degrading messages from kona linden

I was wondering if any residents have gotten degrading messages from Kona Linden for writing abuse or bug reports? here is the degrading messages i got for simply reporting what we , several of is residents thought, was a bug or someone abusing our inventory. simple bug and abuse report on behave of several of us.
below is a copy of the email response i got from him my original message is below it.
************************************************
From Kona Linden:

Julianna,

It would help us tremendously if you can write coherent
sentences. It's
very difficult to understand your reports if have poorly written
reports
and lack of specific details.

What exactly is the name of the object that has gone missing?
What do
you mean "someone accepted something out of my inventory"? What
occurred
that made you think that? How can we confirm this is a bug if
you
refuse to explain in detail what exactly is the issue you're
having?

I've told you several times how to type a proper report, but as
of yet,
you've refused to cooperate. If we can't reproduce your
incident and
you don't give us specific names of items you claim have gone
missing,
how do you expect us to provide you with effective assistance?

Also, try re-reading your reports before sending them and make
sure
you're not using run-on sentences & bad grammar so we can
understand
what you're trying to say. We'd like to help, but you're not
giving us
the information we need. Try calling customer support if that's
easier
for you: 800.860.6990.

Kona


Your original support request:
------------------------------
well it happend again someone accepted something out of my
inventory there as no name on it. who is doing this a linden
perhaps? a bug insl that has not been fixed, or someone who has
access. yes we have passwords but there are people way hi up there
that i do believe have the power to covert our inventory to the
next version of sl and all so what is it guys you or a bug? well
it just happened again just to let you know
**********************************************************

i am merely here reporting a bug and an abuse report after it happened to so many residents over a long period of time. all i was requesting is that the lindens look into it. is not that the purpose of having the bug and abuse reports? to alert the Lindens of such things? then why do i get such a degrading message from a Linden , Kona , specifically like this one above??

It may be just me, but I don't see anything degrading about her reply. I'm not trying to make it look like I'm taking sides, I'm just being honest with you. I would get very frustrated too (and I do) if I can't decipher someone's writing. I read the report you sent her and I couldn't understand it either. It doesn't make sense to me. People are different and some are better at writing, others are better at speaking. It seems to me that you're the latter. Therefore it's best for you to try and call that number where you can speak to someone directly Good luck Julianna.

Well your original message made no sense to me either and from what Kona wrote back...it seems you have done it before. You need to provide more details about a bug and in a readable manner. He may have been having a bad day and maybe received several reports such as yours. It is rather hard to help someone if they are not clear on what the problem is.

I can understand Kona's difficulty with Julianna's bug/abuse report. I would need to ask a lot of questions to understand it, though I can make a *guess* that she's getting messages along the lines of "[blank] has accepted Object from you."

Were I an HR professional however I would give Kona a serious coaching about customer service behavior, however. It's imperative that someone in that position remain positive and helpful, asking questions when something isn't clear, rather than complain about poor grammar and punctuation.

I got a couple of those yesterday myself (not messages from Kona). When you get a "blank) accepted your inventory offer" message I'm about 99% sure it's legitimate and is someone accepting an inventory item you gave them, but they haven't logged in for a while and several days have passed since you sent the item.

As for your exchange with Kona he did sound a little frustrated, but in all fairness your bug report wasn't very clear. Bug reports should be clearly written with just the facts of exactly what happened and the context in which they happened. About 90% of your bug report was unnecessary information that kinda muddled it and made it confusing. He did have a point. One thing a bug report should absolutely not be is emotional. The only part of your bug report that explains what happened and should have been included was "someone accepted something out of my inventory there as no name on it." You have to admit that's not very clear.

I couldn't understand anything in that bug report and it seems Kona was very polite in suggesting if you had a hard time with written reports you call and talk to someone rather than write it. It could be worse they could just ignore bug reports they don't understand.

I agree this is a very snarky and demeaning reply. It's just improper in a customer-service business to be allowing these kinds of letters to go out. I've also had people bearing the "Linden" title snap at me, make cutting remarks, imply that I'm going to be AR'd etc. Now I'm a cantankerous individual. So I cut them a lot of slack, because I know they are often just telecommuters working a tough shift for not-much pay, just trying to polish their resumes and move on to greater glory. But I, too, have had really curt and even nasty replies from people I've typed one innocent sentence to, like "Could you do X" or "Y isn't working" or "But that's because of Z..."

