CommerceTeam Linden

Marketplace Merchants, Thanks to all of you who have already migrated to Direct Delivery. For those who have not yet completed the process, we have pulled together a summary of the frequently asked questions from the forums and support cases. We really appreciate Support jumping in and helping out Merchants on the Forums this past week, and are glad to see the responses from Merchants seeking help. Going forward, we’ll post additional answers here to make it easy for everyone to find and reference. Of course, you can still contact the Marketplace Support team to address specific issues you might have by submitting a support case. Questions and answers follow as responses to this post. We will add new questions as needed. The Commerce Team EDIT April 24, 2013: Please see this forum post for more details on Magic Box retirement dates.

As you already know, about a year ago, we introduced Direct Delivery, a more reliable and faster method to deliver merchandise to your Second Life Marketplace customers. To complete the migration from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery, we’re starting a phased shutdown of Magic Boxes. In order to keep listings that are currently using the Magic Boxes active, you will need to convert them to the Direct Delivery system. We will be sending email to all Merchants who have active listings that are still using Magic Boxes. Important dates for this plan: April 2, 2013: Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes. Any active, unlimited-quantity listings for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes will be unlisted. April 16, 2013: Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items using Magic Boxes, regardless of price. Any remaining active, unlimited-quantity listings using Magic Boxes will be unlisted, regardless of price. For the time being, limited-quantity items can continue to use Magic Boxes and will not be affected. “Limited-quantity” refers to items that the Merchant does not have rights to copy (such as breedable animals which are “no copy” for the seller). We do not have a Magic Box shutdown date for the migration of limited-quantity listings at this time. After we designate that date, we will give 30 days’ notice so that Merchants will have time to migrate those items. However, to avoid disruption of your listings by the Magic Box phase-out, we strongly encourage you to convert all of your listings to Direct Delivery as soon as possible. For more information on Direct Delivery and migrating to Direct Delivery, please see the Knowledge Base. If you have questions or problems, please contact customer support for help. [March 8, 2013]: Please see the Direct Delivery Migration FAQ for more information.

Thanks to everyone for the insight and feedback on ways we might improve the Marketplace Categories. After considering all the feedback, we have updated the Marketplace Category Changes wiki page which shows the exciting new changes you will soon see in the Marketplace. You’ll see some of the initial additions starting today (under Animations and Apparel). After that, you’ll see the rest roll out over a period of 1-2 weeks. Keep an eye on this post for an update when we’ve completed the changes! Thanks again. We expect these additions will make your Marketplace shopping and listing experiences even better.

Marketplace now supports the ability to set email preferences. You will now be able to turn emails on or off. In addition, new emails have been added and work has been done on stability to prevent delays in email delivery. Please see the Release Notes or the Knowledge Base articles for Merchants or Shoppers for more information. Enjoy!

Thanks to all of you who attempted to try this out! Aditi was experiencing login problems earlier in the week. Please try again to check out these new features. If you continue to have issues logging into Aditi, please contact support. Thank you all!

To make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for when shopping the Marketplace, we have updated the proposed new categories based upon your feedback. But it doesn't end there! You have until January 10, 2013 to review and share any additional comments you may have. Here are the new categories we have already added to the Marketplace. Enjoy! Under Celebrations/Holidays/Christmas Added “Women’s Seasonal Apparel” Added “Men’s Seasonal Apparel” Added “Christmas Trees & Ornaments” Added “Christmas Lights” Under Celebrations/Wedding Added “Wedding Dresses” Added “Wedding Tuxedos” Added “Bridesmaid Dresses” Added “Wedding Decorations” Added “Wedding Rings” We look forward to seeing your thoughts and comments on any other categories!

We have announced the winners for the categories contest! Thanks to all who participated and provided feedback. And thank you to everyone who provided general feedback on categories. Here are the new categories we’ll be using for Female Skins (as well as Male Skins): FantasyAnimal Vampire Fairy Alien Zombie Other Human Light TonedYoung Adult Aged Human Medium TonedYoung Adult Aged Human Dark TonedYoung Adult Aged Human Fatpacks Our next steps include: During the week of December 10, 2012, we will add the proposed categories for Celebrations/Holidays/Christmas. We will update other proposed category changes on the wiki and provide an additional chance to provide feedback. In the new year, we will begin adding these additional categories. Thanks for your feedback! The Commerce Team

Thanks for the questions. We've added a section to the wiki page with answers. Those who have made suggestions here, please fill out the survey so we can review them in one location. Thank you! The Commerce Team

We have taken a look at the bug and support case submitted on this issue. We were able to touch base with the customer and determine that a No Copy item was rezzed directly from the delivered folder in the Received Items folder, making it appear empty. We would very much like to make sure this is not happening in unexpected ways, so if additional Merchants/Customers have experienced this, please file a JIRA with details. Thank you, The Commerce Team

