possibly criminal.

 

[Marianne Little]

It is interesting that LL has removed any trace of the seller from the MP. That gives me the impression that his goods was rip-offs from other games. I think that in cases of copyright infringment, this goes beyond the usual avatar disputes. LL has already acted against the seller.

And I strongly doubt that one complaint from a customer is enough to take down a legal store. 

[Ariel Vuissent]

If this is not the viewer you have, download it: https://secondlife.com/support/downloads/

Or download the third party viewer, Firestorm: http://www.firestormviewer.org/downloads/

Or Phoenix, which is reachable through the same link as Firestorm.

Or try one of these http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory

Although not all of the ones on that list are mesh enabled, most of the full clients are. (Imprudence isn't, I believe, although I could be wrong.)

If you do not have a mesh enabled viewer, you won't be able to see mesh, which would explain why the avatar you bought isn't working. If your computer isn't strong enough to handle one of the newer viewers, like the newer official viewers or Firestorm, you can try using something like Phoenix. If you are already using a mesh enabled viewer, none of this will help, unfortunately.

It does look like LL took down the entire store, so I wonder if by "another viewer" they meant another game entirely!

 

[Kirinn Vollmar]

To answer the questions of if I actually tried it on other viewers: yes. That was the /first/ thing I did.

 

I  tried it in Viewer 2 and Firestorm. Both did not show up anything.

 

I want to thank everyone for their comments and concerns.

[Pamela Galli]

IF LL acted on any of the suggestions that merchants have made over and over again, about taking even MINIMAL steps to reduce the presence of frauds and thieves on the marketplace -- like requiring them to not have an anonymous account, as just one example -- then they would be more justified in failing to investigate accusations of fraud.

 

But as it stands, they make NO effort to impede criminals from listing things on the marketplace -- anyone can put up empty boxes for sale at no expense to themselves whatsoever -- and then take no responsibility for the consequences.

 

LL, take some steps to tighten up the marketplace, and THEN you can tell us it's our own damn fault if we buy from criminals.

 

 

 

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Kirinn Vollmar wrote:

To answer the questions of if I actually tried it on other viewers: yes. That was the /first/ thing I did.

 

I  tried it in Viewer 2 and Firestorm. Both did not show up anything.

 

I want to thank everyone for their comments and concerns.

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Thank you for updating us. :matte-motes-smile:  As another poster said, it was most probably a mesh avatar that could only be seen on the game from whence it came.  (How do people even do that???  Gah!)  Still, 20,000L for a "viewer" is weird. 

Something I do if I am going to purchase something on the expensive side in SL and am not familiar with the merchant is to check out his profile.  One can actually get a fairly decent idea from what is in one's profile.  I checked out this guy's profile and he had nothing at all in his profile about creating items/being a merchant.  Arguably he *could* have taken that out after his items were removed but for some reason I doubt it.  Next, his profile was full of "rules" for IMing him - not merchant rules but personal ones that boiled down to "don't IM me."  Added to that was a lot of "You can F*** off if you don't like it" type of comments as well as other items that would cause me to never, ever do business with this dude.

I realize this isn't helpful for this situation, but just an idea for the future.  Again I'm sorry this was your first experience after returning to SL. :smileysad:

[Czari Zenovka]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

IF LL acted on any of the suggestions that merchants have made over and over again, about taking even MINIMAL steps to reduce the presence of frauds and thieves on the marketplace -- like requiring them to not have an anonymous account, as just one example -- then they would be more justified in failing to investigate accusations of fraud.

 

But as it stands, they make NO effort to impede criminals from listing things on the marketplace -- anyone can put up empty boxes for sale at no expense to themselves whatsoever -- and then take no responsibility for the consequences.

 

LL, take some steps to tighten up the marketplace, and THEN you can tell us it's our own damn fault if we buy from criminals.

 

 

 

 

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And this^^^^^^

[baby Kranfel]

I would have loved it if you had posted a link to the MP item at the start.

[Pamela Galli]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Kirinn Vollmar wrote:

To answer the questions of if I actually tried it on other viewers: yes. That was the /first/ thing I did.

 

I  tried it in Viewer 2 and Firestorm. Both did not show up anything.

 

I want to thank everyone for their comments and concerns.

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I checked out this guy's profile and he had nothing at all in his profile about creating items/being a merchant.  Arguably he *could* have taken that out after his items were removed but for some reason I doubt it.  Next, his profile was full of "rules" for IMing him - not merchant rules but personal ones that boiled down to "don't IM me."  Added to that was a lot of "You can F*** off if you don't like it" type of comments as well as other items that would cause me to never, ever do business with this dude.

