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How would you like a replacement fraud plywood cube?


Sassy Romano
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When someone buys what turns out to be a plywood cube for L$5,500 instead of the right content, you can feel somewhat sympathetic.

When that person contacts the original creator who replies that the item had a DMCA filed against it 36 hours PREVIOUSLY

Then when that person flags the item as "not as advertised" and files a support ticket, you just have to laugh insanely when the response from support is that they cannot refund the purchase but will be happy to redeliver another empty plywood prim!

Precisely what part of FRAUD does LL not understand?  If they hadn't been notified, if the product was as advertised and the merchant refused to response you could almost agree but this sort of behaviour is just laughable.

I wonder how much L$  the commission on the fraudulent transactions actually adds up to and what part of "complicit" is not understood by LL here?


(I'm not involved here, just was told of this by the unfortunate customer but add this to the recent failed attempt at making merchants PIOF and you just have to shake your head and laugh at the stack of fails)

 

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The thing is, the scammers are not infringing on IP, except if they use the original's pictures (as they did when selling what appeared to be one of my houses but turned out to be a griefer HUD).  They are not in fact selling someone else's intellectual property, they are selling nothing or worse than nothing.

I have heard many tales of these scammers continuing to do business long after being reported. Why should LL care?

What it always comes down to: Buyer beware. No one is going to refund the money you have been scammed out of. 

 

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I know, that was my thoughts about it too however they don't hold copyright to upload someone else's picture.  However, it's clearly fraud when it's not as per the very long description that claims the product is one thing when it turns out to be an empty cube.

What is interesting though is that Peter Gray of LL has pointed out that one of the changes of he TOS was to facilitate them being able to act as an agent, a re-seller on Marketplace.

That firmly puts LL as the selling agent and against whom the claim should be made.  Funds go to Commerce Linden, LL sold the product under licence (as stated by Peter Gray).

Once notified, that rather points the finger at LL as the fraudulent party here, completely complicit :)

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LL doesn't care because the US dollar amount is so low, they know their profit margin won't be hit by it. A few times I've filed fraud on my credit card with charges made for L$ or for marketplace purchases. It's always simply refunded without dispute.

If we were paying larger amounts, we could take it to small claims court. If the amounts were up in the hundreds, it'd fall under grand theft laws. LL could get into a lot of trouble if the transactions were large. But since 5500 only amounts to about 20 bucks or so, nobody cares.

It's like when oil companies are fined 10 thousand dollars a day for not being compliant with safety laws- they're making millions every day by breaking those laws, it's more profitable to break the law and pay the fine, than spend the hundreds of thousands to comply with the law.

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They seem to just want to be hosts, you need to go to RL cops if someone attacks you at the grocery store and robs you I guess, so same here.

Of course, if anarchy where decalred (or maybe it can't be, that is to much like trying to rule people and stuff...so it would be mutually understood state that arose) then maybe the walled garden woudl have thugs.

You can imagine these thugs, they would be in teams and have names. People may become partons and pay them respect, becuase the really true fighters of justice wouldn't take money and look like a mob. They would be like a cross between one of those bums that fights the other bum to death over a coat and a super hero. You would go to the grocery store and when someone attacks you these guys bust through the isles and starts smashing the guys arms so he can't steal anymore. Jails are so costly, a lead pipe and a weight bench for a thug to work out on leads to stopping criminals quickly.

In SL they could do this, it is thier play money. They can watch for the dimensions and contents of things. Then when someone lists something like that, an alarm goes off. The Linden Thugs are set loose. The gang hack into his computer by posting a client upload needed message to the guys viewer based on his IP and account log-in. He loads up and they get into his PC and trash it with evil linden bear screen savers and such playing to really send the message home they are not absent. They are watching over us!!!! They care!!!! The jerks would leave us alone then, no more fooling and I would have my sports car instead of a empty box...you swine!!!! I should haave known better than to buy a box in a sandbox from a guy who can't type good english. But, we don't have that...sort of.

