GracePlace

Bottom line, I now only buy in world, In MY opinion, by MY experience Linden Lab fails to do ALL that they can to provide a safe shopping experience for me at their Marketplace. This is based on this particular fraudulent listing being left up by the commerce team for a full 10 days AFTER they were aware that this listing was an empty ply wood prim scam. If I get scammed by an in world merchant by paying his in world vendor I see this solely as a ’resident to resident' transaction and I am aware of the risk. Marketplace for my friends and I has now become nothing more than a search tool. We use this to locate items, try and establish if they have an in world store. Then we check if they are a registered PRIMBAY user as I have spoken to the creator and he has spelt out a very different approach as to how he and his team would have handled this specific plywood prim scam. Funnily enough his actions were almost exactly how I would have thought Linden Lab Commerce team would have handled it. Once alerted we'd perform a test delivery, check if the item is as advertised, if not we'd delist the item and check some of the seller's other items, too... if there are more examples, the merchant will be banned from listing on primbay. Otherwise a warning would be issued, and a ban issued on the next offence The main issue here for me has always been not the linden dollars being returned but the inaction of the commerce team. They KNOWLY continued to support this scam merchant by providing a platform for him to continue to rob more and more of their customers all the while collecting commissions themselves and their refusual of at the very least the return of the lindens that they took in commission of a fraudulent sale. Whether they were able to recover the lindens from the scammer is not applicable. What about the commission Linden amount, they should be able kept them? In the event that I choose to purchase anything in the future from LL's marketplace my payment method with only be by credit card or PayPal where I am offered 'some' protections. If I flag a transaction in Paypal I doubt Linden Lab as the selling agent would be able to dismiss it quite so easily as a 'resident to resident' issue in which they do not get involved. Will be interesting to see.

After much pressure and profit Linden Lab have deemed a merchants storefront to be fraudulent and removed his items. The Merchant's avatar name is no longer appearing in search. My questions are, what happens to all the commission made by Linden Lab from fradulent Marketplace Transactions? The victims are denied the commission paid, the seller is denied the commission charged so does this mean Linden Lab profits from fraud?

The listing was never removed by Linden Lab and I hadn’t left a review, naively I believed once I had flagged it as item ‘not as described’ and spoken directly to LL by telephone confirming it as a scam listing I thought it would be best to let Linden Lab handle it from there. Honestly I really thought it was best to let Linden Lab handle it because this wasn’t a case of I didn’t like it or it didn’t meet my expectations etc. It was clearly a fraud case. Bear in mind we are only discussing one listing of this sellers storefront. Every single listing of his is a copy of artwork and ad listing details taken from otherl genuine merchants Marketplace stores

Good news for the Linden Lab endorsed( I say endorsed because I bought it and flagged in as item not as described and Support team refused to remove the listing) fraudulent seller of the $L5,500 empty plywood prim item listed on Marketplace, so successful was this semi exclusive all 12 units of this reported scam has now sold. Good Job LL the scammer could not have done this without your ongoing support. Together Linden Lab and this scam seller would like to offer to those of you that weren’t ripped off yet in the first round, an opportunity to purchase 12 more units of this Linden Lab endorsed empty plywood prim, however due to the success and demand of the first round they have decided to hike the price up this round to L$9,999.

I disagree... The issue is LL being the selling agent. This was not an inworld transaction, I did not pay the scammers own vendor, I purhased from Marketplace. Attempts by Linden Lab to explain this as "a resident to resident transaction" in which Linden Lab does not get involved is invalid because the financial transaction is not between residents but between the buyer and a Linden Lab escrow account "Commerce Linden". Peter Gray of Linden Lab even goes so far as to acknowledge that it acts as a sales agent in his letter to content creators, dated 24th October, around concerns of the recent change to the Terms of Service. The relevant paragraph:- "To that end, we are currently reviewing what changes could be made that would resolve the concerns of Second Life content creators, specifically protecting content creators' intellectual property ownership while permitting Linden Lab to, among other things, act as an agent of content creators (such as yourselves), licensed to sell and re-sell such content". In other words, Linden Lab IS the selling agent of this fraudulent content and yet while making money via commissions from this act, refuses to remedy the error!

I think the real issue here is once Linden Lab is aware of the scam as the 'selling agent' they must act, not mock victims by offering to redeliver the insult. Linden Labs Market place commerce team’s refusal to do so, with full knowledge and confirmation that the listing is indeed fraudulent makes one wonder just what is their motivation for endorsing and continuing to provide a platform for this seller. It raises the question, just who is the REAL scammer here. Please note, at no stage has Linden Lab agreed to repay me even the commision they took from me for the empty prim. The Linden Lab employee that responded to my ticket for support still has refused to provide me with the name of his supervisor so that I can have someone else review this incident. Also note the fraudulent listing STILL remains