Negative feedback on a product pulled from marketplace by the creator to prevent it?

[AineMari Flanagan]

I have been asked to pull this  question in the interest of working things out with the creator of the tool in question and am doing so in the interest of good will.- Thanks for your responses to my question!

 

AINE

[Ariel Vuissent]

What was promised to you? As a consumer, when you made your purchase you were likely told you could have certain things. Sometimes, this "certain thing" is just the product itself. If that's the case, and you do have the product, I don't think there's anything you can do. However, if you were guaranteed certain options and services that you do not think you are getting, or will get, you should have the option of reporting the creator.

I'm not clear on exactly what the message means - "support from me, the creator, not this useless hack." Odd that you would have recieved that when contacting the creator...Perhaps give him/her some time to get back to you before reporting the product?

[AineMari Flanagan]

Ditto

[Ariel Vuissent]

You MIGHT be able to report it as fraud, in that case. Then again, any creator has the right to pack up and leave SL at any time, or (as far as I'm aware) to discontinue any service, so...I'm not sure if anything would come of it or not.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do.  The LL TOS specifically states that they assume no responsibility for resolving disputes such as this and have no liabilty towards you in the matter.  This is something that is strictly between the seller and buyer of content.

You can't really report the creator for fraud either.  You paid for a product and received it.  If you were guaranteed in writing that you would have access to the database for a specific time period, and did not, then this would fall under a failure to perform the provisions of the contract as agreed and your only remedy would be to take the matter to a RL civil court having jurisdiction.

[Morgaine Christensen]

It sounds like LL might have already been involved..."The store had to be removed for reasons of customer solicitation/harrassment"...this  isn't very specific is the customer(s) solicitating/harrassing him or vice versa. Did the creator pull it or did LL pull it?   If the customer(s) were solicitating/harrassing...what were they solicitating/harrassing over?  Usually, customers only harrass a merchant if they did not receive a product, or a product did not do as advertised.

Also, why would you do this "the marketplace ad was also a repeated target, and had to be removed temporarily"...what about the ad made it "a repeated target"?  Again, if the product didn't live up to what is said, LL could have been involved and had it pulled.

About the only thing you can do is file an A/R, if nothing more than for peace of mind.  But, it is doubtful you will ever know if action has been taken due to LL maintaining privacy.   And, I seriously doubt you are going to get what you paid for nor, will you get your money back.  If this was a takedown item by LL, you are pretty  much SOL.   I don't think that anyone got their money back from the Redzone product takedown last year, nor during the various "sex bed scandals".   But, who knows!  One thing about SL, it is always a world of the unexpected.

[Irene Muni]

Kowledge Base article Transactios and disputes between Residents:

People sometimes seek help with questions such as the following:

• I rented a land parcel from another Resident and they are taking it back from me, even though I paid the fees or rent.
• Another Resident is not upholding their agreement regarding real estate, group management, performance of services, or division of revenue.
• I paid for something, but didn't receive it as promised.
• I provided something, but the buyer didn't pay for it as promised.

However, Linden Lab cannot verify, enforce, certify, examine, uphold, or adjudicate any oath, contract, deal, bargain, or agreement made by the Residents of Second Life.  Nor does Linden Lab enforce or uphold rental agreements between Residents.  While you may have a valid agreement with another person, Linden Lab is not a party to and cannot resolve your dispute.   Please contact the Resident involved and resolve the issue with them.

[Medhue Simoni]

I'm interested to know what this product does. I know of only a few mesh "tool" for exterior programs and mesh, but I have never heard of, nor seen any mesh "tools" for inside SL. Well, maybe 1. Beyond this 1 product tho, I can't think of any inworld "tool" specifically for mesh. You can tell us everything you know about the product and just leave out the creator and name of the product. As far as I know, once a mesh is inworld, you can only resize it or retexture it, so I can't imagine what a "tool" would do.

[AineMari Flanagan]

Information removed in the interest of working with the creator to resolve this dispute 01/.11/12- Aine

[Pamela Galli]

I thought that might be the product -- a customer sent me the link the other day. But  I never heard of this creator, and I do know that TheBlack Box, who created Sculpt Studio, has been working for a long time on Mesh Studio, now in alpha or beta I think -- still some bugs to workout -- ie with Blender.  So I was wondering how someone else could beat him to the punch.

