(very) old issue, my 2 cents...

In the last 10 months since I started creating and selling my animations and associated products in SL, the problem of undelivered items has consistently increased as sales have increased. It has now got to the point where I actually dread logging in because I know I am facing a whole stack of support requests. Increasingly, there are days when I don't log in at all because of this. In terms of time, I now have to budget between half and hour and an hour a day to sorting out undelivered items.

This leaves me less time for content creation and leaves me in a frustrated state of mind before I even start.

So this evening I finally decided to stand up and say something - SORT IT OUT LL!

YOU ARE STIFLING MY CREATIVITY, UPSETTING MY CUSTOMERS AND MAKING ME DREAD LOGGING IN EVERY DAY.

I don't want to see new versions of Dazzle or Windlight until this is fixed! I don't care about minor fixes to this and that - this undelivered items bug is an immense issue to me, far more important than any other fix I have seen you implement in the last 10 months. It frustrates both me and my customers, many of whom don't realise it's LL's fault and will accuse me of ripping them off.

I am planning a new customer support mechanism for my shop whereby I will be actively encouraging customers to report each and every failed item delivery incident directly to LL. I will be making it as easy as I possible can for them to do so. Having dealt with so many failed transactions I understand that the 'typical' SL resident is not in the slightest bit interested in coming out of SL and trawling through pages of text on the Jira to locate the place where they can post their complaints - a fact LL should consider when looking at the vast amount of reports that actually HAVE been made on this issue.

/rant

Same issue, different Day... as I also sell media equipment, I'm finding not just undelivered goods, but perm changes. We use open media playlists in our systems, the NC is set to full perms, so the next owner can add, amend etc the playlist to their hearts content.
Recently, a lot of our customers have found, although the playlist is still full perms, they are locked out by asseset server lag, namely the Aquired date showing (waiting). Until thats is verified, no one can open the dam things. I try giving new cards but the system times out and they cannot delete the old ones. Apart from costing me a fortune tping about trying to find a fix, keeping my customers happy, I'm having to send out refunds.

Not a problem you may argue, but as some of the equipment is sold from SLExchange, I've already paid commission on the sale.

Because this is not RL, the vast majority cannot afford to ring their lawyers, if it was LL would start to find the few millions of USD tracking across their threshold, starting to dwindle and they would either sort it out or go bust. I've been here 4 years and still these issues remain.

I have also been affected by this issue and I want to urge Linden Labs to please sort this out as soon as possible.

signed
(your name)
Beverley Mills______

this is one of those kinds of problems that will solve itself over time, one way, or another.

Ollj, it's been going on for years. I think if it was going to somehow magically sort itself out on it's own it would have done so by now! Believe me, it's not going to just go away - it needs to be taken seriously by LL and fixed.

In the meantime, content creators and their customers alike are left having to sort out the mess. So many resident's hours wasted...

/me wonders how much better use I could have made of all those wasted hours...

I'm sort of wondering what you know about 'over time'... Aug 2007, hardly gives you a benchmark from which to draw from.

When you sell something you have crafted over and invested not just time, but real money, see it being sold, then discover due to a 'SL Glitch' that is is now being sold as full perms due to a rollback, you have no recourse. You can only do damage limitation. If that happened to Ford or IBM, what sort of responce do you think would then take place?

What many see as a micro economy (chump change), equates to a platform that has a couple of million USD crossing the counter per DAY. This is not hacks, bugs or fraudulent use, this is sheer incompetence.

Simmer down, hoss. Ollj's just being colorful in observing the seriousness of the situation: either the problem is fixed, or content creators leave in droves, and eventually nobody's left to experience the problem.

So why haven't people already left SL for less buggy pastures?

Because there's no equivalent to SL in existence....yet.

:\ this may help (in case you suspect possible 'conjobs' coming in)... keep in mind though that the customer can end up unpacking in a 'no script' area and you may not get all delivery receipts from the package.

Library: Product Packaging Receipt System
/54/4f/214183/1.html

but yeah, past this there is sometimes a very basic 'deep lag' in the grid that interferes with payments and product deliveries. seems like they're always chasing it and trying to 'tune it out', but it always creeps up somewhere... and on occasion, better or worse than before.

