Incorrect permissions?

[Paul Hexem]

Now, I know on the marketplace, there's a specific category if a merchant lists the permissions incorrectly where you take take it up with LL (Not As Advertised, Item Permissions Not As Advertised), but I don't see one in-world.
If a merchant puts on the sign that an item is modify and you purchase it, and they don't want to honor the permissions on the sign, how do you go after them?

Could you use Commerce > Failure to deliver product or service, or is it maybe Fraud > L$?

[Darrius Gothly]

Not an "official" opinion, but I'd bet it falls under the great chasm known as "User to User Disputes" ... AKA "tough shiiiiiii .. luck'

[Paul Hexem]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Not an "official" opinion, but I'd bet it falls under the great chasm known as "User to User Disputes" ... AKA "tough shiiiiiii .. luck'

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Let's say it does. How come the marketplace has an option to deal with it, but not in-world?

[Darrius Gothly]

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Gadget Portal wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Not an "official" opinion, but I'd bet it falls under the great chasm known as "User to User Disputes" ... AKA "tough shiiiiiii .. luck'

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Let's say it does. How come the marketplace has an option to deal with it, but not in-world?

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Because on Marketplace they have full control of the presentation and enforcement. In-World, the store owner retains a major portion of the control and enforcement. (So says the conventional wisdom.) On SLM it's a simple matter for them to check the permissions as reported by the Magic Box, therefore they have an easy method of determining "Truth". But with in-world vendors (all 5,239, 229 varieties of them .. this week) determining the actual permissions is a bit less cut and dried.

My theory though is something like "SLM is Theirs .. In-World is Ours" .. and they prefer to keep them separate that way.

[Dresden Ceriano]

So in other words, it's actually much better for customers to buy stuff from SLM because they have that protection... right?  Brilliant... another strike against shopping inworld.  Not that I think that that kind of protection is bad, but it just provides more incentive to shop in the SLM.  What else is LL going to come up with to devalue having a store inworld?

...Dres

[Darrius Gothly]

Not strictly true Dres. Sell From a Prim Vendors (AKA unscripted vendors) show the list of items that will be delivered complete with permissions of each. I'm not intimately familiar with every scripted vendor system out there, but I believe some include something similar as well. Also there is no "Automatic" checking of permissions selected on an SLM Item Detail page against the actual permissions provided either.

So really it boils down to the age-old (and still very valid) "Caveat Emptor" admonition. In other words, keep your eyes open and pay attention to what you're purchasing.

But bottom line? IMO a vast majority of Merchants are honest and doing their absolute best to accurately represent their products. If you run into a situation where the permissions on the objects you receive do not match what the sign or vendor said, send a polite message to the Merchant and ask if there was a mistake or perhaps a misunderstanding. The Permissions System is one of the most often misunderstood details about selling in Second Life. And mistakes happen too.

Personal story time: Not long ago I received a message from a customer that had purchased one of my items that was intended to have full permissions (so it could be included in builds for resale to others). Well, the bone-head that put the stuff in the Vendor ... ummm .. made a mistake. (BLUSH!) The message politely asked if there was a mistake or a misunderstanding, and that's when I realized "Oh CRAP!" What made it worse in my particular case was that I'd been selling the object with borked perms for over a year and not a soul mentioned it once. I'm pretty sure I had some royally ticked off customers, but since I never make a msiteak, it never dawned on me that they were wrong in the parts delivered.

I investigated, quickly spotted my error and immediately delivered a fixed version to the customer. I then sent out updates to every customer that had ever purchased that item with corrected permissions. I also sent a thank-you note to the customer for spotting my error and letting me know.

But I have also had a situation where a customer lit me up for delivering something with permissions other than those "advertised". The bottom line that time was that the scripts were not modifiable but the object itself was .. as advertised. I eventually refunded their money even though there was no way for them to "return" the item, figuring the pittance lost was worth it just to make the customer happy. And even if they'd sent a polite message instead of the "you lying cheating lousy excuse for a human being" note I received, I would have done the same thing.

So .. what I'm saying is .. assume it's an honest mistake, be polite and also be willing to accept the fact that you are the one in the wrong.

