Reasons NOT to just put all of the Direct Delivery items back into Magic Boxes:

[Josh Susanto]

No. 1...

OK, I got nothin'

How about you?

[Ariel Vuissent]

I'm not a merchant and haven't used the marketplace since direct delivery was rolled out, but...I would say one good reason is that LL is going to stop supporting magic boxes within the next couple of months, if I'm not mistaken?

[Josh Susanto]

Sure.

Assuming they can get DD to work better than the boxes already work (don't hold your breath for that).

And in the meantime (however long that may actually be)... what, exactly, is the advantage for people continuing to use DD rather than boxes?

 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Josh, I had a few minutes of regret about pulling it all down, but not anymore.

I did not even want to leave the stuff up in a magic box, because of what happened in January.  Figured that the slow load times on the marketplace pages would contribute to some problems, even if continuing to use a magic box, and with sales every day, that means that you wake up every morning wondering if stuff worked.

It's huge relief for a while, not to worry about it. 

So I guess I could say there IS a reason....

Are you sure the way the current system is acting, that a magic box will still work?  Many have reported that their sales are way down.

People were still telling me they were not able to purchase from my store when it was up (normally) about the time all this started, so every conversation was to clarify that it was not just my store, that there were issues across the board. 

I guess it depends upon how many hours a day each person has to handle all that.

[TatianaDokuchic Varriale]

I think it's likely that many problems are because of performance issues caused by the volume of new records generated by the conversion.  LL seems to be working on getting that fixed. 

So what's the point of moving back to magic boxes and then having to move back again to DD?  It will just cause more load on the system and make things worse not better.  Seems like a really bad idea to me.  I'm staying put in DD now that I'm there.

[Madeliefste Oh]

What I like is the possibility for customers to see what content they are actually buying, when the content is in a folder in stead of a box.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Mickey Vandeverre wrote:Are you sure the way the current system is acting, that a magic box will still work?  Many have reported that their sales are way down.

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I've still been getting my usual amount of sales per day from my Magic Box.  Of course just having relatively few items and being a "hobbyist" and all.:smileywink: BUT...I'm getting sales!!

[Mickey Vandeverre]

That's great, Czari, but that very first day, my sales stopped dead in tracks.  That rarely happens - it happened on Valentine's Day - and figured this would be ongoing Valetine's Day.

Was watching the OMG, this is painful thread, and took those comments into consideration, too.  Not sure if that has worked itself out or not, but chatting with people inworld today, I don't think that it has worked out for everyone.

[Josh Susanto]

>Many have reported that their sales are way down.

My sales are down a bit, but nothing like previous incidents.

Moreover, purchases that are placed are at least being both delivered and paid, and I have seen nothing to indicate that I'd be getting more orders simply by going to DD.

How would that work, exactly?

[Josh Susanto]

>I think it's likely that many problems are because of performance issues caused by the volume of new records generated by the conversion.  LL seems to be working on getting that fixed. 

Meaning that they are probably just waiting for it to clear itself up, as any bottleneck presumably will.... (except what it it's NOT just a bottleneck?).

>So what's the point of moving back to magic boxes and then having to move back again to DD? 

The point is that people were eager to do the conversion when it was, at best, an ambiguous upgrade.

So now that we know re-conversion is an unambiguous upgrade, why shoudn't people just be even more eager to re-convert?

Is is because they're already exhausted? Is it an example of sunk costs fallacy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs

>It will just cause more load on the system and make things worse not better. 

It will make things better for the people who do it. They'll stop losing a bunch of sales and getting sales records that are completely fouled-up.

>Seems like a really bad idea to me.  I'm staying put in DD now that I'm there.

I get it. You're already over your psychological budget for encertainty of outcome per effort.

Maybe next time LL should just get you to upgrade to something that straight up gives them all your money, and they can just make sure that you get exhausted in the process. 

[Josh Susanto]

>What I like is the possibility for customers to see what content they are actually buying, when the content is in a folder in stead of a box.

