Sharie Criss Posted March 3, 2018 Share Posted March 3, 2018 Shortly after "Live Support" (which is chat and phone) closed, I had one of my regions crash and not restart. So I did the normal thing and filed a support ticket for offline regions. Up until some point recently (not sure when this policy changed) these types of critical support issues would be addressed no matter what time or day it was. Apparently this is no longer the case. My region was offline until 30 minutes after "live" support re-opened the next day. Chatting with live support, they confirmed that no support at all is offered outside of the chat / phone support hours. Do I need to point out how unfair that is to non-US based customers for this global service that is Second Life? Am I going to be offered any sort of service credit for failure of cloud services? I opened a feature request asking for the ability to Self Service a forced region restart through the land manager, but I anticipate that this will go nowhere. While that would address this particular type of support, there are other types of support (griefing attacks) that will still require Linden Lab to resolve. Linden Labs: This is not the way to treat a paying customer (paying to the tune of over $45,000 USD over a 10 year period.) Do you REALLY want to lose more paying customers? This lack of support coupled with the SEVERE drop in region performance caused either by server consolidation or back-end code changes, it's starting to look like it may be time to find a new hobby. I may just have to take my hobby money and use it elsewhere. I'll be following up on these concerns with a snail mail letter to senior LL management as the LL moderators clearly will NEVER EVER let senior management know that customers MAY be dissatisfied. 6 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayesha Askham Posted March 3, 2018 Share Posted March 3, 2018 Having seen what Sharie experienced, I can only whole-heartedly endorse the sentiment. If region-restart requests by ticket are not being serviced until the support reopens as Live Chat, this is completely unacceptable for the majority of the world. I have also found Live Chat now to be wholly unreliable, no response being received by both myself (my alt actually) and a friend of mine who is seemingly unable to log into her home location. Live Chat should be just that. SecondLife is a world-wide operation and to reduced support to East Coast working hours only is simply inadequate. It is bad enough that the hours of Live Chat support have been reduced. To further curtail support outside these hours is disrespectful of the many premium or basic users that live outside the USA. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callum Meriman Posted March 3, 2018 Share Posted March 3, 2018 Same has happened to me, with 14 hours downtime. A secured web portal to do the restart would be nice. But failing that then concierge should be reinstated as 24x7 for offline regions. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigmoe Whitfield Posted March 4, 2018 Share Posted March 4, 2018 from what I've read over the years. we are supposed to have the ability to do restarts, backups, ect. they said that would happen sooner then later. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whirly Fizzle Posted March 4, 2018 Share Posted March 4, 2018 JIRA issue: BUG-214678 - Ability to Force Restart a region from Land Manager 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted March 4, 2018 Share Posted March 4, 2018 If you lack support, you can find girdles, bras, j*ckstr*ps, hernia belts, garter belt, suspenders, support hose, belts, big-boy pants, 12-step support groups, moral support, chinstraps, child support, superstructures, girders, rebar, The Secret, AA sponsor.. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBeatrix Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 On 3/3/2018 at 3:04 PM, Sharie Criss said: Shortly after "Live Support" (which is chat and phone) closed, I had one of my regions crash and not restart. So I did the normal thing and filed a support ticket for offline regions. Up until some point recently (not sure when this policy changed) these types of critical support issues would be addressed no matter what time or day it was. Apparently this is no longer the case. My region was offline until 30 minutes after "live" support re-opened the next day. Chatting with live support, they confirmed that no support at all is offered outside of the chat / phone support hours. Do I need to point out how unfair that is to non-US based customers for this global service that is Second Life? Am I going to be offered any sort of service credit for failure of cloud services? [...] That's outrageous. So what's the point of filing support tickets if no one is there to do what needs to be done? It sounds like it's the millions LL says they are investing in Second Life. Lame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hexem Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 Ah, Linden Lab. If something can be screwed up, they'll find a way to do it. WTF good is email support if it's going to be ignored until Live Chat hours anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 Does this mean that even for private sim owners, concierge service is limited to phone hours? (It wouldn’t surprise me if mainland residents have a lower level of support.