Yes, LL has much better "enforcement" tools on SLM than they do In-World. But really, in a majority of cases they don't even need to get involved. Just be reasonable, rational and open to discussion ... and avoid the whole "Drama Scene" from the get-go.

[Paul Hexem]

You're right and wrong, Darrius. Yes, prim vendors do show the permissions right inside them. The issue is scripted objects in there. If the object inside the vendor has a no-mod script in it, but it's set to allow mod, inside the vendor will often (incorrectly) show it as no-modify. In that case, you have to take the creator's word that yes, the prims are actually modify.

 

In my case, the sign said modify, transfer, no copy. So, I went ahead and bought it. And in the process of fitting the prims, I discovered that one of the linksets was no-mod.

 

I immediately went to the creator's profile, which said to go talk to his support people. Alright, I can do that. I sent a polite notecard to them, explaining the issue, complete with transaction info and everything. His support people tell me "Sorry, that's just the perms it comes with." When I point out that the sign says modify, they say "Well, there's a resize script in it." I then say scripted is not modify... And they give me the verbal shrug that comes from someone that's done customer service for a little too long.

 

In the end, the support person says there's nothing they can do and that's just the permissions it comes with. I offer to give it back for a refund, since it's transfer/no copy. To which the reply is "I'll ask the creator" (why didn't I just go to the creator in the first place?). That was... three days ago.

 

So if nobody gets back to me on this soon, I'm either stuck with the worthless junk, or hope that an AR clears it up. If it's a "resident to resident dispute" like you think and not actually fraud or failure to deliver a product (as advertised), Dres is right. It's just not worth shopping in-world, since anyone can apparently do whatever they want with no consequences.

 

Whereas on the marketplace, there's a clearly defined option to fight that sort of thing.

[Darrius Gothly]

(gosh, I'm never wrong. Just temporarily unable to convince reality to see things "my way". LOL)

Yup, you are correct. I had it wrong.

From your description, it sounds like a very simple (and no-harm, no-foul) kind of fix. It's a very common mistake to accidentally set a linkset to No Mod by accidentally having just one prim set incorrectly. I would have expected the "Support Staff" to say something to that effect as well. However based on their less-than-stellar response, I'm led to believe they have very little interaction with the Creator and, even less impressive, very little understanding of why it's an issue at all. That's a shame.

I wish I had magic for you Gadget, but I'm still not sure that LL would get too deeply involved in resolving the same issue on SLM. They may delist the item with a rather uninformative message to the Merchant, and eventually they would respond to a Support Ticket asking "why?" with the reason. But they wouldn't actually have any means to ensure the Merchant actually fixed the issue until someone purchased and flagged it again. Their method is strictly "reactive" and not at all "proactive".

However you have nailed one of the major roadblocks that keeps SL Virtual Sales stuck in the "not really serious" camp ... a lack of competent and effective commercial controls. (At least IMO) They have demonstrated both the desire and ability to handle serious instances of Fraud and Theft (for example, the RedZone debacle) but overall the effectiveness of their controls and punishments "feels" somewhat anemic.

From what I can tell ... and this is strictly my own personal opinion ... it's not the fault of those actually tasked with doing the enforcing (Dakota for example). I believe she wants to do right by those that get fleeced by unscrupulous types, however she lacks both authority and tools to really put some bite into her bark.

For a time, it was common to see boxes of stolen items posted on SLM for next-to-nothing prices .. the timing of which was designed to coincide with the departure of the LL Staff for the weekend. By Monday morning when they would return, the items had sold so many copies that they were often at the very top of the Best Seller charts. However I have not seen any mention of that continuing in recent forum posts, so either LL figured out a means to stop it cold, or they managed to block/render impotent those that used such techniques to generate a pretty sizeable illegitimate chunk of money from the scam. During that particular ploy's heyday, it was rather obvious that LL's staff wanted to make it stop, it just became a rather lengthy process to arrive at a solution (assuming of course that it has been solved.)

Regardless, whatever today's state of the situation, I hope you are able to find an amicable resolution soon. My only advice remaining would be to send an IM, a Notecard and (if available) an email directly to the Creator that expresses the simple nature of the problem and respectfully asking that they "do the right thing." Miracles do happen, and it still might just be a case of the support staff not really grasping the scope of the problem. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you in any event.

