You can get LL to remove negative marketplace reviews?

[Suki Hirano]

Is this for real? You can easily get LL to help you remove negative, non-flaming marketplace reviews? And I thought some merchants, as well as LL, can sink no lower. Bought some stuff from a shop with an absolutely a-hole of a creator (love to reveal which shop it is but unfortunately mods will probably just remove it anyways), left a negative review about the creator's attitude, then a few days later every single one-star review in that shop (not just mine) were removed. Now everything in the shop either has no review or 5-stars.

Positive reviews = tricks people to spend more = more $ for merchants = more $ for LL. I guess the trend of removing negative reviews in the appstore by Apple is now common practice in SL as well. Disgusting.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

A merchant can ask for a review to be removed if for example it is flaming, low rating due to delivery problems that not the merchants fault, or factually inaccurate among other reasons.  The key word here is ask.  Just because you ask doesn't mean it will be done.  LL has to agree with your reason for removing it and they don't remove all they are asked to remove

A merchant can get rid of reviews by relisting a product too, but this is illegal and you can flag a product for relisting.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

Or the store owner removed and relisted everything. Look at the Product ID and see it it's a "recent" number or not.

As for what is "recent" .. you'll have to do some poking around. But the Product ID is part of the URL to the product page. For example:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/product-name-here/1263996

The number at the end is the Product ID. (And the above is a VERY old Product ID)

[Tamara Artis]

Maybe it is because your review was not about the item you bought but about the merchant's attitude? I am really not sure, just guessing. 

As I see it, a merchant can be an a-hole and have top quality products or be a lovely person that anyone would want as a friend but bad at creating anything worth selling lol

[ChinRey]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Or the store owner removed and relisted everything.

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Yes, that is a far more likely explanation if all negative reviews in the store were removed, not just yours. If so, flag the item you bought and any other items you remember had negative reviews. If the seller has an unlucky day, somebody at LL may take notice and remove the listings.

[Pamela Galli]

The purpose of a review is to assist potential buyers to make a decision based on whether or not the item is as described, is of good quality, and whether customer service is good.

I see MANY reviews, however, that are one star because the reviewer did not read the listing (or included instructions), and did not therefore know what was included, how something works, what the perms are, etc. IOW, has nothing to do with the product or customer service, and therefore should be removed.

[Kralus]

Merchants by MP agreement.. are not allowed to completely remove a listing and then re-add it to the MP as a way of getting around bad reviews. If they are caught doing that LL will permanently remove the item from MP and the merchant will not be allowed to re-list it ever again.

Many one star reviews are also malicious behavior of other merchants trying to drive traffic away from their competitors and to their own store.

Any unhappy review I receive and I contact the customer to rectify the issue and make them happy. I have mostly run into customers that did not read the description or even the details on the catalog image or simply do not know how to use alpha's and etc.. and they get upset and instead of contacting me they jump in the MP and leave a bad review. After contacting them to instruct/teach or create a custom fitting for their avie.. they have happily gone back to change the review and state how happy they now are.

Malicious behavior is obvious as the customer wont ever respond, even though they are always online and active.. states incorrect information in the review that is impossible and will not accept any assistance from the creator. These actions need to be recorded and given to LL where they can see the malicious behavior and then remove the review. But there must be clear evidence that it is indeed malicious behavior and not just a whinny creator complaining about a bad review.

Customers are not the only ones that like to flame for invalid reasons but other merchants do so to eliminate the competition. Which I find more appalling then an unhappy customer that can be assisted and made happy.

[Tari Landar]

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Kralus wrote:

Merchants by MP agreement.. are not allowed to completely remove a listing and then re-add it to the MP as a way of getting around bad reviews. If they are caught doing that LL will permanently remove the item from MP and the merchant will not be allowed to re-list it ever again.