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said: (It wouldn’t surprise me if mainland residents have a lower level of support.) It would surprise - and annoy - me. I see no reason for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 6 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said: It would surprise - and annoy - me. I see no reason for it. Well, I believe “concierge” support (if it even exists still) is/was only for private sim owners. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 No. It is/was for those who pay tier for half a sim or more, regardless of where the land is - mainland or island. As far as I know, it still exists. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayesha Askham Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 (edited) My experience thus far is this: On Mainland, Linden Lab, in the shape of Governor Linden, owns all the land, therefore parcel owners requiring a restart have had to ask LL to do it for them. The current JIRA BUG-214678 - Ability to Force Restart a region from Land Manager is an attempt to get LL to remove this need. Concierge support has only, to my understanding at least, been available for Premium accounts where that account owns more than half a region. Don't quote me on that I am not sure. Phil may be right on this. That it is now reduced is undeniable. The result of the recent changes is that everyone has a reduced level of support. To say that that is poor service is, in my opinion a gross understatement. ETA: OK Phil, "half or more" but as to whether you "need" to be Premium to use concierge, I do not know. Edited March 5, 2018 by Ayesha Askham Correction 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 20 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said: No. It is/was for those who pay tier for half a sim or more, regardless of where the land is - mainland or island. As far as I know, it still exists. Cool, since I have a full mainland sim, will have to check! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 11 minutes ago, Ayesha Askham said: [...] where that account owns more than half a region Not "more than" half a sim. It is/was half a sim and more. So a user got concierge support when s/he owned half a sim; i.e. paying tier for half a sim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said: Cool, since I have a full mainland sim, will have to check! Let us know what concierge support is these days Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callum Meriman Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 Phil is correct, it was half a region mainland, and of course a full for private, but concierge no longer exists. It's now just live chat for any premium member. Timewise it's pretty hard for people not locked away inside Trump's wall. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elijah Pyrithea Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 It's not uncommon for American(s) and America based tech companies to associate the world with America only. Actually they mean USA only. If this is the lack of education or just plain arrogance I don't know. Just look at the amount of US internet based company's that have online competitions and prices. They announce them online to the world but when you try to participate from outside of the US you quickly find out that they cannot send you the prices. And when you confront them with that one long "uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh" and "I don't know" is often the response. Like they never knew there are people living outside of the US to. It's a funny thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 5 hours ago, Elijah Pyrithea said: It's not uncommon for American(s) and America based tech companies to associate the world with America only. Actually they mean USA only. If this is the lack of education or just plain arrogance I don't know. The company I work for is now more “world-wide” than ever, and as a result it gets harder every day to forget. Our culture changed. Too bad if LL’s culture is becoming more US-centric. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharie Criss Posted March 7, 2018 Author Share Posted March 7, 2018 Thank you all for kind words of support - we are here because we are passionate about Second Life. It's really frustrating to see the company responsible for the the community we all enjoy so much doing everything in their power to sabotage it. Sure, there is SOME new development, but to be quite honest it almost feels like they are attempting to just toss a steak in the cage every now and then to keep the lions satisfied rather that truly doing things that would REALLY make Second Life a lot better. These are harder problems to solve - severe lag and other performance problems. Based on periodic benchmarks having been run for years, I have pretty solid evidence that Linden Labs has REDUCED server resources allocated to regions thus making performance problems even worse. How much worse? Regions today are running about 50% slower than they were 9 months ago. Considering our Tier hasn't gone down and modern servers are leaps and bounds faster than servers from 10 years ago, with data center, storage, and bandwidth costs ALSO dropping significantly in that time, it's unacceptable to have this performance drop yet still be paying the same. The Pathfinding feature which came out a few years ago could have been Sooo cool to work with - especially coupled with the new Animesh feature. The reality however is that unless your sim is EMPTY, you can't actually