Direct Delivery Second Life - payment system broken

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Arwen, I think it was mistake to lump those together.  Since my plea is at top of page, I went and edited a tad to make sure Direct Delivery was made known, if you all want me to add more at the top of the page, just tell me what to add.

but since technically challenged, and had so much trouble back in January, have no idea if the people who had trouble back then are going to experience it with DD or if it just random glitches.  I'm going to relist eventually, but not if we're going to have to deal with that again.

[Arwen Serpente]

Agreed, they are different situations and call for different JIRAs (at least from a Merchant and Customer POV).

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

I absolutely agree with CTL. I have had problems with Magic Boxes forever.

I would get messages that communications timed out, and my sales would tank. I would resetup all the boxes (limiting each box to about 5-10 items) and my sales would be 10x higher than after I got the message that my magic boxes have timed out. Not only that, but only a few items would sell well at a time, and the successful items would always change after resetting my boxes. I've been playing with it since the beginning of September, and I am fairly confident that there are major issues.

Oddly enough, DD has been working much better for me, but the fact that the website isn't working right is really showing and sales still aren't the greatest I've had, but I'm doing far better with DD than I was with Magic Boxes.

There is something very, very broken in SLMP that transcends DD or Magic Box. When I had my magic boxes, I kept having people message me about a product I didn't sell and them not getting it after they paid for it.

Whatever the cause, it's not just DD that's causing it. Sometimes when I would re-rez my magic boxes, things would be better or they'd be worse. I really think it's kind of random and I wonder how many people have given up selling things in here because SLMP wasn't working properly.

With magic boxes, I could re rez them and the system would be better. I don't know of a workaround like that for DD, since the code is all running somewhere where we don't have control. I don't even know how it's implimented.You might try resending objects from the merchant outbox and re-assigning them, but if we don't know how DD works, there's no way to come up with a good solution. It was somewhat straightforward how magic boxes worked. LSL scripts and a web server communicating with each other. Server sends items to website. Done.

Whatever the case, I hope everyone gets this figured out. The website has been running really odd for me. Sometimes it just times out.Other times it takes a while for it to load. Either way, people are discouraged from shopping when it takes 10 seconds to load a page. It really hurts their confidence that the transaction is going to complete and it makes them worried they're going to have their L$ taken and then end up messaging a store owner who doesn't reply and won't resend the item.

[Super String]

Mickey, all of them--payments and delivery (on transition history)

It's good here to listen to you clarifying your experience, I surely have no doubt about your issue, however, what I doubt is that these 2 cases can't just be merged altogether. Because it will blur both facts.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

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Super String wrote:

Mickey, all of them--payments and delivery (on transition history)

It's good here to listen to you clarifying your experience,

I surely have no doubt about your issue, however, what I doubt is that these 2 cases can't just be merged

altogether. Because it will blur both facts.

---

they are not getting delivered either?

when I was managing that, and keep in mind that reflecting back is making me a bit queasy.....

because there was different lingo on pages of transactions, I checked with each customer every day, and if you want to hang on to your customers, you might want to do that, if you are not already.  The extra time paid off, because each person was very grateful for the check.  And they will come back.  (even in spite of stuff)  I do realize that not everyone can take that extra few hours a day.  I cannot now.

I think that some of those were delivered and some were not, but it was just a mess, so can't verify for sure, this late in the game.

I'm sorry they merged your Jira.  you're going to have to get creative on how to survive like that.

 

 

 

 

[Super String]

 

I really want to agree with CTL too, but...even the worst abnormal Magic Box experiences I've ever heard from anyone wouldn't be worse than the daily normal behavior of Direct Delivery in my sotre since its launch.

So far, I don't get even one success transition from DD system. All fail.

All...I mean... all...

Every single direct delivery payment is a fail...since I used DD...

I never heard about anyone couldn't got at least one success Magic Box delivery in the past.

 

If DD works well for you, I'm just happy for you.

I wish I have such luck.

[Super String]

In fact I just created another new JIRA and complained a lot...

and will continue to do things like this repeatedly in any possible areas on the internet in every possible language...if I could.

 

Those deliveries are just as what I've mentioned in the threads and JIRA...they're received inwolrd but my report says they are still delivered. If I never bought from myself, I would never know the the fact.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

duuuuuude............

pace yourself.  hold the temper.  you'll get even hotter if you have to watch from sidelines for a month 

[Flea Yatsenko]

I understand your frustration. The first time this happened to me it slashed my monthly sales by half, and it was with magic boxes.

