Marketplace Overhaul: Should All In Person Purchases Be Routed Through The Marketplace For A More Efficient, Consistent, & Secure Re Delivery System

[Prokofy Neva]

On 8/6/2021 at 3:03 PM, Paulsian said:

I've seen modified hacked caspervend systems. I went into a place once with no redelivery policy and asked the group about it and one person popped up gave me a casper vend object that was not created by the caspervend people. That was one horror story I had reported to the seller the store i was in as well as LL.

Also the casper vend system in one place has items from other places and does not always list all purchases from the given specific world location for the specific items attempting to be recovered. 

I think it's important to note, since we are naming names, the capacity of this monopolist, or let's say "major market mover" as there are some vending alternatives but few use them and most depend on 

Casper put my name into his "sample" ban lists of all his teleporters for sale. That means that many, many stores that use teleporters to get to the second floor or outlet have my name in them. I often discover this from merchants from whom I have bought large volumes for years, and they are shocked, and remove it.

Sometimes when I go to an art gallery or installation of some kind and the people don't know me, I have to wait until they study my profile and realize that someone in business for 17 years is not a griefer. You will think they must not read the forums much less read my blog. No, actually, unlike all of you, they have, and that's why they unban me. I have never met a merchant who did *not* unban me from a Casper TP with my name as a "sample" "just because". Since Casper put my name in BEFORE I approached him inworld some time later, UNAWARE that he did that, to simply ask him what he did with the volumes of business information he scraped from the world, and did that put him in a position to benefit in the land business or any business related to location (he claimed it did not), I have to assume that he did this based on some rumour or some prejudice of the sort that I do not think should spread into automated commerce and ban systems and why banning through vendors or TPs, or using ban systems that accept enormous amounts of copy-pasta from venue owners all over, should not rule the world as they will fail when they have too many errors and too many bad bans.

I have never, never seen widespread copying of Casper or even one instance as this person is very skilled and capable and connected to LL and would instantly detect this in his system, which is entirely automated. Casper lists most of the purchases and not from that one place; sometimes they don't, which may be a reflection of how their users calibrated their system, I don't know.

I personally would go out of business before I'd ever use their rental or vending systems, but many people are happy with their product and I don't dictate people's consumer choices.

[Jax Leeder]

Routing all sales through the marketplace is a very poor decision....

1) Fees - it will force merchants to pay the LL fee for sales they previously did not have to pay it on hence all prices will rise

2) Single point of failure. The marketplace has maintenance so should all commerce in SL grind to a halt as a result?

3) There are alternatives.

[Jules Catlyn]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Casper put my name into his "sample" ban lists of all his teleporters for sale.

Rest assured. you are not on the banlist in the latest versions.

[Prokofy Neva]

19 minutes ago, Jules Catlyn said:

Rest assured. you are not on the banlist in the latest versions.

And you know because...why?

Just last week, I went to a venue that was kind of an artistic gallery installation kind of yard, and the TP banned me. So maybe not all of your customers, if you actually represent this establishment, update your wares/these wares as much as they should. So there's still a lot of damage out there, I encounter it often.

But -- this may be hard to think through for you -- a reputation for putting people in your sample "ban list' based on your dislike of their blog and not their activity as a griefer, which is non-existent -- that's problematic in a free marketplace, you know?

Good thing Dick Ravitch didn't put me in his ban list on my building elevators -- if such a thing existed -- in my RL building.

[Jules Catlyn]

11 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

And you know because...why?

I simply checked the notecard in the latest version. 

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

Two major reasons I am against this:

1. EDIT: Oops, had this one wrong.
2. Destroying inworld commerce would leave a lot of land without purpose.

 

On gifting:

NEVERMIND this one. It looks like today my alt finally sees that she was given a gift...

 

On land:

While I prefer most land be residential, I also think inworld shops that are well made (a notable minority of them...) add flavor to SL. They also form the backbone of a lot of land usage within SL. If these sellers had to pay the marketplace commission for every sale they made, it would be hard for all but a few of them to still justify the expense of an inworld location. We would further segment out those merchants who can afford what would now always be a loss. There's already enough things driving people away from land ownership in SL, we don't need more of them.

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2021 by Pussycat Catnap

[Pussycat Catnap]

6 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Casper put my name into his "sample" ban lists of all his teleporters for sale. That means that many, many stores that use teleporters to get to the second floor or outlet have my name in them. I often discover this from merchants from whom I have bought large volumes for years, and they are shocked, and remove it.

That's... insanely stupid...

When I put names into sample lists like that I always use my own alts or people who can easily ignore them like governor linden...

I would never use another resident's name in something like that - even if they were someone I was furious with, as relationships can change with the times. Locking yourself into a fight like this is more griefing yourself than the other party...

 

[Qie Niangao]

13 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I don't tend to use the 'gift' feature so this is the first time in all these years that I've noticed this. Recently bought a mesh body for an alt by gifting it rather than having my alt buy it directly. What I'm finding in this now is that my alt cannot request a redelivery - I have to use my own account to do it.

Yeah, that's pretty horrible. Also, I noticed using an in-world gifting system (most likely Caspervend) that it was smart enough to keep me from gifting something the recipient had already purchased for themselves (or maybe somebody else already gave it to them, dunno). That's a pretty important feature, too, which I doubt the Marketplace has yet.

It seems kind of restrictive, though, to assume that the current Marketplace is the thing through which all purchases would be routed, if such a thing ever happened. So then it would become a requirements-gathering exercise to determine what features would need to be developed (in addition to the massive increase in throughput to which it would need to scale).

And while we're at it, we could just "require" that routed-through-Marketplace in-world purchases not incur the same merchant commissions as direct Marketplace sales, which is only fair given that dues are already being paid in the form of Land fees.

But I think it's all moot. I'd build it that way if I started from scratch, but I'm not seeing how it could be introduced in SL as it exists today.

[Pussycat Catnap]

5 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yeah, that's pretty horrible. Also, I noticed using an in-world gifting system (most likely Caspervend) that it was smart enough to keep me from gifting something the recipient had already purchased for themselves (or maybe somebody else already gave it to them, dunno). That's a pretty important feature, too, which I doubt the Marketplace has yet.

I JUST updated that post, It looks like there had simply been a delay on the gift issue as the alt now sees that she was given a purchase and was able to use that to get a redelivery. Looks like I edited my post right as you were typing.

So that ends one of my concerns.

Edited August 12, 2021 by Pussycat Catnap