[Medhue Simoni]

Ok, yeah, that's what I thought it was. I actually saw a demo of all this a year or so ago. Of course, I don't know if it was the same people. I'm notorious with forgetting names. They seemed like honest people tho. Maybe they are just having some problems.

Not to discredit the system at all, cause I have no clue ultimately how it works, but converting normal prims into mesh is not an efficient way to use mesh. A normal prim has many more vertices, or polygons than it needs. This is because the SL prim is made up of slices, so it can be edited. The more edits you make to a cube prim the more polygons you create. A sphere prim is generally the worst to convert to a mesh, I think. The point of mesh is that you use your polygons efficiently, and you can get a better look at the same time. Using prims and converting them to mesh might even be less efficient than just using the prims. Even if you just used standard primitives in any 3d program and constructed the object the same way you would in SL, the mesh version would not have all the extra polygons. Plus, you still need a good physics box for the mesh to get a lower land impact score. Overall, this is not the best way to get a mesh, just probably the easiest. This was a good idea in theory, but not now considering all the restrictions that have been put on mesh items. This doesn't mean that all mesh made the normal way are efficient, cause most people don't really care what the impact of their products are, or they think that their product is sooo important that the impact is warranted.

To any1 that thinks they can't learn to make a mesh, creating a mesh is essentially the same in a 3d program as it is creating something in SL, except like 3 times more complicated and you can move every point on the mesh. Texture Mapping and avatar rigging are really the only tough parts. Oh, and learning all LL's restrictions, lol.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

After seeing the product your talking about and  re-reading your post I wonder if , as Medhue pointed out, he is just having problems and you caught him at a bad time when he was extremely frustrated. (not that this excuses rudeness) . He did say he was NOT moving on and that you would continue to receive support from him and that the listing has been temporarily removed.

This item was for sale very recently because I was looking at it myself Sunday out of curiosity.  At the time there were several reviews, none of which were 'negative or bad". So whatever happened must have just occurred and its early yet.

It does say on the listing that the item is in beta, which means its still in the testing phase and you should expect that problems and glitches will arise.  He offered it at a special price because it was in beta.  You can not expect the same thing from a beta product in terms of reliability and performance as you would a fully developed and released product. 

I know this could not have been an 'easy' product to develop AND its brand new SL technology, so I would not be surprised if he IS having problems.  He may have disabled the ability for everyone to chat in his group and closed it to new members, but that is temporary too as long as he didn't boot everyone out and kill the group.  He is still able to make announcements to group members and hopefully some more information will be forthcoming as soon as he is able to actually give some information.

Granted, he may not be handling the situation in the most customer friendly way and I am not defending those actions..  He was however honest about it being in beta and you knew that when you bought it.  Maybe a little patience and understanding is needed to see if he makes announcements about the situation and if the problems get fixed allowing him to bring back the web site and the item back to the marketplace. 

[AineMari Flanagan]

  In the almost 5 years in SL- i guess I've been really lucky up till this point  and never had to deal with something like this Its been my experience that people are  usually more than willing to make things right- work things out in a rational way 99.99% of the time .Hopefully this is the case here too.

But thanks for the info and feed back

[Madeliefste Oh]

I'm not sure, but it might be in conflict with TOS this item. You need to be verified to be able to upload meshes to SL. This seems to be tool that makes it also possible for unverified avatars to produce mesh. Might that be the source of the problem?

[Restraint]

Just a short response since I am directly involved in this matter.

The original post, prior to it being removed in good faith, was lacking important details that I won't get into however, it is important to stress that support of this product was never in question, there was certianly misunderstanding between both parties, the creator had made repeated attempts to contact the poster and the product being pulled had to do with an extraneous matter of harassment currently being investigated by Linden Lab.

Please take everything said in forums with a grain of salt as the full story, in any matter, is rarely as it appears but usually somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, emotions can get the best of all of us.

Thank you all for expressing your concern.

[AineMari Flanagan]

Actually the orginal posts were a true and faithful accounting of how I was treated,  and my honest quest for  my options as to  what my rights are as a consumer in second life. Nothing more.

I have not shared logs- I have not sladered the product  only to state that it didnt work for me-  and then was pulled completely from second life from the marketplace and the group was closed by the creator who has also blocked any ability to use the product.. I asked for a refund.