I think telecommuters, working late hours maybe on top of another job or school, are going to get snappish and their day/night in front of the terminal wears on. They need to figure out whether this system of telecommuters is really working, whether a CS-intensive game like this, with such a steep learning curve, needs to make use of more qualified and better-trained labour than old players working for free as live helpers and still older players transmogrifying into Lindens, replete with old-boy/girl networks that are often a hindrance in this game.

Yes, there's also the factor that some Lindens are merely older players who've wangled a job at Linden Labs either as telecommuters or even in the office, more often the former, and this elevation in their status over other players often prompts them to behave arrogantly and badly.

On the other hand, this Linden is correct, that if you haven't given him the name of the object or tried to reproduce the bug for him, you aren't helping at all. The bug reports have to be really, really terse and clear and answer the five Ws of who/what/when/where/how. I'm not sure how you could make a run-on sentence in those tiny AR windows however.

To an extent, I sympathize with Kona merely because I've had utterly exaspering customers who are completely impervious to your simple instructions to them of how to help themselves. Their default mode seems to be one of entitlement, and rank suspicion that each and every thing happening to them is a "bug" or "someone getting into my account" instead of rooted in their own actions, about which they may be unaware.

Let me hypothesize about what I think is happening to you with this seeming "stealing of inventory" from your own account, something I don't think is physically possible in the game -- but someone could correct me on this.

Sometimes I will send out invitations to an event, or have some new item I'd like to send copies of to some friends and customers. So I sit and pull up their profiles, and drag an item on to their profile. If they are not online, I drag the item into the profile and it accepts the inventory and leaves it sitting for them to accept when they do come online.

If I'm sending out several of these, I might accidently drag my inventory on to somebody's profile who has a similar name to my friend or just by accident even drag it on to somebody on a lot I'm at or a similar error.

That gives rise then to a seemingly alarming phenomenon whereby days later -- sometimes weeks later depending on when the person logs on -- I suddenly get a message 'HAS ACCEPTED YOUR INVENTORY'. Suddenly, it seems like somebody is "grabbing into" my inventory. A complete stranger is grabbing my inventory! But it is just an accident, a server delay, or a later log-in -- a person I mistakenly dragged something to on a lot, or in a multiple-mailing is suddenly getting it much later.

Having said that, I do want to point out that a significant bug in the game in recent days is the total borking of the messages you leave for people offline, and I assume, the inventory passes offline. Because people aren't getting them, and sometimes they all slew in at once.

I don't think anybody, even using the new version of SL, has the power to reach into your account and grab your inventory. However inventory passes, accidently or on purpose, do not always accounce a name when received. When the person is online, yes, it gives their name. But when they are offline, no, it gives NO name when performing this function if you don't have their calling card (I think that's the tie-in).

Hope that helps.

There are faults to be found in both of your communiques.

Your complaint is of no use to a technical troubleshooter whatsoever. I also find it strange that the last half of it seems to allude to a Linden conspiracy that is out to delete your objects. (Or is it? I can't really understand it at all.) If I were a Linden, I'd probably just delete the complaint without replying.

To be fair, Kona Linden's reply did lack tact in the sense that he was unable to tell you that you're a clueless user without actually saying that you're a clueless user. Good customer service provides reassurance (tell the clueless that their opinions matter), education (teach them by example how to file a complaint), and persistence (don't get frustrated and remain professional).

So to recap -- you appear to be a clueless user who is torturing customer support and Kona, who has to deal with your odd complaints, is losing patience and getting grumpy. This is a standard customer-support issue and doesn't qualify even remotely as degrading speech.

~Ulrika~

Interesting, Prokofy; I hadn't thought of the not-possessing-the-calling-card theory of why you get the "blank) accepted your inventory offer" message, but it makes sense to me. I've had this happen a number of times myself. And, like Prokofy said, I seriously doubt that anybody will "co[n]vert our inventory" into some other "version of sl" without our consent.

Kona Linden has been less than cordial to me , not at all useful, and displays an inability to comprehend the meaning of short, simple sentences that have been repeated a great number of times.

I'm sure I'm glad I'm not in Kona's position

But yes, I worked on support teams, and I even managed a few small support teams in my professional life - never at the scale of Linden Lab, though. Luckily, being over in Europe, politically correctness is not necessarily a prime requisite for answering back to customers.

