Open apology to Merwan Marker and the Second Life community

Will do M'am....

OK, I hope everybody is now removing their money and items from SLExchange. If Apotheus is willing to harm the merchants so obviously over this by ceasing operations if Merwan does not accept he needs to have everything pulled from beneath him. Let him cease operations. He'll never run an equivalent service like SLExchange after this if he does indeed go through with it as the community will just kick it into touch before he gets it started.

It's clear that Apotheus doesn't have the merchant's interests at heart here, only his own greed.

Post it again in the new boycott thread!

~Ulrika~

I have temporarily de-listed my items from slexchange. I've seen enough that I'm seriously concerned about who I'm doing business with.

I will await for Apotheus to present his side of the story before coming to a final decision.

I'm with you on this Frances. I'm glad to have heard from Merwan. I'd like to hear more from Apotheus too.

Surreal

I have delisted also. It just bothers me that Apotheus has been sitting there letting all this go on without reassuring his customers & merchants. He must know this is hurting SLExchange. Right now I have no confidence in SLExchange unless some changes are made.

I'm outta there as well. No Merwan No SL Exchange.

MERWIN WAS SLEXCHANGE!

While I do highly appreciate all the promoting, and work Merwan did for SLExchange, it's unrealistic to expect he was SLEX. I did not sign up because of him. I had faith in the entire group behind it.

If anyone backs out of using this service - it should be because his partner did not handle the business, internally, in a manner that would comfort or take into consideration SLEX' customers. Threatening to close down to get rid of Merwan? That really doesn't speak "stability" in volumes. Probability of said threat being irrelevant.

If Merwan had left SLEX for another, more civil reason, and business went on as usual... fine.

However, this whole thing really stinks.

I appreciate your response. But don't read into my statement . In my case, I didn't know there were others involved in SLEX until this post started. I only knew of Merwan. I found out about SL Exchange through Merwan. Merwan explained it to me and help me get set up. Anytime I had any question...I talked to Merwin. So to me in my opinion he was the reason I joined and what happened to him is the reason I'm leaving. I was going to leave SLEX when I first heard of this. It was Merwan that said don't leave til I try to resolve things.

I still stand by MY opinion that he was SLEX!

Does that mean that you are waiting for the first post in this thread or that you are looking for a different version of the first post in the thread? Or, put another way, the original poster asserted "P", would it increase your confidence if he now said "not P"?

I read about some legal contract mentioned. Would it be possible to post scan of that document?

I would also like to withdraw my funds. Is there a reason why it is not responding?

Froze on my too, and I have a fair amount of $L in there Oh well, I am sure it will be fixed soon

Thank you for your explination Merwan! You have a lot of people behind you! *HUGS*

Been trying to delist, but it keeps telling me 'this item cannot be deleted'. I hope it's a bug.

I just think it would be fair to hear both sides of the story before passing judgement.

There may be facts that have not surfaced yet that would cast light the entire situation in a different light. Let me come up with a hypothetical example.

(Let me be clear that this is just a purely fictitious example.)

Suppose the reason that Apotheus has decided to terminate his working relationship with Merwan because he has uncovered evidence that Merwan was acting dishonourably, such as using his administrative access to steal funds from the slexchange account.

If I were Apotheus, I would react by doing many of the things he's done. I would lock out the administrative accounts, I would terminate the partnership, and I would offer to buy up the remaining interests in the business.

(Keep in mind, this is a purely ficticious example.)

All I am saying is that there may be information that has not presented that may change the underlying story. I do not suspect that this kind of scenario will evolve, but I think it would be irresponsible of me to say that Apotheus is a dishonourable person without even listening to his side of the story. Even criminals have the opportunity to defend themselves before judgement is passed on them.

I do not do business with dishonourable people. I have temporarily suspended my activities on slexchange, because I am now sufficiently concerned about Apotheus' code of ethics.

