Marketplace, double-paying, undelivered items, and more

[Alaska Metropolitan]

(Hey, we now have forums again instead of the stupid flogs. Yay!)

So, I've had a couple of situations now where customers have tried to buy something off the Marketplace, the deliver fails or they're set to busy or something, the system fails to automatically give them a refund, and they simply buy the item again. Sometimes they're too shy to tell me they paid twice. I've found these by checking my transactions for anything strange.

Here's the dilemma: If I give them a refund in-world, like I morally and ethically should, I am losing money because, while they paid $500 or whatever, I only received $420 or something due to the comission fees. LL keeps their commission on a transaction that really shouldn't have gone through at all.

Furthermore, there's an awful lot of items rated one star on the Marketplace that look great... upon reading the review, it's always the same: "I paid $XXX for this and I never got the item!!!"

What LL need to realize is that merchants are taking 100% of the blame for Marketplace glitches. It's costing us sales, lost time, and lost L$ in commission fees. Lost customers.

What, in my opinion, should have been done with the new Marketplace? I don't think LL should have charged commission until the old Magic Boxes were replaced with something that doesn't fail 20% of the time. I don't think they should be charging commission right now.

Failing that pipe dream, can we at least get a way to click a refund button for transactions on the orders page? Pretty please??

*goes back to hiding in a skybox drawing pixelclothes*

[Robert Galland]

Right, it is unfortunate if you end up paying LL double commission as failed transactions are not our fault.  You are doing the right thing, though.  Better to have a happy customer who may think well enough of how you handled it to tell their friends and might even come back.

 

[Alaska Metropolitan]

I offer another item of the same value instead, for now... at least until the Marketplace has a way to do a proper refund. If peeps reallllly want a refund I can do it, but I hate to suck up the commission fee when I shouldn't have to!

[George Orellana]

In the case of a customer actually paying twice (having been verified by the transaction history), I always do what you do and send an IM to the customer and tell them "Hey, I noticed you paid twice for a copyable item.......etc." I then send them a full refund. Why a full refund? because unlike RL it is actually NOT costing us anything to lose the commission LL "stole". Ok I know you are frowning at me right now but hear me out. Any item you make and place on the marketplace incurs a production cost only once. By refunding the customer you are not actually losing anything. Also keep in mind that it's better to make a customer happy, in the long run it pays off through positive word of mouth. 

[Alaska Metropolitan]

No one is paying us for our time to produce custom content in the first place. Certainly not Linden Lab. The way to recoup our production costs is through selling our products. We're still losing money by providing a full refund...

Keep in mind, while a lot of merchants are all "I just do this for fun" and are indifferent to their L$ balances*, some merchants are treating this instead as a real business and paying real life bills with their virtual wares.

Naturally, one wants their customers to be happy. I'd just like LL to provide the basic tools we need to do business. A refund button on the Marketplace (that doesn't force the merchant to eat the commission!) for the hundreds of failed transactions would be nice.

*I'm more in this camp myself

[Harper Montgomery]

What about the customers themselves? We have no recourse if a vendor or merchant decides NOT to resend or refund an undelivered purchase. People will say that we can make our opinions known by posting a review on the marketplace item page but #1. That doesn't get me the items i ordered. #2. That doesn't refund the money I spent. #3. Poll the marketplace customers and find out how many of them actually take the time to read the reviews. This isn't a satisfactory arrangement.

In my case I contacted the seller three times each by both notecard and instant message. The order #, the item id number and the item prefix code along with full name of products and the price for each item along with the date of the original order.

I have not heard from the seller. I have not received my items and I have not been refunded my money.

What do I do?

 

[George Orellana]

 

---

Alaska Metropolitan wrote:

No one is paying us for our time to produce custom content in the first place. Certainly not Linden Lab. The way to recoup our production costs is through selling our products. We're still losing money by providing a full refund...

Keep in mind, while a lot of merchants are all "I just do this for fun" and are indifferent to their L$ balances*, some merchants are treating this instead as a real business and paying real life bills with their virtual wares.

Naturally, one wants their customers to be happy. I'd just like LL to provide the basic tools we need to do business.

A refund button on the Marketplace

(that doesn't force the merchant to eat the commission!)

for the hundreds of failed transactions would be nice.

*I'm more in this camp myself

---

 

When a customer has paid you twice you are not losing money, you have no "production costs to recoup" unless LL was charging listing fees which they are not. When you create a product in SL you incur a cost only once, that being for uploads and your time. When you put that item up for sale in the Marketplace you will have priced the item to cover that one time cost. Unless you intend to sell that item only once then there are no costs of goods sold involved and thus your gross profit from the sale is 100% regardless of the price. If the customer has paid you 1000L for a 500L item and you refund them 500L you have a profit of 475L, don't think of it as a loss, think of it as smaller profit. (Provided you are not paying LL for any MP adverts.)

