Sorry LL But Tier Will Be Late

OK do you think Lindens would understand if I told them that tier was late because of lack of funds, due to transactions in game not working properly at time.
OK so i'm griping about LL, but I'm sick of hearing how please don't do transaction at this time as there is ia problem.
Some of us depend on transactions working. when the game is down well it does affect us.
Sales were actually up for a bit, but with the recent issues in game I'm suspecting they will go down again.
I really do hate bitching about LL but I want transactions to work...dont think i'm asking too much.
Sexy Partridge

No.

I sure understand your frustration.

Maybe LL even does, but they still are gonna be money grubbing after your tier fees.

The way things have been crap lately -- it seems like 7 or 8 days in a row of borked transactions and gridwide "Don't Buy Nuthin!" announcements from LL -- they darn well should understand. Except the billing dept. have probably never been inworld and won't understand or probably care cos that's not their department.

Good luck Sexy - hopefully things will calm down soon... maybe the havoc4 team can go tackle the asset servers once they've finished h4. At least they seem genuinely concerned about what residents are experiencing.

-Atashi

The daily "no transactions" are becoming really annoying, but it shouldn't affect sales. All it should do is postpone them. People are still going to want what the things when the all clear is given.

I'd agree, if it were maybe once a week that they closed transactions. But when it's daily, you're now potentially postponing those sales a week, 8 days, and that's long enough for people to forget they wanted to buy the thing in the first place. So long as LL don't mind that tier will be 'postponed' a week because it's 'unsafe to perform transactions', then I guess all's fair.

-Atashi

You go hunting for something for an event, find it but can't buy, well once it straightens event is over.
You are out exploring and find something you think might be fun, well again can't buy.
No transactions at this time definetely kills those impulse buys. heck most of my purchases are impulse.

and here we go again...game hosed

A friend of mine just opened a store, and right when the message from SL came, a first customer arrived to buy an item but because of the problems, she couldn't. She never came back. It's obvious that for smaller stores it DOES make a huge difference. Large stores can use their big name to benefit here but smaller stores are easily forgotten.

Nope. You're not asking too much. As images of happy shoe shoppers are displayed at regular intervals on the index page of the Second Life web site Linden Lab has an obligation to actually support it's product. It has to work. Transactions actually have to go through on an ongoing and continuous basis. Otherwise the shoe shopping image needs to have a caption of: "Enjoy your outrage at purchasing prim shoes that are never delivered thanks to borked transactions. Join Second Life!"

However, it's unlikely that LL will ever let that level of reality with the chronic and repeated problems with the SL product creep into their marketing materials.

So... what to do...

You need to scale back your tier level to the bare minimum needed to maintain your enterprise and to also maintain enough Linden dollars in reserve to cover your expenses in the (likely) event of borked transaction problems in the future.

You cut your expenses and built a reserve? Fantastic. Now to let Zero Linden (the finance guy) know why you cut the amount you're willing to spend on the Second Life product and that this also has the limiting effect of fewer Linden dollars sloshing around in the economy due to having to maintain a reserve. Hopefully (and, gosh. I do mean hopefully) Zero will, in turn, let someone on the support and development sides of the product know that repeated problems result in paying customers taking money off the table which, also in turn, decreases revenue (and potential profits) for Linden Lab.

Ok, I withdraw what I said about the faults postponing sales. The daily occurence lately is >>>REALLY<<< pissing me off, but I've always told myself that people will still want the things after the all clear. It's true to some extent, though not always.

Should'nt be a problem ..

[Update 14:25 PM] Second Life is still down. We expect to have a backup system online shortly.


Just tell them you'll have paymentt to them "shortly" ..

If they contnue yo mither ..

Tell them "You expect to have payment within 10 minutes" ..

That should put them off the scent for at least an hour.

( Ensure you have "Repiles" turned off )

Some very helpful SL friends essentially gave me this advice when I first went into business. It was so tempting those first couple of weeks, with L$ flowing in that you didn't have to purchase yourself, to go shopping and have fun.

I have kept very detailed sales records from Day 1 and after this advice was given, I started listing what tier was due each week and carried that out on a calendar in Excel so that I could see exactly how long I could go on my latest balance. Since I rent on a private sim by the week, it's fairly easy to be flexible with the amount of parcels I own and to let them go if needed. My current goal is to have at least on month's tier (actually 5 weeks worth) in reserve.

Sadly, this week after reviewing my ongoing sales, I found that I dipped below that 5 week level. I cleaned up a bit and let one parcel go. Doesn't affect SL directly, but the sim owner now has another parcel to put out for rent.

Since I pay tier every Sunday, next weekend, I'll review and decide what decision to make then. Fortunately, the parcels I do have now are more than sufficient to run my business. If needed, I could move some stuff around and let two or three more go.

Of course it hurts sales. Across the board sales, all the way down the line sales; everybody's sales. Impulse purchases, planned purchases, casual purchases - purchases period.

Even worse, unpredictible purchase results erodes consumer confidence, and lowers the desire to even log in and play.

coco

Any of the old timers remember the big update we had in '06 that broked EVERY thing? lol I bet this coming monday with the new sim software.. we get to relive that lol

I remember well ..

Q .. did the big (broken) updates end ?

In June of 05 when 1.6 came out ... EVERYTHING was grey for most of a day.

She's an old-time ambassador
Of sweet talking, night walking games
And she's known in the darkest clubs
For pushing ahead of the dames
If she says she can do it
Then she can do it,
she don't make false claims
But she's a Queen,
and such are queens
That your laughter
is sucked in their brains
Now she's leading him on
And she'll lay him right down
But it could have been me
Yes, it could have been me
Why didn't I say,
why didn't I say, no, no, no

She don't make false claims ?

Colette .. why you try to hide your online status ?

Like Duh !!!

Just had to bump this one so I could write QFT.

It definitely puts a damper on my spending. Where in the past I would try and return to buy something if I couldn't get through, but now i usually don't bother. I occasionally make take a landmark and go back, but usually I just move on.

As a former SL shopahollic, I would say that if I go to a shop and find I cannot make the transaction I am VERY likely to go off and do something else and it it unlikely that I would return to try again. I think I have only returned to the shop the next day once in my whole time in SL.

The other thing that has affected my spending is that items have disappeared from my inventory, or fail to rez and disappear and never come back to me. (And it is never the junk items, or maybe I don't notice - always the most expensive ones.)

This has happened on a nuimber of occasions and on more than one Sim. (If it was only in one place I could accept that it might have been an old server, struggling - but it happened several places, both mainland and islands) and EACH TIME it has happened AFTER Linden have given the all-clear that "inventory problems are now resolved". I am careful to follow their warnings, of course, but it doesn't seem to make a difference....

I feel I cannot reliably buy a really nice piece, say of furniture, and know that it is MINE to USE and to KEEP. I know it may only be a few US$ but it is significant to me, and the dissatisfaction and anger about the loss (reported and no satisfaction of course) is borking my whole SL experience.

Wow, This is becoming a pretty common problem now. Transactions not working again.
Ok I have been in game a long time now and have seen a lot of issues over the years.
But I have to say transactions being down like this is a first. Yes we would crash and whole grid would come down, but now we are having hours several times a week where we are told we can't do transactions.

*sigh* a new frustration with SL.

Yes - with purchases undelivered and random inventory loss, I feel extremely insecure about buying anything, even if it only costs $1L. SL is starting to feel like this really unstable place where you cannot trust anything to work as it should.