Chelsea Malibu

Your recourse is to never shop there again. You want vengeance and that just isn't how things work. If a product is garbage and the support is weak, they will die off on their own. We have seen many come and go over the years and only those who create quality products with good support and value win.

Technically, Scripted Agents...aka Bots are not a violation of the TOS. However, more than 5 alts are. If you use your Scripted Agents for specific reasons, such as display models, you too are not in violation and do not warrant an AR. However, if these bots are lagging down your store and you do not own the sim, report it to your sim owner. If this is due to a competitive disadvantage you feel you have, then unfortunately, you will have to find a more creative way to compete. Crowds attract crowds because people are what makes SL fun. A bot on a region, isn't very fun and in time, they all figure this out and go away. My point is, unless you own the sim and it's a direct problem for you, there is little more that you can do other than wait. Traffic count has far less importance in the new search as it used to.

I think one needs to first consider their purpose. Is it to generate traffic for your traffic count in hopes of getting a higher search ranking? or is it to bring new shoppers into your store? If it's new shoppers, do you think this is incentive enough for them to hang our for hours waiting for the letter to come up? or perhaps a thank you for the customers you already have. Any of those reasons are weak and do little to improve your income. The original idea of campers and such are from the old days where Linden Labs used to pay us for traffic. At that time, we received a stipend for all traffic and that was how you made your money...you built a hot sim and filled it up. It benefited SL and they rewarded us. It ended around the time free accounts came out and all that remained was the Traffic ranking that helped your search or to get into the Popular Places tab. Today, one needs to be more creative to generate traffic and most of the methods are very real world methods. Good marketing, creative advertising, quality products, stellar support and incentives for your existing customer base to shop more and bring their friends. In the end, Lucky Chairs, Campers and such are just another way to lag your sim. If they do attract anyone, it's usually people that dont have any money anyways. Manage your groups, provide them special incentives when new products come out and advertise. in the end, you will see much more valed success than from a lucky chair.

Yes agreed, the word Hooker tagged you. Very lame with little overbite but that's how linden labs works for the most part, automation and trolls who blindly follow Mr.. "Isn't life gay and fun" Philip Rosedale. However, there are also some very astute and intelligent people there though they usually don't stick around long. I'd call them and get it worked out.

Perhaps you could do what I say..."you shape sucks, need some help?" lol.. actually i usually just ask if i can tweak their shape to match their skin better and fix it myself with a demo skin of what they have one.

Far, far from worthless, you just didn't take the time to learn how it works. You may want to check out: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Commerce-Forums-General/Thank-You-Search-Gods-for-making-it-work-again/m-p/452021#M46163

Pauses for a moment of silent prayer to her friends and family, all my deepest sympathy.

ROFLMAO - thanks Anna1, I needed that laugh today.

I can't believe I missed this post as it is an area that I know well. The person who "infringed" on your content did not actually violate your copyright as much as they violated your licensing agreement. You sold it at full perm and allowed them a license to resell it. However, under the terms of what you stated, they did not fully follow the terms of your licensing agreement. What you have here is not a violation of copyright, what you have is a violation of the licensing around your copyright. If you placed in your terms that this mean an immediate revocation of the copyright, then you need to revoke it formally then it can become a copyright issue. I hope this makes sense. In the end, Linden Labs cannot nor should not enforce your licensing agreement as it is a contract between you and that user. If the DRM which is embedded in LL's system had be breached, then Section 1201 of the DMCA prevents the tampering of encryption and reverse engineering. If in fact that had taken place, you may have a case there but this does not seem to be the case. In the end, unless want to hire an attorney and have the legal entity identified as in who that user is in RL, then you just need to take a deep breath and move on.

Wow, great story and scary. I do agree that most are great and I truly love my customers, which is why I work so hard to accommodate them. I have many fantastic and loyal fans of my creations who are so supportive, give me great feedback and many times, a little appreciation goes a long way since the only reason I do this in the first place is to share my creations with others. I'd give it all away if I didn't need to lindens to pay for my store and the shop I create in. After reading your reply, I had a thought hit me. What if they linked buyer's comments and ratings that showed how that person rated everyone else? Or if they had an average on that person of how they rated. If you rate everyone a 1 star, then you get a 1 star reviewers rating. lol, now that would be interesting.

Hmm, come to think of it...I've not seen a notification for a while either. Guess I'd better check.

Brooke, Thanks for the update. Can I make a very serious suggestion for a new feature to you? Why doest marketplace add a feature that lets the user themselves reship an undelivered item that is copy? This would be an opt in feature for the merchant and can be set by item. This would save us and you a lot of grief.