(BTW: I've always found it helpful if you not only outline the problem, but offer a plan of action that gets your issue resolved and makes sense to the Creator as well. At the very least it closes off that loophole best described by the phrase "well I didn't know what you wanted me to do about it!")

[Paul Hexem]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

(BTW: I've always found it helpful if you not only outline the problem, but offer a plan of action that gets your issue resolved and makes sense to the Creator as well. At the very least it closes off that loophole best described by the phrase "well I didn't know what you wanted me to do about it!")

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Actually, I'm right there with you on this one. That's why I offered the support staff the option to refund. "I notice it's transfer, no copy. That means it would be trivial for me to hand everything back for a refund if we can't come to a good solution." Which is when they said they'd have to contact the creator. From the wording though, it sounded like you were right about the disconnect between them- they worded it as waiting for the creator to come online, not proactively trying to contact him.

 

To me, that's ineffective support staff that can't contact you to resolve support issues.

 

I may take it upon myself to drop him an offline and send a notecard. If he gets offlines to email, he may see the message and log in. My concern there is that his entire profile is "Talk to them, don't talk to me", so contacting him may put him in a bad mood right from the get go. I did script a prim on my own parcel to alert me if he logs in though, so I can see if they're telling the truth about him not being online. So far, it hasn't buzzed me.

 

As for the overall idea of LL getting involved... You're right. They want to have a virtual marketplace where they can make money and show off how innovative they are, but they (the lawyers, at least) don't want any responsibility for anything that goes wrong. If they ever stepped up and actually enforced some commercial regulations or rules or any of the consumer/business protections we have in the real world, I bet even the big companies would consider taking the virtual marketplace more seriously. I've already seen MMO's start getting into microtransactions. But as long as it remains the wild west (and it's not even the wild west, because if I do something to fix the problem myself, I risk getting banned- at least in the wild west, you could take the law into your own hands), no serious players will invest in it.

[Dresden Ceriano]

Could be they've hired someone to deal with it overnight and on the weekends as they did with moderation in the forums.

Just because you are scrupulous and know how to treat your customers that doesn't mean everyone on the grid does as well.  It's because of those kinds of merchants that people need protections in place.  Even if it's reactive, it's better than nothing.

...Dres

[Paul Hexem]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

It's because of those kinds of merchants that people need protections in place.  Even if it's reactive, it's better than nothing.

...Dres

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Agreed.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Gadget Portal wrote:

To me, that's ineffective support staff that can't contact you to resolve support issues.

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To me, it sounds more like ineffective training of support staff and failing to give them the authority to deal with a simple problem when it comes up... which is the creator's responsibility.

Oh and, in the wild west, you could also get shot.  Just saying... lol.

...Dres

[Paul Hexem]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

Oh and, in the wild west, you could also get shot.  Just saying... lol.

...Dres

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Yeah, but you could get shot at and shoot back!

 

But no, my point was more this; I paid for a product I can modify. I was given a product that I can't modify, and told "Sorry, that's just the way it is." If LL refuses to fix it, but I fix it myself (we all know it's possible with the right software), suddenly I'm the bad guy and I could get banned. There's some kind of definite imbalance going on there.

 

Thus my semi-comparison. For the dishonest merchants, it's the wild west, anything goes, and they can do what they want. For the consumers getting shafted, all of a sudden there's rules you have to follow or risk consequences. At least in the wild west, when someone scammed you, you could pull out your Colt single action and handle it yourself when the authorities wouldn't.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

[..] Just because you are scrupulous and know how to treat your customers that doesn't mean everyone on the grid does as well.  It's because of those kinds of merchants that people need protections in place.  Even if it's reactive, it's better than nothing.

...Dres

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Oh I totally agree .. the way Sellers treat their Customers ranges from one end of the spectrum to the other. However, with that said, my perception is that the overwhelming majority of people selling in SL and on SLM are decent honest folks. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I really have yet to bump into anyone with serious bad intentions. (However I also steered clear of that RZ dood too.)

