Vendors compensating lost Items?

I don't mean to bring a technical issue to the general forum, but the reason that I do is I'm trying save my partnership. The issues from yesterday caused my partner to lose quite a few items that he was placing around our new home. The incident happened when he sat them then decided to move them. The items vanished. LindenLabs acknowledges this but says they are unable to rectify the issue which equates into loss of real money if a person bought L$s to purchase items in game. My partner's loss equates to approximately 50 US dollars. We're premium account holders and have a combined land tier that equals to 80 Us dollars a month. I've paid my account up in advanced but he has not.

The situation that I'm wanting to address is: Will you the vendors really be willing to compensate players for lost items? And I'm talking losses that occurred through no fault of their own? I personally don't feel the vendors should be ones to make up for the loss, but I don't know what to do? If I can't find replacements I'll lose my partner! Someone I've actually grown to love and would really have no point to SL if he leaves me and the game. I just don't know what to do and am looking to you the vendors, oldbies etc for guidance.

Thanks.
Nisa

Well, if she lost anything made by me she just has to im me and ask for a replacement, i always replace lost or damaged items

If anyone has bought lost anything they bought from me within the last month (so I can find it in my ledger) I'll be more than happy to replace it

Since I sell mostly mod/copy/no transfer I can easily replace anything lost if a customer asks. It's helpful if a time frame is given so I can check sales records, but otherwise easy replacement. In my experience most others are good about it too, so it's worth asking all the vendors in question.

I don't have any problem replacing items lost or damaged. I would much rather have happy customers opposed to pissed off ones even if I run the riisk of being cheated. So what, it doesn't cost me anything to replace it. A bad rep will cost me plenty and ticked off customers rarely buy from you again. Besides, I have been the victim of this as well so I know how it is.

Usually, if you file a bug report when and where the items dissapear, later on these items will show back up, or has in a lot of cases. Give them a few days and they may be able to straighten things out. That has happened to me as well.

Unfortunately most only have records for the past 30 days inworld as far as what items were purchased. While there is a database on your acct page on the website it does not itemize the sales only listing them as objects. Its to bad the Lindens went to the trouble of setting up that database and not having it pull the inworld data that would be most useful to us.

Couldn't agree more Drift. If they'd just add the item names to the excel files it would be easy to have records stretching back as far as we want to keep them, and to be able to do custom queries. It's pretty useless as it is, but it's still cool to have. I hope they can add item names eventually.

I posted a request for this in Feature Suggestions:

/13/6d/33280/1.html

As of today, no replies still. And it has been a while. It is my first post there that I recall, so I'm not sure how the "process" works. If no replies from a Linden, no dice?

Anyway... I'd appreciate it if you or anyone else interested in these features or any of the other ones I posted in the thread would Bump or Reply there so it doesn't get ignored or lost 8 pages into the forum, never to be seen again.

-Omen

Likewise... always willing to replace lost or damaged through this issue ... but you'll have to come to me

I am willing to replace lost/damaged items without hassle - just IM me if any of the items were animations of mine. There is no good reason to not replace items - it doesn't cost us anything to do so except a little time. Yes, someone can scam someone by doing this if the sale can't be verified, but the amount of goodwill brought about by helping people legitimately offsets any scamming that would cost you nothing in the end either.

Quote:
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide reimbursment for lost objects purchased in Second Life.

That speaks volumes regarding LL's committment to the content created for Second Life. And indirectly, to the value of the in-world currency. Personally, replacement of the lost object would be preferable to reimbursement, especially in cases where the object's creator was no longer available. If people are afraid to display or purchase objects because they may disappear, then why are we here?


Quote:
However, many of the vendors in Second Life are very willing to replace objects lost through system error, often at no additional cost.

If you are saying that since the vendor created it, then they are responsible for it, I would have to request that you put your money where your mouth is and give us the transaction tools and accountability we need to be able to track and replace purchases in question!

Personally, I will always replace an item as long as you are in my database. Since I launched the 'Primcrafters' line I have kept records of all transactions, and I'm more than willing to replace pairs of glasses. (As long as the request comes from the purchaser)

Done

I replace items that have been devoured by bugs, broken by failed teleports, or otherwise messed up . . . if my customer IMs me about it. I worry all the time that something will go missing from my inventory -- two of my good friends lost a lot of items recently, and it's just depressing. I'm sure the Linden bughunters are working like mad on this, and I hope they nail it soon.

What sort of stuff did you guys lose, Nisa? If it's the sort of stuff I make, maybe I can help you out -- IM me inworld.

I always replace lost dogs. As a matter of fact, sometimes I will even go with my customer to look for the dog, as they sometimes could get stuck somewhere and have the scripts die. I have found a few dogs for people this way - no replacement needed

As for record keeping, everytime we make a sale, the object sends us an email with all the sale info (who bought it, how much, what was purchased, etc). So we have a record in a seperate email account of all sales. Granted, it's no database, but it's sure easy enough to sort through all our emails to verify what was purchased when.

I think you will find that most vendors have no problem replacing lost items. We know that SL can sometimes be buggy (most truly lost dogs were due to a sim boundary bug) and it really doesn't cost us anything to replace. Plus, it's just good business practice! Keep your customers happy and they will always come back!

Hi Lukas, good to see you.
I appreciate the responses, but one or two of you put the stipulation down that it would need to be within the last 30 day purchase. My partner and I have been in game since September and October respectively, Items lost are well over 30 days old.

I super appreciate the willingness to replace items, but my point is, the Lindens relied on your good will and your desire for goodwill to make up for their error. That alone amazes me. I've worked with databases and there is always a way to back up data...especially as important as a player's possessions. I can understand the loss of one or two items from recent history...but surely they have a restore up to a point in place...and what Lindens are saying is they don't...again I am amazed -- it would have been better to have fewer servers and better data protection. But that's another story all together.

