Regarding privacy and legality of products sold on Marketplace

[WeFlossDaily]

4 hours ago, V Ghost said:

For reasons that are my business and my business alone

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

bought a dick, it didn't work like I thought it would, the creator was not helpful and blah blah blah.

Summarized. =]

 

 

[Kore Jardberg]

2 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Not me in particular, I'm usually nice, but this can be a rough crowd. 😁

 

Sounds more like a crowd with a lot of time on their hands. I am re-reading this thread, I can barely find relevant content except for Rowan Amore who mentioned remote servers. Would be interesting to apply a fee like for texture upload everytime someone post a message, could make threads more compact lol

[WeFlossDaily]

3 minutes ago, Kore Jardberg said:

Sounds more like a crowd with a lot of time on their hands. I am re-reading this thread, I can barely find relevant content except for Rowan Amore who mentioned remote servers. Would be interesting to apply a fee like for texture upload everytime someone post a message, could make threads more compact lol

I'm just going to go ahead and start stacking up a pile of wood for you. =]

[lovestofu]

Just now, WeFlossDaily said:

Summarized. =]

 

 

This is an incomplete summary.

Among other details in the original post, the poster alleged the following:

1. A product the user purchased did not work according to their expectations.
2. User left a negative product review on the Marketplace listing for the product.
3. The negative product review was removed from the Marketplace listing.
4. The item was remotely rendered unusable.

I am not attesting to the veracity of the claims of the original poster. I am, however, summarizing the salient points that are discussion-worthy.

For instance, regarding points (3) and (4), it would be good to know the content of the negative product review.  A review being negative or angry is not sufficient reason for removal of a review, and points to gaming the system by Marketplace sellers who have a business interest to wash away all negative feedback concerning their products. Without negative feedback visible on the Marketplace, however, it becomes difficult to differentiate good products from bad. I believe this is a bad trend that only degrades the user experience on the Marketplace from the point of the view of the customer.

Point (4), if true, is egregious. That a Seller can offer a product that the Seller can later disable without good reason is an abuse. The only way I see this being permissible is if the customer and Seller were to enter a contract where this is stated as a possible outcome, although I cannot see many people entering such a contract without consideration. Therefore, there is a gray area addressed here, of whether every customer of the Second Life Marketplace implicitly enters such a contract. In my opinion, this needs clarification by Linden Lab.

[Gabriele Graves]

It doesn't matter how much the customer upsets them, they took their money.  The only exception in my book would be if the product was described as a service with a subscription which of course means the customer knows what they are buying and the vendor doesn't have any obligation to continue to provide a service to anyone they don't want to as long as the customer got the service they paid for.

Of course this is SL and so caveat emptor, there are no customer rights, etc. but people who do this should be aware that all it takes are a handful vendors doing this to make people lose confidence in buying anything in SL.

Today, it's people they don't like, tomorrow it's to force you to upgrade or lose what you have bought.

Being able to remotely disable a product that people have paid for is not a good thing. 

[AmelieLavigne]

As a creator, but also a consumer I find this shocking. There's a difference between removing something from MP and disabling it to someone who has bought it already.

This is fraudulent behaviour as wells as being immature of the creator to mock the consumer for not finding their product intuitive. Those who don't listen to customers' feedback will inevitably sink.

I am naturally suspicious of creators who remove or block reviews instead of addressing the issues with updates. Given consumer law varies all over the world I guess this isn't so easy but LL should surely ensure more measures for sellers to act responsibly.

[WeFlossDaily]

32 minutes ago, lovestofu said:

This is an incomplete summary.

Okej. You are right. I did not take it seriousness enough.

18 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Being able to remotely disable a product that people have paid for is not a good thing. 

I agree. In fact, I refuse to use items with scripts I can't remove. If I can't open the script, I probably don't need it.

 

[Chelsea Hansen]

We need to treat this customer nicely. He is feeling very deflated.

[Kore Jardberg]

7 hours ago, Chelsea Hansen said:

We need to treat this customer nicely. He is feeling very deflated.

"She", not "he", you clearly didn't read.

Edited August 16 by Quartz Mole

[Bree Giffen]

The thing to remember about stores in Second Life is that they are run by ordinary people who may not have the natural ability to serve customers. They can be rude, unhelpful and infuriating. All you need to do to run a store is create a product and upload it. Most real businesses have to train people to be polite and say the right things. 

To the OP, I am aware that some products in SL do connect to external resources and that makes what happened to you possible. Is it a privacy issue or something that can be handled through legal channels? Possibly small claims court but do you really want to explain what happened in front of a judge? Honestly, I suggest you buy a different product from another store and take it as a learning experience. I know those things can be expensive.

[Eowyn Southmoor]

If the creator can remotely disable a product so that it can't be used by the customer, then the creator should have no issue in refunding the customer.  That way no-one loses out. Seems the fairest option to me.