Seems to be doing well for Microsoft LOL

________________________________________________________________________________________

I have also been affected by this issue and I want to urge Linden Labs to please sort this out as soon as possible.

signed

Lillith Surtees

________________________________________________________________________________________

I have also been affected by this issue and I want to urge Linden Labs to please sort this out as soon as possible.

signed

Atom Hykova

I have also been affected by this issue. Please find a solution!

A solid database should be more important than anything else, if you can imagine I have lost entire parts of my inventory and they were never recovered, I almost gave up Second Life because of this too... This needs to be addressed as soon as possible...

Also since anyone can look at their transaction history on the web site they should also be able to request a copy of that item if they misplaced or deleted it from their inventory, anything you have paid for should be forever yours in virtual reality...

:: Not lost into the void ::

There was a recent blog entry whereby LL said they had discovered and returned over 460,000 lost inventory items to over 140,000 people. guess that favourite pair of socks are lost forever now then LOL.

Friend of mine had about 23.000 inventory, and she lost half of it, not acceptable, but did LL ever reply or do anything about her mails to them?. not other then the copy paste reply, and she is a paying customer, you get what you pay for?, glad i dont pay -.-

Official Linden Labs blog update:

Asset Server Issues
Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 3:45 PM by: Elle Linden
We are currently experiencing problems with our asset servers. While we work on resolving this issue, it is highly recommended that you do not make any purchases or transfers or rez objects until this problem is solved. We will keep you updated in this blog post as the situation progresses.


in response:

Asset Server Issues
Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 3:46 PM by: Dave Bellman
We (SL residents) are permanently experiencing problems with your (Linden Labs) asset servers. While we work to generate content to make your Virtual World a worthwhile place to be, it is highly recommended that you make plans to sort out the problem once and for all instead of just keep patching over what appears to be a fundamentally flawed system. We will keep you updated in this forum post as the situation continues not to progress.

_______________________________________________________________

---:: Animazoo animations - The best dances in SL - Smooth AOs - Freebies ::---
.

I'd say one of the major reasons that I am no longer in business is SL's failure to make deliveries of my group notices, my sale notices, my new product notices. Failure to make deliveries as well. Thank god I have my messages deleivered to my email so I at least know I have issues to deal with.

Not a day or minute or even a crummy second goes by that something isn't broken. All these new viewers all these special effects, give me a break...I don't care a damn about any of that because every NEW viewer is just more bugs on top of the old ones that they cant fix. More of a strain on equipment that not up to the task and more of a burden on a network that can't handle 1/10 of the load that is imposed on it.

No, I am not programmer and no I am not a network nerd. I am a paying customer that in any other industry would get satisfaction or the vendor would be out of business. Personally I think Linden labs ought to give a call to Blizzard and find out how to program their client and maybe learn how to build a network. Just a thought.
Oh and before I hear the line "SL is a totally unique concept and cannot be compared to a game like World of Warcraft", spare me! There is a old saying "if it's to hot in the kitchen, then get the hell out of the kitchen!

I had to reply to the paying customer quote, only in that I felt the same way and downgraded my account to a "free" one only to discover that the fee you pay each month is not to play the game aka live in a virtual world but to pay for your tech support.

That's right kiddies, for those of you that don't know it, a free account can't even post a technical or support issue ticket. Actually if all the free accounts were closed and forced to pay or "get out of Dodge" there might be: Less strain on the already stressed system, more money for LL to actually hire technicians that could fix this barrel of bugs and last but not least the people that "pay" for their virtual world could actually enjoy it!

from the official blog:



I was hoping to get my new range of preconfigured ZHAOs out before I go to the Virtual Worlds 2008 conference early next week. Instead, I now have a huge pile of customer support requests to deal with first. So to everyone who is waiting for the next Animazoo release, Linden Labs complacency has just forced the date back about a week. Nice one LL.


And then, to add insult to injury:




Yeah, that's right, you make the mess, and tell your paying customers to clear it up for you. Thanks a bunch. This is utterly unacceptable. Will you please just stop patching over the cracks and do the right thing by us all by redesigning the transactions system.

