SL Customer Service and $300USD

Hi,
I am posting here because I am frustrated to my wits end, and I have no idea what else to do.

I have lost $300USD to LL due to a bug. I have attempted to contact them by any means possible (phone, email) repeatedly over the past 3 weeks, and have not received a single response.

What can I do? Have I no recourse? I cannot believe that I can have $300USD taken from me, without services rendered, and have no hope of reclaiming it.

What would you do?

edit: this thread has progressed past my initial subject, so I've edited the title accordingly.

Small claims court? *shrugs*

I think they mean they need hugs......OMG...

After repeated calls, I have not managed to speak to another live human being. I have been emailing support desperately, as it is not directly related to billing.

My situation:

I was affected by the rash of classifieds ads problems that occurred of late. However, I didn't seem to fall under LL's criteria of situations that warranted a refund. This is what occurred:

On February 19th, I placed a classified ad for $81,000L. If you do the math, this equates to over $300USD. Sometime between the 19th and the 21st, the ad vanished. Although LL claims this was because ads set to auto-renew simply did not renew after a week, my ad was not set to auto renew, and it lasted two days at most. I have not been credited, the ad has not been rerun.

I am so upset about this I could just burst into tears. I have not been nasty, demanding, overbearing, accusatory, or in any way impolite in any of my communications to LL support. I have very politely and HUMBLY pleaded for help. What more can I do?

Be sure to have your accounts transaction number when you finally do get ahold of them, I have had problems with lost moneys and lost services both, and both time they have came thru as long as they can find where you paid. Even though it takes some time, have faith.

I really don't understand why people are paying such ridiculous amounts for classified advertisments. We pay L$50 for the Stratics classified advert and get just as much traffic because people search for keywords as if we spent L$50,000.

I'd love to know how people can afford to throw away hundreds of dollars a week on a little advertisment - plus make enough money for tier for their island(s) and make a profit for themselves.

Broccoli

E-mail them again. Call again. It is about all you can do. You can try to e-mail a Linden direct. You may want to try Torley, Brent, or one of the other lindens. If they can't help you, they may be able to get you in direct contact with someone else.

If people did not see a reasonable return on their investment, they would not pay so much for classifieds.

Have you tried making a help request in world, Arielle?

Thanks for your advice and support, everyone. I really do appreciate it--and thank you especially, Jackson. I feel reassured, and I will keep trying.


Broccoli, it really depends on what you advertising, and what you are trying to achieve with your advertising. Advertising for a venue or service is much different than advertising for a clothing store (like mine)--because there are so many, placement on the list really does matter, and the top 20 spots are generally $30,000L and above.
Also, I'm a very recent newcomer among the sea of those who do the same thing as I do. It's most important for me right now to get my face out there and stake some mental real estate rather than turning the absolute highest profit possible.

I believe it, it`s happened to me just 2 days ago. All my classifieds disappeared, so I redid them, the next day more were missing (After having just been up a day). Fortunately for me, it was a $60L classified. (Also, they did refund me previously for the first batch that went missing, but I was only refunded for 2)


Its really disgusting that their "service" is so terrible. Especially when real life money is at stake and even missing.


On the downside because you paid it with Lindens, it isnt really classified as having much worth other than an ingame value I think.

But im really sorry....... Everyday I play SL I wonder when something similarly as large is going to happen to me because it seems to happen to many, and the victims seem to go unheard.

Really sad, really disgusting.