USE pathfinding as it performs Soooooo Slowly it's - unusable. Things that used to run smoothly now barely function at all. Second life was designed as a social platform. It was DESIGNED for people to get together, yet regions struggle when more than 20 people actually attempt to be in the same place at the same time. Could Linden Labs fix this? SURE!!!! While not trivial, they could certainly dynamically provide additional CPU / RAM to busy regions to actually HANDLE events gracefully. But - that's a different issue than lack of support. I'll cap this off with the fact that my $10 / month hosting service has 24x7x365 support via phone, chat, email, and support tickets. My SL $400 / month for land plus transaction fees plus premium account fees does not. With how much you are charging me, Linden Labs, this lack of support is outrageous and NOT "normal" in the industry. It feels like you are "Bleeding" your cash cow to pay for your pet project Sansar. There's only one problem - there's no more blood and you've made your cow angry. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callum Meriman Posted March 7, 2018 Share Posted March 7, 2018 (edited) 2 hours ago, Sharie Criss said: My $400 / month for land plus transaction fees plus premium account fees does not. With how much you are charging me, Linden Labs, this lack of support is outrageous and NOT "normal" in the industry. To be fair, unlike a server hosting company (I use Digital Ocean and spend US$70 a month there) LL have a custom product that needs a whole raft of developers to maintain. A lot of our teir (I pay quite a bit more than you, although my tenants do cover a lot of it) goes towards paying for developers as well. Now, that's not an excuse for the Lab not to provide 24x7 concierge. Follow the sun makes that very possible and not so much of a financial burden. It annoys me that the Lab are not there when we need them. It *IS* a lot of money, even if it pays for dev wages. 2 hours ago, Sharie Criss said: It feels like you are "Bleeding" your cash cow to pay for your pet project Sansar. There's only one problem - there's no more blood and you've made your cow angry. Looking at the positive - if not for the Lab needing a lot of cash to get Sansar running we likely wouldn't have had the grandfather buy-in and we wouldn't be saving hundreds of USD each month in teir. But yeah, I also have the sad feeling the Lab are wasting money on that white elephant, money that should be supporting it's main product. Edited March 7, 2018 by Callum Meriman 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharie Criss Posted March 7, 2018 Author Share Posted March 7, 2018 (edited) Lol, I made the error of using mixed metaphors, let me fix that.... They MILKED SL for everything they could, NOW they've resorted to bleeding it - which will kill the cow eventually. All in hopes that people will flock to Sansar - the "My Little Pony" edition of SL. Looking over the Bio page for the senior management team, these APPEAR to be bright people - and maybe they are - "Technically." They completely lack a basic understanding however of what their customers want, are completely clueless when it comes to customer service. Anyone remember the days when SL had over 125,000 online residents during busy times? Now we struggle to have 40K, and 20K of those are bots. This is what happens when you fail to understand your customers. You lose them. Having worked in a number of startup environments in my career, been in negotiations with venture capitalists, one of the BIGGEST red flags for a companies lack of success is having a TECHNICAL person as CEO rather than a business person. I strongly believe this is why SL is failing. (edited.) Regarding tier, yes, LL does more, but remember that the current staff is a skeleton crew. Most of the developers are on Sansar. There are lots of other servers and services our tier is paying for - and to be very frank, it's a bit unfair to force landowners to pay for ALL the infrastructure and having "free account" users not owning or renting land basically paying nothing while being able to take advantage of everything us supporters are paying for. All in all, I've accepted that and have been paying the huge tier fees for over 10 years. It's my hobby and hobbies usually have a cost. Until recently, my regions have been performing "okay" - not "great" but "okay." Now they are terrible and I just can't see paying the same rate and getting a LOT less. Edited March 7, 2018 by Sharie Criss 2 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callum Meriman Posted March 7, 2018 Share Posted March 7, 2018 26 minutes ago, Sharie Criss said: They completely lack a basic understanding however of what their customers want Yep. That's the Lab. The best thing Ebbe could do would be to spend an hour each week in both of his worlds talking to the customers in an office hour. He might learn some things. Honestly, every Linden, from Ebbe down the Janitor should be required to login to both worlds for an office hour. 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted March 7, 2018 Share Posted March 7, 2018 Lol Bleeding cash cow was cooked rare.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBeatrix Posted March 7, 2018 Share Posted March 7, 2018 I'm not sure, but if LL wants their business going down the drain, then they are doing almost all right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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