[belindacarson]

7 hours ago, V Ghost said:

Then how do I inform people about these actions and warn them about this store? You don't seem to care at all.

Why would we care?

You bought a product you had a problem with in a virtual world, you couldn't operate it so you ran crying to the forums.

 

On a side note on something that actually really matters my coffee cup needs refilling.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

It doesn't matter how much the customer upsets them, they took their money.  The only exception in my book would be if the product was described as a service with a subscription which of course means the customer knows what they are buying and the vendor doesn't have any obligation to continue to provide a service to anyone they don't want to as long as the customer got the service they paid for.

Of course this is SL and so caveat emptor, there are no customer rights, etc. but people who do this should be aware that all it takes are a handful vendors doing this to make people lose confidence in buying anything in SL.

Today, it's people they don't like, tomorrow it's to force you to upgrade or lose what you have bought.

Being able to remotely disable a product that people have paid for is not a good thing. 

I'm 100% with Gabriele on this. IF (and yes, it's a big "if") what we are hearing is true, the creator is a major jackass.

Welcome to SL, where the consumer has almost zero recourse if they are scammed, ripped off, or otherwise subjected to abusive behaviour by a creator.

The worst thing about this, in some ways, is that it also entirely undercuts the value of MP reviews. People ARE afraid to leave negative reviews sometimes because they fear retaliation, and that's precisely what seems to have happened in this instance.

In some ways, SL is such an interesting throwback to the 19th century. An unfettered and unregulated free market that is rife with abuse, and labour (including that of the actual creators and merchants themselves) going for peanuts.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

8 hours ago, V Ghost said:

Voluntary grievance, disabling products that have been paid for.

 

6 hours ago, Kore Jardberg said:

I never came accross a product that would be disabled after it was paid for.

I can think of several in SL, I can also think of one in RL

Awful Mac whyPhones. Awful Mac can "brick" the device remotely if they decide you shouldn't be using it. For example you buy it 2nd hand from the original owner, who then reports it "lost/stolen" so they can claim on insurance, to lower the cost of the new whyPhone.

 

4 hours ago, Kore Jardberg said:

What a warm welcome

4 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

So why are you sharing the details of your sex life?

4 hours ago, discussionbot said:

not sure why anyone has to sit through the first 3 paragraphs that have nothing to do with the actual issue

4 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

All they needed to say was...bought a dick, it didn't work like I thought it would

The start of this tale of "groin dangle woe" is basically an attempt to appeal for un-deserved sympathy, pure and simple. Going to THAT mush of an effort to "over-share" is red flag, tells you immediately that there's some LITTLE detail, they deliberately left out.

 

5 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

had called me an arrogant c***, I'd have done the same as this creator

Yeah, LITTLE details like that.

 

4 hours ago, Kore Jardberg said:

I don't wander here often. Are you saying this is typical of you to welcome visitors this way or typical of this forum in general?

BillieJo's a "warm up act", while you wait for the "headliners" to log in.

 

3 hours ago, Kore Jardberg said:

Would be interesting to apply a fee like for texture upload everytime someone post a message

A suggestion not uncommon amongst people who FAILED to understand that a Forum is not a Blog, that they don't "own" the thread, and have no right to dictate who replies, or how, and that other people are in fact, ALLOWED to disagree with any over-entitled nonsense.

 

Somebody bought a dick, it didn't work as expected, specifically, it was more complicated to use than expected, which iis not the same as "broken", RTFM.

Than they left a bad review, after getting bad customer service, but reviews of PRODUCTS are not supposed to be OPINIONS on the creator, just on the PRODUCT.

Posting "This dick sucks, the Squirty button on the hud doesn't work" is allowed, but posting "Finkin R hard! Dis creetor sucks an R a ******* ***" is not allowed.

In response to which, the creator "bricked" the product remotely.

 

Is bricking products allowed, yes, there are almost NO consumer protection features in SL, anywhere. It was created as a "Free Market" paradise, where the buyer must always beware.

Never buy anything without a demo, always try the demo first, if the demo is a non working one, walk away. NEVER expect that some Linden will magically punish that BAD store owner, and get your money back because you had a cry and sulked.

 

Edited August 16 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Zalificent Corvinus]

8 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

In some ways, SL is such an interesting throwback to the 19th century. An unfettered and unregulated free market that is rife with abuse, and labour (including that of the actual creators and merchants themselves) going for peanuts.

See! Scylla gets it.

SL was/is an amateur social engineering experiment, "what will happen if we actually create one of those alt-fruitcake free market fallacy fairy rip-off un-economics paradises?"

 

Now you know.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

SL was/is an amateur social engineering experiment, "what will happen if we actually create one of those alt-fruitcake free market fallacy fairy rip-off un-economics paradises?"

