Is Caspervend down?

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

What did we do before Caspervend? Buy directly from a vendor prim?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

What did we do before Caspervend? Buy directly from a vendor prim?

We lived huddled lives of despair and fear, Kimmi, taking refuge from a bleak and hostile world in our prim caves.

That was a very dark time indeed.

[LittleMe Jewell]

I received a notice from one group saying "We are happy to report that we are NOT impacted by the current Caspervend outage.  Happy Shopping".

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

11 hours ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

What did we do before Caspervend? Buy directly from a vendor prim?

I still use vendor prims.

The most important reason I don't use any third-party vending system is that I sell over 500 items (and growing) in my in-world store and I find it just silly to put a script in every single one of their respective vendors (and, oh my gosh, is my sim lightning fast). I could use these browsable panels that save on prims and scripts, but if I go down that road, I might as well sell stuff on a web page, which would be faster and more convenient.

Sure, people can't gift with an unscripted vendor prim.But they could go to my MP instead for that. They can't have something redelivered, unless they have proof of purchase either. And it'd be a hassle to personally have to deal with redeliveries all the time (although, it's not that bad at all). But again: MP.

Would not using a third party system like Caspervend affect my sales? Would I be able to make more L$ if I'd use vendor scripts? Maybe. Most likely. But it would probably not make much of a difference at all, only marginally. Also, disclaimer, I'm not selling things to get rich, only because I have these things sitting in my inventory anyways, because I enjoy making them and it would be a waste not to sell them.

Now wouldn't it be convenient if LL made it possible to change the classic vendor prim system in a way that would enable anyone to gift/redeliver? Without scripts? I guess one can dream (or rush to the JIRA for a proposal).

Edited November 9, 2020 by Arduenn Schwartzman
Added 'n unscripted'

[Sphynx Soleil]

2 hours ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

It would be more helpful, if the word would be spread to all people being affected, not just to a few selected ones.
When i tried to get a redelivery 11 hours ago, i just got to see a timed out connection. And that didnt change until now.

Word HAS been going out - not only to the CasperTech group itself, but also FROM any merchants who are also in the CasperTech group (Fallen Gods, for example, sent out some notices about that, because I saw them when I logged in) and at least the SL commerce merchants group and one of the other groups I'm in have also passed the word along.

There is an official facebook post (link posted by @Jules Catlyn after the post I'm quoting) so please do keep an eye on that if you want to stay updated without having to be inworld. (That post is also publically viewable by anyone who's not logged in to facebook.)

Transactions are NOT lost during this outage - there is a backup system in place for this kind of situation. Manually delivering products to customers is up to you - transactions WILL be processed when everything comes back up, but there will be a large backlog so it will take a while.

Whether the deliveries are successful STILL depends on inworld factors - such as whether the region(s) with the dropboxes can be reached, or if the product package is even in the dropbox. But the transaction will still be processed.

[Resi Pfeffer]

3 minutes ago, Sphynx Soleil said:

Word HAS been going out - not only to the CasperTech group itself, but also FROM any merchants who are also in the CasperTech group (Fallen Gods, for example, sent out some notices about that, because I saw them when I logged in) and at least the SL commerce merchants group and one of the other groups I'm in have also passed the word along.

There are hundreds of store owners having no clue about the vendor system failing, but thats not Caspars fault, of course.
Maybe LL will wake up now, after letting happen such a monopoly inworld structure with no backup at all.

But still... running web- and database servers in 2 different datacenters (like soooooooooo many other companies do), would have solved the issue for customers in no time.
But i can understand, why buying another sports car instead has more priority.
 

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

There are hundreds of store owners having no clue about the vendor system failing, but thats not Caspars fault, of course.
Maybe LL will wake up now, after letting happen such a monopoly inworld structure with no backup at all.

But still... running web- and database servers in 2 different datacenters (like soooooooooo many other companies do), would have solved the issue for customers in no time.
But i can understand, why buying another sports car instead has more priority.
 

So create an alternative.  

[Resi Pfeffer]

Just now, RowanMinx said:

So create an alternative.  

Not being able or willing to do it better means not being unable to know how its done better.

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

Not being able or willing to do it better means not being unable to know how its done better.

All I'm saying is it's only a monopoly until someone creates an alternative.  As SL is user created, why should LL have to create something?  Not me, personally, but isn't that our responsibility?  It would seem a great opportunity for someone with that skill set.  

[Resi Pfeffer]

1 minute ago, RowanMinx said:

All I'm saying is it's only a monopoly until someone creates an alternative.  As SL is user created, why should LL have to create something?  Not me, personally, but isn't that our responsibility?  It would seem a great opportunity for someone with that skill set.  

I know, but it boggles my mind, as i stand for user created content more than anything else.
Its just the impact it has right now. And no one, except one single person, is able to fix it.  That sounds off, a bit, for such a big economy.
I see it also being in Lindens responsibility, as its system-relevant for SL. But i dont claim to be right. Maybe Lindens dont get any revenue out of inworld sales and they dont care at all. (no sarcasm)

[Rowan Amore]

2 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

I know, but it boggles my mind, as i stand for user created content more than anything else.
Its just the impact it has right now. And no one, except one single person, is able to fix it.  That sounds off, a bit, for such a big economy.
I see it also being in Lindens responsibility, as its system-relevant for SL. But i dont claim to be right. Maybe Lindens dont get any revenue out of inworld sales and they dont care at all. (no sarcasm)

What do you suggest LL do?