 

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Yes, the difference is that the police don't run the supermarket and staff the checkout and then say that the problem of the empty tin of beans is not their fault even if they were notified of it 3 days earlier but they can replace it with another empty tin.

 

Don't misunderstand me, I don't expect quality care or a responsible process from LL, I know better than that. However that doesn't excuse then from being complicit in fraud and then acting laughably about it.

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I think the real issue here is once Linden Lab is aware of the scam as the 'selling agent' they must act, not mock victims by offering to redeliver the insult.

Linden Labs Market place commerce team’s refusal to do so, with full knowledge and confirmation that the listing is indeed fraudulent makes one wonder just what is their motivation  for endorsing and continuing to provide a platform for this seller. It raises the question, just who is the REAL  scammer here.

Please note, at no stage has Linden Lab agreed to repay me even the  commision they took from me for the empty prim.

The Linden Lab employee that responded to my ticket for support  still has refused to provide me with the name of his supervisor so that I can have someone else review this incident.

Also note the fraudulent listing STILL remains

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I have to wonder if any one uses that option sense LL charges more to use it.    But if some one was scammed and had paid with RL $ then maybe more could be done about it.  I don't think individual action against LL would do much to change things, a class action would be the attention getter. 

I all so have  to wonder how LL deals with failed deliveries, and stolen content paid for with RL $, special now that they claim to own it.

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GracePlace wrote:

I think the real issue here is once Linden Lab is aware of the scam as the 'selling agent' they must act, not mock victims by offering to redeliver the insult.

I disagree... the issue is not that of LL being the "selling agent", but that of LL not providing the protection to their users that they should.  Anyone with two cells in their brain would realize that this is fraudulent behavior that should be taken care of post haste.  I seriously doubt that LL lacks those brain cells, so the only think I can figure is that they just don't care... which fits in well with my overall impression of LL as a service provider.

...Dres

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I disagree... The issue is LL being the selling agent.  This was not an inworld transaction, I did not pay the scammers own vendor, I purhased from Marketplace. Attempts by Linden Lab to explain this as "a resident to resident transaction" in which Linden Lab does not get involved is invalid because the financial transaction is not between residents but between the buyer and a Linden Lab escrow account "Commerce Linden".

Peter Gray of Linden Lab even goes so far as to acknowledge that it acts as a sales agent in his letter to content creators, dated 24th October, around concerns of the recent change to the Terms of Service.  The relevant paragraph:-
"To that end, we are currently reviewing what changes could be made that would resolve the concerns of Second Life content creators, specifically protecting content creators' intellectual property ownership while permitting Linden Lab to, among other things, act as an agent of content creators (such as yourselves), licensed to sell and re-sell such content".

In other words, Linden Lab IS the selling agent of this fraudulent content and yet while making money via commissions from this act, refuses to remedy the error!

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Good news for the Linden Lab endorsed( I say endorsed because I bought it and flagged in as item not as described and Support team refused to remove the listing) fraudulent seller of the $L5,500 empty plywood prim item listed on Marketplace, so successful  was this semi exclusive all 12 units of this reported scam has now sold. Good Job LL the scammer could not have done this without your ongoing support.

Together Linden Lab and this scam seller would like to offer to those of you that weren’t ripped off yet in the first round, an opportunity to purchase 12 more units of this Linden Lab endorsed empty plywood prim, however due to the success and demand of the first round they have decided to hike the price up this round to L$9,999.

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This is nothing new. I saw a scammer selling one of my freebies for 8000L$. I made a comment on the item saying it was not worth 8000L$ and was in fact one of my freebies, I can not DMCA as I gave it away full perms. It annoys me that people see my name as the creator and that 2 people who paid 8k for it item contacted me and called ME a scammer. I then Flagged all the items (as they were selling, as they were selling it Copy/No Tran/No Mod, Mod/Copy/No Tran and one Full Perms). There was also a review that said it was my item and told people not to buy it as it was not as described. I also gave a list of other Merchants (and suggested they look at them for being Alts of the same scammer) that were also selling empty boxes and stolen HUD's.

