Failed Purchases, how do you tell if it's truth or scam?

Hi,
I've only recently started selling in Second Life, and I've noticed I often get people claiming they bought things from my vendor, but never recived the item. Now I can check the sales history on the vendor and see they paid, and I can check my Transaction history (eventually) and see I recieved the money. But how do I know if they really didn't get the item, or are just saying they didn't, to get a second free one (my items are No Copy/Trans). If it happened maybe once in a great while I wouldn't worry, but when someone buys 3-4 items and says they received none of it, I start getting suspicious. Oh, And Im using the free HiroVendor System, could that be the issue? I need some real advice. TIA

Have you tested it yourself? Buy from your own vendor (it will debit you, then credit you). Did you recieve your item as expected? Have a trusted friend try it (spot them the money to do it).

Is your vendor up to date? Those freebie Hiro vendors have been around almost a year now. Maybe you picked up an older version? Some SL updates have been known to break vendors in the past. AubreTec just sent out new vendors last night to us authorized Aubretec merchants to replace broken and/or hacked vendors.

Personally, i prefer the Moopf Murphy vendors. They put the least amount of lag, for a vendor, on the sim and have the ability to sell an item and deliver it to someone else as a gift. And they seem to be the most reliable.

addendum:
Look in your transaction history. You can have it display transactions where you give an object to someone. So you should see the transaction where so-n-so gives you money, and another transaction where you give so-n-so, such-n-such object

It will look like this (this is from my own account history showing someone "buying" for zero, some freebies that i set out). Buyers name altered to comply with forum policy:

114 188099189 Object Sale 0 2007-02-16 11:08:23 LCK 2.0 Turbo package John Doe xxxxx
115 188099119 Object Sale 0 2007-02-16 11:08:17 LCK v2.0 Open Source John Doe xxxxx
116 188099022 Object Sale 0 2007-02-16 11:08:09 LCK 2.1b11 Open Source (Multi-Blade) John Doe xxxxx

114 = the history ID number
118099189 = the transaction ID number
"object sale" = the type of transaction
0 = the amount of L$ that i recieved for the item (in the credit column)
date and time of transaction are self explanatory
"LCK 2.0.... Package" = the item they bought
"John Doe" = who bought it
xxxxx = my balance

The buyer will have an account history showing the transaction too. Have them notecard their account history for that period and send it to you. Unfortunately you cannot verify if they got the object. Only that they paid.

This is an example of the buyer's transaction, again from my own history:

181 184799270 Object Sale 1500 2007-02-13 19:01:03 Blaze* Bundle - All 5 RadioActive Dresses Jane Doe xxxxx

"Jane Doe" = who I paid
1500 = how much I paid (the diff is this appears in the debit column)


During periods of high lag, SL sometimes can fall behind. I recall some months back buying some gestures from Kurt Ludd's. I never got them. Kurt warned me of the transaction lag. My purchases arrived an hour later or so (15 minutes after Kurt personally replaced them, because he thought that it was taking too long even with the lag). Have your customer check again. Did your vendor delivered the item to his "objects" directory of his inventory? or did it create a new folder and deliver to that?

Make sure your customer is looking for the right name. "::Jane Does:: Red Dress" will not appear in the same location as "Jane Doe's Red Dress" (those ":" marks and other characters will sort it to the top, not alphabetical by the name).

I hoped this helped you

Product delivery is a bitch right now. I just had a purchase go south from a very reliable merchant. Paid my money, watched my L$ balance drop, then... nothing... And yes, I verified before clicking on Pay that the merchant name and product info and price were all correct on the dialog. No one was intercepting the purchase with a transparent prim.

I stayed around for 5 min or so, hoping for a delayed delivery, then notified the store manager, who all but lives in that store, and logged off to get back to work. Maybe it will show up when I log back on, maybe not...

Three other purchases in the same store sailed right through with no delays, but were on a different vending system. The shoes are a partner of the store who has his own vendors.

