Strongly suggest you learn RUSSIAN if you want to use SL!

RobbyRacoon Olmstead got banned because he reported somebody else stealing his stuff? WTH is up with that??

Ah Russia!: "the most eastern of western countries and teh most western of eastern countries"

Better Red than Dead.

Well, here's the thing... I don't know why I was banned. I know that it happened *immediately* after reporting content theft, but I do not know for a fact that was the reason.

And that's the problem: I have no choice but to guess. Linden Lab does not (and did not in my case) see fit to inform people of the reasons for a ban or suspension. To this day (two weeks after the ban went into effect, and one day after it was released), I do not know why I was banned.

And that's not the end of it, unfortunately. I am now prohibited from buying or selling $L, and the $65USD-worth of $L in my balance has disappeared. Again, I do not know why. There was a Support Ticket filed on my behalf by Linden Lab alleging that I paid them the standard monthly fee for a Premium Account. Guilty as charged, I had a billing agreement set up with PayPal that was in place since August of 2006, and it did in fact pay them automatically. Sound ridiculous? Yes it does, but take a look: http://tinyurl.com/y8ojf8l

So, to summarize: I was banned after reporting content theft, and do not know why. The ban was removed when Linden Lab got bad press about it. They then prohibited me from buying or selling Linden Dollars, effectively if not explicitly barring me from continuing to profit from literally thousands of hours of work (and incidentally removing all motivation to create new content), and I do not know why. I can only guess as to the root cause of those issues, because Linden Lab's support system is fundamentally broken and their lines of communication are fatally ineffective.

Like they said above, "2 shots in the back first then a warning shot over the head!"

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I really believe that Lindens need to take a more serious approach to banning and ARing since for many people what may simply be a tick in the box for someone in an office somewhere can be the end of a livelihood for a person who really needs the cash.

To be truthful, I would probably just tell them to stick their account after all that. That's ridiculous. They really are a bunch of idiots.

I think they need to outsource the day to day management of SL. They are obviously not capable of doing it themselves.

In my 6 months of dealing with the adult content issue, and now writing a user's manual for the viewer, I have concluded that you are dealing with a bunch of amateurs who really don't know what they are doing sometimes.

My latest example: The Showcase submissions form page -

https://secure-web17.secondlife.com/my/forms/showcase_submission.php?lang=en
https://secure-web17.secondlife.com/my/forms/showcase_submission.php?lang=en

Click the FAQ link in the second paragraph. It doesnt go where it's supposed to. Apparently they dont test or proofread stuff when they post it.

Harsh but understandable - if there is a flood, turn off all spigots until the mess can be cleaned up.

Perhaps. But it makes little sense to turn off your neighbor's spigots in the process.

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Well of course they're amateurs - it's not like virtual worlds of the size, scope, and population - or issues - of SL have been around for decades. Everyone's still an amateur.

Yeah, but there are some rules of business management and customer service that hold true, no matter what. And they aren't catching any of them it seems.

While some parts of your tale are understandable, the money loss, inability to buy/sell, and the not knowing are not nice at all and I would be upset. If it's a temporary thing that's ok - but there's no way of knowing and in fact the likelihood is that it's the way it is now - which is far from ok.

Dekka's idea about an email to inform people is good. It hardly seems revolutionary, but it's much beyond what is in place now.

The more I read about ways LL are handling things, the more I'm glad I long since stopped putting money into SL.

More than that, every day they get closer to getting sued again and again...

I know if I WERE putting money into SL and they pulled half this crap, not only would I put a stop payment on my account, but I'd also be talking to a lawyer about getting money back.

In Soviet Life™ sim owns you.

If that happened to me, I'd be emailing/IMing Philip on a annoyingly regular basis and yelling at every office hour I could find.

Maybe people should AR some stuff made by the IBM folks and see if LL shuts down thier regions for a week while they investigate. (nothing personal, IBMers - you're just a well-known example)

A real customer service executive would post here and assure everyone that it was a tragic error and the customer negatively impacted has been contacted and compensated.

Instead of just pretending this is not happening while the customers that were deciding to buy a island or not decide not to after reading this.

This is Linden Lab... they have no CS executive...

Sure they do...GengisKhan Linden