Julianna, I only wonder how you are able to write such well-articulated posts on the forums, but strangely your writing skills are lacking when posting a bug report. Nobody is supposed to have a thorough technical training in order to enjoy Second Life and nobody at their support team is expecting you to have a PhD in Computer Science to be able to file a bug report. On the other hand, I think even you may agree that your alleged "bug report" is definitely almost worthless to give you a proper answer:

"well it happend again someone accepted something out of my inventory there as no name on it"

If I hadn't read this thread I certainly wouldn't have understood a word of it. Now I that I read it, I can certainly say this happened to me before. What about simply stating: "I got the blue dialog box telling 'has accepted your inventory' but there was no name on it, is that a problem?" "Nameless" avatar names are usually tied to the user server, which sometimes (it's really rare, but I have had this happening a handful of times) is slow to respond. However, properly identifying *this* is not really easy from your description.

"who is doing this a linden perhaps?"

Why should they do that, and why should they do it sneakily without telling you so? Yes, sometimes the Lindens, to sort out bugs, may do "things to you", but they tell you what's happening. Have you never been teleported by a Linden, for instance? You cannot "avoid" being teleported and it "simply happens". But I've never saw a Linden not warning you beforehand.

And if it happened once (ie. they forgot to tell you what happened), do you sincerely think that they would do it again? Lindens are human beings, last time I checked (and thus make mistakes), but they certainly are not in the business of annoying customers.

"a bug insl that has not been fixed, or someone who has access"

Why do you feel necessary to include that information in a bug report? You're implying things without having any real data. This is like returning from work, finding your door wide open, and going to the FBI telling them that they're guilty of opening your door, because certainly the police has ways of opening everybody's doors or at least giving the proper tools to others so that they invade your home with their consent.

Don't you think that's ridiculous, to say the very least? But you sincerely seem to believe your own words:

"yes we have passwords but there are people way hi up there that i do believe have the power to covert our inventory to the next version of sl "

You may "believe" what you wish, Julianna. You can even believe that Lindens are alien beings from outer space, wanting to intrude in your privacy, and that have set all of this - SL - as a big conspiracy in order to take over the world.

When doing a bug report, your "beliefs" are not interesting for tracking bugs, no matter how much you think they are.

"so what is it guys you or a bug?"

I think that this really shows your attitude, doesn't it? You're not really "after a bug" - you have made up your mind that, for some reason, Linden Lab wants to be after your inventory (for it contains "valuable items" and are confronting them with yet another "clue" that will ultimately make them reveal themselves as the Evil Masterminds that we all know they are.

Well, as said, this is just like going to the police with pictures of your door wide open and asking them: "I *believe* you open other people's homes, so, was it you this time or somebody else?"

Strangely enough, you finish your post with:

"i am merely here reporting a bug and an abuse report after it happened to so many residents over a long period of time. all i was requesting is that the lindens look into it. is not that the purpose of having the bug and abuse reports? to alert the Lindens of such things? then why do i get such a degrading message from a Linden , Kona , specifically like this one above??"

Yes, that's precisely the purpose of bug reporting - you're quite right. That's the reason it exists: to alert the Lindens that some things are wrong for some reason, and kindly ask them to look into them. However, what you sent was not a bug report, but just a pretext to point the Lindens towards the Big Conspiracy you happen to "believe" in.

You think Kona sent you a "degrading message"? Well, the only "degrading bit" I've read was:

"I've told you several times how to type a proper report, but as of yet,
you've refused to cooperate. If we can't reproduce your incident and
you don't give us specific names of items you claim have gone missing,
how do you expect us to provide you with effective assistance?"

So, we learn that not only Kona has several times taught you how to properly file a bug report - trying to make you understand what a bug report is, and not what you "believe" it is - but you persist in your "style" of Linden attacks, apparently. Kona couldn't be more direct. If you don't provide them with facts that they can't reproduce, how can they help you out? By magic? Telepathy? I don't think so. But Kona provided an alternative: just call them on the phone and try to explain them what's your problem.

Also, it's not particularly nice to post a personal answer from Kona Linden in the forums without his authorization.

For myself, I think Kona was too nice. He has so many messages to keep track every day, and he has spent half an hour replying to your message, giving a thorough explanation of what you need to do in order to file a proper bug report, and giving alternate ways of doing so (like phone calls). Yes, he probably was angry. Yes, I'd agree that the best way would be to ignore "yet another Conspiracy Theory report" and simply answering "I'm sorry, we couldn't understand properly what the bug report was about. We need more facts to be able to reproduce it. Could you rephrase that more clearly?" and that would be all. The trouble Kona had in answering shows me not only his frustration (since it wasn't the first time) but a detailed answer for you to get - once more - the proper guidelines in writing a good bug report, that could actually be used for something.