I'm not worried about getting my stuff. The store has a steller reputation for customer service. But I can assure you that failed deliveries have been a problem for a LOT of merchants the last few weeks, and it is NOT a scam. It's SL being it's usual, flaky, buggy self.

Usually - they got the item, but just cant find it in their inventory. I find this true with alot of newer players who aren't educated yet with our wonderful inventory system. Teach them how to search for items.

This isn't always the case, however. The missing deliveries that I have had recently were just that - absolutely nothing added anywhere in inventory, and either a silent failure or a 'transaction could not be completed because it timed out" error.

Asset transfers and object rezzing have both been very iffy of late - especially if there are 20K+ people concurrently logged on!

Best advice I can offer, if it was a no-transfer item, and if you can see the purchase in your transaction log on the website or in whatever records your vending system produces, then believe your customer, replace the item, and reap the benefits of a great reputation for customer service.

If it was a no-copy, transferrable item, I'd believe them the first time, and after that would have to take it on a case by case basis of they said something failed to rez for them.

Yes, I've seen delivery problems lately.

However, the fact that folks know this is happening means it's rife for scams.

If a customer has a problem more than once, consider asking them to come you personally in the future for items. You'll be able to see if they accept the item when you give it to them.

LL: Inventory acceptance should be logged in the object owner's account! This would greatly reduce potential for scams during periods when delivery is unreliable for some reason.

Personally I just give them the products once I've confirmed they did pay for the items; doesn't cost me anything, and it's a hell of a lot simpler than trying to prove whether or not they already received their purchase. If they start asking for the same product multiple times then I will politely explain that I cannot keep giving out free copies of my item forever and I hope they understand, but that's only happened once. Oh, and I do mean multiple copies of a single item; multiple products that failed delivery all at once is not suspicious.

THe blog says that there have been problems with the email which has been cuasing vendors to malfunction.

THat explains your problem/

Thanks everyone for all of your feedback. Yes, I've checked the vendors and they do work. I was hoping there was a way to find out if the item was accpeted or not, but I guess as many have said, I'll just have to err on the side of caution and resolve these issues in the name of good customer service. To Rocketman, the vendor I use isn't networked, it doesn't rely on Email at all, it just gives an item out of it's inventory. Thanks for the alternate Vendor suggestion Stephanie, I'll check into that.

I think this is also happening with non vendors. I had a customer today who bought directly from a rezzed out item set to sell copies of itself; he paid but failed to receive the item in his inventory. Asset/db servers remains semi borked I think

It seems there is a issue with XMLRPC lagging out. I am experiencing issues with our vender (I run the Aventity avatar vender) It seems to be general internal lag that sl always has but its getting worse.

Correct. The case I saw was with an unscripted box set to sell contents. Money transferred but no article received. There were two of us working on vending, and we had several failures with each others' boxes. It was a bad SL day in general, though, and things have since seemed to clear up. IIRC, LL did report asset server problems around the time of the failures.

IIRC, a common problem was that the transfer took too long. Sometimes the money transfer would fail, and sometimes that would succeed but the object transfer would then fail. There was a clear error message on the money transfer failure, but (IIRC) not for the object transfer failure.

I only use basic "buy" boxes but have still had "failed" transactions.

When SL is groaning under the strain of it all, these can be stale requests, and no buy happened. Sometimes though, the items were sold successfully but the customer didn't know where to look (a newly created folder in inventory for example), or the items would only show after quitting and logging in again. I sell most stuff as copy/no trans, so if I see a payment in my transactions, it's no hardship to send another box along. It also means doing refunds on duplicate buys (due to confusion over the lag problems) isn't hard either.

I have lost several products I have bought.
And I was confronted with sellers who don't give the item again.
Simple solution: I will not buy from them any more.

Other sellers did replace the objects I lost: I will recommend them to everyone!

Latest disaster was a beautiful gown. It came packaged in a non-copy box.
I dragged it from my inventory to the ground (in my own house!).
Result: SL reported "Unable to rez an object"
And it was gone, lost forever!
L$ 450 down the drain.
I cannot blame the seller for this.
Filing a bug report won't get me my gown back.