I think it can be demonstrated that that was in fact exactly the case in SL's earliest incarnations. One still hears a bit of the Silicon Valley libertarian ethos from people like Rosedale.

All I can say is, thank god this is virtual.

[BriannaLovey]

8 hours ago, V Ghost said:

Ok, I have been in Second Life for about 15 years and while I'm pretty used to it being messy (and I'm being nice here), I recently came accross something that I have never seen before nor even heard about and that I believe is as infamous as it requires proper sanctions. This is the reason I decided to post a topic in this forum for the first time.

I recently came closer to the transexual community in Second Life up to the point I started entertaining intimacy with t girls / transfem. During these moments of intimacy, I decided to get male genitals too.

So I bought this product on marketplace.

Having used it, I wanted to change the texture, and it became clear the HUD was not self explanatory enough and I needed help to get it set up. I asked my friends and they didn't know how to change textures too and told me that if I got more information, they would be interested too.

I contacted the owner of this store but she was offline. So I spent an hour reading documentation that do NOT address the hud but some command lines, I browsed and tested each button in the HUD as well as the folders of the product and I eventually found how to achieve what I wanted to do. I told one of my friends about it and they thanked me.

After that, the creator eventually "answered" my question by mocking the fact I couldn't find how to use her product myself.

I then posted a bad review on their product, because I didn't appreciate her tone and incompetency.

If the story ended up here, this would be "daily life" in SL. But it did not.

After that, THE CREATOR REMOTELY DISABLED MY PRODUCT.

Yes, you heard me.

Every time I would try to wear the object, it would self detach after a few seconds, writing a message with a lot of typos in local chat saying to contact the creator.

And, on top of that, I realized MY REVIEW WAS REMOVED FROM THE MARKETPLACE. There was nothing in my review that enfrained Marketplace or SL rules. It was an honest review warning customers that they should not expect proper customer support from this store.

I did contact the creator telling her that I filed a complaint for fraud and submitted a support ticket to Linden Lab.

So there are at least two things here that would get condemned in a court of law:

1. Voluntary grievance, disabling products that have been paid for.

2. Lack of consumer protection on Marketplace regarding products that spy on customers and stop working, without the ability to post an informed review about it.

PS: for those who accuse me of being too long and giving unnecessary details, I decided to explain the context because some of my acquaintances could come accross this post and wonder why I bought such an item, as I never did before. I will not remove this part although I made it shorter.

"You don't need to see the source code, just trust be bro!"

[Raspberry Crystal]

It is obviously difficult to comment in a balanced way about a thread where the original post had to be edited, but I am really puzzled why some of the initial responses to this post have been so odd and awkward and somewhat aggressive at times.

Anyhoo, it sounds like the OP did more than enough to try and understand how the product should work, so other customers must be having very similar issues and I agree with the recent comments made by @Gabriele Graves and @Scylla Rhiadra that it only takes one experience like this to undermine confidence in the marketplace.

[Prokofy Neva]

8 hours ago, V Ghost said:

Ok, I have been in Second Life for about 15 years and while I'm pretty used to it being messy (and I'm being nice here), I recently came accross something that I have never seen before nor even heard about and that I believe is as infamous as it requires proper sanctions. This is the reason I decided to post a topic in this forum for the first time.

I recently came closer to the transexual community in Second Life up to the point I started entertaining intimacy with t girls / transfem. During these moments of intimacy, I decided to get male genitals too.

So I bought this product on marketplace.

Having used it, I wanted to change the texture, and it became clear the HUD was not self explanatory enough and I needed help to get it set up. I asked my friends and they didn't know how to change textures too and told me that if I got more information, they would be interested too.

I contacted the owner of this store but she was offline. So I spent an hour reading documentation that do NOT address the hud but some command lines, I browsed and tested each button in the HUD as well as the folders of the product and I eventually found how to achieve what I wanted to do. I told one of my friends about it and they thanked me.

After that, the creator eventually "answered" my question by mocking the fact I couldn't find how to use her product myself.

I then posted a bad review on their product, because I didn't appreciate her tone and incompetency.

If the story ended up here, this would be "daily life" in SL. But it did not.

After that, THE CREATOR REMOTELY DISABLED MY PRODUCT.

Yes, you heard me.

Every time I would try to wear the object, it would self detach after a few seconds, writing a message with a lot of typos in local chat saying to contact the creator.

And, on top of that, I realized MY REVIEW WAS REMOVED FROM THE MARKETPLACE. There was nothing in my review that enfrained Marketplace or SL rules. It was an honest review warning customers that they should not expect proper customer support from this store.

I did contact the creator telling her that I filed a complaint for fraud and submitted a support ticket to Linden Lab.