Well, and what do *I* have to do with this? I'm just angry myself. I now understand what the tech support team has to go through every day, and why they're slow in answering to "serious" bug reports. With the launch of 1.6.0, 1.6.1 and 1.6.2, I imagined that LL was beeing flooded with many bug reports, and thus, I have put my own "standing" bug reports on hold for a while, just letting them answer to the ones that are more demanding - the ones I found out, just affect perhaps 5 or 10% of the SL residents, and I thought they were addressing the Big Ones, who affect all or almost all the residents. Instead it seems that they're just having trouble to deal with tons of useless bug reports, angry replies, Conspiracy theories, and people abusing their patience and professional attitude.

I'm really, really sorry to know that.

Wow Gwyneth. That was perfect and precise. I really hope Julianna reads that one

For those not quite clear on the issue Julianna didn't quite report very well, I tried to clear it up in the hotline here:

/invalid_link.html

By the way, I'm pretty sure it's not linked to having the person's calling card, because I've had the issue happen pretty much exclusively with people whose card I have (pre 1.6, when card meant friend). I'm not sure about the suggestion above that this happens when the person is not logged in, because, uh, you kind of need to be logged in to accept inventory. Perhaps if you log in, accept inventory, then log out before the message gets sent, it causes problems.

Uh, when you log in, and accept inventory waiting for you whether you asked for it or not, your acceptance of it comes back to the sender as a message HAS ACCEPTED INVENTORY with no name when the person is offline. When they are offline, it gives their name. What I'm not sure about is whether it gives a name when they are offline and get it, then accept it when they come on.

I guess snarkiness and a condescending attitude is built into Linden customer-service culture?

I would have fully expected an apology from a senior Linden for the overly wordy and nasty tone of Kona's letter to Julianna. I'm really disturbed that there's a failure to see this. It doesn't matter what the technical issues are, it doesn't matter whether Julianna has technical brilliance or capacity or not, the fact is Julianna is a paying customer and requires a polite and matter-of-fact tone in communications with her, not a hectoring, condescending tone such as we see in Koha's letter trying to "set her straight".

I would just like to point out some things.

Since this is program that we can use for fun, and many folks like to enhance their fun with a few chemicals, the support staff is probably having to deal with a great many people who are smashed out of their gourds and this is likely to be quite annoying. Any hostility the support staff may be showing may not be the result of the message they are responding to but rather the cumulative effects of many annoying customers that came before. It doesn't help the person who gets the undeserved piled up anger from the support personnel but it is somthing I can empathize with.

Also the help available to us online and iworl has improved dramatically since a year o so ogo . The support wik has a wealth of info , including now a step by step troubleshooting guide. Both people who are having problems and customers who are helping as mentors, live help, etc. need to check these readily available sources of info, they are improving all the time. Every queston we can answer ourself leaves the support pesonnel more time to deal with more difficult prolems and the more difficult customers .

Wow, Gwyneth, you've got a bad case of what might be called Swedish-hostage syndrome, that is, unable to see when someone is abusive because you've come to love them yourself.

You are utterly justifying the Lindens rude and condescending behaviour in this transaction merely because of your past experience and your engagement with the Lindens now as a long-time player.

You are totally unaware of the nastiness, exasperation, and hectoring that comes into Kona's tone. Any customer service senior expert in the business would take one look at that letter and discipline that employee just for their over-long reply and their tone. It's absolutely inappropriate. And the fact that you had to write a long Prok-like post to justify it is proof!



This is utter baloney, Gwyn. It's condescending -- and surely you didn't mean to be that way because that's not how you are! In fact, her sentence is perfectly understandable to the NORMAL person who isn't HOBBLED by all their "tekkie savvy".



This badly spelled and somewhat-vague message made PERFECT SENSE to me the MINUTE I read it. It was the same problem I had all week "no name on it" was ALL I needed to hear!

I didn't have to get all shirty, complain about her computer and writing skills, and get all fucking aggressive to show I'm a fucking hot-shit tekkie with a kewl job in a fucking GAME.