Events like these make me loose confidence in SL

Two days ago I was looking at transactions and one was missing some data. I thought, "Hmmm." Sure enough, that person contacted me and I was glad to give her the things she had paid for. It's rare that you have direct evidence, though. Mostly it's best just to trust. How distressing it would be to buy something and not receive it1

I don't mind IM's telling me that someone didn't receive a purchase. Heck, I didn't mind it when the person paid into the wrong vendor which didn't send their item along.. (That was MY fault, I misnamed the items in it and I sent the correct/wanted item along). Just be polite about it. Telling me I suck because one didn't receive the item is just silly. I have proof of purchase, which is all I need, even if I have to swap viewers to check it.

I've had this happen a few times. Once when one of my JEVN servers completely hung up. It would take the money but then could not communicate with the server to deliver the items. In that case my transaction history showed the money but the server logs showed nothing. I just asked what the customer bought and sent it to them along with a freebie for their trouble.

In the other instance it was because of the e-mail problem LL just fixed and I was able to verify the transaction the same way. If however I see the money AND I see the server delivered the item and they say they don't have it I usually just send them exactly the same item as shown in the server logs. Since my items are no transfer, no mod and copy me sending another copy to them is not a big deal.

I have had a few instances where they believed they had purchased the item but when I directed them to their transaction history to get me the transaction ID they found that in fact they had not paid after all.

Probably the most bizarre one I had was an IM from a user complaining that they just got a box and no shoes and that they would report me if I didn't give them their shoes! After a little investigation (including a couple more threats and a nasty reponse that they knew what they were doing followed by them promptly wearing the box) I was able to determine that the person had not rezzed the box and then opened it to get the contents.

In all cases (except the box wearer) I have also given them a little something extra. I figure its good customer service and encourages them to come back or at least share my stores name with others.

I've also had a lot of repeat business from all of the ones the I helped (including the box wearer) which I attribute to giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Exactly my thoughts Ceera! The good rep you get from it far out weighs any potentially lost revenue. I've had people IM me that they were referred by someone else and have always found that person in my history somewhere.

apparrently a lot of the noobs are using "First Look" (newer is better, right?) well at least one vendor I know has reason to beleive that FL may be causing some of these missed transactions (somehow?)... she's had ENOUGH reason to think this, that she's erected a door spammer that informs people coming in that FL may cause purchase issues.

And in my experience doing tech support, I'm seeing a LOT of people using the beta client.. who have no business doing so. 3 day old noobs who can't get the box off their head, should NOT be using FirstLook!

LL needs a big Banner on the download page saying this

The default attach point was changed from head to right hand quite a few updates back. Whoever talks about "boxes on head" instead of "boxes on hand" isn't a newbie .

Actually no it doesn't. Most vendors don't work via emails. And the Hiro vendors CERTAINLY don't. In fact ... how did you get email issues into affecting vendors .. ummm .. I'm still confused actually lol

Heres one thing to check ... before you rez an object make sure that if the land you are on is deeded to a group, either because your renting or because you set your land to a group, that you activate that group first. This has happened to me many times. Normally what ACTUALLY happens to your item then is it gets pushed off-world or into the corner of the SIM. Chatting to Help Request normally resolves this and sometimes if you wait long enough it magically returns anyways.

Otherwise, if this is not the case, contact the seller, often people are far nicer than you know and they will gladly resend you the dress anyways. Its happened to my fiance before, and thwy are normally very good ... believe me, people understand with the way SL acts up sometimes.

I KNOW. Triple post .. i DOOOOO apologise



Is there no way the developers of the vendors can confirm delivery of items and if delivery does not happen refund the customer?

There are big problems with a lot of UK users with the main viewer in the evenings due to isp restrictions, First Look doesn't have the problem. Why don't they have business using the client which has been publicly advertised?