Nonetheless LL does need to do something about failed deliveries. One thing I would love to see is that L$ be only deducted when an item is actually delivered, that would save everyone a lot of trouble.

[George Orellana]

 

---

Harper Montgomery wrote:

What about the customers themselves? We have no recourse if a vendor or merchant decides NOT to resend or refund an undelivered purchase. People will say that we can make our opinions known by posting a review on the marketplace item page but #1. That doesn't get me the items i ordered. #2. That doesn't refund the money I spent. #3. Poll the marketplace customers and find out how many of them actually take the time to read the reviews. This isn't a satisfactory arrangement.

In my case I contacted the seller three times each by both notecard and instant message. The order #, the item id number and the item prefix code along with full name of products and the price for each item along with the date of the original order.

I have not heard from the seller. I have not received my items and I have not been refunded my money.

What do I do?

 

---

 

In most cases of nondelivery it really is not the merchant's fault. Many people do not understand that although LL takes your money, the merchant is NOT paid until and only if a successful delivery has taken place. Many people don't ever realize that they have received a notice posted on their accounts  that notifies them of this fact, most people don't even know that a MP transaction history exist. Depending on the item and the price of the item, you really can't expect the merchant to deliver the item for free.

Having said that. In my case, in all my alts all our items are no more than 500L and deal with this type of issue on a case by case basis, till now I have not had one single customer who does not end up happy.

[Alaska Metropolitan]

I think Harper's really gotten to the crux of the issue... which is what the consumer is going through. They make a purchase, they receive nothing, they still pay L$. They contact the seller... but in some cases in SL, the seller's moved on and isn't an active content creator anymore, or their IMs get capped, whatever. In some cases, the consumer decides to just buy the item again - double paying.

In my opinion, it's a failure of the Marketplace technology to deal with the undelivered items... which can be undelivered for any number of reasons, ranging from broken Magic Box technology (even my up to date ones fail about 15% of their transactions!), set to busy, offline, server is down, etc. The Marketplace itself needs to address these issues and make it easier for both a) consumers to lodge a complaint and b) merchants to deal with it.

[avari Kytori]

hi all

now iv'e tried to buy things from marketplace (3days later) stiil no items deliverd. on transaction history it says it has been deliverd. i ordered 3 times in 3 days. don't know what to do now.  greetz avari kytori

[Ry0ta Exonar]

This page will help you out.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Shopping-in-the-Marketplace/ta-p/700195#Section_.3.3

 

[Zanara Zenovka]

Not getting into wider issues with non-delivery here, except to say that more problems are caused by the way the SLM web end of things was implemented, rather than the poor old much-maligned magic box itself...

but just letting you know that if you refund a double purchase, you can submit a ticket with the details to marketplace support and they will refund the second commission.

[Neon Hammerer]

Hello I bought a latex nurse outfit

Invoice # 1307881617

Ordered on November 08, 2012

Order Status: Delivered

	Description	Item IDs	Unit Price	Qty	Total:
	Naughty Nurse - Xstreet Promo Price Sold by Ketzal Frankfurter Visit The StoreReview Product	86640836, 86640837	L$49	2	L$98
	2 items have been deliveredItem(s) will be delivered to the  Objects  folder.

Total:

L$98

I did not want towo of the same item. SO i would like to have a refund. on both of them. the skirt in the photo did not have the correct skirt, at least not  the same one in the photo. , so not only was the photo misleading, but when i tried to buy just one,  and i tried 4 times... to jsut have one. so I would like a rfull refund of my double paid item.. How do I ask for a dispute? how do I get my money back?  

[Darrius Gothly]

Neon,

Your best course of action is to contact the Merchant directly. The Forums are where people share general issues with Second Life and, for this board, the Marketplace and In-World selling operations. It doesn't work well for specific individual problems.

But as for the "double sale", when you were shown the order summary .. before you clicked "Place Order" .. you had the chance to notice that TWO of the same items were in your cart. That screen is there to help you prevent mistakes such as the one you made. I realize that it's too late now, but in the future you should read carefully to make sure you don't have two of the same items in your cart.

Unfortunately it's a mistake many people make. They zoom past the Summary screen and are then surprised when they are charged for both items. It's just one of those things where it really is in your best interest to read carefully before you spend your money.