What concerns me is the perception that cheats, liars, thieves and scam artists are the rule rather than the rare exception. If we (the Resi's) feel that way, then it's a good bet that LL feels that way too. That would cause them to enact Draconian "protections" that presume guilt and deal major hardships on everyone just because a handful of idjuts can't be bothered to obey basic rules of decency.

It falls under the old adage of "you see what you expect to see." Meaning if you expect everyone to be a cheat, you will find that everyone cheats.

But rather than turn this into a personal Moral Bully Pulpit, I'll just say that I agree, realistic and effective controls need to be defined and enforced .. with regularity and equanimity. I just hope that when LL does finally take the commercial systems in SL seriously, they honestly and accurately reflect the true level of Wild Westedness that exists and not some hyped up or overzealous perception that consigns us all to hell before we have a chance to take ourselves there first.

[Dresden Ceriano]

I agree they are the exception and the measures shouldn't have to be draconian, there has to be a balance that protects customers without putting undue pressure on merchants.  It's a similar situation to the government regulating corporate activities in RL, only the stakes are not as high.

@Gadget: I understood your point... I was just joking.

...Dres

[Paul Hexem]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

@Gadget: I understood your point... I was just joking.

...Dres

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Well... Next time.. joke better!

 

Sun's up. That means I've been awake all night again and forgot to sleep, so that explains why I may have missed the joke.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Gadget Portal wrote:

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

@Gadget: I understood your point... I was just joking.

...Dres

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Well... Next time.. joke better!

 

Sun's up. That means I've been awake all night again and forgot to sleep, so that explains why I may have missed the joke.

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So have I... could be why my joke was so bad... lol.

I'm going to bed now.

Goodnight ...Dres

[Darrius Gothly]

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Gadget Portal wrote:

[..] For the dishonest merchants, it's the wild west, anything goes, and they can do what they want. For the consumers getting shafted, all of a sudden there's rules you have to follow or risk consequences. At least in the wild west, when someone scammed you, you could pull out your Colt single action and handle it yourself when the authorities wouldn't.

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I totally agree with you here Gadget. Assuming that you exhaust all the "right" methods of getting this resolved then suddenly discover that the perms on the copy in your possession have "magically fixed themselves", I would have no qualms about giving you a sly wink and forgetting all about it.

But as it stands now, even if you prove beyond all doubt that you tried to make it right with the approved methods and finally resorted to your own solution, you can still wind up disconnected with no recourse whatsoever. That's just plain wrong and needs to be changed. The first step in changing it is to enact standard and fairly enforced procedures for getting a resolution the "proper way".

(wanders off the trail some .. but on a parallel path .. promise)

The AR Process is supposed to be the method a Buyer can use to start the process. But because it's a "Fire and Forget" process, the Buyer has not only no way to find out if the problem is being resolved, they're not even allowed to inquire. Instead there needs to be a Consumer Complaints procedure that a Buyer can use to alert the Seller to an unresolved problem then follow through with the Seller to assure it is resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.

Yes, I realize that box has "PANDORA" written in big bold letters on all sides, but "The Right Thing" is never easy .. and the "Easy Thing" is very seldom right. What we have now is the "Easy Thing" ... and it's keeping the consumer dissatisfaction level pegged at an unacceptable high.

If my perception is correct, that a majority of complaints are really just misunderstandings or honest mistakes, a high number of Consumer Complaints would be resolved at the first stage (meaning "I gots a problem" .. "Oops, sorry. Fixed!") Anything that goes beyond that stage would have to be adjudicated in the court of "Because We (LL) Say So". But at least we'd have an LL "say so" and I believe the overall net effect would be a lot higher level of Consumer Confidence and a lot less Drama and Revenge Griefing.

FWIW, Linden Lab could probably even turn it into an income center (although not much of one) simply by requiring all complaints that go beyond Stage One are accompanied by a "Filing Fee" similar to the small court fees paid when filing a case in Small Claims Court in the USA.