So there are at least two things here that would get condemned in a court of law:

1. Voluntary grievance, disabling products that have been paid for.

2. Lack of consumer protection on Marketplace regarding products that spy on customers and stop working, without the ability to post an informed review about it.

PS: for those who accuse me of being too long and giving unnecessary details, I decided to explain the context because some of my acquaintances could come accross this post and wonder why I bought such an item, as I never did before. I will not remove this part although I made it shorter.

I think you have raised valid concerns.

You are describing a feature of "creator fascism" which is the system we have here, supported by the platform providers.

How can you combat creator fascism? Unfortunately, not on the forums for reasons you have discovered. This is the single worst feature of the forums in particular and Second Life generally. Without being able to criticize companies and individuals, you can't make a world with less crime -- period. But because the owners fear lawsuits and libel/slander run amok, they censor the forums -- although if free, they would also serve to correct the record from falsehoods printed by competitors or disgruntled customers. Yes, indeed, this is awful.

You can try social media, blogs, etc. but these are dispersed, the "community" is small but atomized in SL. Even so, you could try.

Every time anyone has tried to create a "Better Businesss Bureau" in SL, it has been entirely self--serving, i.e. one set of creators using it to harass competitors, or critics, or people they don't like -- entire classes of people. So they deservedly failed.

We have a "BBB" but it's a cos=play of a co-op management (actually, a very convincing one), also supported by the Lindens and Moles, and doesn't get involved in consumer issues.

Wouldn't it be great if there were at least a consumer interest blog, let alone bureau? Sure, but such things take a lot of work, they endure a lot of suffering and hate, and no one wants to do this as usually only their own case bothers them.

You are commended for exposing your own privacy and your sex life involving transgender. 

Because I have been a critic of our "virtual reality" for 21 years now, I have merchants who block their vendors from my purchases; who ban me from their stores; who arrange entire posses of flying monkeys to harass me on the forums and external social media, etc. etc. But I think criticism is worth it to make a better world.

 

Edited August 16 by Prokofy Neva

[SandorWren]

30 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I'm 100% with Gabriele on this. IF (and yes, it's a big "if") what we are hearing is true, the creator is a major jackass.

Welcome to SL, where the consumer has almost zero recourse if they are scammed, ripped off, or otherwise subjected to abusive behaviour by a creator.

The worst thing about this, in some ways, is that it also entirely undercuts the value of MP reviews. People ARE afraid to leave negative reviews sometimes because they fear retaliation, and that's precisely what seems to have happened in this instance.

In some ways, SL is such an interesting throwback to the 19th century. An unfettered and unregulated free market that is rife with abuse, and labour (including that of the actual creators and merchants themselves) going for peanuts.

Something like this happened to Caitlin a few years ago. She was looking at an outfit in a major retail inworld store, and it said it was compatible with Lara Petite. She bought it. It wasn't. It was nearly $L2k. She contacted them with no reply. I figured I would try. No response to either one of us. And we both sent IM's along with notecards. caitlin gave up, but I repeated this a number of times. The contact person seemed to exist and not exist at different times in search, even though their name was listed on the MP store. It was just bizzarre!!!

[Alwin Alcott]

6 hours ago, Kore Jardberg said:

Not sure what's your point Caitlin, you seem to

i wonder why somebody starts a topic ánd another one takes over the conversation... 

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

i wonder why somebody starts a topic ánd another one takes over the conversation... 

Safer to use an Alt or new account on sensitive topics maybe?

[Arielle Popstar]

45 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

The start of this tale of "groin dangle woe" is basically an attempt to appeal for un-deserved sympathy, pure and simple. Going to THAT mush of an effort to "over-share" is red flag, tells you immediately that there's some LITTLE detail, they deliberately left out.

For some of us, the back story gives some hint as to who the creator is.

Quote

Never buy anything without a demo, always try the demo first, if the demo is a non working one, walk away. NEVER expect that some Linden will magically punish that BAD store owner, and get your money back because you had a cry and sulked.

Very few products of that type have an available demo.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

22 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Wouldn't it be great if there were at least a consumer interest blog, let alone bureau?

Yes, it would.

And one of the reasons we don't is this:

22 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Because I have been a critic of our "virtual reality" for 21 years now, I have merchants who block their vendors from my purchases; who ban me from their stores; who arrange entire posses of flying monkeys to harass me on the forums and external social media, etc. etc.

It would be a laborious, thankless task, and anyone running it would be subject to untold abuse.

[Arielle Popstar]

10 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yes, it would.

And one of the reasons we don't is this:

It would be a laborious, thankless task, and anyone running it would be subject to untold abuse.

I can think of one popular virtual world where creators are obligated to return the funds of all customers if a product is deemed to have been a problem, up to and including content that was not advertised correctly. Should the creator have insufficient funds to cover the rebate, they are blocked from uploading new content and will be eventually be disabled if they don't pony up.