Bought an Island - disgusted with support.

I recently bought an island, and thought I would share the pain and process that has come along with it.

I ordered my island roughly 4 weeks ago. I recieve an email saying it should be ready within a week - cool. 1 week goes by, still not ready, i'm told it will be another week - ok, I run tech support for my company, you are extra busy, I understand, no problem.

The purpose of the island is simple. I like to build, and I wanted a house so big it required an island, or atleast half an island. Since I like to build houses, it was my plan to build my big house on half the island, and then use the rest of the island to sell other houses I've built.

2 weeks after ordering, I get my island - YAY. I start building on my house - http://www.architecturaldesigns.com/house-plan-66024we.asp . I build this house all except for closests(left them out, don't need them), and i had just started on the roof. I'm on a months vacation currently, so I figured this would be a great time to get this house done. It took a little over 2500 prims not counting the roof.

Well, the roof was a pain, but I was making progress. It was a very slow process getting those pieces to all fit on the roof with the weird shapes and angles. So I decide I will take a break from it, and start working on the yard a bit. So off to editing terrain files I go.

I figure I'll start out simple, I just want to change the water lvl a bit. So I edit the .RAW, and start to upload. IT says up to 2 mins, ok np. 10 minutes later it finally goes in - and suddenly there is a huge mountain in my island, and I get about 1000 objects sent into my lost and found folder. WTH? I reupload again, I can't see anything on my island, but I have a feeling it's not going to be pretty. The 2nd time, it works as it should, my water lvl is up, and the mountain is gone. But half my house is missing - oh no.

This was thursday. Ok, so time for a rollback, no big deal. I call, they tell me to send an email. No problem, I look it up in the help section, answer all the questions and send the email.

Now it's been over 48 hours since I needed the rollback. I haven't gotten a single response on the issue at all. When I do actually talk to someone, I get the same thing everytime - not our job, contact them by email blah blah blah.

Exactly what does it take to get a little help on something? I'm basically to the point of putting in a chargeback for the island. I'm definetly not about to rebuild that house, and considering I run tech support and understand what it takes to restore a backup or rollback on any decent system, I'm losing my patience with being ignored. I did just pay $1200 and spend $200+ a month for this thing.

On a side note, it's a bit of a bad idea to upload a file, and applying it without a preview of the file for these very reasons. I can't help an upload is corrupted, but I sure could have hit a button that said cancel after seeing it was corrupted and it's effects. Such a simple concept would have saved me all this trouble, and most likely kept you a paying customer.

Looks around to see if there's a Linden out there that is saying right now... get on it fellas!!!

This is exactly why I will not pay the money for a private island. I have heard from countless people who have had the exact same experience. Linden Lab has created a wonderful place, but on the customer service end of things, they are severely lacking.

Yeah, man. The whole "where there's smoke there's fire" thing really dissuades me from the whole private island thing, were I ever to have the sort of disposable income to indulge in such a thing.

/me puts checkbook away and shakes head.
Thanks for sharing. I had no idea that customer service was this bad...especially for island owners. Seems like you should be at the top of the priority list. Somewhere in between membership fee processing and server maintenance? Sending you well wishes.

Regards and hugz,
~Mad

I feel for you on this one Clay. Must have been heartbreaking to see your build disappear like that.

Who were you dealing with? Lee Linden? With both the private islands I've owned I had very varied levels of support, good from some Lindens, bad with others. Lee Linden, especially, I found unbelievably infuriating to deal with, to the point of him being obnoxious and almost purposefully difficult.

Unfortunately he was basically the main point of contact with private island owners at the time. Not sure if that's different now or not, however.

Have you ever been HUNGUP on by support That the worst yet

I've found dealing with Cyn Linden to be a fairly pleasant experience. Cyn is generally fairly responsive and gets onto things as soon as she is notified; both with the Azure Islands, and my own private island ('Aleph').

In regards to RAW uploads; be warned, they are highly complex things (and in my opinion, a bit too lossy); it is very easy to upload a corrupted one which can cause the mountain-in-the-middle problem. I actually think a RAW 'previewer' in the estate tools would go a long way to making them more useful.

Yeah. I only wanted to breathe heavily into the phone for five minutes.

Just five bloody minutes!!

You can't be a pervert nowadays without getting the phone slammed down on you.

I am sorry you had this experience. I have had my sim for almost 2 years and have had wonderful service from Lee and Cyn. I recommend that you message Cyn Linden who is very reponsive, but will probably not be at work until Monday.

hhaahhahahhah cute thank you i need a good laugh really

But dealing with Cyn Linden is always the best choice. Lee well he at time can be a "man" ehheh no it must be very hard to deal with upset and pissed off people liek the creator of this thread. 1200.00 and 200.00 a month! OMG he has a right to be pissed off and screaming like this.Its bad enought when a sim is having problems and its prime time on sl and the dam sim needs reseting/ or the dam sim disconnects from the server. Your fighting to get the dam sim up and all your getting from CS is we are working on getting the sim back up.DOH Dwelling is being lost and you have a stupid look on your face goin "why is this crap happening to me" Not bashing the lindens at all here, but the CS at times just SUCKS!

