If you have Basic Membership, you're basically screwed lol

[NastasiaRogue]

At least when it comes to needing support.  Even with premium the customer service is less than ideal. 

BTW, when she said "basic membership is not entitled to certain help." She meant any. The email I had receieved basically directed me here.

At least as a community we have each other **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyhappy:" title="Smiley Happy" /> It's good to know free help is tons better than the kind Linden makes you pay for any day. <3

Check this out. 

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ShndrkaG S: Hello! I may be working with multiple issues already, so please explain your issue (including any ticket numbers we will be discussing) and I will be with you shortly.

Please note: Live Chat is unable to assist with abuse-related issues. Abuse reports can be submitted using the Second Life viewer's built-in tool under the Help menu.

 

ShndrkaG S: Hi NastasiaRogue, I'm Drika! Thank you for contacting Linden Lab Support! What can I assist you with today?

You: Hi Drika **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyhappy:" title="Smiley Happy" /> I just finished speaking to MacieoM about Case #: 01730783 and she said a response was sent to my email, but the only thing there are links to the community and all of the sources I have tried already with no success.

ShndrkaG S: One moment while I review your case.

You: Okay, thank you.

ShndrkaG S: Ok, I see you just upgraded to Premium. You will need to reply back to the case & let the agent know that you just upgraded your account to Premium. Also, state that you have already tried what was on the links and you still have problems. This issue is something that has to be further handled/troubleshooted via case.

ShndrkaG S: Do you have any further questions or concerns?

You: Okay, so I just reply to that email and someone will assist me? I feel like I am getting the runaround so I just want to make sure.

ShndrkaG S: You are not getting the runarounds. When you first submitted your case and the reason you received the response you did to the case, is because you had a Basic membership. Basic memberships are not entitled to certain help.

ShndrkaG S: You now have a premium membership.

You: LOL okay. I understand that. Basic members are basically SOL. Yes. I found that out. But thank you, I shall reply to the email. Have a spectacular day.

ShndrkaG S: You're Welcome & Thanks for contacting us!

The chat has been ended by the agent.

 

Save Chat

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Yes, basic users only get a limited fom of help, and premium users get more help -seems a decent business model to me.

[Tamara Artis]

I am a basic member and I got reply and help to each of my tickets. Most were immediate responses, for one I waited for half a year to get it fixed, but they did it and I didn't have to go to premium to get a person to log on my account and fix stuff. 

And why double posting?

[Cincia Singh]

You're not screwed, you're getting exactly what you paid for.  :womantongue:

[Intoxicate]

To say that someone isn't entitled to help because they aren't spending money, is a bit disturbing to me. 

I could understand if they gave premium users priority status with respect to promptness, (meaning premium users would get -faster- responses than basic users, but at least -everyone- gets help.)

But to just send people to the forums and leave em' 'out to sea' simply because they don't pay a monthly fee is shocking to me (and I say this coming from IMVU where the customer service is atrocious, but at least everyone gets helped, not just those with paid memberships). 

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Running a support system costs time and therefore money.

Expecting support for free is just silly. That's what the forums are for, where other residents usually help if they can.

[Intoxicate]

There are plenty of companies who provide support to their customers whether they pay a monthly fee or not, I've already named one and they just so happen to be comparable to SL. 

All of the companies we buy items from irl, have support systems, whether it be the grocery store where you buy your food, or wacom where many people buy their graphics tablets, or samsung where we buy an array of things from phones to TVs to computer monitors. ALL of those companies have support services and none of them will shove you away because a monthly fee isn't being paid. Yes money is spent in these examples but they don't impose a recurring fee just for you to talk to someone. 

Yes time costs money, I'm fully aware of that. But just because people are basic users doesn't mean that they don't spend money on SL, so I'm not really seeing where the 'free' comes in. 

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Money you spend within SL doesn't necessarily go to LL though. If you get paid in SL in L$ and you pay someone else in SL with that, LL sees none of it. LL sees a miniscule amount if you buy/sell L$ through their webpage, not even remotely enough to justify full support for free players.

Besides, you do get some support. Just not much. Premium gets a little more. Estate owners get even more. It's a simple tiered support system like many other companies have as well.

If you want to look at comparable models, look at Free-To-Play games. They rarely offer full support for free players, it's simply not financially feasible.

[Intoxicate]

You have a point but it's based on the assumption that the people in question are all creators with enough sales income to avoid having to purchase lindens. That's not the case at all. I'd be willing to bet that there are more people on here who put more real world curency into SL than they get out of it, if they get anything at all. And since a lot of people don't know about currency resellers, they tend to buy their lindens directly from LL. 

