Its funny...

I don't consider myself a "ranter", but I do think that people need to mention that customer service really stinks in this company. Customer service has nothing, nothing at all, to do with the technical problems. Good customer service just shows respect for your customers, who are usually the people who help pay your paycheck. I love SL, I really do, and I pay to love SL, so i'm not one of the basic accounts complaining (not that they don't have the right to also). I pay a monthly fee and a tier, not as much as some, but I still pay. I work in an industry that is very competitive, and I'm in sales/customer service. When I quote my company's prices to customers, we are consistently higher than our competitors, but still command a huge market share in the industry. Why is that? Because our company has outstanding customer service. Do we make mistakes? Of course we do.....sales does, production does, shipping does...everyone does, we're all human. BUT (yes, caps because it's a big "but", when we make mistakes we acknowledge them and do everything in our power to quickly correct them and make things right. If we didn't do that, we'd lose customers to our cheaper, and substandard, competitors. Customers will go the cheaper and lower quality route if their needs aren't being met by a vendor. That's what it all really comes down to. I think people could handle the technical issues, if Linden Lab would acknowledge them, and give customers a good dependable resource to report problems. Yes, they acknowledged the search issue, but the password reset still has not been addressed in the blog, and where's the update on the stipend payout?
I can't write computer code, I can't set up servers, I can't even find disk defrag on my own PC without some help, but I am a consumer of goods and services, and in that role I expect customer service. It's a proven fact that people will pay premium prices to companies who have excellent customer service. If I have a problem with a good or service that I am paying for, at least acknowledge my concern. Even if it's just to placate me, at least do that that. LL doesn't even bother. I'm sorry, but sooner or later, all of their technology and efforts won't matter because they are completely clueless on customer service!
Yep, that was a rant

Welcome to Forum Life
I realise some seem to whine and overcomplain about everything, but after you've been here a while, just 6 months in my case, and seen the improvements LL has done. I t gets frustrating.
For example If I found a sim down or doing weird stuff and needed restarting then I go into accounts page and there is a report region down button. On the old help system it used to take you straight to a page, you fill out the details and it goes straight to the people onsite as a pirority even at midnight US time. Now it takes me to pages explaing what a region is, explaining region down, how to make coffee and who knows what else, after 10 or so screens you eventually bumble upon a submit ticket screen, which goes through multiple choice tree options asking you your avatar details and 20 other irrelevant questions eventually you send a ticket 3 days later, no response, the sim was fixed because eventually someone managed to collar a Linden Inworld which is nigh on impossible at non US times. There can be 23k residents on the grid & not a single Linden or if there is no way to find them. So sims just stay crashed, people living there log out & give up.
The road surface in Hanja dissappeared 2 months ago I lodged a ticket, it's still missing.
Public sandboxes stay filled with replicating following Penises,. Nearly every blog statement sems to be worded to incite confususion in residents

I have seen the following penises. Its kind of funny actually Are they the yelling ones?

This is the truth.
Really simple and right.

No haven't seen the yelling penises, but I did find a sandbox near unuseable onday because there were 20 screamers spread out over the sim. And the following ones are funny till you try and actually build something while surrounded by them.

LOL.. It was funny reading the analogy of money invested against costs spent to create a 'game' like SL. Microsoft dropped how many billions of investment into their OS's? Yet as I unwrapped and installed my very new and fresh copy of Vista some months ago, it spent a great deal of time, what can only be described as an equivilant of a SP1, downloading and installing 'updates'. Vista didn't last long on my system, as I don't like my PC being answerable to Time Warner or Hollywood, when I want to install a mouse driver.

Back to the trusty bug ridden OS called XP... deemed to be the most stable and secure OS ever written... well if you include the GB's of continous updates/upgrades over the years. Lets put things into perspective here.

LL did not ever say 'hey, come sign up for our shiny new, ground breaking software platform, whereby you can pawn the shirt off your back and invest millions, even swap your pension options, so you can all be millionaires, it's like the stock exchange without the risk'.... no, they simply gave opportunity, but with written explaination of risks involved regarding VR content. Paying for a premium account doesn't mean you should be covered for any potential loss of 'investment, time, money spent etc', it just means you can buy land direct from LL. If the plug was pulled tomorrow, you will have no refund, not insurance protecting any form of investment.. nadda... but thats no hidden rule.. its there in black and white.

You don't seriously believe any company is going to respond to an individual thats having a problem with their PC system, when they neither sold it to you, provide the internet connection, install the software you use, wired up the modem you have etc? What LL are interested in, and I'm convinced they are, is collating issues that effect a lot of people, trying to sort through the scant information people give them, if at all, to recreate the problem and find out, despite all the multitude of complexities and combinations of systems connecting to the servers, is a COMMON cause.
If more people used the auto crash reporting system (which works even if you don't actually suffer a crash), they can gain a better overview for targetting issues... come, join the programme.

FYI, It is very rare that I suffer issues like so many here. My system is very stable, but then I check everything on my systems first, before I blame everything on LL. I also carryout maintenance on my systems, which very few do. If they treated their cars the same way, they would become unusable in a very short space of time.

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*locks*