Yes, and if people actually got paid for those contents, wouldn't that be extra-cool?

In fact, wouldn't getting paid for boxes be better than getting not paid for folders?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

doubt you would get more orders transferring to DD unless one of your heavy competitors pulled the plug.  not sure how someone can ramp up sales when you can't even get in to shop - I'm still not able to pull a page in a reasonable time frame.

I saw the hemorrhaging, just wanted to stop it quicker this time.  Glad you're still on track.

[Josh Susanto]

Well maybe I'm somehow wrong about this.

But I don't see a lot of merchants adding to the list of reasons on this thread.

Why is that?

[Super String]

Josh, you're right, Magic Box is comparatively reliable and steady for me, maybe I should just put all my stuff back into Magic Box...

at least Magic Box doesn't rob my store...

6 days...144 hours for "being delivered" and "being unpaid"...

I couldn't stop wondering if my store be cursed??? 

[Deja Letov]

Day 1, 2 and even 3 I was in major witch mode with DD, freaking out probably like most because I hate change. Taking items out of the magic box, copying them all to my inventory and making them folders felt like it was taking forever. It was a pain in the keister to only have a 100 limit on the unassociated item listing as well. I can understand why they did it for future issues but they really should have lifted that during the conversion. I did have MAJOR issue with how slow the system was, when I was trying to delete the old magic box items. But I found a way around that after complaining about it on the forum.

However, now that I've migrated all of my listings over, I've spent less than a day getting them all out of the magic boxes and organized neatly into my folder structure in my inventory and of course uploaded to the merchant outbox. Honestly, I'm kinda digging the DD. No more having to create boxes unless I want to sell them on my wall is awesome to me. I also like how quick it is for me to update a product and add new products as well. No more storing of a folder of the items, plus a boxed version of the item. And now that the speed seems to have improved greatly in the marketplace it's even better. I haven't experienced any issues with deliveries since the launch and my sales are about normal as far as I can tell. Who knows if the positive experience will continue but after getting over the initial slowness hump, I can't complain much.

[Josh Susanto]

>at least Magic Box doesn't rob my store...

Yeah.

The bottom line is the bottom line.

But as I already mentioned, there seem to be a lot of people who think it's worth their trouble to migrate in order to get robbed, but not worth their trouble to migrate in order to stop getting robbed.

The big robberies, though, are the listing enhancements.

People are still paying LL to let them advertise stuff that either won't be delivered, or for which, if delivered, they will not be paid. 

And even if you are advertising items in magic boxes, the whole market remains so depressed by this DD disaster that whatever listing enhancements you may have purchased have a utility value far below what was implicit when LL offered to let you buy them. 

That is: every day that LL doesn't tell people to re-migrate, they are are continuing to solicit our complicity in the fraud which they continue to perpetrate by not refunding everyone's listing enhancements for at least the period of time during which the market remains depressed. 

If I had not had the foresight to withhold purchases of listing enhancements, I would now already be filing legal papers in this matter.

So what's stopping the rest of you?

Do you like getting robbed, all day, every day, for the foreseeable future?

[Ariel Vuissent]

There's resistance to every new idea. I'm sorry this is affecting your sales, but it IS a new system, and they are still working out the kinks - as must be done with every new system. Hopefully it will improve as LL identifies problems and comes up with solutions.

Why on earth would LL tell people to move back to Magic Boxes? This is their idea, and they want it to work. They don't have any evidence yet that it WON'T work, since they are still working out all the problems and bugs. It'll probably take at least a month or two for LL to either give up, or make it workable. Be patient. In the meantime, if you want your items to stay in Magic Boxes, feel free.

LL is trying to make the marketplace better. What your talking about was already happening - the failure of items to be delivered, the failure of merchants to get paid. It's not new. The depressed sales are new, I suppose, though I don't know how many merchants are experiencing that. LL rolled out Direct Delivery with the intention of improving failed delivery issues. Maybe it's working, maybe it's not; I haven't ordered off the marketplace lately.

