[Update] - Valentine's Day Downtime and Commission Discount Promotion

[Shaleene Kenin]

It really is a big step forward to see you are trying to do a nice gesture for us, yet I think this will not compensate the value of the loss income from Valentine's Day. Yet thank you.

[Porky Gorky]

I'm sure I saw you estimate somewhere that LL generate about $75000 USD per month for the MP commission sink, So assuming the average month has 31 days then this will cost the Lab/sink about 7 grand. 

Nice to put a ballpark value on the gesture

[Tayren Theas]

Ample wrote:

"On a side note, I'd be willing to give more than 5% commission if they made the search more relevant, allowed newer items to be mixed in with the higher ranking items...."

 

Yes, it is very difficult for people adding newer listings to compete with older, established listings. This hurts people trying to start out, as well as people adding brand new things or trying to expand what they have on marketplace.

For example, I have some things I added recently that have both a matching item name, keywords and description fitting my Search. I attempt searches that exactly match the name of my newer listing, with the assumption that the exact search wording should make my item at least come close to the top. But when I perform the search, these items sometimes fall dozens of pages under things that appear only marginally related - if they are even related at all (in fact some things come up well ahead of mine that have no matching titles or matches anywhere in the visible description).

In what way is it fair or encourging to newer merchants on here, when sellers who have sold something a few times keep being rewarded by being at the top of the search, while any new things added fall way at the bottom. It's similar to a "rich getting richer while the poor stay poorer" kind of system. Keywords should be more important in the search results in some way. 

On a related note.. I have paid a good bit of money for several ads. But some of the ads have to compete with so many other ads (for example Womens Formal Gowns has so many featured ads). I think some of these costly ads are barely getting their "time in the sun", so to speak. Perhaps it could be adjusted so that when there are more people advertising in a certain niche, we can have our ads show longer for the same cost, since they have to compete and rotate in with so many other ads. Just an idea.

 

[Anastazia Lemieux]

I'm confused... free commission? Isn't the commission taken out when something is bought. So as I'm reading it... anything SOLD during those 3 days won't have any commission taken out? Or am I wrong on this? 

[CommerceTeam Linden]

We have begun to answer some of the questions that have come up in this thread and elsewhere.

What are you doing to make sure this does not happen again during another peak traffic time?
We are working to make our systems more fault-tolerant and better able to recover from such unforeseeable outages in the future. Direct Delivery will also greatly improve the stability of the Marketplace in these areas.

Why did I receive payment on an order from before February 13, 2012?
While working to resolve orders after the Valentine’s Day downtime, we identified a subset of older orders that had not been completely processed. We were able to resolve those orders as part of the work done to complete Valentine’s Day orders.

Please continue to check back for additional information.

The Commerce Team

[Josh Susanto]

This gesture is yet another example of someone at LL politely offering you a reach-around while 4 of his buddies hold you face-down in a prison shower (and...you know).

Since accepting the waiver of commission fees could be construed as an agreement to a plan of settlement, I suggest that you should all submit notices that you decline the waiver pending other, more complete compensation, and indicate that you are willing to pay the commissions later if billed, assuming that the rest of the matter is first resolved to your personal satisfaction.

In my case, I will consider the matter settled when they publicly post the name of the person terminated with prejudice as a partial means of preventing a repeat of such an incident. No amount of money they dangle in front of me or threaten to take away will be of greater value to me than this.

I should acknowledge, though, that I'm already not really paying anything significant in commissions.

I have long said that I am willing to raise prices that will generate commissions if LL will get DD working and stable first, but they haven't done that. I'm not convinced at this point that they necessarily ever will. It has been a while that they have talked about it and yet failed (and then some) to actually implement it.

So, as a person who is basically not paying commissions anyway, this gesture in no way offsets the massive and ongoing decline in my sales after the incident. Sales are at a trickle, and have been. This pattern is as clear as night and day at this point.