I'm in agreement with Lukas, what is the value of your product and the currency and why are we here if what we strive for isn't worth backing up?

I'll talk to my partner and hopefully he will calm enough not to leave me.

I think for LL to do this would be a huge support nightmare for them. I mean, I can just imagine the sheer number of requests..."my couch disappeared, my dog disappeared, my house disappeared". And what they would have to do for every single one of those requests is an entire investigation...look in their inventories, look in their history to see if they gave it away to an alt, look at the location they said they lost it in...etc.

Basically, I think it would slow down LL in such a tremendous way that it would be counter productive. I can fully understand why they have this policy in place, and judging from the willingness of vendors to replace objects, it seems the problem is really not all that big a deal.

They are a software company and can create a tool, if they haven't already, to easily locate an object by its unique ID, assuming they have persistent unique IDs. I certainly hope they have unique IDs.

Nisa, I am so sorry to hear this happened to you and your partner. I wish there was something I could do to help. You are right to be upset.

I'm not a vendor but I wanted to give my support.

Some of us are nomadic, moving from online community to online community. The site you're at, well, the bugs start to piss you off. The way the community is managed starts to piss you off. It's always the same kinda stuff . . . always the same complaints in thread after thread, forum after forum, site after site. Then a new site comes along, and it has features you were wishing for, and some really cool-sounding stuff you never heard of, and you've been pretty fed up for a while. So you leave your friends and your familiar place and whatever else you have invested or built up, and go to greener pastures. And it's great! And you make new friends or your old friends catch up, and you get familiar with the place and comfortable, and you invest your money and/or time, and you build up your inventory or points or whatever it is you build up at that site. But then it starts to be less great. Because the bugs start to piss you off. The way the community is managed starts to piss you off. And you start wondering about the next site that's going to come along.

Sure, some of it is "grass is always greener." But that's only part of it -- takes some mighty green-looking grass to tempt someone out of an online community where they've been for a couple years. It's that, in combination with genuine complaints, the sort of stuff we wouldn't put up with from some other kind of company.

Is it that online communities, in general, are managed on a shoestring budget that doesn't allow things to be done to the same standards to which other companies do them? Maybe it's because the really big companies in the field do things this way, and they've set a low standard that consumers put up with and other companies don't seek to exceed (and perhaps can't exceed, and remain competitive)?

I am hoping Linden Lab will buck the trend, and I think they might. I've watched how they do things. Yeah, sometimes they screw up, and sometimes they don't have the resources to do things right. But they admit it, instead of covering up, like most places do, and they apologize. They try a lot of different things -- lots of new plans lately. And they are willing to retract even what are obviously some of their favorite pet plans in a really likeable and respectable way before the members start flipping out too much. They communicate, and I think that they care about the community in a personal way more than the staff at a lot of other online community sites.

So, yeah, it's crap that we can't back up our inventories and they won't do it for us, and that LL doesn't replace stuff that goes missing. Some days I wonder why I put up with this crap . . . I ask my friends if maybe they'd like to pull up stakes and go be Wookies. But I'd have to put up with some kind of crap at any online community site, and I see these Lindens trying especially hard. So, I put up with it and enjoy the site despite it, and hope the Lindens will eventually get a handle on things.

Very true, if and only if you notice it has disappeared and remember where you got it and the vendor is still active.

'Twould be better not to have things disappear. You may say I'm a dreamer...

For me it would really depend on the item in question. I almost always err on the side of trusting people, but I've also been burned. I have no hard fast rules so if you've lost anything of mine don't hesitate to talk to me about it. I keep records of all my skins sales going back over the past year. Clothing I don't keep records on, but it's also inexpensive so not a big deal. I'd just rather not put out a blanket invitation for free clothes

Agreed. I don't have a database, so for me, it has to be 30 days or rely on my memory. Certainly the really expensive stuff, I have a note of somewhere though. Anyways, as of this month, a database of transactions will be set up for this purpose. It's a shame (as has been said) that it's necessary.

Fortunately, secondserver/gigas sales and sl-exchange keep seperate records... that makes that a little easier.

Thank you April, you are a great friend *hugs*.

Good News for me.
My Partner didn't tier down and he's not quitting yay. But we replaced all but one item. We couldn't find the vendor any more for that one thing. We decided not to contact the vendors because we both feel that it's just not their repsonsiblity to replace something that was not faulty or destroyed by any action of theirs. We went and bought every piece, and found a suitable replacement for the missing piece. We spent nearly 10k.

I don't expect reimbursement from linden labs...I didn't the first time and I don't now. What I expect is recourse and redundancy! I just think that they've been up and operating for quite awhile now...in that time why didn't they implement a back up system. It just doesn't make sense... they could have sacrificed a few servers for back and redundancy...they are talented programmers and there is cost effective solutions out there if one takes the time to look. So what if a couple of the pg sims weren't available for settlement! (just kidding we live in PG)

Linden Labs don't realize what they cost me tonight, they cost me stress with my in game partner ( who is my real life love ), they cost me an additional 10k on items I've already owned once, and because my partner was so livid at the lack of what he thought was adequate recourse, and wanted to sell aour land and tier down...my home that was NEARLY finish is gone. (At least I have some of it backed up in a folder and can put it back to friday of last week). Such a hassle for something they should have foresaw and addressed long before Wednesday.

Thanks everyone for your offers to repair. If I purchased from you again tonight... just know we appreciate your business. Good night everyone!!

Just to let you know that if you bought anythng from me, let me know and I will replace it for you.