If Julianna was writing this to me, I would have instantly realized she was talking about that weird phenom where strangers seem to suddenly be sending you messages that say HAS ACCEPTED YOUR INVENTORY with no name. We've had an awful lot of that in the last week as both servers have caught up with trapped mail, and players boxed out of the game with log-in problems are now loggin on.

Geez, that ought to be clear. Kona was rude. A senior Linden should apologize for that tone and instill a better CS culture.

I hate it that Julianna is being second-guessed here by the forum jackals. She may be a complainer, she may be a bad speller, but it makes no difference. She deserves common courtesy.

Why? You are snarky and condecending, yet you never apologize?

Kona Linden tried to look up my skirt

That was not snarkyness. That was exasperation with someone who has posted several bug reports in a poor format, and continues to do so regardless of the fact someone tried to help teach them how to file a proper one.

Got news for you: I've been in the IT industry doing tech support for the past 15 years. Poor consistent documentation of a problem is one of the most regular issues we have to deal with. It usually happens over and over, caused by the same person who cannot be 'bothered' to do it right, even after having the situation explained to them.

This is not the first time they have conversed, and from the looks of it, not the 2nd or 3rd time either.

You go in for slamming your hand a door ten times running to the same doctor, and see if he doesn't get a little snide about you watching what your doing...

What's the point? You only get that reaction FROM PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT THEIR WORK. If she didn't care, she would just reply with something like this:

"Your last bug report was unintelligible, and we were unable to gain useful data from it in order to help you. Please re-send a detailed bug report. Thank you."

If the above is snarky, then this is cold and aloof.


Sorry, but I'm siding with the Linden on this one.

Julianna, I have little sympathy for you especially after reading what you wrote in the Hotline to Lindens forum. You appear to believe that the Lindens are out to get you in general which I think invalidates this whole thread.

Frost, you don't see it, because you are a tekkie in that very world, even given your greater sophistication and gallantry in dealing with CS that I think Kona lacks.

Julianna was clear to me by her badly worded one-line story. Why? Because I drew from my direct experience as a user and linked it to her direct experience as a user, whereas you and others posting here are filtering that experience through a welter of tekki knowledge. Julianna said stuff was getting accepted from inventory which had no name -- instantly clear to me!

Kona could have been firm and aloof. That's OK. But he slammed her writing style and that's just over the top. That's not appropriate. It's too personal and involved. He has to maintain a better personal distance and not get overly involved. A pesky customer like that is usually not dealt with by doing something in writing, because you are more than likely to show your exasperation in writing and they are more than likely to collect it and serve it up in forums.

No written communication from a Lindens should be anything other than the most terse and banal, because otherwise, it gets served up in the forums and they know that, and have to watch this.

You can trust me that whoever supervises these Lindens is having a little talking-to with them on Monday morning asking them not to send verbose and snarky messages to players like this. It's just not a good practice in the CS business.

If they aren't, wow, I'm scared. These people don't know how to do customer service, and I'm a customer! Help!

In fact, in my many years having to deal with the public myself in RL, I have to say that I've never been in a setting where the words "customer service" were shortened to "CS" like "Kentucky Fried Chicken" is now shortened to "KFC" so we don't have to think about how fried and fattening it is.

Tekkies shorten the phrase to CS to make it seem like some other acronymned "bug" or technical problem they have to deal with. I've often heard Lindens speak of "CS" with a bit of a snark in their tone. Customers get in the way of their resume-polishing experience, I realize.

The phrase deserves to be spelled out. CUSTOMER SERVICE.

In America, long live the words of Johnny Wannamaker and other pioneers in retailing:

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

Could it be because I'm not a Linden?

Could it be that I'm not paid to be a Linden?

It just so happens that Julianna was my tenant. And she came to me from some difficult situation, and had some difficulties while in my community with game features or whatever, and developed "CS" problems. They were hard to deal with because she was difficult.

But that doesn't mean she didn't deserve anything but the most patient and full explanations I could muster in dealing with her.

That doesn't mean that she didn't deserve repeated, detailed answers to her continued problems.

She does! She's a customer!

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

Congrats Prok for hijacking yet another thread. Your support for Julianna has been diminished by your obvious need to "bash a Linden" yet again.

Well Julianna I Have To Agree..were Just The Ones Plugging Dollar After Dollar Into This Game Month After Month. What Makes You Think That Any Computer Geek That Works For SL Has The Time Of Day For You ??? Silly Girl!!!

Hmmm, I don't think that I would consider Kona's communications to be degrading messages.

A better example oF a degareadinggg mes)(##s would b