[Resi Pfeffer]

Just now, RowanMinx said:

What do you suggest LL do?

At least thinking about if its a good idea to have almost the complete inworld sales structure "outsourced" and no control about at all.

[SneakyBooger]

Casper just has no competition is all. No one is forced to use his systems. He just just a coding wizard!!

[Samara Sharkfin]

Here there is a hint that LL has intentions to implement something that might go in that way.

"We’re also planning to give the Marketplace a facelift later in the year, and we’re looking into a way to develop a native vendor system that better connects inworld sales and tracking with Marketplace transactions."

To be found here under Marketplace Changes and Fee Updates:

I never found something more about that. Speculations are open.

[Resi Pfeffer]

2 minutes ago, SneakyBooger said:

He just just a coding wizard!!

The magic coding abilities dont replace a risk managment plan or a technician, able to fix the issue. Its 16 hours now, more or less? 
In most parts of the IT, thats just inacceptable.

[Resi Pfeffer]

6 minutes ago, Samara Sharkfin said:

I never found something more about that. Speculations are open.

Probably its much more than just a speculation after what happens recently

[Jules Catlyn]

51 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

There are hundreds of store owners having no clue about the vendor system failing, but thats not Caspars fault, of course.
Maybe LL will wake up now, after letting happen such a monopoly inworld structure with no backup at all.

But still... running web- and database servers in 2 different datacenters (like soooooooooo many other companies do), would have solved the issue for customers in no time.
But i can understand, why buying another sports car instead has more priority.

We have a few public channels we use to relay messages to our customers.  There isnt a monopoly, there are alternatives. Now as to the matter of the sportscar. I dont know if you know but Caspervend/Casperlet are not subscription based, only users of the free version of Caspervend version pay a commission. There is no hidden big revenue stream. So if you think there are sportscars involved. you are very much mistaken.

[steeljane42]

LL vendor system most likely got pushed back along with everything because of "uplift". There were speculations of how it'll also take 10% (currently. who knows how much it'll be in the future) cut like MP does.

Either way it sucks, but it happens. And through the years I had way more issues with MP not opening/being slow or the recent authorization failures, than a couple of caspervend outages.

There are some alternatives, too. Plenty merchants use the MD vendor system from what I saw, some use self-hosted ones (TMP, Lelutka, Blueberry I think to name a few). And I'm quite sure that they have issues as well from time to time, just like SL itself. Even recently when CenturyLink had issues and it did affect quite large part of the internet including SL. Same thing here - no point to get angry about it and blame LL (or CL), those things happen and it's not always possible to have a backup plan, sometimes only thing that's left to do is wait until it gets fixed.

[Maitimo]

I just heard from a couple of my groups that it's back online.

 

[Jules Catlyn]

From Casper Warden, sent as a notice

PROVISIONALLY CLEAR
I've completed the system health checks.

All services are up and operating smoothly.

However, one of our MongoDB nodes has corrupted so we're running with only two nodes while the data re-replicates.

Our off-grid backup transaction processor is currently working at restoring all missing transactions. This may take some time, please be patient.

This has been a painful day for all of us, but I am very happy that we've been able to restore service much sooner than our previous ETA.

More info soon.

[Marisa Starbrook]

I got an offline message that my skybox rental payment had gone through. It's now updated inworld. 

[Mollymews]

9 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I've long and often argued that all purchases of SL goods should be the same, whether from in-world vendors or on Marketplace, using the very same payment processing, product delivery, customer reviews, redelivery, merchant analytics, advertising, discounting, etc. This might supplant third party vendor systems such as Casper, although not necessarily, given a sufficiently complete API. It however would introduce a single point of failure for all SL commerce, but at least that point would be under Lab control.

i tend to agree about this

at some point Linden is going to have to do something. Maybe buy some ownership stake in Caspar

Is not just products but also rentals. Linden can say oh! well not getting the rental payment is a resident-to-resident thing.  But... AnsheX and quite a few other big barons use Caspar. If this system fails, or experiences a sustained outage,  then Linden have a massive problem, 1000s of regions with unpaid L$ rent which the barons may not be able to cover. Or just as bad from a baron's management pov,  millions of L$ haphazardly dumped on baron avatar accounts by people worried about losing their homes if they don't pay somebody somehow

the alternative to ownership is Linden goms Caspar. I don't think this would be a good idea for Linden to do, but I think that it would be prudent for Caspar to initiate some conversation with Linden about all this

[Chic Aeon]

And then there are the .05 percent (just a guess) of creators and resellers who have never used vendor systems.  Somehow --- oh so surprisingly -- SL still works that way after oh so many years.   

 

Glad you guys are up and running now -- if a bit slowly.  

[Scylla Rhiadra]

I just checked in-world, and I've now received delivery of my missing items -- so, it would seem that the backup system did indeed do what it was designed to do.

Caspar's in his heaven, and all's right with the world. Although, I wonder if this isn't an interesting wake-up call.

[Mollymews]

4 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I received a notice from one group saying "We are happy to report that we are NOT impacted by the current Caspervend outage.  Happy Shopping".

 

must be all the politics recently as I read that as: "We are happy to report that we are NOT impeached by the current Caspervend outrage" 😸