SOOO, WHAT DID LINDEN LABS DO? 

They DELETED the Buyer review and DELETED my comments. Needless to say all scam merchants are still doing great business on the MP, as are LL with their share of the scamming profits.

 

 

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Legend Hye wrote:

This is nothing new. I saw a scammer selling one of my freebies for 8000L$. I made a comment on the item saying it was not worth 8000L$ and was in fact one of my freebies, I can not DMCA as I gave it away full perms. It annoys me that people see my name as the creator and that 2 people who paid 8k for it item contacted me and called ME a scammer. I then Flagged all the items (as they were selling, as they were selling it Copy/No Tran/No Mod, Mod/Copy/No Tran and one Full Perms). There was also a review that said it was my item and told people not to buy it as it was not as described. I also gave a list of other Merchants (and suggested they look at them for being Alts of the same scammer) that were also selling empty boxes and stolen HUD's.

SOOO, WHAT DID LINDEN LABS DO? 

They DELETED the Buyer review and DELETED my comments. Needless to say all scam merchants are still doing great business on the MP, as are LL with their share of the scamming profits.

 

 

The scammer may have just relisted the item to get rid of the review. Either way, it shows criminal incompetence by LL.

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The listing was  never removed by Linden Lab and I hadn’t left a review, naively I believed once I had flagged it as item ‘not as described’ and spoken directly to LL by telephone confirming it as a scam listing I thought it would be best to let Linden Lab handle it from there.

Honestly I really thought it was best to let Linden Lab handle it because this wasn’t a case of I didn’t like it or it didn’t meet my expectations etc.  It was clearly a fraud case.

Bear in mind we are only discussing one listing of this sellers storefront.  Every single listing of his is a copy of artwork and ad listing details  taken from otherl genuine merchants Marketplace stores

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Sassy Romano wrote:

Yes, the difference is that the police don't run the supermarket and staff the checkout and then say that the problem of the empty tin of beans is not their fault even if they were notified of it 3 days earlier but they can replace it with another empty tin.

 

Don't misunderstand me, I don't expect quality care or a responsible process from LL, I know better than that. However that doesn't excuse then from being complicit in fraud and then acting laughably about it.

You have a point on offering do resend the stuff. There is a blur on the line between hosts on the net and hosts in real life who have with biscuits and tea for you.

I think they straddle the middle, they offer some things beyond a simple listing service, sort of like a classified ads or a open market. They try to help, but sometimes you can imagine the dismay the customer service people have when they have to use a set of rules and they just roll thier eyes and say "All I can do, which doesn't help you situation, is..." and it can be funny at times.

SO, yeah, you are right. I am just pointing out they are really trying not to get involved many times. They try to and it is almost nice to see they do have some standards or rules, but yeah it is funny when a set of rules makes little sense and they start to sound like robots or AI software, and sarcastic and insulting at it's worste moments.

Sorry about that, you have a point beyond what I thought was an explanation. Just in a mood to type I guess.

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Poenald Palen wrote:

Sorry about that, you have a point beyond what I thought was an explanation. Just in a mood to type I guess.

Oh don't worry i'm thick skinned and I do understand their stance on not taking sides however a better response would have been to tell the purchaser that they will escalate and ensure that it's properly investigated.  It's not like it's too hard to deliver the "Product" rez it and confirm that it's absolutely NOT as described, then pass it immediately to the other team who will delist a product if there's so much as a spelling mistake in it.

It's the sequence of fails and shrug of shoulders and apparent apathy at following and upholding their own prior processes that is called into question here.

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This type of fraud is thankfully getting much harder to pull off successfully. By clicking on the new Contents tab in the listing for each product, a prospective purchaser can rapidly list the entire contents of the item along with the permissions for each part. Of course this only works for products that will be delivered via Direct Delivery, but it is one of those features that arrived with very little fanfare yet offers a very useful and powerful tool to help prevent being ripped off.

product contents tab.jpg

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