...we could rate our customers? Remember when we could rate other residents? LOL. With all the errors in marketplace and while most of us are bending over backwards for our customers to rectify these issues, we will no doubt get blasted by idiots regardless of how hard we try to take care of them. Yes, I know LL said they would fix these but they wouldn't have to if some people just paid attention or show some consideration. In real life, most would never act like this to your face. I had one who bought one of my sale products that I had miss-marked the permissions on when I set up the ad. I immediately honored that and sent him one in a full copy version for $L 99 (normal $L 350 for a non copy version, I sell fully copy versions for nearly times that) then went back and corrected my marketplace listing. He blasted me in the reviews and gave me a 1 star rating basically telling others not to trust me. It amazes me how rude and inconsiderate people are when they can hide behind an anonymous avatar. Wouldn't it be nice if we could do like they do on eBay and rate the buyer? :smileyvery-happy: Oh, I'd have a few things to say. Thanks for letting me vent! :P

I understand your frustrations Pamela and we have all felt the pain from this. I had my team build a system that allowed for direct credit card transactions with an in world delivery system. When it was operational (we have since ended it as the ROI was not there) we had a feature allowing merchants to toggle a redelivery option where the user could go to the site and ask for a copy item to be re-delivered. Obviously this does not work for no copy objects but as most purchase are for fashion items that are copy, I would think it would be a great feature to add to marketplace as well. On another note regarding this, a large amount of my customers find my stuff in marketplace then come to my store to view it in world. I actually prefer this as this is where my differentiator is. The quality of my work is often muted by other products that photo well but look far less impressive in world. I think my stuff looks better in world than in photos.

No one is scamming however, it is frustrating if that users gives you a 1 star rating on something that had nothing to do with because of delivery or DB issues, it makes you even more steamed. One solution that I have been ranting on and I know it can be done as I used it for my own delivery system is the ability for buyers to have their copy items reshipped. It does not work for no copy items but on copy items, they can at least request a reship of the product while I am offline. SL traditionally runs worse on the weekends and I am sure that is due to limited weekend resources who can only manage the most critical issues. When it comes to the Marketplace, I have heard that they only have a few employees dedicated to that and I am sure, not enough to mange the technology very deep over the weekends. 5 years ago, there was even a blog post when SL went down for nearly a day that they had to get the person in charge of this out of bed and make him come down to fix it. That was actually a blog entry and though they may have thought it was cute, it really laid out the road map to the lack of seriousness they take on their own product. That being said, their new CEO is a real executive with a real understanding of business and from what I am seeing, many of these "lackings" are being tightened up.

EXACTLY!! This is why I am such an advocate of lower limits on key words or even purchased key words.

Interesting to see all the variations in business. My sales are always up and down and seem to fit within what is happening in new home sales and new business start-ups. When those two are good, my business is good since they all need decor. However, I have also noticed that search changes my rank position nearly weekly where I am doing nothing different to change it. When I am in the top spot, my sales rock but for each position I move down, my traffic moves down even though most above me in my key words have no relevance to what I sell. January through March where good and April has been very slow. My numbers nearly always shift with in world sales and right now, both are not as good as I have seen in the past.

Great thread Tiffy! I suffer from a god complex and am addicted to the ability to wave my hands, make the earth move, the waters part and object appear right out of thin air. Truthfully, I am a business professional in the internet business and spend most of my day with clients, technicians and in front of a PC looking at facts and figures. For me, to create is to be able to expand my mind and use talents I don't get to use with my day job. Simply put, I love to design and create. Having a store feeds my ego and helps me to continue with my pursuit as it generates enough income to pay for all of my internet and computer needs including my world of warcraft play time. Providing the ability to help others decorate their homes and businesses is a real high for me and seeing my things in someone's home or business, really excites me. One day my old friend Baccara Rhodes came to my store and bought a lamp. I was jazzed for weeks because Baccara is one of the oldest residents in SL and has been a creator for many years including a partnership in a very successful home store. For her to find something I made worthy enough to be in her home reminded me of why I do this.

Odd but, I'm not seeing that. And when I looked up some Top Rated stuff, I got returns near that top that had never been rated. In my own store, I got returns of Best Sellers that I know are not where my Best Sellers didn't even show up.

Dayum my stuff fits all your criteria except for one small issue, I don't make clothes again a day late and a dollar short..or is it a day short and dollar late? hehe...oh well. Actually there is so much great stuff out there but I have found a lot of carp too (not a typo and not a fish, just personal censorship). I found that using market place to find good stuff is one way and then go to the store but if a clothing merchant really wanted to raise the bar, more would make demo clothing.