From my experience, if you can find a way to reupload your items to second life market place you should be ok. When my magic boxes were failing, I would have about a 80-90% failure rate.

I don't know of a way to fix it. I would try renaming your objects, uploading them again through the outbox, and then reassociating them and seeing if they work. That's stupidly time consuming though. If you can go back to boxes you should for now, LL hasn't given us a good way to reset things with DD if they go bad.

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Flea Yatsenko wrote:

I absolutely agree with CTL. I have had problems with Magic Boxes forever.

I would get messages that communications timed out, and my sales would tank. I would resetup all the boxes (limiting each box to about 5-10 items) and my sales would be 10x higher than after I got the message that my magic boxes have timed out. Not only that, but only a few items would sell well at a time, and the successful items would always change after resetting my boxes. I've been playing with it since the beginning of September, and I am fairly confident that there are major issues.

Oddly enough, DD has been working much better for me, but the fact that the website isn't working right is really showing and sales still aren't the greatest I've had, but I'm doing far better with DD than I was with Magic Boxes.

There is something very, very broken in SLMP that transcends DD or Magic Box. When I had my magic boxes, I kept having people message me about a product I didn't sell and them not getting it after they paid for it.

Whatever the cause, it's not just DD that's causing it. Sometimes when I would re-rez my magic boxes, things would be better or they'd be worse. I really think it's kind of random and I wonder how many people have given up selling things in here because SLMP wasn't working properly.

With magic boxes, I could re rez them and the system would be better. I don't know of a workaround like that for DD, since the code is all running somewhere where we don't have control. I don't even know how it's implimented.You might try resending objects from the merchant outbox and re-assigning them, but if we don't know how DD works, there's no way to come up with a good solution. It was somewhat straightforward how magic boxes worked. LSL scripts and a web server communicating with each other. Server sends items to website. Done.

Whatever the case, I hope everyone gets this figured out. The website has been running really odd for me. Sometimes it just times out.Other times it takes a while for it to load. Either way, people are discouraged from shopping when it takes 10 seconds to load a page. It really hurts their confidence that the transaction is going to complete and it makes them worried they're going to have their L$ taken and then end up messaging a store owner who doesn't reply and won't resend the item.

---

And Flea.... for every horror story like you have just posted on how bad Magicboxes were there is likely 5 untold perfectly happy stories about magicboxes.  So I will tell you my story about magicboxes...

I have been selling on xstreet and mp since june 2008 with the same single magicbox on one laggy mainland store parcel inworld.  I think in the entire almost 4 years of selling from this one magicbox, I upgraded the code once.  Prior to me even having a store - my magicbox was stuffed under a tree near a friend's rock club.

In all these years, I have only gone to my magicbox to add new content or replace content.  I think in 2011 I might have went to see my magicbox ONCE!

In all these years my failed deliveries were so low that it would be considered a statistical error compared to my total sales.  I might get a failed delivery maybe once every month or two.  Whenever there was the rare rash of delivery failures it was because LL was messing with the general system that controlled deliveries or SL inworld or the asset servers.

For me.... moving to DD is nothing but a complete waste of time.  I had no problems with my one 3+ year old magicbox that DD needed to solve.  So DD is only forcing me to do work in migrating that I didnt need to do.

So..... opposite to what LL has being openly promoting with a bear burning its Magicbox.... when LL finally kills any magicbox functionality... I will likely build a shrine for my magicbox and honor it with the respect it well deserves. 

The parts that are screwing up merchants for delivery right now with DD - as LL as actually admitted to - is the system that controls delivery.  These delays and failures will continue.   In fact I would like to test a 3am SLT delivery of a DD item and see if the item shows up immediately after the sale or if it still takes an hour.

 

Conclusion......   the Magicbox should not be burned or vilified - it should be praised for all the work it has been doing for xstreet and MP despite LL's poor delivery processes that the magicbox had to be dependent on.

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

I'm not saying DD is better, I'm trying to help Super (and whoever else reads this thread) fix the problem. I haven't really had a single issue with DD other than a few times I've had outbox failures, but I resent them and it worked.

The point I'm trying to make is that there's something wrong with SLMP that has nothing to do with DD or magic boxes.