I've dealt with both Lee and Cyn, and... bottom line, support has been pretty good so far.

Just calling it like I've seen it.

Just to relate my experience so far...

Ordered the island : 2 week wait. OK not surprising.

Sometime 2 weeks or so later I notice the money gone from my a/c.
Island had arrived. Not a single IM. Not a single email. If I hadn't checked my a/c I wouldn't have noticed!.

Since owning the island I've IMd both Lee and Cyn twice. No reply. I know Lee is a good person I've dealt with him before, but even if you're too busy Lee, being ignored is not really an acceptable level of service. How many times are we supposed to send IMs before it gets too many ?

I'm putting on a 2 week long building event on the island, getting any response from LL has been totally impossible. No reply to a single IM sent to anyone at LL. Either I'm blacklisted or they're simply not there to do the job they're supposed to be doing. If you're too busy guys stop trying to beat the WoW population count, employ some more help and give us at least some attention!

And it's possible this whole fiasco is down to the problems with IM reception since 1.9, this really needs fixing too!

Same here so far. Maybe I'm just lucky.

I've had my island going on 2 years now and I've been satisfied with the support. I thought Lee was just great when the island was being prepped for me. The Concierge program has also been very effective in getting things done for me.

I owned my island for about 3 months. The support was terrible and I could get no help with some serious lag issues I was having. After a frustrating period I unloaded my island and now rent on the mainland.

This was all before the concierge period, so I am not sure if that has helped things at all.

Just my 2 cents based on my experience.

Lauk, I had exactly the same. I ordered the island, (money was taken from my account tho reasonably quickly) and heard absolutley nothing until a few weeks later I got a notecard sent through saying it was ready. It would have been nice to get at least an indication that things were moving along.
Anyway, back to the thread topic. I too am waiting on some help from Cyn or Lee. Im having a few issues with my island, esp on crashes and despite sending email and IM, have heard nothing back..

Well, I just sold some land on Noonkkott to someone, and a griefer had dropped a scripted object on it that, as soon as she enabled edit, it raised the whole land and trashed everything she was working on... including the terraforming I'd done for her.

She's paying more per square meter than a private sim owner, and she doesn't get to call for a rollback.

I'm sure Linden support is any worse for private islands than for anyone else.

But I'll say one thing... if they can't get your island to you in less than three weeks they ought to wait three weeks before billing you. If they need a deposit, OK, but full price?

OK I think I should speak up on this...
When I first got my islands, I did have a horrible time with customer service, BUT that was when they first introduced and they were new to it all themselves. I can accept that...

Recently, I have had wonderfule customer service, and as much as I despised Lee Linden (sorry I held a grudge from when he was an ass to me lol) he has been very professional and VERY helpful to me and the islands... and I am not an easy person to please... I don't think I have gone a month without calling Lee for one reason or another and he has been very patient and helpful to me. I don't think I can be anymore satisfied with the customer service I have received in regards to private islands.

I hope things work at better for you Laukosargas, Private Islands are really the best thing to own in SL!

Do you have the concierge phone #? The Lindens will probably hate me for this, but I have never seeked help (and expected a response) via email or IM, if there is continuous problem with an island I simply pick up the phone and have a chat with Lee... he usually responds fairly quickly and gets to the bottom of it. Sometimes I will have to wait for the grid monekys to take a peek, but not usually Lee..

I must say the Customer Support I have received from day 1 has been good. No problems at all.

Why don't you give them a call tomorrow and explain what happened and I'm sure if they can, they will help you.

It's not so much the amount of time to get it fixed as it is the fact I have been ignored completely by anyone that can help. I would be happy with even an email back that says - we got your request, we are busy and will get to it asap.

It's now been 72 hours since I needed the rollback, and still not a single im, email or anything from them.

People I have talked to have been really nice. I have no complaints about people being rude to me or anything. The problem is they all say the same thing - I can't do anything, and those who can give no reply.

If this was a free service, then yeah I could understand. But thats not the case. In the end, I'm left with a feeling that they just plain and simple don't care.

Another day, still not even the first thing that reseambles a response or help. I can't make up my mind if to wait and see how long it takes them to actually take the 2 minutes to send me an email, or just go ahead and cancel/chargeback.

Have you called the concierge #?
Also the weekend just ended , thier offices aren't open on the weekend.. =/