We'd like to hear from you! We have posted some proposed new categories on the wiki and would love to get your feedback. As a bonus for those who chose to participate, we’re having a contest to create sub-categories for Female Skins. For more information, please see the contest blog post. Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think! The Commerce Team

Thanks for your continued feedback. We have posted an update here. The Commerce Team

Merchants, Thank you for your continued feedback. Following is an update regarding your latest questions and requests: Direct Delivery email notifying merchants receipt of item by customer: We understand your request and are looking into this. Marketplace category changes: We’re working on some proposed updates to these categories and will give you the opportunity to provide input. Stay tuned for more details - including a survey. JIRA changes: We are working to adjust our communications practices to make sure all Merchants are kept up-to-date on bug fixes. Marketplace weekly user group: We will not be adding a user group at this time. Publish Marketplace six-month backlog: There are no plans to provide this data. In addition, we are evaluating ways to improve communications practices with Merchants that will allow us to address technical and support issues more effectively. This includes direct email correspondence, such as the direct email that was sent November 6, 2012 to let all Merchants know about the benefits of Direct Delivery. We appreciate your patience while we continue to improve marketplace functionality and merchant communications. The Commerce Team

If by "stuck listings" you mean listings with Product Listing Enhancements in "charging, cannot edit" state, these have not yet been addressed. We will address as soon as we are able. The Commerce Team

For those of you trying to reconcile your Product Listing Enhancement charges and refunds, here are a couple of tips to help you find the transactions and order numbers. Subscription Charge In order to determine the order number on your subscription, you can look it up in your Marketplace orders OR in your Second Life transaction history. The explanation below covers using your transaction history. Here is a sample from the Detail column of the transaction report--see the order number at the end: Destination: Commerce Linden MKT2 Subscription Description: Order #1306369458 Subscription Refund In order to identify the order number on a refund associated with your subscription, please use your Second Life transaction history. Here is a sample from the Detail column of the report. See the order number on the last line; it is in burgundy and bold: Source: Commerce Linden MKT2 Refund Description: refund-1302981491-157659 Please let us know if you have additional questions on this process.

Merchants, As Rodvik Linden promised, we have pulled together a summary of the key Marketplace related issues brought up by the merchant community on the forums. Direct Delivery and Magic Boxes For those who have transitioned to Direct Delivery, we now see Direct Delivery items getting delivered 2.3 times faster than their Magic Box counterparts. In addition, Direct Delivery has a delivery success rate 2.5 percent higher than Magic Box items. (Note that over 50% of items delivered in September were delivered by Direct Delivery.) That said, a small subset of Merchants will be unable to migrate to Direct Delivery due to remaining work: Some Merchants are unable to initialize the Merchant Outbox, or they cannot successfully send items to the Marketplace. We continue to work on resolving this. Limited Quantity support has not been completed. This is for Merchants who sell objects that the Merchant does not have the ability to copy. Some of you have commented that you have had issues with Direct Delivery not performing as expected (delayed deliveries, odd failures, no emails when a customer makes a purchase). If you experience any issues related to the above, please file a JIRA so we can investigate further. Additional Marketplace Issues Following is the list of additional Marketplace-related issues that we have collected from the community and our responses: Direct Delivery should email Merchants notification of sale. Linden Lab response: it does for each sale. If you are not receiving emails, please file a JIRA. Product Listing Enhancements being billed multiple times. Linden Lab response: please see the forum post on this topic Release Notes posted should be posted advance. Linden Lab response: for most releases, we do so on the Beta Release Notes. Notification in advance of email address changes. Linden Lab response: in the future, we will notify Merchants of any changes in advance in the Beta Release Notes. In addition to the above, the community raised the following issues which we are either investigating or evaluating the best way to address. Enhancements for “charging, cannot edit.” Price change problems with the cart. Listings that have the wrong photos. Merchants should be notified when a review is written. Categories should be reviewed and updated. Make preview image larger when editing a listing. Centralized reporting. Better association between a demo and a product. The ability for Merchants to merchandise their stores. Better sharing of products. A more detailed explanation of how search works. Again, we appreciate your feedback! The Commerce Team

We have completed the processing of refunds and have turned recurring billing for Product Listing Enhancements back on. This has resulted in the following: Merchants should not have been charged for any Product Listing Enhancements between August 7 and October 17, 2012. Please note that in most cases this was done as a refund. The next billing date for all active Product Listing Enhancements is AFTER October 17, 2012, and these Enhancements have begun billing again as of today. Please file a JIRA if this is not the case with your Enhancements. We apologize for any confusion and thank you for your patience. The Commerce Team

Those of you who have reported multiple billings will be refunded. Our current plan is to refund Merchants by the end of this week (Friday, October 19, 2012). We will provide more details tomorrow once we have processed the refunds. Thank you for your patience.

The Release Notes have been updated with more information. Please let us know if they are still not clear.