_______________________________________________________________

---:: Animazoo animations - The best dances in SL - Smooth AOs - Freebies ::---
.

(it's really a shame that no Linden representatives actually READ these forums)

As a content creator, and a consumer, I'm seeing this too, from BOTH sides of the equation.

I sat there the other day, as SL failed, and watched a customer pay the vendor, and watched the vendor do nothing. So, she paid again, and again, NOTHING.. so she paid AGAIN... and finally I was able to get her profile open and IM her to say "PLEASE STOP PAYING THAT VENDOR!"..

By the time I got to my shop, of course, the damage had been done. and the Blog, as is often the case, had "a vague acknowledgment of the problem".

I'm seriously getting tired of "problem/resolved/reopened/resolved/reopened/resolved" posts in the Blog... It's clear from their usage of phrases like "the problem is working itself out" or "Database corrected itself" that they may not actually be DOING anything to affect repairs or prevent recurrences.

Of course, to make matters worse, this has happened frequently... recently. little jags of 2-3 days in a row, then a gap of a couple of days. It starts with "attachment is pending" errors, and then progresses to "very slow to process payments" and finally payment timeouts.

Unfortunately, not every glitched payment seems to go through! some people are actually seeing money go out of their account, and NOT seeing it appear in the other person's account! So you can't refund more than you GOT!... and then all you can tell the customer is "file a support ticket".. and of course, if you're a Basic account holder.. good luck.

But when it happens to me.. (last night, I was actually buying some animations from Dave here)... I TOTALLY know what it's like for the shop owner.. and it's not so much a matter of making the refunds, as it is a matter of HOPING you received the money so you CAN give refunds!. I took about 20 minutes to write a note to Dave when it happened.. cropping down transaction listings etc.. but I know that MOST users.. most of MY customers for example.. are just in the mindframe of "Help SL ate my item" at best, and "you lousy theif you stole my money" at worst.

Seriously, LL.. it's time to consider the scalability of your databases. It's STABILITY we want... whiz-bang is fun, but if no one's buying anything, I can't afford that new video card to keep up with your watermelon skies.

FIX. THE. BUGS.

I feel bad when I have to contact someone like Dave (as I had to do just this past weekend), as I know I'm just one in a mountain of customers who have paid for an item and not had it delivered by SL. It's frustrating on two levels - I'm without something that I've purchased (quite possibly at the last minute and for a specific purpose), and I'm going to end up adding just one more problem to the vendor's inbox.

Dave shouldn't have to dread logging into Second Life. Nobody should, but specifically not those people who (originally, at least) began creating for SL out of the joy of enhancing the experience.

Please, can we deal with stability issues before we do anything else? Windlight is pretty, but I can do without it. There's no point in having a shiny UI if the infrastructure is rusted.

You know, looking through old forum posts, there was a time when Linden employees would respond to forum posts. I know I've dealt out some vitriol here, but really, I'm a nice guy and very approachable - I promise not to bite! Whilst I do offload my frustration at LL in general (and will continue to do so) I promise to be my normal civil self on a one-to-one basis!

Surely it's not too much to ask that someone from LL actually acknowledges what we are all saying here?

Oh, and to Marx (and anyone else who has to contact me for any reason) PLEASE don't feel bad about doing so - I'd much rather sort things out for you than have you feeling let down or ripped off.

And for the record, due to the database problems this weekend, I had over 30 support requests which took me over two hours to sort out this morning...

_______________________________________________________________

---:: Animazoo animations - The best dances in SL - Smooth AOs - Freebies ::---
.

I have also been affected by this issue and I want to urge Linden Labs to please sort this out as soon as possible.

signed
Ema Poole

I have also been affected by this issue and I want to urge Linden Labs to please sort this out as soon as possible.

signed
Becky Nosferatu


Now, I sell avatars. I'm rather unable to work in RL, (Various health problems,) and this is affecting what little business I can do. Every day I log on and at least ONE customer has asked me "Where's my avatar?" This is getting OLD. I'm loosing business because people are to afraid of buying anything!