Agreed! Search is key but moreover, tell us how it works if you can but since no one anywhere really knows it seems, I would like to suggest the following: 1. Create an Advanced Search that allows users to refine their search. 2. The Product Hierarchy is a good idea (Home and Garden > Lighting > Chandeliers as an example), should be expanded to include more product subsets. 3. Remove that pop up that screams "Get Me Out of Here" when you log into market place, it's been 4 months now out dated. You do know each step reduces sales by increasing abandonment? 4. Increase page load times with better content delivery through a better CDN and clean up your DB. 5. Sell keywords or limit them to just a few. 6. Offer direct credit card purchases through the shopping cart. 7. Provide a user link where buyers can reship copy product to themselves that do not get delivered. 8. Build an affiliate program that allows me to pay those who send me sales with through affiliate links. All of this can be done and all of it works. This is what I do professionally and am paid very well for my knowledge. I'll send the bill to Linden Labs :smileywink:

My Dear Fareyn, there was once a day when you contacted me first for these kinds of questions...have I abandoned you? LOL. Hit me up in world or call me my dear friend and I'll see if I can help. :smileywink:

Darrius, as usual I concur and feel your pain. I was had the top spot for some time as "Home Lighting" and seemingly, the relevance of their search was in fact "relevant". However, now when I search Home Lighting, I again get everything with Home and Light and Lighting above me. They claim they base this off Google Search Algorithms however, Google by their own admission changes this over 300 times a year and per an SEO expert I spoke with, there is no way to match the Google system to SL as they do not share common characteristics that can be leveraged. My take is that Linden Labs has full time employees working on search and once it was fixed right a while back, they had nothing to do, so they tinker and break it, then fix it. Sort of like our government...break it then tell us only they can fix it it..lol. Look into the market place search and it becomes ever more baffling. I have 5 of my lights in the "Most Popular" search under Chandeliers. Oddly, none of the ones that show are my best sellers and one in fact has never sold one. My actual best sellers are on page 5 or 6. I've stopped loosing sleep over this since I make far more in IMVU and Red Light Center selling junk that I would be embarrassed to sell here but it makes a lot more money. Probably because my customers can find it.

I am a huge proponent of good customer service. Not just for my business but it reflects on all of us in the end. It sends a message that you can spend money in SL and be safe that you know what you got was backed up by someone who cares about their customers. Calling the bad ones out in my mind is not the way to do as I prefer to catch someone doing things right. Recently I made a pledge to my customers to do things right. I put what I am and my retail philosophy in writing and posted it in my stores. It makes me accountable to my customers. This is the direction I feel we should take. Make a commitment to our customers and make yourself accountable to them for this. -------------------------- As a conscience business owner who is more concerned with creating unique works that others can enjoy than making lindens, I am committed to good customer service and value in my products. As such, I pledged to support my customers and to understand their wants and needs while providing the best of my talents at a reasonable price. Therefore I pledge to you, my valued customer to provide you with the following: I will not spam you with group joins, landmark givers and note cards. You can make that decision after you have seen my work and I hope you do return, but I will not fill your inventory my stuff unless it is what you want. Anything you buy here, you can rezz here. I will not sell you items in a box that you cannot open in my stores. If you do leave something here, this land is set to auto return. I will keep my stores set up in logical order and by department. I will make it easy for you to buy my creations while also making it easy to find them. Everything I make is modifiable. If you own it, it’s your right to modify it. My scripts are not mod therefore, you may see something in your inventory that shows No Modify but I assure you, when you try to adjust the prims, they will modify. Anything that you cannot make copies of, you can transfer and anything you can transfer, you will not be able to make copies of. It’s a fair trade off and I believe you deserve one or the other. I will show my work to you as it is without misleading ads, images or claims. I work very hard on my wares and I take pride in my work. I want to earn your business and hope you recommend me to your friends. I will name my products appropriately so you can find them in your inventory and include as much information as possible in that name to help you should you have problems remembering what you bought. I will spell check my note cards and if needed, will help you personally when you need assistance. I will come to your home or place of business, if needed, when you have issues with any product you bought from me. I stand 100% behind my work even if it’s working perfectly, I want you to be happy with your purchases and I truly want your home or business to look the best it can look. I will not force you to land in one spot and will allow you to teleport to anyplace within my store, or teleport your friends here. I will not scan your IP address or attempt to capture your personal information through RedZone or any other devices. I will remove anyone in my store that does this and is not respectful to my customers. I will replace or refund any product you purchased that you are not 100% satisfied with. I will respect your taste, your lifestyle and your background and I will never treat you as if you are a nuisance. You are important and to me, you are never a newbie, we just have different rez dates. As much as I am a creator and merchant, I too am a consumer and these are what I want when I shop. If you find anything you want or need and I do not provide it, I am always open to suggestions. Your opinion matters to me!

It doesnt seem to be just the market place. I am having issues on other alert items that notify me not getting sent to my email as well as many offline messages.