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No, I imagine no reasonable person would ever consider anyone with a profile like that a legitimate creator or merchant. It would not have taken much investigation to come to that conclusion.

 

The bottom line is Buyer Beware. No matter what steps LL may ever take, the ultimate responsibility will be on the buyer to investigate before buying. If they don't, there will be no one to bear the consequences on their behalf.

 

[Kirinn Vollmar]

Baby Kranfel: When I was originally posting, I was still in the process and had the hope that the seller would actually work with me and refund my money, so I didn't want to post it if I could get some actual response from the seller. I didn't have much a chance to post the original link to the item, because within just a few hours, it had been completely taken down and the store vanished.

 

 

[Maeve Balfour]

I posted in THIS THREAD about this kind of thing yesterday.... I had actually been spurred on in anger, in reference to the exact same "merchant" you were ripped off by Kirinn (I actually saw your review on the product (you were quite reasonable about it), and I left comments as well - however the product was pulled within an hour or two after).

My anger was because I had seen this fake store appear about a day before (simply by doing my daily search for "mesh" / "newest first" (I enjoy looking at what people are creating in mesh etc, hence my daily looksee)). I had instantly sensed a scam, and then you (and others) were ripped off in the hours that followed (I tend to "fave" a product or two from suspect stores, simply to keep track of them later - and saw these later had one-star reviews)).

Being a mesh hobbyist creator, I can spot these scam stores from a mile off, yet I am powerless to act on it - and time and again I see unsuspecting customers being ripped off by these scumbags. I am fairly certain it is just one or two individuals behind it all - exact same method of operation each time. They set up a fake storefront with a fairly new AV (often only a week or two old, although they might be letting them get a bit older now, judging by this latest AV (about a month old)). ALL the products in these fake stores carry images stolen directly from the same few 3D brokerage sites I am familiar with (usually AV replacements, clothing or vehicles), all at exhorbitant prices (6000L and upward). (I can always find these stolen images' original location via a very quick search on the brokerage sites I am familiar with). Unsuspecting customers are ripped off, and items are pulled and relisted "clean" as soon as negative reviews are left, or at least until LL pulls down the entire store and bans the AV account. And then a week or less later, they pop up again, same method, different images from the same sites. Rinse and repeat, the scam continues.

It makes me furious because I can see the crimes being committed, yet cannot warn anyone other than leaving comments on reviews left by angry ripped off customers - which nobody will likely see, since the items are pulled and relisted within hours. LL should be utterly ashamed of themselves - they are making a lot of commission from these scammers, judging by the dozens of angry reviews I have been fast enough to spot.

:matte-motes-angry:

.......................

(copy and paste below from my post in the other thread, but it is relevant here):

Biggest giveaway clue (if their "items" are mesh related): They NEVER have the items listed as Mesh: 100% Mesh (located under the Permissions section on the right hand side of the product page). Instant reason for suspicion if the items are hugely pricey and supposedly full-perms. Genuine mesh uploaders are REQUIRED to have their RL payment details on file with LL (a means of identification) - of course, criminal scammers won't do this. Hence their LACK of ability to have the Mesh: 100% Mesh status on their products. No details on file, so they cannot upload mesh - so of course they CANNOT be selling these "fantastic" items they are faking. Usually, the AVs involved are only a week or so old (although the latest scammer has an AV about a month old - so they are possibly "ageing" them first now).
(NOTE: This doesn't apply to mesh prefab kit retexture/resellers, of course - they are simply reselling an existing mesh kit already uploaded to SL by another party. Also their items are usually decently priced as well).

I'm just posting this in a faint hope of saving some unfortunate resident being suckered by this scam method.

[baby Kranfel]

Make sense I was just curious. To bad it's gone.

[Blitz Rage]

I saw your review on the mesh avatar on Marketplace. I looked at the persons items and store polocy, even his profile after reading the other comments. Its a big loss 6k! I am not rich but if its all you had, I am willing to give you some lindens to help you out. Contact me in world.

 

[Blitz Rage]

You can pay for Blender Jass or other Blender software in world. Problem is the way this persons store was done was very professional. I wish we could request assistance from LL in problems like this so that they could trace, or put a hold on any Lindens being transferred out of SL into Paypal linked to that person who was the scammer. 