At any rate, clearly I've had too much coffee and not enough sleep, so I'll leave my pontificating there. But one way or another, I feel it's an issue that needs to be put on the LL Big Thinker's agenda pads and given due consideration. It's time Second Life "grows up", and taking responsibility for things is one of those important "grown up" things.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

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Gadget Portal wrote:

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

@Gadget: I understood your point... I was just joking.

...Dres

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Well... Next time.. joke better!

 

Sun's up. That means I've been awake all night again and forgot to sleep, so that explains why I may have missed the joke.

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So have I... could be why my joke was so bad... lol.

I'm going to bed now.

Goodnight ...Dres

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Oh great! So here we are, three sleep-deprived, mostly brain dead people discussing the Great Ills of Society. No WONDER we got it fixed in one Forum Thread.

Hey, you guys wanna work on that Mideast Peace thing next?

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

FWIW, Linden Lab could probably even turn it into an income center (although not much of one) simply by requiring all complaints that go beyond Stage One are accompanied by a "Filing Fee" similar to the small court fees paid when filing a case in

Small Claims Court in the USA

.

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Lol... I can see it... Dakota in a Judge Judy avi.

...Dres

[Darrius Gothly]

Geez Ai, you really know how to kill a good game of "Network Feedback Loop". (I think it used to be called "Post Office"?)

[Darrius Gothly]

No kidding. I bet you even give people directions in short, concise steps rather than lead them on a Taxi Driver's Wet Dream tour route .. dontcha?

*sigh*

Ah well, one of these days I'll get you properly trained.

[Paul Hexem]

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Ai Velde wrote:

I find actually contacting the merchant works?

 

A lot of times there's a discrepancy between items modifiable by scripts, and items modifiable by LL's definition. In many cases, Merchants just need to be politely told there is a difference and they should include that detail.

 

If it's just straight up 'no copy' when they say it's 'copy', it could be an accident, and again... contacting does wonders. If they're just trying to scam you, then yeah, you can go more extreme I guess, but in most cases it's very innocent and can be cleared up with a polite and mature IM conversation. In most cases, the merchant will gladly fix it.

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I considered that. But A) His profile specifically says "Do not contact me". I'll give you his name and show you, if you want, and B) According to the online monitor I scripted, he hasn't signed on in days anyway.

 

If I contacted him, he'd first have to have offline to email enabled for it to do any good, and second, be the sort of merchant that doesn't mind being contacted. Which I doubt, since he has a support staff and his profile is simply "don't talk to me". I'm not making that up. It's blank. There's seriously nothing else in it but "don't talk to me" and the three people he wants you to talk to.

 

If you ask me, it's odd that someone can have what seems to be a really successful men's clothing store connected to an even more successful women's lingerie store (I didn't say any names, I'm not breaking any forum guidelines!) without logging in for days at a time, allowing issues like this to just fester...

[Paul Hexem]

If anyone's still following this, I figured I'd let you know it reached an outcome.

 

After (what, four?) days, the creator finally logged in, talked to his support person for five minutes, then logged out. Apparently he thinks I'm braindead and can't tell the difference between mod and no-mod, because he gave her instructions to tell me how to edit linked parts.

 

Basically it seems to be the attitude, "the permissions in the box can't possibly be wrong, I never make mistakes and SL never has glitches, so you must be stupid".

 

That said, he gave her a copy to "show me how to do it". Since it's transfer, she offered me that one, which I took, and it has the correct permissions on it.

 

So... The problem is solved, technically. Of course, it seems like it's more because I got lucky and she offered me that one than the fact that the problem was actually going to be solved...

[Darrius Gothly]

(quietly snickers behind his hand...)

I've seen this "solution" SOOOO many times in my years, it's just not funny any more. One of my old coworkers referred to it is a "slipstream fix". That means "slipping the fix into the stream" .. quietly.

In past instances (and I'm not saying this applies to this particular Creator) the engineer would not admit they'd made a mistake. Instead they just quietly replaced the shipping version with a fixed version and kept everything else the same. (Version number, packaging, name, etc.) In fact, I worked with one guy that was so bad about slipstream fixes that we implemented a required checksum on every file he provided .. created at the time he delivered code for shipping (which the company euphemistically referred to as "Testing" LOL)

Congrats on the fix Gadget ... and welcome to the Stream. *wink*