Merchant Issue Resolution

Is there any official way to file a complaint against an SL Merchant? I recently spent 8000L for some merchandise with an SL Merchant and never received the merchandise. This occurred on 6/21, and since then, I have sent 5 IM's as well as 4 notecards to the merchant (In case IMs were capped) and received no response.

At best this is poor customer service, at worst fraud.

I am still looking for a peaceful resolution to the problem, and thus am not divulging the merchant in question here. I am open to suggestions on how to advance this issue however short of wearing a sandwich board sign and standing in front of his property <grin>.

I am sad to say that there is likely no resolution of this.

The likely fault is actually with Linden Lab, not the merchant - it is possible that the merchant deliberately conned you, but more likely the merchant's object did try to give you the object but the asset server failed to deliver it properly.

Unfortunately the TOS you agreed to in order to use Second Life basically said that you have no recompense for loss caused by Linden Lab's errors.

However, try sending the merchant a notecard instead of an IM (their IMs may be capped). Most will indeed give you a replacement product if they can see the transaction on their transaction list.

Could also be that the merchant is not available. I know at least one maker of popular avatars who wound up on military assignment in a foreign country, where he can't access SL. He has some people who have tried to keep his vendors going, but he himself is rarely available to log in.

The best you can do, really, is to patiently keep trying to contact the merchant. As someone else stated, in most cases these failed deliveries are NOT the fault of the merchant, and in many cases they are not even aware of a failure until the customer successfully contacts them.

I agree that this is most likely a case of a vendor error of not delivering the merchandise. Those things happen. My larger complaint is with the merchant in general for not responding to any IMs or Notecards that I have sent.

As one person indicated, it may be that the merchant is not available and has not been logged on in the last two weeks. As this is a very popular merchant, well known in SL, I don't think that this is the case, but it is possible.

Unfortunatly this will cause me to become more sensitive to purchasing from merchants that do not explicitly state their policies and response times up front. I have had some very VERY good experiences, and most SL merchants have bent over backwards to make their customers happy.

As an open request to all merchants...if you are indeed going to be unavailable for any significant period, posting a notice in your shop to that effect would be a very customer friendly thing to do.

Be sure that you include a cut 'n paste of your transaction history showing the purchase.

This makes merchants feel a little more favorably inclined to claims of "I didn't get my stuff".

Have you tried joining one of the merchant's groups to see if you can find their last logged in time? Or maybe if they have some instructions in their profile on how to contact them? That is a bit strange to not respond but I've seen people drop off SL for several weeks at times and come right back.

The merchant groups is a good idea, I'll check that out and see what I can learn. Thanks. As to the comment about the transaction history, I'm including that in the notecard that I've been sending them on a daily basis.

Denrael, did you make sure you didn't accidentally mute the merchant? It's surprisingly easy to do that.

Communications are also so crappy lately. I'm getting many IMs going un-sent, and inventory deliveries too.

On the other hand, if a merchant is selling something for 8K, I say shame on them if they aren't making darn sure that thing is working all the time. If they have to leave SL then take the vendor out, I don't care how noble their reason for leaving. I guess the principle is the same for any price, but still, 28 bucks is something I'd make a stink about in RL too.

Yes, I have to endorse this, as a creator it's happened to me so many times, someone doesn't get their item because they have accidentally muted me. They send an IM and or notecard, I reply back, never knowing they can't see my reply. I've gone 5 or 6 rounds with people before figuring out finally they had me muted.

Please check your Mute List, Make sure they aren't on it. Top Menu Bar: View-> Mute List