Explanation is due

[Ela Talaj]

As most here probably know, I always defended The Lab against somewhat capricious rage of some merchants ready to explode in response to every insignificance without actual understanding of the system complexity and what it takes to upgrade and maintain it.

Having said that, I must now also say that if an event comparable to todays Marketplace "Valentine's Day Massacre" occured on let's say E-Bay, it would be all over the media tomorrow, if not already and the heads would start rolling soon thereafter. My own sales did not suffer too much (in fact I do better on weekdays than on holidays) so this is not personal at all, but what about ppl who relied on Valentine's Day for a significant part of their revenues and were preparing for weeks, if not for months? Then suddenly waking up to discover that the Marketplace is down for the most part of the day and those sales they did make they are not paid for, even though the customers were charged, so now they have to spend time filing tickets.

I'm not calling for anyone's head but in my opinion, Mr. Humble should make a blog entry with a detailed (and a keyword here is "detailed") explanation of what exactly has occured and what steps are or will be taken to prevent repeats. Unless he does so, my confidence in The Lab would remain somewhat diminished.

 

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

I would love to see some actual numbers for yesterday.

I want to know:

1. How much was spent by customers on the marketplace yesterday.

2. How many merchants were actually paid.

3. What the difference between the two sales figures are. IE what cheating profit LL has made.

4. How many of those products were actually delivered (my purchases are still pending)

How a company can decide to ruin the most romantic holiday is beyond me.

[Anaiya Arnold]

It's completely unacceptable that after such a monumental stuff up and causing such a headache for everyone, they post on the grid status that all issues are resolved and then complete silence, while we have not been paid, some customers have paid and recived their products and some have paid and received nothing. 

 

Commerce Team, this is beyond unacceptable.

[Marcus Hancroft]

---

Anaiya Arnold wrote:

It's completely unacceptable that after such a monumental stuff up and causing such a headache for everyone, they post on the grid status that all issues are resolved and then complete silence, while we have not been paid, some customers have paid and recived their products and some have paid and received nothing. 

 

Commerce Team, this is beyond unacceptable.

---

Good mornin, Miss Anaiya.  (/me just woke up and is wiping the sleep from his eyes)

I completely agree that the valentines day massacre and then the subsequent apology for the inconvenience and then silence is completely unacceptable.  I still have not been paid either, and at this point, I don't expect to.  The OP is absolutely correct too...if it was E-Bay that had happened to, it would have been all over the media in no time.

[Emma Krokus]

Calling it "resolved" is untrue - from group chat and personal experience, many merchants are still waiting to have their issues "resolved".

How about a rewording: Marketplace is working again for new purchases. We are working on getting outstanding past purchase issues resolved.

Linden Labs: where are your skilled communicators?

 

[Tari Landar]

Sigh....still have orders that went through, customer paid(and in some cases got the item), but I didn't get the funds, as well as orders that never delivered and while some never took the money, others did. What a mess.

To say I'm miffed is an understatement.

I have an extremely high level of patience, especially when crap happens out of your control, or you really do just make an honest mistake. But dangnabbit this was NOT out of their control, nor an honest mistake. They caused it, plain and simple. They chose an absolutely terrible day to do this. Their responses are just crap too-but that I did expect, they're known for it. I bet the labbies' mothers would be ashamed of them all right about now (if I were a labbie, I'd be ashamed of my own workplace, to be honest)

I felt, and still feel, terrible for my customers who ordered and did not get the item. All but one order that was placed, were for Valentine related items, too. So waiting for LL to get their heads out of their butts, really isn't an option. I went through all of yesterday's(and so far today's) orders and resent them inworld(well the ones who were online, I left NC and IMs for ones not online, so they know to contact me when it's convenient for them, for redelivery). LL isn't going to make up for my lost revenue, so I'll just have to take that hit.  Normally, I wouldn't mind *too terribly. But in this case, I do mind, very much. Because it wasn't just an accident, or a mistake, or some other event that they had absolutely no control over. Sometimes I give them more credit than due, but definitely not doing that here. They dropped the ball, big time, and can't even own up to it. I loathe business people who can't accept and admit their own mistakes.

I guess they're just lucky SL offers more good than bad. That's also why things like this, don't really have a lasting impact for many, or cause people to up and leave(moreso a culmination of things that cause this), and why they can get away with it, so to speak.

I am quite grateful that, thus far, all my customers have been VERY understanding.