Hello,

I found that Merwan had posted some information on the SL exchange forums which got me really confused about what was going on (I've since noticed the threads have been removed). So after trying to some more information I found my way to these forums. So heres my first post to these boards

I'm rather concerned as I'm experimenting with the idea of selling Real Life items in Second Life and that requires stability and trust in any shopping system. I had already placed a couple of items on SL Exchange, but have removed these until I have a sense that this dispute has been resolved.

Its a shame. But hopefully more information will be forthcoming as I don't particularly like uncertainty.

I suspect Apotheus is trying to terminate the relationship because he doesn't think Merwan is doing any real work, or rather he is doing something anyone can do.

Even if this were true, there are better ways than the way he went about it. He could set up an arrangement such that each of them had to log their time and unless they were paid a salary based on that time.

Apotheus could make the argument that he should be paid more, while Merwan could make the argument that they could hire some grunt from india to do the website work he was doing and Merwan (with his clearly awesome communication skills) should be paid more. Apotheus could be paid a premium if any LSL needs to be done.

The fact is, Apotheus has simply made a very big mistake. He needs to come to term with this and re-accept Merwan back into the partnership with perhaps a business contract with more clearer terms so there is no such confusion again.

Urusula & Willow: The on-site withdraw at SLExhchange is not working. You have to go to an SLExchange ATM in-world to get your money out. Go up to an ATM and say "withdraw amount". You'll get a dialog box to confirm. Click yes and flee.

Siobhan: That's not a bug. You cannot delete items from SLExchange, for accounting reasons. You have to make an item inactive, but because of the weird policies of SLEX, we can never "delete" our account or our items.

Thanks Aaron.

You can, however take the slexchange vendor into your inventory, and the products will go away from the site after a while. They come back again when you rerez it.

For now, ive set all my 24 products on SLExchange as inactive, and I will remove the vendor from the world as soon as i can log in.

I was just recently considering listing my stuff on SLExchange and thought it looked like a great service to SL. Now - I would not touch the site with a 10-meter prim.

It is sad and disappointing to see something cool like this fall apart.

I too have delisted, and withdrawn my funds. I also took down the SLEX merchant signs at my in world stores, and will be removing the terminal from our group property in due time. The only reason I am leaving the terminal out for the time being is so people have another location to withdraw their funds if they so chose. I find this whole situation to be highly disturbing, and a major set back to the innovation of SL business as a whole. I want to be clear on this point though, I did not delist out of loyalty to Merwan, or because Ulrika called for a boycot. I have thought about the situation and have come to the conclusion that I no longer personally trust SLEX as a business partner. Don't get me wrong, I think the best of Merwan, and I respect him a great deal. I just want to be clear that delisting should not just be a knee jerk reaction based on the band wagon effect. Everyone needs to evaluate their trust in SLEX and make a decision for themselves. Best of luck to all of the SLEX merchants taken along for this wild ride.

Regards,
McW

Unfortunately, due to the continued silence on Apotheus part, the lack of notice to the change of TOS, my faith in SLE has waned and I will be joining the many other merchants and removing my listed items from SL Exchange.


Note to Apotheus, you're running a business whether you define it that way or not. Customer confidence in your business is something that cannot and should not be taken lightly. Quick and efficient resolution of an issue that may erode confidence is the key to successfully making it through an issue like this. Clear and open dialogue with your customers is another valuable tool to help keep from losing customer confidence.

I urge you to resolve this issue and start treating your customers as customers quickly - before the damage to SLE is beyond repair.

Best of luck to you and Merwan.

D&D Dogs has also delisted it's products from SL Exchange, as well as removing the terminal from our location. I want to point out that this had nothing to do with Ulrika's boycott. To be quite honest, the main reason is that I don't want to be looked at as supporting SLEX when there's such a negative view of them now. Also, we have only made 12 total sales through them in over one month. We sell TONS more at our in-world location.

Ours is a product better seen in person than on a website anyway, so no big loss for us.