How does one warn others of a Merchant that may take your money and not provide the service paid for

[Dustyavi]

 

The problem is being able to warn others by mentioning the Merchant by name without breaking the TOS by speaking negative?   Without this ability the Merchant will just continue to prey on people ... There should be a list where one can check on  the integrity of Merchants.

[steph Arnott]

Um well unless you leave a review, which can be removed and a ticked of complaint, the answer is not a lot.Seems LL are not interested.

[Dustyavi]

Where would one leave a "review"?   I was warned that speaking negative against a Merchant or avi on sl was grounds for ejection from SL .. so hesitant???

 

[steph Arnott]

Well here is the joke, you have to buy it first and leave a review in the MP shop. Even if you make a complaint at the MP shop the drop down reasons for a complaint are useless. Also the owner can have that bad review removed. Put it on your in world profile, you can then use the legal presedent of, "well i think its a rip off" hard to prove anothers opinion in a court.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If you bought the item in world there is nothing you can do except tell people you know and maybe put it in your profile.  If you bought it on MP you can leave a poor review.

Before you do anything though, what exactly is your complaint? 

Did you pay for something and didn't get it?  If that's the case, contact the creator as most will gladly make it right.  Look in their profile to see if there is a preferred method of contact.  Send your transaction information with your request as proof of purchase.  Lastly be polite and patient.  Merchants have RL's too and may be absent due to RL circumstances.  Not all of them log in every day either.  If you bought it on MP you can file a support ticket to have it redelivered.

Did you get something that didn't work?  Again contact the creator as most will work with you to fix the problem and if they can't will refund your money.

 

[Dustyavi]

No, Amethyst .... i was renting some land and living on it in a house i built for 6-7 months.

 Some how when i opened a box I bought on MP it rezz and object that intruded on my neighbors land .. I was not aware of this.   After signing off and later trying to return to my home i found the landlord had banned me and removed all my property off her land without any notice ... due to intruding on my neighbors property.  

When questioning what was going on I was muted.  I had paid for a few weeks ahead and sent a notecard requesting the refund of this advanced payment and was told that was not reasonable.   So, yes i have tried to contact the Merchant/landlord without any solution.

 

[steph Arnott]

What has that to do with your OP? First it a merchant issue now it a landlord issue.

ADDED, Have a good life, i have better things to do,

[Chic Aeon]

There are a lot of "rules" you learn over time in SL.

 

ONE is never pay more than a week ahead if that is the minimum. Things happen. Landlords leave and land disappears. A bondage establishment moves in next door. The sim is overrun with breedables and you can't move. MANY scenarios.

 

TWO - if you don't know what is in a box, open in it the sandbox; that is what they are for.

 

Some landlords are great, other are not. In this case I think you have to chalk it up to your inexperience. The landlord could easily have decided you were a greifer (OK, maybe not reasonably but we don't know what kind of day they had ).

 

Linden Lab will do nothing and in this case I doubt that you can blame the merchant for an "oversized" item (which likely told you how big it was in the description) on the Marketplace.

 

We have all had some kind of issue as we get our SL learning curve going. Just move on and try to remember not to make the same mistakes.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Sorry that happened but it probably stated in the covenant that you could't have things go over your property line.  It is your responsibility to turn on property lines (WORLD>SHOW MORE>PROPERTY LINES) to make sure your stuff does not go over it when you rez it.  You didn't and you left it as it was.  So you broke the covenant.  That's why you were booted and banned.  Most covenants state you are not due a refund if you break them and are booted.

Granted they may have cut you some slack but they weren't required to.  You also don't say how long you were gone.  A Landlord must protect the interests of all their tenants.

 

[greek Wingtips]

Correct me if I am wrong, but does LL's not get a cut of every sale? if so they obigied to have a duty of care to the buyer so I think if there are a cetain amount of complaints via reviews or direct complaint and can upheld then the merchant should be give the oppertunity to put things right or if still continues be struck off in extreme cases

[Qie Niangao]

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greek Wingtips wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong, but does LL's not get a cut of every sale?

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Nope, only on Marketplace, and the fee is tiny -- like 5% I think -- probably less than it takes to keep Marketplace itself running. (This is a change we've been told to expect in Sansar... and then this raises an interesting point: Suddenly those transactions become more like those of an online app store, where the store itself has some responsibility for not distributing malware, etc. Not for intervening in every landlord / tenant dispute, though, thank god.)

To the OP's situation: Yeah, you're right: you can't use this forum for that purpose, which is one reason many folks have abandoned the LL forums altogether. Even most of us who still peek in here really rely on other forums (notably SL Universe) for this kind of thing. (For example, I would never buy a mesh product without first checking whether the merchant is a ripper as listed in one thread on that forum.)

 

[Syo Emerald]

A landlord is not a merchant. Don't confuse those terms or people don't know what you are talking about. Also I think even if it is a harsh reaction from what you describe, I don't think there is anything you can do. I'm not even sure if this breaks the ToS at all...but it certainly belongs to the resident disputes LL does not get involved in.

[Dustyavi]

Sorry, i think a rental is a "service" paid for .. and is not a landlord a Merchant for their property.   Did not mean to mislead .. just do not see a difference .. just a different product.

[Qie Niangao]

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Dustyavi wrote:

is not a landlord a Merchant for their property [?]

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Not so much in standard parlance, no. That's just a superficial distinction of language, though. And it's interesting to note how especially superficial it is in the case of a virtual world in which pretty much every purchase is -- one way or another -- renting a license on some pixels.

And yet, even in SL, there's a special kind of crazy that applies to "landlord" / "tenant" relations that goes beyond the usual craziness of other customer service situations.

I trust, however, that this tangent is not effectively distracting from the original aggravation. Sorry 'bout that.

[Pamela Galli]

Since he accepts money for his services, let's just call him Merchant Obama.

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[Spica Inventor]

I agree with you Dustyavi. In addition, alot of peeps have taken their marbles home with them out of SL due to hard @sses like that creating a hostile self serving environment.  Similar types of hostility found at sandboxes has caused the same. Peeps like to blame the griefers and trolls, but they are only a relatively minor attrition component in reality. It's the uptight control freaks and @nal retents that are a much more significant problem when it comes to getting peeps interested in SL and growing the population base and such.

[steph Arnott]

Unfortunatly anyone can go online and sell be it in SL vurtual goods or RL real goods and not give a hoot about ripping some one off. I certainly belive  a minimum 50% of MP shops owners are long gone and never to return. Best advise is to just get over it, the other certainly will not be upset. At least on the better side it was L$ and not US$.

[JoJo Aurelia]

This is fishy.  Missing something.  They could  have just returned the item. 

[Sierra Oskar]

If in sl it is not allowed, warn your friends outside of sl about the specific merchant. Most of us do connect with other people from sl on skype and other social media.