OnRez vs SLExchange

I released my first product this week. What a learning experience.

First, the drop boxes are a pain in the neck. Unreliable, I can understand. This is SL. So, why doesn't OnRez allow you to create backup boxes? Sure, I can create them, but if I enable them I get duplicate listings. And the OnRez box won't function on one of my properties, no way no how, though there is an SLX box right next to it happily delivering stuff.

I'd like to put version numbers in my product names, since I'll be selling/giving away lots of scripted items. OnRez once again is a pain in the neck. SLExchange allows me to edit my listing to point to the new version. OnRez, on the other hand, wants me to create a new listing. Am I missing something?

Oh, and the icons OnRez creates are wonky. I understand they are cropped to be square, but mine are also squished so that there is unused white space. Cropped *and* re-proportioned. I've seen other icons that are like this, but most are correctly cropped. How?

And the damned thing signs me out if I blink too long. And the organization leaves much to be desired.

In short, the OnRez seller interface is clunky as hell.

But I'm selling (for L$0) twice as many items from OnRez as I am from SLX. Go figure. And I do like the touch-to-update on the OnRez box better than the will-update-in-60-seconds for the SLX box.

That's because if I remember correctly On-Rez links to In-world vendors. SLX does not, thankfully.

SLX connects to inworld boxes as well. It's just that SLX allows for multiple boxes, so you can have them in several sims, so you won't get delivery failures if a sim is down. Admittedly, it can be tricky to figure out where a sim is physically located, but it's best to have one in California and one in Texas if at all possible -- that way when half the grid is down you can still deliver product from the half of the grid that's still up.

This isn't the first time this has been asked and yeah, I find it kind of annoying to know that if I have a dropbox go buh-bye in world, that I have to redo all the information. There was an an explanation in the Onrez blog on why it was this way, but it's as a comment.

My OnRez box isn't reporting any problems, but I see people making repeat purchases a few minutes after their first attempt. I'm not sure if they're receiving. Since they aren't paying anything they may be giving up without complaining.

I read on another forum that LL is opening up a second server for communication between inworld objects and websites. Maybe it'll improve the reliability of the boxes. I hope it arrives in a shorter timeframe than, say, mono or havok4.

I pulled all my lindens out of OnRez last week after a series of items I purchased weren't delivered.

I contacted OnRez's customer service and found out that they are sort of misnamed. Largely, the person seems to be there to cut and paste text from the faq. Not even a bit of sympathy. I understand that sometimes they can't actually help directly, but a kind word and an offer to help contact the seller would have been nice.

SLexchange is ugly as original sin, but they deliver what I purchase.

I've not been very impressed with OnRez/SLBoutique, there web-site has always been nicer, but the vendor technology is dreadful. Mine has to reconnect almost daily for no reason =S

As a consumer I´d have to go with SLExchange. Although the OnRez website may be better, the SLExchange customer service is amazing!

Just my 2c, IMHO and YMMV of course

I'll agree, especially since Onrez has taken a page out of the LL book and using the 'ticket' format for requesting support. Oh, and emailing that person listed for support? Opens a ticket with NO human review.

I've had two tickets with Onrez.. one didn't get a response for nearly a week and the other, while it got a response, I didn't get a real answer to my question either. Just that it was a technical problem and they would work on it. Not "Oh, the item didn't really deliver, and we're working on why it listed as a sale," or, "Oops, the item delivered, so we're paying you for it." I'm going to list there.. but I'm not holding out much hope for the support system, since it seems to be ONE person doing the work of 10 and that one has fingers in other pies.

Their withdraw system does seem to work a bit better, however. I can withdraw my L from the webpage and it will take. With SLEx, sometimes that payment in world gets lost, unless you use the in world atm.

Hey guys. I'll alert the Shop.OnRez team to this thread. Sorry to hear that people are having some troubles. I'll see what we can do to get you guys taken care of.

SLEX is better, in-wolrd the delivery of the item is EXACT

Both systems need to make their search functions work properly. I don't need to see 5000 jackets when I search for "straight jacket". Otherwise, SLX wins hands down.

Both systems need to keep 4000 trivial variations of the same crappy item from rendering search results too tedious to view.

Thanks for trying, but I think you are wasting your time. You'll probably end up talking to the same charmer over there I did.

The ONLY way I actually got a response out of OnRez customer service was when I started IM'ing all the sellers I had purchased from on OnRez ever, telling them how crummy the delivery and service was and urging them to leave OnRez. The OnRez customer service person did become MUCH more responsive when she found out I was having a nice two way conversation with Simone.