Didn't we have similar, if not identical, issues on another holiday in the past with MP? I distinctly remember there being issues, hefty ones like this was, but can't recall which holiday. Clearly, LL doesn't know how to take past mistakes and experiences and turn them into lessons on what not to do(and when to not do it).

 

 

[Zanara Zenovka]

Agree with all above.

Not just the stuffup, and (always tiresome) attempt at spin, but now everyone needs to be checking their records and getting their money for the sales that did go through.

Because the dominant pattern for the 8 hours of fail delivery seems to be that the customer was charged, the item was delivered (eventually) but merchant was not paid, and all this money is sitting in escrow with Commerce Linden in incompete transactions.

Just from what I've seen with the merchants I've been talking to as we try to help each other work this out, the amount of money involved here is not trivial...

[Legend Hye]

If Linden Labs were a responsible company they would explain and say they were sorry in a place that ALL could see, for example when you log in to the MP. Only a small number of people look at forums etc. Most people who use MP have no idea of who is to blame when things go wrong (which is often). Most customers blame the merchant, this takes the blame away from LL and I expect thats the way LL likes it.

Yesterday was a TOTAL MESS, what sane company would do maintenance on the MP on Valentines Day? They KNEW it was going to be busy.

So, now what? Many of us merchants have lots of sales showing up as "Being Delivered" they have been there for OVER 24 hours. In most cases the buyer has paid and received the item, but the merchant has not been paid. I suspect LL will change all those sales to "Failed " soon and will keep the L$ the buyer paid and leave the merchant high and dry. But I would be VERY HAPPY if LL would prove me wrong.

 

[Josh Susanto]

If such an incident were generated outside of LL, LL would almost certainly try to take some kind of very decisive action to prevent it from ever happening again, at least in the same way.

But it seems that when someone is on the clock at LL when they make something like this happen, it's automatically defined as some kind of unintended failure, rather than as sabotage.The thinking on other points so far seems to be indistinguishable to us outsiders from "if we paid someone to do something, that automatically made it part of their job".

So (anyway) let me just introduce the next variable that might be used to help track down Malefactor Linden:

("theory"...)

His alt or alts offer little or nothing that would only be of interest to consumers on Valentines Day, but his competitors probably offer a lot of such things, and they probably pay so much to promote their special V-Day items that to be unable to sell them after promoting them potentially serves to undermine them in their ability to compete with Malefactor Linden with other items. Or at least he might think so.

Previous variables include that he probably has an in-world store full of animations that are either a bit clumsy, a bit complicated or both. I have more recently come to suspect that there could also be good animations attached to various poseball furniture that is somehow not a great match for the animations.

Checking such stores against either total absence of V-Day items (although there may well have been other holiday items that did not sell well, in spite of his promotions, thus provoking this incident) OR, V-Day items that were not promoted on SLM (and probably cost almost nothing to produce), the field begins to narrow a bit... if anyone will bother to do that.

Not that that will happen if nothing similar has happened by now (you can be pretty sure that it hasn't).

It's not a great time to investigate or try to place blame at LL while so many people there are still hung over or otherwise disoriented from various Whitney Houston memorial Karaoke events.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Josh Susanto wrote:

("theory"...)

His alt or alts offer little or nothing that would only be of interest to consumers on Valentines Day, but his competitors probably offer a lot of such things, and they probably pay so much to promote their special V-Day items that to be unable to sell them after promoting them potentially serves to undermine them in their ability to compete with Malefactor Linden with other items. Or at least he might think so.

Previous variables include that he probably has an in-world store full of animations that are either a bit clumsy, a bit complicated or both. I have more recently come to suspect that there could also be good animations attached to various poseball furniture that is somehow not a great match for the animations.

Checking such stores against either total absence of V-Day items (although there may well have been other holiday items that did not sell well, in spite of his promotions, thus provoking this incident) OR, V-Day items that were not promoted on SLM (and probably cost almost nothing to produce), the field begins to narrow a bit... if anyone will bother to do that.

 

---

What? I'm confused. Yeah, I've heard parts of your theories, I just don't get why it has to be an animator. Plus, you seem to know very little about the animation market. I mean, I could see that if some1 like myself was making such claims, it would, at least, have some weight, only because I'm an animator. Why a sculpty maker has theories about the motivations of animators, I'm somewhat dumbfounded.