The release with PLE fixes has been deployed. Please see the Release Notes for more details. The Commerce Team

Merchants, There has been quite a bit of discussion on Product Listing Enhancements and stuck orders over the past few days on this Forum. Here is an update on these issues. Product Listing Enhancements: Last week, we deployed a fix for Product Listing Enhancements to allow them to start billing again. We refunded all PLEs for the prior two months. After we refunded merchants, billing for Product Listing Enhancements started again. Not all of the billed enhancements correctly updated their renewal date, so we stopped billing. We have updated the PLEs that had an incorrect date and will be releasing a fix this week before we start billing again. We are aware that there are some Merchants who have Product Listing Enhancements stuck in the “Charging, cannot edit” state. We are continuing to look into this and investigate what we can do to get those PLEs unstuck. Stuck Orders: Late Friday night through early Saturday morning, many orders got stuck in the being_delivered state. This morning we were able to force those orders to a completed state (allowing payments to Merchants to complete) and are working to prevent this from happening again. If you are seeing anything different than the behavior described above (or have an additional problem), please contact support or file a JIRA. Please include order numbers or listing information as needed. The Commerce Team

SUBJECT: PLE Update Merchants, As some of you are aware, we have been giving away free listing enhancements to many of you for the past 2 months. We recently deployed a fix that was supposed to just start billing again. Unfortunately, it back-billed the free enhancements. We apologize for doing this without warning. To show our appreciation for your patience with this mix-up, we will be doing the following: Giving everyone free listing enhancement renewals* for the period between August 7, 2012 and today. This means all listing enhancements billed during this time will be refunded before end of day today (October 4, 2012). Once the refunds have completed, we will begin billing those enhancements again. For full details of today’s release, please see the Marketplace Release Notes on the wiki. Thank you for your patience. The Commerce Team *If you created a new listing enhancement after August 7, 2012, that listing enhancement is not eligible for this refund.

The transition from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery has been extended indefinitely. We will be providing a 30-day warning before any shutdown actions are taken and will avoid doing this before peak holidays for the Marketplace (Halloween, Christmas/New Year's, Valentine's Day). We are aware that some Merchants are still having problems with the Merchant Outbox. We are are working with TPVs and our internal development teams to address this issue.

Thanks for letting us know. These links have been updated to reflect the new locations.

UPDATE: July 31, 2012 We continue to work on testing the next Marketplace update, which includes a required upgrade (for the Marketplace, not for Residents). One benefit of this work is that we are seeing performance increases with page load and purchase completion during our testing. We are working to get this update completed as soon as possible. Last week, fixes to help with WEB-4600 were deployed with viewer 3.3.4. We have also been working with Third Party Viewers to make sure they are handling the Merchant Outbox correctly going forward. In addition, some Third Party Viewers now support the Merchant Outbox on Linux. Please see the following Third Party Viewers if you would like to use the Merchant Outbox on Linux: Firestorm version 4.1.1 and above Dolphin version 3.3.0 and above If your Third Party Viewer is not on this list, and it supports the Merchant Outbox on Linux, please send a notecard to CommerceTeam Linden. Please include a link to the download location, and it will be added to the above list. Below is the updated set of outstanding issues with Direct Delivery and the Marketplace. Direct Delivery Here are the outstanding Direct Delivery issues: WEB-4600 (Merchant Outbox failures): There are still outstanding issues with the Merchant Outbox, in addition to the issues addressed above. We continue to investigate and address these issues as they come up. WEB-4554 (Test delivery permissions incorrect): This is on hold while we work on other issues. Limited Quantity Support (Merchant does not have rights to copy the items for sale): This is currently being worked on. Magic Box migration will not be required until this is supported. (Note that Merchants can sell items that have next owner rights set to “No Copy”.) Overall Marketplace There are also several issues that occurred around the time of the Direct Delivery launch that we are still working to address, but are not issues with Direct Delivery. WEB-4587 (listings with the wrong images): This will be addressed after the next Marketplace update. WEB-4441 (Orders stuck in “Being Delivered” state): We have been able decrease the number of orders getting stuck and continue to work on preventing all orders from getting stuck. WEB-4592 (Orders marked as “Delivery Partially Failed” on success): This issue is currently being worked on. WEB-4138 (Confirmation emails failing to deliver): We are currently working on a solution to this issue. WEB-2974 (Listing enhancement stuck in “Charging, cannot edit right now” state): This issue is on hold while we work on the other items on this list. WEB-4696 (Deleted listings appearing in search results): This issue is on hold while we work on the other items on this list. WEB-4567 (Bulk delete fails for some merchants): We will evaluate the priority of this once we have completed the above Direct Delivery fixes and features.

We have extended the Magic Box migration to October 1, 2012 and will be providing a more complete Marketplace/Direct Delivery update within the next couple of weeks. We’d like to remind those of you who see any issues to please file a JIRA or contact support with your issue so we can confirm and address any problems.