You shouldn't have to do that sort of thing. All it would have taken was some nice words and an attempt to help me contact the sellers.

Thanks for the feedback raised in this thread. We have been steadily making progress on dealing with some of the transaction failures emerging from Second Life architectural decisions. Both SLX and OnRez were hurt this past month by the XML-RPC bottleneck, but we've both got workarounds in place that should make things a lot smoother. We're pushing LL to implement a new communications system that should make this more bulletproof. There are a few other things about SL and LSL that are frustratingly flaky, but we are doing our best to either work around or talk to LL about how they can be improved. Also keep in mind that when the overall grid has trouble (which you often see in the form of TPs failing, logins closed, inventory transfers not getting through), we will suffer as well. We've had a few bad days of that too.

I also know that it can be frustrating seeing repetitive search results (color variations, etc), and we have been examining different alternative approaches that would not be too burdensome on sellers.

Anya, you are right that when you put a new item with a new name in your dropbox, our system treads that as a new listing. I can see how that gets in the way for your purposes. We'll review and add to our feature request list, although we've got a number of things on our near-term plate right now.

Sioban, there was a period there where we had *way* too many void deliveries. We've made some changes that have driven the rate of void deliveries WAY down, thankfully. You sound a little too angry to come back. Jade Lily, our customer support lead, tries to be as helpful as she can -- it's true that sometimes she has to go back to the developers to get answers, or that there are things (like void delivery problems we were facing and which you experienced) that are being worked on but for which there isn't an immediate fix. In those situations, you may feel like you are getting a non-answer, but Jade really does the best that she can.

OnRez is not perfect yet but it is getting better and better.

Forseti, I'd like to thank you for responding. I just realized *hangs head* that my question wasn't answered in a direct way, but probably was in an indirect. It was an item that had shown up in the sales listing, even though the transaction had failed. Jade DID try her best to give an answer, but without demanding an answer from the customer on whether they got the item or not, it couldn't easily BE answered. Only thing she could really honestly tell me was that it was a technical problem and that it was being worked on.

It was my own fool fault for not turning on notifications of sales, which if this had happened in the SLEx where the system says it fails, but the box tells me it delivered, I'd just email their support, forward both emails and the problem gets resolved.

One thing I will gladly say about Onrez, I've never had a L withdraw fail.. I just thought I did once.

I have to say that the first post here was the absolute opposite of all the posts I've seen on the subject, something which made me laugh. Usually people say "OnRez has a nice interface but I don't sell anything like what I do on SLX".

I make no bones about being a fan of ShopOnRez, but it clearly is not perfect. I have made a few suggestions myself, and reliability is always something that can be tweaked. And one thing that is definitely needed is better sales statistics - one can't even filter out free item sales (which makes the sales reports a bit worthless for me!)

I think if ShopOnRez is to become something that people use in preference to SLX, rather than just as another shopping site, it will be added extras. For instance, ShopOnRez allows one to easily create in-world networked vendors, which is very valuable - why bother buying and maintaining an in-world system as well as web shopping boxes? Add things like an automatic product update service and a notification list for a particular store that doesn't need groups (these are simple to make, but annoying to configure) and you have a system that provides tangible benefits over the alternatives.

Imagine, for instance, if there was an option to subscribe to a particular seller, via email or RSS, and see whenever they put a new item on the system. That would be relatively simple and also intensely useful for those with favourite designers.

Raudf - you had a transaction fail but it showed up in the transaction history as delivered (and not void)? Yes, I would like us to look into that more. We're trying to do whatever we can to make things more bulletproof.

Ordinal - we do already support RSS feeds for new items for a seller. If you go to a seller's storefront (just click on their hyperlinked name), you will see the RSS feed icon in the top left. Your feed is here:

http://shop.onrez.com/feed/store/Ordinal_Malaprop

I was very pleased when OnRez won Second Style's poll comparing the two ecommerce sites, but there is a lot about the OnRez service which needs to be improved and I feel like we've barely scratched the surface at making a site and service people can unanimously rave about. One foot after the other!

Not exactly. What happened is that it showed up as a "recent sales," but void in the transaction history. SLEx had a bad problem with the website saying the purchase had failed, but the item would still deliver. So, I'd get an email notification from the website of the failure, but the box would send me an message saying it had delivered.. I just wouldn't get my payment. I don't know/understand enough about how Onrez works, so I felt it might be the same kind of issue, except that I don't have the notification turned on for Onrez and it hasn't happened since.