Really, it just seems to me like LL stroking their pet merchants, as usual, by waiving the commissions. But it's not what you agreed to, and it's what they seem to be subtly telling you that you'll have to accept in lieu of that to which you did agree. That is: they're arbitrarily rewriting the service contract and not mentioning that continuing to do any kind of business with them amounts to the same thing as agreeing to a retroactive revision. But they aren't even offering anything in compensation for losses to date, are they? Not for lost sales, not for wasted listing enhancement fees, and certainly not for fees for data you loaded, with their own encouragement, specifically to sell during a limited window of demand essentially corresponding to the down time, itself.

Without any of that being offered (or the name of the person terminated, which I think would not only be easier, but also a much better long-term idea for LL as well), waiving commissions for people who pay commissions seems to redefine the problem not as a problem that importantly affects all merchants, but only as a problem that importantly affects important merchants; many of us not being important because we don't yet generate commissions with the way we currently use the clumsy tools LL currently continues to provide us in order to do so. 

I can't speak for all the other component-level merchants, but if LL wants me gone all they've ever had to do is to say so unambiguously and publicly. 

Meanwhile, Malefactor Linden probably just gave himself a commission holiday and took a lot of the rest of you along for the ride. 

Congratulations on your new bedfellow, merchants.

[Lasher Oh]

Thanks for the updates CT however your waiver of  commission whilst appreciated will in no way substitute for the lost sales due to 'failed delivery' I've counted at least 25 for the 17th  alone and similar numbers for the other days since the  Valentines Day debacle. Add to that  the cost  in time taken to deal DIRECTLY with  all the customers complaints and I'm sure  any reasonable person would agree that your  gesture is kind of hollow. I'd rather you keep the commision (besides half my sales aint going through anyway)  and instead have you tell us what you are concretely doing to fix the mess. Your post only gives vaque hints and a propaganda push for DD as the  cure all for all ills. Snake oil Salesmen Techniques come to mind.

^L^

[AineMari Flanagan]

Honestly? Though the gesture is apperciated I would like to see that offer on another major holiday - Frankly I don't make enough " regular sales' to see this as a benefit for me otherwise. Free  Sales listing for St Paddies day or  Easter weekend would be more of a benefit to a merchant like me.

[Pamela Galli]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Yesterday, I recieved payments on items purchased over a year ago. I'd like to know, how exactly these purchases were misplaced for over a year, and what you are doing to correct the problem in the future?

This is to the Lindens, not Sapphy. I swear I clicked the right reply button, lol.

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Did you just notice them in your transaction log? Trying to imagine how you would discover them.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Did you just notice them in your transaction log? Trying to imagine how you would discover them.

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Yes, this was thrusday, and I knew they were correcting what happened during the V day thing. So, when I started to see transactions that were not matching what was happening neither inworld nor on the Marketplace, that was my first clue. Plus, I had only 1 bad purchase on Vday. Then, it struck me that these orders had extremely low order numbers. I went and looked up these orders and they matched exactly with orders from over a year ago, on the marketplace. So look at your order numbers.

[Emma Krokus]

Thank you, Commerce Team Linden - your gesture and communications are much appreciated.

 

Emma  

[Mikki Miles]

I had this case, too. The item still had a (very) old pricetag, so it must have been from a long time ago...

[Meli Imako]

i did open ticket to receive all "being delivered" states  and they payed for them now they are also giving commision free days.  i am quite happy with everything what more they can do come on guys.

[Josh Susanto]

I don't need them to do more.

I need them to do something different.

If the person who allowed this is different from the person who allowed 13 September, they should say so.

Otherwise, that person needs to go.

I mean - why not, really?

[Anaiya Arnold]

So this commission thing is not for the weekend we just had but the one at the end of this week?

[Meli Imako]

yes, Anaiya   dates are stated in their message. this coming weekend is commision free.

[Bonadea Avedon]

You do realize that this forum has diverted our attention from the jira which is what they wanted.

[Anaiya Arnold]

Thanks.

[Monavie Voight]

There is just no way to undo what has been done... I mean you can't go back and make it right. What sells for Valentine's Day will not sell during this special promotion... the Valentine's sales are over, all the items created just for the holiday will not be sold during the promotion.

Instead of spending time creating those little places of exploration spend the effort and energy on doing things that really matter such as making the marketplace so it can handle holiday shopping, doing maintenance before the holiday to ensure it's going to work for the holiday shopping, to name just one thing.