PSA: Merchants are responsible for MP errors

[Paul Hexem]

So, the other day I was spending time with a friend and she was shopping on the marketplace. At one point she tells me it's not working, she can't buy anything anymore.

To test it, I decided to try to buy something. No surprise, I got the same error message she was getting. Something about being unable to create an invoice, I believe was the wording.

Anyway, I told her it looked like the MP had crashed, and we'd have to wait for them to fix it. We'll try again tomorrow or something.

The next day, she tells me a ton of her L$ went missing. We investigated, and it turned out all her failed attempts to buy things processed hours later, and she was sent multiple copies of stuff, and charged multiple times.

Right away, she filed a support ticket. The reply? It's a resident to resident dispute, she should contact the merchants and have them refund her for duplicate purchases.

So, fellow merchants, keep that in mind if a customer comes to you asking for refunds and blames marketplace errors. LL told them to.

[Paul Hexem]

Update:

Here's LL's response, nearly word for word.

Quote

Unfortunately this is not something I can assist with since you will have to contact the Merchant of the store and have them cancel the order. They will need to cancel the order and return the L$ you were charged for that order since it is still "Under construction".

This doesn't even make sense to me, I've never seen an order as "under construction". I've certainly never been able to cancel an order when someone purchased something from my store. Has anyone else seen that option?

[Talligurl]

As a merchant i would have no problem refunding the additional purchases, provided the item was not a no copy transferable item, then i would need to get those items transferred back to me first. As for canceling an order I have never had occasion to try to do that. It doesn't seem like something that would be necessary, if someone wanted one item but they tried to buy it 8 times and then got charged 8 times, just send them 7 times the selling price. I think I might take advantage of the fact i know they have the money to offer them a discount on anything else they might want to compensate for their trouble.

What I don't understand is why someone would make multiple purchases when the first purchase didn't go though

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Gadget Portal said:

This doesn't even make sense to me, I've never seen an order as "under construction". I've certainly never been able to cancel an order when someone purchased something from my store. Has anyone else seen that option?

That's new to me too and of course it raises the question if LL will refund their fee too or is that deudcted from the merchant?

[Elvina Ewing]

i wanna bet the fee LL charged will stay where it went - with LL! - i don't believe LL is going to refund the merchants, as it is a final purchase. The merchant can choose not to refund the customer at all and LL have no way of knowing whether the merchant did or didn't. Basically, if the merchant chooses to refund the customer's money minus LL commissions, it is the customer who will be losing some money anyway. If the merchant chooses to refund the full price it will be the merchant who loses money. Either way, i wanna bet it won't be LL that is losing money...

[Arwen Serpente]

Elvina? If a merchant refunds a customer, all the merchant has to do is file a support ticket with the information and LL does refund the commission to the Merchant. I've done it, and they do refund it.

[Elvina Ewing]

really? just like that? what information do you provide then? i mean you will have to prove that 1) a double purchase has taken place; 2) that you refunded the customer... Do they actually take time to verify that information and even refund the merchant? Wow, i didn't know that, sounds like so much trouble...

[Arwen Serpente]

I just send the transaction information from my dashboard that shows when they purchased it and when I refunded it. Sometimes I include the conversation I had with the customer so it's clear that we spoke and I sent a refund. It's really rare that it happens (that I need to send a refund).  But it really isn't very much work to send the info to Support and get the commission credited to your account.

[Talligurl]

2 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

LL have no way of knowing whether the merchant did or didn't.

Any payment of money is in you transaction history, surely you do not think LL does not have access to that.

[Paul Hexem]

It's amazing how many merchants I see complaining about customers complaining to them about MP errors. I just thought I'd share why. This is turning into a downright useful thread, though!

[Elvina Ewing]

On 27/05/2017 at 7:45 PM, Talligurl said:

Any payment of money is in you transaction history, surely you do not think LL does not have access to that.

LL have access to a lot of things. It seems that they often just choose to not access certain things. When it suits them somehow.

[Tamara Artis]

On 27. 05. 2017. at 7:25 PM, Arwen Serpente said:

I just send the transaction information from my dashboard that shows when they purchased it and when I refunded it. Sometimes I include the conversation I had with the customer so it's clear that we spoke and I sent a refund. It's really rare that it happens (that I need to send a refund).  But it really isn't very much work to send the info to Support and get the commission credited to your account.

I had no idea you could do this! Thank you for sharing so far I had only one case where I had to refund a double purchase but its good to know for future. 

[Dakota Linden]

Greetings All!

I would like to clarify some of the issues raised in this thread.

1. Linden Lab does not issue refunds for completed orders, except in extremely rare situations. This is because the receiver got the item and the seller got paid for the sale.  If Linden Lab issued refunds on completed orders, then the funds would need to be removed from the sellers account, and the buyer refunded for the purchase.  This would mean that Linden Lab is taking money from the seller, even though they sold the item, and the buyer would be getting the item for free.  This is not fair to either the seller or other buyers who pay for items.