 

[Pamela Galli]

LL ought to pay you for the monitoring you do, Maeve --at the very least they ought to welcome reports of criminal activity you spot, and say thank you for them.

 

There is a long thread over in "Another Well Known Forum" full of links to ripped mesh on the marketplace. I had little doubt that the avatar mentioned in this thread was probably one of those, ripped from some other game.

[GothGirl Demonia]

Report it to Linden Lab, although when a scammer gets paid they usually log in and quickly launder out the money fast so LL and you can't recover the money, and given the fact anonmity is allowed in Second Life and IP/Mac/Proxy spoofing there isn't much that can be done legally. ( Yes it sucks, no LL doesn't seem to fix the issue no matter how many times I have brought it up.)

Do not download any viewers other than what is listen on the TPV website, as any viewers downloaded can contain keyloggers, currently the PN are passing around illegal viewers including CopyBot viewers, and legit viewers for download which look just like FireStorm and exact same name but false download links which contain keyloggers and you will go to login to SL to find your account has been banned by LL, inventory erased, or that you got banned form many places for griefing for acts that were not you.

If it requires a special viewer or Mesh Viewer than FireStorm should work if it doesn't its an obvious scam and I would not risk the account on downloading a viewer which you can't see the source code for.

While there is so many open sourced viewers and I am sure there are custom legit viewers people do for themselves as coders or friends its just impossible to tell which ones have keyloggers or illegal and which ones are not so its always good to stick to the TPV directory.

[Pamela Galli]

Today a customer alerted me to one of my houses being sold on the MP by a NPIOF account a few months old, blank profile - and she/he had the gall to copy my entire listing and all the photos on the listing! 

 

And in the unlikely event LL ever removed that account -- they say, as a matter of policy, they want every copybotter to have the opportunity to infringe "repeatedly" before they stop them -- another one will be made/used.

[Phil Deakins]

Is it possible to sell just one item in the marketplace? I mean, suppose someone bought your house, and suppose it is no copy, is it possible to sell it on the marketplace?

I ask because quite a long time ago, someone told me that someone was selling one of my no-copy chesterfields on the marketplace and, sure enough, it was there for sale. But the seller didn't offer any more of my items so I just assumed that it was someone selling the item that they bought and, when it was sold, that was it.

[Madeline Blackbart]

It hink if it's trans it's possible but how honest it is I don't know...

[Pamela Galli]

Update:  I had an alt buy the "house". It turned out to be some HUD:

 

[Pamela Galli]

You can sell just one item with a Magic Box but not (yet) with Direct Delivery.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Is it possible to sell just one item in the marketplace? I mean, suppose someone bought your house, and suppose it is no copy, is it possible to sell it on the marketplace?

I ask because quite a long time ago, someone told me that someone was selling one of my no-copy chesterfields on the marketplace and, sure enough, it was there for sale. But the seller didn't offer any more of my items so I just assumed that it was someone selling the item that they bought and, when it was sold, that was it.

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There is a category on the MP called "Used Items."  I *think* this category was called the same thing in Xstreet, but at any rate it was a category for listing transfer items for resale, thus it was perfectly legal - the MP version of a yard sale.

In the past I've listed and purchased a couple of items in that category; the listing always had a disclaimer by LL printed in red that stated something about the item being sold by a private resident (ie. not a merchant) and buy at your own risk.  At least words to that effect.  I just checked the MP and, at least the items I pulled up to check out prior to posting, did not have the disclaimer on them.  Maybe it has something to do with the software conversion from Xstreet/SLX to the MP, who knows.

At any rate, reselling a transfer item is permissible.

@Pam - Gah!  Unbelievable!!!  This scamming is starting to be more than just an occasional occurrance.

[Pamela Galli]

@ Czari -- yes the smarter criminals have realized they don't need to go to the trouble to copybot something and package it up to sell. Just sell empty boxes or griefer objects.

 

If the Marketplace welcomes them with open arms, and there's no risk of consequences, why not?

[Porky Gorky]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Update:  I had an alt buy the "house". It turned out to be some HUD:

 

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Jesus wept, we can't even attract a good quality of thief in SL now. In the old days at least they made a token effort to rip a build and import it in before selling it. Now they are just right clicking and stealing the sales image from the website and selling any old crap as the end product. 

This is why merchants need to retain inworld stores, so customers can rez and touch and see the stuff they are buying :smileywink:

Especially if this practice becomes an epidemic. It will destroy confidence in the MP.