[Super String]

 

Flea, I know you just want to help, thank you, I'll try your suggestion to rename and reupload them tomorrow, hopefully it will work for me...

 

Toysoldier, I totally agree with you that Magic Box should not be burned or vilified, in my heart I feel thankful for old magic boxes, though they're not 100% perfect, they made great contribution to SL economy, and it also worked well for me.

 

It's a special oppotunity here to be shared all kinds of personal experiences in this thread during DD disaster.

Each merchant has his/her very special own story. Being a SL merchant is certainly not easy.   

[Josh Susanto]

>Toysoldier, I totally agree with you that Magic Box should not be burned or vilified, in my heart I feel thankful for old magic boxes, though they're not 100% perfect, they made great contribution to SL economy, and it also worked well for me.

Now I'm confused.

Why, anyway, should we want to burn or vilify something that even continues to work better than the mandatory downgrade?

[Gavin Hird]

I have found that all the transactions that have failed for me has the characters ö | or – (em dash) in the listing name.

Looks like a sensitivity to charachter set (ASCII only) might have been introduced. Do you guys see the same pattern in your nondeliveries?

 

 

[Sera Lok]

I was able to duplicate this with one of the characters you supplied.  Item was delivered, money was taken, but no payment to Merchant.  Now it's hanging in limbo. (yeah yeah, I should have used a $1 item. it's late and I was curious)

 

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Gavin Hird wrote:

I have found that all the transactions that have failed for me has the characters ö | or – (em dash) in the listing name.

Looks like a sensitivity to charachter set (ASCII only) might have been introduced. Do you guys see the same pattern in your nondeliveries? 

---

Ooooohh .. good catch Gavin. I use only "Flat English" in my listings, no Unicode whatsoever. It would make sense though that if Spree (the website sales engine that is at the root of Marketplace) wasn't properly programmed to handle multi-byte or unicode characters .. those could cause it to choke BIG time.

Hey Super String!! Have you checked your listings and Associated Objects to see if any of them have characters other than A-Z, 0-9, space and underscore? Since it hits every single one of your products too, maybe it's a standard piece of text you put on every listing?

 

ETA: Just checked Super String's products .. and Yup, every single one has a fancy character in the name of the item.

BINGO GAVIN!! You've earned the Super Geek Sleuth of the month award!!! (Now hold still while we measure you for the propeller hat and pocket protector)

[Zanara Zenovka]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

I have found that all the transactions that have failed for me has the characters ö | or – (em dash) in the listing name.

Looks like a sensitivity to charachter set (ASCII only) might have been introduced. Do you guys see the same pattern in your nondeliveries?

 

 

---

Oh good grief - well spotted Gavin

Although your example there looks like an en, not em

[Sera Lok]

I noticed on the JIRA one of Super String's products has a "►" in it...

[Darrius Gothly]

All of them do/ For example: Condom Pack➔ Mesh

That arrow is a unicode character.

HAHAHA!! Chalk another one up to ... well it's not really user error because SLM should handle those okay. But if it doesn't then they should at least "sanitize" the fields before adding them to the database.

[Sera Lok]

Nod, it appears to 'clean' them for delivery, the character is gone from the Folder Name in my Received Items folder. Just doesn't clean it good enough for payment, I guess >.<

[Zanara Zenovka]

In before someone else does:

http://xkcd.com/327/

[Darrius Gothly]

Dangit! Now where's a Linden when you need something fixed. LOL

At least they'll be tickled pink when they come in and find out we (meaning Gavin) solved it.

[Darrius Gothly]

ROFL!! You must have that website memorized Zanara. Seriously!

[Anaiya Arnold]

Oh FFS!

Thank you Gavin, for completing in your free time, what the Commerce Team are paid to do.

In addition to solving the mystery, your discovery provides a workaround, which is a very good thing since an actual fix means waiting around until the Commerce Team find they can be bothered, and assumes they will not just file it in the "too much like actual work" basket, and henceforth instruct us, in some obscure post buried on the forums in a thread posted quietly at no-am in the the morning, to not use those characters, while still allowing the item/product title field to carry on accepting them.  Naturally it will be our fault if we do not find the obscure post buried somewhere on the forum at no-am.

[Gavin Hird]

This is typically what you get when you have a limited or too conform user base to do your testing, or if your test data is not representative enough for your user base. All test data must have international / non US content, as the testers must represent the major languages your support.m