Inventory Items Missing

Well. I don't think Linden Labs or SL is populated by hairy green monsters who hate Christmas, but ugh, 10 packaged up Christmas presents I had meticulously packed and 'taken' back into my inventory earlier today are now gone. Poof. I've run every step of the 'what to do about lost inventory', including a bug report after the steps all failed.

I'm posting this up in case anyone has any other suggestions I can try. The bug reports are clear that they won't likely give us a status or update, so I'm left with a handful of days to Christmas having to try and figure out if I can even afford a fraction of what I'd already bought to give to those I care about. I'd really prefer to have the nice presents back that I spent so much time on.

Any suggestions?

Guess not? Three days and it's Christmas and the presents are gone still. I spent a serious pile of RL money into $L to buy gifts for people I care about. I'm not talking about just 800L or 5000L here. Losing this much purchased good in RL would be a serious theft case, easily covered by my homeowners insurance. (The amount of money involved here exceeds my deductable for my insurance.) In SL, I only have the record of money exchanged and the remaining account balance to prove 'something' happened to the money. Good for the vendors I shopped at, but I'm still sad that what I had intended as generosity and rampant spoiling of those I love has been the SL equivalent of visiting the ATM, taking out a pile of cash and then throwing it out the car window as I drove away. Frustrating in the extreme.

LL's response to try the lost inventory 'script' made sense, and I ran it. Their direction to fill out a bug report was understandable too, and I did so. But when we're talking about serious financial loss, a lack of subsequent response to the situation is aggravating.

Despite this, I do wish those who work hard to build and maintain this environment a Merry Christmas and happy holidays. I just wish 'Santa Linden' had managed to pull out a little Christmas magic from his great red sack. Phooey.

umm.
Is anyone else having trouble with those gift boxes that are scripted?
YOu GIVE the box to someone, who then TOUCHES it to open, and receives their gifts?
'cause I was given such a gift box. I tried to REZ it to the floor, and it disappeared..
Hasn't come back to lost and found.
Not nearly as valuable as Ann's losses, but I"m wondering if there's a bad script running around....

No, just hairy green cylanders wearing Santa hats!

Seriously.

At least this one was funny. Though I sat and watched them for a while. They bounced around everywhere, then just stopped moving at all. Kind of withered and died. I don't think this was one that LL cleaned up. I think it was scripted to die off. Like the ecosystems stuff, but sped up to a much faster lifespan.

I'm not sure if my experience is the same as the orginal poster's but I lost packages I made up as gifts to friends also. The event that evidently caused the problem was when the owner of a casino finally cut his loses and decided to shut down the money hole and turned back on autoreturn. I had a Christmas tree rezzed in the casino that was returned but not the two packages I had boxed up as gifts to both the owner and a fellow employee. The tree came back to my lost and found............I got the notice both in my email and when I logged into SL later. I did a search for the missing items numerous times using different key words and actually visually scanned each and every item in my inventory (and believe me that is a lot of scanning ). I was about to scream bloody murder to LL about it when for some reason I thought of rezzing the tree that was returned.........and guess what? There were to the two boxed gifts sitting under the tree just as I placed them a few days earlier

So, what I'm suggesting is, if anything was returned to your lost and found folder about the same time as your items went missing perhaps you might try rezzing that item or somehow opening it to see if those items might be there? Just a shot in the dark but maybe it will help The search would not return a match because the items were within the tree item, not under the names I gave them.

Was a good idea, I've seen that problem before too, but there was nothing returned to my lost and found folder to try this one. Searched inventory and rez'd anything that didn't look normal, nada. My bug seems to be something about things picked up into inventory before logging out.

Well. It's been close to two weeks since the initial inventory loss. And the grand total support I've gotten from Linden Labs or their customer service contractor? The suggestion on the day of the loss to use their help file 'lost inventory' script, and then fill out a bug report.

Not one response to my inquiries since by a Linden or by their customer service contractor. Not one suggestion of anything to do except by a former employee who took pity on me and suggested privately that my only possible recourse was to talk directly to each vendor and *beg* them to re-give me things I'd paid for, and that they'd delivered in good faith already.

I put in excess of $200 US into Lindens to buy presents, and it was Linden Lab's hardware or software that deleted every bit of the virtual property that was purchased with that hard earned money. Since this, I've been told that company policy forbids reimbursement, even in cases when LL's own hardware or software is at fault.

I understand the desire to limit liability. But papa john christ the pope, SL's economy IS tied to real money. It's not an independent 'game' economy. It's a virtual economy with a market index to the real world. To support that.. and then have NO concept of supporting liability for their own hardware and software.. boggles my mind.

I truly love Second Life, for what it has provided me, and the wonderful people I've met, the friendships I've found, the love and support I've been blessed with. But the server crap like this has GOT to come to an end at some point. This stupid thing had me in tears for a week, and the customer support response from Linden Labs is the equivalent of 'Bah Humbug, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out'.

Inventory relability, a backup system or something.. has GOT to become a priority for this place. The economy is going to fall apart if this kind of stuff is as widespread as the vendors I talked with today suggest. And they at least talk with me, so I tend to think they're telling me the truth.

Hey I am missing lots of stuff. Where did you find this 'what to do about lost inventory'?

I swear I have been searching help for days and waiting for an hour for online help more than once before giving up.

I'll point you to where Linden's pointed me. I'll note unhappily that it did nothing to help me, but it's worth trying certainly.

>Help Menu>Second Life Help (F1)

Scroll all the way down, and find and click on 'I have lost inventory', which is located in the 'Immediate Advice..' part of the window.

Cut and Paste straight from the page:
WHAT TO DO ABOUT LOST INVENTORY

If something appears to be missing from your Inventory, please follow the steps below.

1. Has your inventory fully loaded? With large inventories it can take a little while. Try logging out of SL, then back in again.. open your Inventory and wait for it to load fully before looking for the missing item.
2. On your inventory window there are menus. In the File menu, look at 'Show Filters'. Make sure they are all ticked.
3. Use the search bar on your inventory to try to find the missing items, try parts of the name.
4. Look in the My Inventory/Lost & Found folder and the Trash folder to see if they are in there.
5. If they were left out (rezzed) in-world, has anyone else got permissions to take or delete these items?
6. Failing all of the above, on some occasions uninstalling Second Life and re-installing it again can help.

Still cannot find the items? Then you need to file a Bug Report from your help menu. Give as much detail as you can, the object names, where they were in-world if they were out of your inventory, or which folder they were in if they were inside your inventory.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the items will be able to be found. But someone will look into your bug report, so do file one. For purchased items, some vendors do not mind replacing lost goods - so you might want to ask them, but do remember that they are under no obligation to do so.

When building, always take backups - regularly - to lessen the risk of losing anything.

Ann,
Thanks for posting that.
I'd add something that sneaked into SL 2 or 3 updates ago...
A 'feature' by which multiple items of inventory are returned to you as a single 'bundle'.

I try to keep my lost and found folder empty at all times.
If anything shows up, I rez it to the ground to see what it is.
An 'object', may turn out to be a bundle big enough to hold a house!

Good point. I've seen that happen, and a caveat for folks: The single bundle will be named from a SINGLE object in the whole pile of objects. So you can have this whole big pile of pictures and furniture labelled 'Sink' if a bathroom sink was the magic item that got picked as the 'master' item for the pile. Drop them somewhere with LOTS of room if you're rez'ing stuff out of lost and found.