[Toysoldier Thor]

I said it in the other main thread on the "V-Day Massacre" and I will say it here.

The CEO of the company needs to show his leadership execute on his responsibility as the head of the company and step up on behalf of LL to formally and very publically:

 

• Apologize to all these LL Customers affected by this fiasco
• Explain very transparently what actually and factually happened (no lies or blames or excuses) as well as the root cause of the problem and how many LL systems did it actually impact
• The current state.  LL Grid Status states its RESOLVED but as many Merchants can confirm this is not the case as LL has a ton of incomplete transactions that THEY have in their account that is owed to the Merchants
• Most importantly, what is Rdovik going to do in the coming days / weeks to assure this mistake cannot happen again.  Will LL finally identify and enforce change freezes for the most critical business periods of the year.  Will he force LL Commerce to review the architecture of the Payment Transaction System so that a sales transaction is not  logically split that allows 1/2 the sale to complete and getting the last 1/2 lost in their system (i.e. the part that pays the merchants).
• Will there be some changes in the LL Commerce Team to improve the lacking service levels and communications his team has been allowed to get away with all these months?

fThis should be posted in the main blog by Rodvik and a clearly visible link to the blog should be on the MP pages saying "LL screwed up & we are sorry - please read message from LL CEO"

We all know that LL never owns up to their mistakes unless heavily prodded.  So it is the responsibility of each of us Merchants and even the affected customers of MP to contact Rodvik directly.  Send him a notecard.  Tweet him (like I have been doing).  IM him.  Send him an email.

Complaining about it in the bowels of the Merchant forums will show no results.  Rodvik doesnt read the forums and even if he did he is very happy that all the complaining stays in this one small forum that most ppl dont read.  He needs to know how badly his company and staff screwed up and that he owes us all an explanation and a plan to make things better.

[Medhue Simoni]

Although I agree with many of your points, no1 likes to be dictated about how to run a business. We can say what we don't like, or what bothers us, but to imply that the CEO must do this, that and whatever, is not usually going to be recieved well. Neither you, nor I would take orders from some1 else, irreguardless of them being a customer or not. I'm sure Rodvik has enough experience to understand the issues, once pointed out. Believe me, I've not become an LL advocate, but I do respect some of our new leadership, and, given their background, I expect things to get better and have seem some marginal improvements in some areas.

Now, that said, what concerns me the most is how the structure of the Marketplace system is set up. It seems to me that LL is focusing on the consumers, instead of us merchants. They are choosing to protect the consumer versus protecting us. What I'd like to say, is that these are our customers, not LL's. If there is a problem with the delivery, we can handle that. What we can't handle, is not getting paid for a purchase. Most of us are barely surviving. If any independent Marketplace tried to pass a system like this off onto it's merchants, the site would never get merchants to sell on it. It is only because LL bought out all of it's competition in the online Marketplace field that they can get away with having a system that works this way.

As it stands, LL has destroyed most inworld sales because of the removal of all free marketing, and numerous ongoing changes to a search engine not designed for SL. They have destroyed any and all reliable online Marketplaces, single handedly. If you ask me, overall, things will not really improve until LL takes responsibility for these things, investigates them, and corrects them. I'm not 1 of these people that thinks LL is just trying to use us, but when you add what I've said here, to Linden Homes, and LL releasing dozens and dozens of new free avatars that all compete directly with merchants and other residents, it is not hard to see why many are uneasy with many of LL's actions.

And.... I do believe they read the forums, when they can.

[Sweet Valentine]

:smileymad: Disgusted in Secondlife and Linden labs ..... this is  just sickening but typical and predictable ...things just do not get better even tho they try to blow fluff at us...lots of money lost yesterday lots of Customers lost..and many merchants rethinking WHY we pay tier to this Company with horrible customer service any longer...I hope the Merchants get paid but i do not hold my breath on it...i am expecting an excuse as usual and GOD forbid any other type of compensation for the losses they have caused us

[JeanneAnne]

Keep in mind that LL is a for profit corporation and that top executives will get their salaries & bonuses regardless of how badly LL is managed. Keep in mind that their own profit is all they care about, not yours.

Don't bother building or scripting or selling anything in SL. If you're sufficiently talented to build marketable stuff, turn your talents to a more lucrative venue than SL.

Have fun in SL rather than thinking of it as a business. LL has the deck stacked against you, in their own favor. Just decline to contribute to making LL executives rich while you struggle and get treated like this.