2. Linden Lab will, and is very happy to, refund any seller the commission that was paid on a sale if they choose to refund their customer.  We ask that the sellers provide us with the original MKT Order Number from the sale and the copy of the Gift Transaction from their L$ Funds Transaction Log showing the full amount of the refund to the buyer.   We will then refund the commission that was paid on the item sale (or order).  

Unfortunately, issues can, and do, happen.  If anyone receives an error message when they place an order on the Marketplace, they should not make multiple attempts to purchase the items.  Once the issue is resolved, the orders should complete on their own within a few minutes. Although depending upon the issue, this could take a couple of hours.

3. An Under Construction status on an order means just that. The order is Under Construction.   It means that items have been placed into the Shopping Cart, but the order has not yet been processed.  Most times users will not see this state on an order since they will either remove items from their cart, or will process the order itself. 

If there is an issue, this state may be visible if the buyer processed the order, but the system hasn't yet completed that process for whatever reason.  It could be a simple delay on the Marketplace with processing orders, and the order will be processed as quickly as possible and once the order is processed the state will change to Delivered or Completed.

A good rule of thumb to remember is after you place an order allow up to 12 hours for the order to complete.  If the order has not completed within 12 hours, please submit a Support Case to Linden Lab and we will be able to look into the issue further.

https://support.secondlife.com/create-case/

If you purchased an item through the Marketplace and did not get the item, please use the options Marketplace - Failed Marketplace Delivery when creating the Support Case.

[Rya Nitely]

11 hours ago, Dakota Linden said:

. Linden Lab will, and is very happy to, refund any seller the commission that was paid on a sale if they choose to refund their customer.

My most expensive items are around L$500, and so if I needed to get a refund on commission, then all I need to do is find, copy and provide ' the original MKT Order Number from the sale and the copy of the Gift Transaction from their L$ Funds Transaction Log showing the full amount of the refund to the buyer', and then file a support case with Linden Lab, and then I would get my L$25 or 10 cents back? Wow, if only i'd known this before. The things I could have done with that money. And I do have the time, so it would have also given me something to do, preparing my support case. 

[Pamela Galli]

51 minutes ago, Rya Nitely said:

My most expensive items are around L$500, and so if I needed to get a refund on commission, then all I need to do is find, copy and provide ' the original MKT Order Number from the sale and the copy of the Gift Transaction from their L$ Funds Transaction Log showing the full amount of the refund to the buyer', and then file a support case with Linden Lab, and then I would get my L$25 or 10 cents back? Wow, if only i'd known this before. The things I could have done with that money. And I do have the time, so it would have also given me something to do, preparing my support case. 

Yep this is why I just eat the refunds. 

[Paul Hexem]

Sounds to me like the error message should say "invoice delayed" instead of "invoice failed". Failed does not give the impression that if you just wait 2 hours, it'll suddenly work.

Edited May 31, 2017 by Gadget Portal

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

The dilemma here is that LL would have to take away L$ from the merchant based on something that's either a tech flaw or bad intent—something that is very hard to distinguish. Such an action could get them potentially into enormous trouble.

If the merchant is reasonable, they would refund you the excess L$ upon request. It's very easy for them to verify double purchases. Keep in mind though that if you bought anything No Copy/Trans, there's very little chance of a refund.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Tari Landar]

Somewhat related...and also not...I got an order once from a customer who bought 10 of the same thing. "Surely this wasn't intentional, I should IM them"-a reasonable thought for a merchant to have, right? Yeah, wrong...I got my head verbally ripped off, set on fire, stomped on, chewed up, spit out and buried...The sad thing is, my im was quite polite..."Hello, (name removed), I noticed you bought 10 of (item). I was just checking to be certain this was an intentional purchase. If it was not, please let me know, so I can refund your excess money. If it was, thank you very much for your purchases. I hope you have a wonderful day, either way ". The reply I got back was, well, let's just say, i didn't expect it, it was chock full of accusations, a lot of very colorful language, and ended with me being called retarded for thinking someone else could be that stupid they would unintentionally buy 10 of something and how dare I suggest such a thing...I was being reported.

Lmao

Some folks, can't be pleased, regardless.

I still agree that LL leaves a lot to be desired when they choose the wording of things. I am not sure if they consult with anyone, and should they do so, if that person(group, whatever) actually thinks through what is being "said" and the many ways it can be "interpreted"(yeah, can't focus on them all, but come on now). So, yeah, the whole "failed invoice", "under construction", etc.. type wording, lends no hand to this kind of problem. It just creates confusion, and helps to create a rift between merchant/creator and customer, rather than bring them together cohesively to be angry at LL for mp errors rather than one another. Then again, LL does this with wording all the time, and always has, We have to learn to read between the lines and odds are, if wording is confusing, turning it around to mean almost the exact opposite just might make more sense. Though how LL got there...rarely ever does.