And while other companies do have tiered support systems, I'm pretty sure most of them aren't redirecting people to a forum to get answers. I've gotten amazing support from companies who i hadnt paid a dime to (excluding the actual product purchase). So I know it's possible. 

And I really wouldn't compare SL to a free-to-play game since most FTP games don't don't have a product market, and they're usually owned by a larger conglomerate. 

I understand your point though. 

[Jenni Darkwatch]

If you bought a product you tend to get some support though - depending on country you're even entitled to some support.

Unfortunately I have no idea how much LL makes from L$ exchange and how much of LLs income is from tier payments. I suppose it would make sense to give support as soon as some L$ exchange threshold has been met.

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Intoxicate wrote:

There are plenty of companies who provide support to their customers whether they pay a monthly fee or not, I've already named one and they just so happen to be comparable to SL. 

 

All of the companies we buy items from irl, have support systems, whether it be the grocery store where you buy your food, or wacom where many people buy their graphics tablets, or samsung where we buy an array of things from phones to TVs to computer monitors. ALL of those companies have support services and none of them will shove you away because a monthly fee isn't being paid. Yes money is spent in these examples but they don't impose a recurring fee just for you to talk to someone. 

 

Yes time costs money, I'm fully aware of that. But just because people are basic users doesn't mean that they don't spend money on SL, so I'm not really seeing where the 'free' comes in. 

---

We don't know what the OP's problem WAS. For many everyday issues with SL the combined knowledge of the forum posters is probably higher than anyone in SL support and INFINITELY higher than someone sitting in a call center in Bangalore reading off of a script, which is the level of support you get from many companies selling products worth hundreds of dollars.

[Hoshi Kenin]

Nonsense...on so many fronts

LL have probably one of the worst customer relations that exist, be it RL or virtual world.

That is a fact. No ifs or buts.

No RL company could afford such customer contempt.  

LL are well aware of this. The CEO - unless he is in a constant daydream - is also well aware of this.

How, then, you ask, do they get away with it??

Simply because, even after all these years, there is no viable competition.

Imagine if Gibson back in the 1950's didn't have Fender or Gretsch as competitors.  Musicians would still be playing old F hole guitars with no humbucking pickups.  There would be no electric bass guitar (Fender invented it).  There would be no Les Paul guitar (Gibson went tail between their legs to Les Paul ((who they dismissed a year or so earlier)) when the Fender Telecaster started to gain ground).

Humble is not stupid, but he is very much culpable.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Hoshi Kenin wrote:

Nonsense...on so many fronts

LL have probably one of the worst customer relations that exist, be it RL or virtual world.

That is a fact. No ifs or buts.

No RL company could afford such customer contempt.  

 

---

So Linden Lab isn't a real-life company? Ooo, meta....

And YOU talk about nonsense....

 

[Baloo Uriza]

Read up on asking questions the smart way, Eric S Raymond has an excellent and quick read on the subject and Google can lead you to it. You could have avoided the whole situation and received your answer faster. Also, if you aren't being a dick, sometimes support staff will go the extra mile, particularly if they're not handling very many other chats simultaneously.

[Mick Scarbridge]

Like it or not, SL is a business and things are prioritized just like your ISP priritizes business customers over regular customers. That is a standard model among almost all businesses out there.

[TishaRogue]

i've never had a premium account and have always got a response if i have put a ticket in. It may not have been the response i wanted but the issues did get addressed (in other words not put in the circular file before reading).

From being in world for a while and having read a number of posts on these pages there are a lot of people that just find things to complain about or make trouble just for their version of fun. I can see how the labs would consider the premium members more likely to be sending in legit complaints since so many of the sl griefers use non paid accounts to cause their trouble on. 

I'm not saying that all non paying non premium members are griefers but they must get bombarded to the point that it is difficult to see the difference between some of the legit ticket issues and the ones people are just trying to be a problem with.

Often they will get tickets sent in for issues that they have already posted information on so people don't have to go through the motions of the ticket and be able to get the answers right away. Thats why they say to make sure there isn't already a jira open on the problem. The more repeated tickets the more time they have to spend syphoning through them.

Imagine having 40,000 kids all wanting your attention at the same time, all asking questions talking over one another even if half of them have the same question.... That would be the peeps whose job it is to to go through the tickets.  Often when someone is having a strange glitchy issue... lots of others are having the same thing. So they post the information specific to the most common problems to answer a large number of them questions in one action.