Play SL for free and never spend a cent of real money on it. This way you get what you pay for and needn't complain about stuff like the Great MP Valentines Day Debacle.  LoL

Jeanne

[Toysoldier Thor]

So Medhue I am gonna be blunt about this...

I dont give a S??T what the CEO of LL or any other company likes or doesnt like being told.  Cry me a river.

I also fully understand that if Rodvik's feelings are hurt because of what his CUSTOMERS demand and expect of him, that is fully in his court to take what ever response he wants to take.... then let the response of his CUSTOMERS fall where it might.

What you and I have seen so many other SL residents keep forgetting... Rodvik heads up a company who's prime role is to maintain and grow a business ....  and in order to do that the CEO of the company serves two masters... The Company's Board of Directors and the Company's CUSTOMERS.    Guess where you fall into this equation Medhue?

We are all Rodvik's Customers.  Without us Rodvik doesnt have a job at LL since LL would not exist.  As such, this might shock you Medhue but...  WE ARE RODVIK'S ULTIMATE BOSS.

So when Rodvik's company screws up as bad as it did and since he is the head of this company, we CUSTOMERS have 100% full rights to demand and expect the CEO to step and take a leadership role that he is being paid to do and explain to his ultimate bosses... us CUSTOMERS what went wrong and what will be done to make sure this wont happen again.

 

What frustrates me about the SL Resident community is how such large % of LL Customers do not feel like customers of LL.  They feel like they are just loyal servants to the LL Gods. 

If all the screw ups that teams within LL were to happen by RL business you are a customer of, I am sure you would not sit back and say "well the phone or cable or retailer is an idiot but lets not demand they clean up their act... afterall at least we should be so lucky as to have the service they provide us - no matter how bad it is"

Why do so many of you not expect LL to treat you like a customer when you all in your RL expect RL vendors / business to treat you like a customer?  WHY?

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

JeanneAnne wrote:

Keep in mind that LL is a for profit corporation and that top executives will get their salaries & bonuses regardless of how badly LL is managed. Keep in mind that their own profit is all they care about, not yours.

Don't bother building or scripting or selling anything in SL. If you're sufficiently talented to build marketable stuff, turn your talents to a more lucrative venue than SL.

Have fun in SL rather than thinking of it as a business. LL has the deck stacked against you, in their own favor. Just decline to contribute to making LL executives rich while you struggle and get treated like this.

Play SL for free and never spend a cent of real money on it. This way you get what you pay for and needn't complain about stuff like the Great MP Valentines Day Debacle.  LoL

Jeanne

---

LOL 100% agree.

Its every Avatar for themselves.  Limit your risk with LL and the SL service.  Since LL Executives are only in it for themselves and really have proven not to care about their customers... nor should you care about them.  Use SL for what you can.  Dont invest in premium accounts.  Dont buy land unless it is purely to satisfy you personally. 

If you buy land to run a business - you need to fully understand you are operating a business on a high risk / low level of stability base of sand - that is LL and their management of the SL Grid and services.

The good part for the way I am a customer in SL and a business on SL is that my #1 priority is to enjoy myself in SL.  My #2 priority is to protect my interests and limit my liabilities from a Vendor's service (LL's SL) that has proven to have very low customer service, poor stability, and knee-jerk policy changes and business decisions that have damaged their customers countless times with no concerns by LL.   To put any serious RL $US into SL would be a foolish decision.

If LL and SL were to go under tomorrow... I would primarily be sad for the social aspect in my life that I have loved and lost.  I would be sad that a sweet low burden no cost revenue stream into my RL bank account would finally come to a end.  But I would not be injured or at risk for them going under.

 

 

[JeanneAnne]

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

---

JeanneAnne wrote:

Keep in mind that LL is a for profit corporation and that top executives will get their salaries & bonuses regardless of how badly LL is managed. Keep in mind that their own profit is all they care about, not yours.

Don't bother building or scripting or selling anything in SL. If you're sufficiently talented to build marketable stuff, turn your talents to a more lucrative venue than SL.

Have fun in SL rather than thinking of it as a business. LL has the deck stacked against you, in their own favor. Just decline to contribute to making LL executives rich while you struggle and get treated like this.

Play SL for free and never spend a cent of real money on it. This way you get what you pay for and needn't complain about stuff like the Great MP Valentines Day Debacle.  LoL

Jeanne

---

LOL 100% agree.