You're entitled to your opinions, but my goodness, you sound angry and resentful and borderline disrespectful. An emotion-fueled argument might not have as much impact as you want it to. Regardless, I am sorry you're having such trouble. My only advice is, again, be patient.

[TatianaDokuchic Varriale]

I had a really good sales day on Monday and no problems with deliveries or payments.  So far DD is working out well for me.

[Josh Susanto]

>Why on earth would LL tell people to move back to Magic Boxes?

Maybe just so that the whole market doesn't basically implode?

>This is their idea, and they want it to work.

People in Hell want ice water. If your kid says he wants to be a cowboy, don't give him enough rope to hang himself.

>They don't have any evidence yet that it WON'T work, 

Do you have any evidence that delivering items by hiring psychics to astrally project them WON'T work?

The fact is that we already have more evidence on the DD question.

> since they are still working out all the problems and bugs.

Forcing people either to migrate by a date at which the system may still not be willing to pay them for sales, or to have the marketing utility of their paid listing enhancements destroyed is not a bug, it's blackmail.  Which do you think they should fix first? And which are they fixing?

>LL is trying to make the marketplace better.

Then why does every change so far make it worse?

>the failure of items to be delivered, the failure of merchants to get paid. It's not new.

Precisely. They should be making it go away, not creating new technical excuses to continue doing it, or doing it even more.

>The depressed sales are new, I suppose, though I don't know how many merchants are experiencing that.

How many would be an acceptable number? On what basis can you assess this?

>LL rolled out Direct Delivery with the intention of improving failed delivery issues. 

And has that worked? What about DD actually HAS worked as (statedly) intended?

>you sound angry and resentful and borderline disrespectful. 

I resent people blowing smoke up my a##, yes.

As for respect, how much respect have they been showing my fellow merchants so far with this process? There's a difference between respect and a pleasant tone. LL has plenty of pleasant tone. Buckets of the stuff, I guess you could say. OTOH, I have respect for people who demonstrate integrity and who show that they value principles of fairness. My fellow merchants have mostly done that. LL has not. 

>An emotion-fueled argument might not have as much impact as you want it to.

People don't seem to care much about facts around here unless someone lights a fire under them. If they did, LL wouldn't have been shut down already over its business practices. 

>Regardless, I am sorry you're having such trouble

Actually, my own business is doing OK, but only, specifically, because I didn't trust LL in the first place.

In fact, you might consider my own business to be an object lesson in how to survive and profit through various systematic abuses.

Step One: cultivate an active suspicion and automatic distrust of Linden Labs.

>My only advice is, again, be patient.

I have been patient. Considering that what we've been waiting for turns out to be every bit the mandatory downgrade I long feared it would be, I should have preferred to continue waiting even longer. Maybe forever.

[Josh Susanto]

>I had a really good sales day on Monday and no problems with deliveries or payments.  So far DD is working out well for me.

This is interesting.

To what would you attribute the curious lack of problems widely reported by others?

[TatianaDokuchic Varriale]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

>

I had a really good sales day on Monday and no problems with deliveries or payments.  So far DD is working out well for me.

This is interesting.

To what would you attribute the curious lack of problems widely reported by others?

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I attribute it to the fact that people who don't have problems usually don't take the time to respond to these types of queries.  It's just human nature to become more involved when you have issues rather than when you don't. 

Having said that, I've read about quite a few positive experiences with DD posted on other forums and even in the Second Life Commerce Merchants inworld Chat. 

Let's face it, the environment in this Merchants' forum isn't exactly conducive to sharing positive experiences which is a shame because it skews the perspective and precludes a balanced discussion.

[Josh Susanto]

>Having said that, I've read about quite a few positive experiences with DD posted on other forums and even in the Second Life Commerce Merchants inworld Chat. 

The positive experiences being what, exactly?

That for some users DD works slightly better than a box system that was deliberately borked in order to make DD seem necessary in the first place?