 

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That's how it is *supposed* to work, but not actually how it works most of the time. Merchants de-list and re-list things all the time, some simply because of reviews they don't like. One particular merchant has done it several times with a relatively popular item(in it's niche market), been reported, and LL(ie, commerce team) doesn't much care. The commerce team has removed several reviews from that particular product, which were *not* even remotely against the TOS, simply because the creator asked(one can assume, as there is no other explanation that makes sense)  As merchants, we are supposed to follow the rules. LL, as creator of the rules, doesn't have to, and often chooses not to, commerce team included.

It is what it is, and there is very little we, merchants or customers, can do about it, other than use the tools we've got to the best of our ability. I've learned to accept that which I must, ignore that which I'd rather not accept and have no need to accept, and do whatever LL allows me to *attempt* to change the things I can. Whether or not I am successful in any of those endeavors, remains to be seen  

[Zanzawolf Cosmos]

Sadly, a lot of merchants are just scum like that and in the end you can't really do much about it. Gaming the system to make 

Had a falling out with a big named merchant in the kids' side of SL awhile back because of a simple misunderstanding over criticism about a new product that was in open beta for the customers to try out.

Just discussed how this bit of unrigged TD clothing I bought having a resizer in this article of unrigged mesh clothes and being no-mod made it kind of tricky to effectively fit it onto my TD avatar that wasn't supermodel skinny and that there was also small bug in the scripting that made it break when trying to change the appearance. Overall the product wasn't half bad, it looked very nice as their products usually do and was a good start to something cool. Even gave the product 4 stars.

I log on a day later to find the most childish wall of insults and broken grammar ever about how I was lying and that their friends claimed that it was perfect and that I was banned and blacklisted from their sim. I responded back as calmly as I could, puzzled beyond belief but couldn't get through to the person then made the stupid move of throwing the IMs all over various major kids' chat groups. Resulted in a bunch of harassment from one of their CSR and being demonized in their store group. Luckily, I wasn't suspended but unfortunately with my reports about them, neither were they. 

Found the product relisted a day after with 2.5 pages worth of phony positive reviews, flagged it, sighed and went on my way.

I regret my equally immature actions (Irony being an SL Kid ) and have tried to push aside my frustration towards the store's owner and their minions. 

I agree, we really can't do much about this stuff since LL doesn't do much about it or even supports it even when they have it against their TOS. I just don't get people anymore.

[JoJo Aurelia]

Yes, and yes.

If a seller asks to have a review looked at by Linden, it's up to Linden to remove them.

First you stated, not asked: "You can easily get LL to help you remove negative, non flaming market place reviews?"

Is this a question or a statement? Usually a question mark is a question. You've worded this to sound as if you know some fact. I, personally question that there were more than one star reviews taken off. I find it highly unlikely that Linden would remove them all. Also, giving that you called the merchant a hole, I can only imagine your review. Though you're claiming it wasn't infamatory. I'm thinking it probably wasn't as objective as you're claiming.

Why was she a "hole?" What did she say to you? Assuming again, that you contacted her about the problem?

Based on your original question here, I'm assuming you weren't very pleasant to her, or wrote an objective review.

Unless your a designer, understand the pressure, hard work, devotion to selling items that cost less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, then then you don't understand the issues they face. Yes, Linden will remove reviews if they consider them hostle, or used to demote a product for another designer. They'll remove bad reviews on demo's as well.

Your final statement is unfounded. There are many 1-3 star reviews on Market Place.

Sorry, not buying the full story you're giving here.

[Isilmeriel]

As the others have said previously, LL does not indiscriminantly remove reviews without cause. In my experience they tend to be conservative when it comes to removing flagged reviews. Specifically, the review needs to be factually wrong, off-topic, or clearly flamatory for it to warrant removal. Without more context I can't say if your review fell in any of those categories. 

On a related note, the review system is pretty open to abuse from both sides of the transaction which I guess is what nessessitates the flagging option in the first place. People very rarely give positive reviews because of the hassle of revisiting a product page that you've already purchased from (guilty of that myself from time to time ) A fair bit of negative reviews do seem to come from customers who skipped reading product description or trying the provided demos. Had someone leaving one-star reviews to several demos for being no-mod. In light of that the flagging system does offer some reasonable protection for creators.