Its every Avatar for themselves.  Limit your risk with LL and the SL service.  Since LL Executives are only in it for themselves and really have proven not to care about their customers... nor should you care about them.  Use SL for what you can.  Dont invest in premium accounts.  Dont buy land unless it is purely to satisfy you personally. 

If you buy land to run a business - you need to fully understand you are operating a business on a high risk / low level of stability base of sand - that is LL and their management of the SL Grid and services.

The good part for the way I am a customer in SL and a business on SL is that my #1 priority is to enjoy myself in SL.  My #2 priority is to protect my interests and limit my liabilities from a Vendor's service (LL's SL) that has proven to have very low customer service, poor stability, and knee-jerk policy changes and business decisions that have damaged their customers countless times with no concerns by LL.   To put any serious RL $US into SL would be a foolish decision.

If LL and SL were to go under tomorrow... I would primarily be sad for the social aspect in my life that I have loved and lost.  I would be sad that a sweet low burden no cost revenue stream into my RL bank account would finally come to a end.  But I would not be injured or at risk for them going under.

 

 

---

OMG !!

A rational poster on the forum....

~faints~~ ~

*thud*

Owch!!

Jeanne

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

JeanneAnne wrote:

---

---

OMG !!

A rational poster on the forum....

~faints~~ ~

*thud*

Owch!!

Jeanne

---

SSSShhhhhh... dont say that too loud.  There are many in this Merchant Forum that think I am only a LL Hating, angry, bullying Troll who wants nothing more than to see LL go down.  You will instantly gain a lot of enemies from those in LL that will defend LL whenever possible.

heaven forbid one would vocally express his concerns and frustrations at a vendor that makes as many business / I.T. mistakes as LL does and to challenge them to step up their game.

[Anaiya Arnold]

Good morning to you too Mr Marcus.

 

There's still no action on payments (just checked) and like you, I think this is an inconvenience that will see us out of pocket. 

I'm sure LL can come up with many creative reasons why  billing our customers and sending out our goods while knowingly retaining the proceeds is not fraud, although I doubt anyone with sense or a court of law would agree that "it's too inconvenient to us to bother to fix it given the complete inadequacy and poor design of our systems" constitutes a legal or moral defence against charges of dubious conduct.

 

Oh well, another day, and I will not challenge them to top that stuff up because I have a feeling they could somehow pull it off.

[Deja Letov]

mmmhhh wonder if we can file a DMCA against SL for theft? 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

Deja Letov wrote:

mmmhhh wonder if we can file a DMCA against SL for theft? 

---

There is no such thing as consumer protection with virtual sales here because of the virtual currency.

There is no place to report it in the real world.

There is only trust in LL in LL to make it right.

If you could afford it, you could make a case that virtual currency should come under the same protection as real currency.

Or you can try to tell your elected officials that there is a need for legislation in this regard.

Or you can ask LL to move over to real currency rather than fake currency.

Maybe bring it up at the next office hour.

What you can do when the dust settles, is to ask merchants who have lost money, not filed a ticket and not posted in the forums, whether their money was finally delivered.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Related addendum to my last post:

http://jvwresearch.org/index.php/2011-07-30-02-51-41/for-authors/10-cfps/30

[Ela Talaj]

By the way there is a rather simple and widespread failures management technique called "watchdog". That is if a number of queued events exceeds a certain value (individually set depending on the system parameters and throughput) the lights start blinking, the sirens sound and an alert emails are sent to the maintenance personnel. A malfunctioning device may or may not be auto-shut down but a full memory image is recorded in either case. Would be interesting to know if such is implemented in the Marketplace and if not, why not.

[Sera Lok]

I would certainly appreciate any public explanations and apologies the Lab would have to offer but sadly am not expecting it. Even though pretty much the entire active population of Second Life was affected. 

At this point, it would just be nice to get the money that is currently due to me through Marketplace.

And although it's a hassle to have to get a list together of all the 'being delivered' and 'queued' orders on marketplace, double checking against a separate set of records to make sure it wasn't paid already...  I'm not sure that LL will actually appreciate the scope of what's happened until people start filing tickets with their details.

 

[Rage Riptide]

What may or may not be realised is that SL members are the product, not the customer. The real customer is the shareholders. If the product delivers results, i.e. profit, then it's working as intended. Changes to the product don't really matter as long as the customer is happy. Since when has the Product always been right?