I agree, I have done alot of testing recently, monitoring traffic and sales in relation to the value of my classified ads and if you are selling a product it definitely does make a difference how much you spend on the ad. I think the importance of posting a highly priced ad and out-bidding your competitors is different for each industry. With clothing and furniture the markets are saturated, most logical people will generally work through the ads in ascending order so it makes sense to get your ad as high as possible so they visit your store before spending all their money. Customers are much more likely to see something they like and buy it on the spot. This isnt necesarily true for everyone as some will have a specific item in mind so will search more vendors to find it. For other industries such as prefabs and vehicles etc poeple want to see whats out there before commiting to a purchase rather than just impulse buying as they would if they were searching for a pair of shoes. So i've found (through market research) that customers will often visit a store 2 or 3 times when shopping for a complex or expensive object so having your classfied at the top of the list isnt allways necesary as there will only be a certain % of people who will buy before seeing what else is available. When I doubled the price of my classifed the amount of traffic and sales quadrupled over night. However I then increased it again by 50% to outbid a few competitors above me in the listings and saw no improvment to sales or traffic over a 2 week period. Gave this advice to a friend in the same line of business as me and he doubled his ad and had exactly the same result. So I think it pays to know your market, try to work out and monitor peoples shopping habits in SL, ask your customers questions if they are willing and play about with your classified listing and other advertising outlets until you are getting the maximum return for your investment without wasting L$ just to get to the top of the list as its not allways necessary. Howvever if you are providing content in a saturated market then being at the bottom of the ads is not allot of help either so you need to find your happy medium.

edit: Sorry, this post is of no help with the OP's original issue. - good luck with that

File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau closest to the Second Life main business office. It may inspire Linden Labs to be more prompt about dealing with your issue.

Broccoli, I'd like someone to answer your question! Other than real estate, what else can make that much money in SL?

Seems to be casinos mostly, although quite how one "skin" vendor can have two adverts totalling L$400,500 ($1,505.94 at current exchange) is beyond me.

Broccoli

It depends, look at Abranimations...

Abramelin Wolfe sells mainly anims for animation overriders, & his product is so superior to the others (smooth and realistic motion-captured dances, HUDs to control them, super-innovative novelty anims that allow 2 avs to walk holding hands, carry each other, etc)...he makes good L$. Unless you own pro motion-capture equipment, you can forget tryin to take Abranimations on...

Then theres SL Casino...they just expanded and built The Gun Casino...both are big and the original at least is ALWAYS packed... SL Loony also sells the machines in addition to rakin in the L$ from gamblers every day, folks call em the best gamblin machines in SL


There are more examples, mostly folks who own Islands, run em the right way, & make a profit instead of just payin LL or making thier money back

Actually if more people weren't so concerned about making profit, and actually did things for the good of the community and SL overall, I'm sure it would be a much better place.

There are far too many sex clubs, casinos, laggy malls and camping crap everywhere, and nowhere near enough "fun" things to do.

What makes you think that the capitalist way is the 'right' way? Just because that's where all the advertising points certainly isn't a reason.

Broccoli

My baby spends a ton of money in here Honey just to make people happy. He does this because he is a kind and generous man. I see nothing wrong with him placing a few ads and maybe making some of his money back. Advertising is the only way people will find his new dance club , Club Sin-her-"G", as soon as it opens next week. *wink* If you can think of a better way to get the word out, then please let me know.

Kira,

Well, their record shows an "unsatisfactory" rating, and shows that they respond to few BBB complaints. Since they already have this rating, further complaints won't make it worse.

Still, I would encourage anyone who feels ripped off and cannot get redress of grievances in a reasonable amount of time to file a complaint. The more complaints that go unresolved, the worse it looks (since complaint counts are kept), even though there's no worse rating than "unsatisfactory".

The Classifieds used to work consistently. Now they don't. How come?

Are they going to fix this? CAN they fix this?

Is this a matter of something no longer scaling? If so, what are they going to do about it.

Why do the Classifieds no longer work consistently?

You would think this would be a HUGE priority thing.

coco

Has anyone read the BBB page?

"The Bureau processed a total of 16 complaints about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total of 16 complaints closed in 36 months, 14 were closed in the last year."

16 in the last 3 years. 16!

BBB Membership: This company is not a member.

And as for the classifieds, they have stated they are actively working on them.

16 is actually quite a few. You have to consider that most people a) don't know about the BBB, b) don't think it means anything to report a business to it, since there's no teeth involved in a report, and c) don't think it is worth the hassle to go through the reporting and grievance process.

The BBB knows this, and weights their ratings acordingly. Thus, even with *just* 16 complaints, most of which went unanswered or unresolved ("closed" doesn't mean "resolved"; it means they were administratively closed by the Bureau once the standard response period has expired without a response), they have awarded LL with an "Unsatisfactory" rating.

Real estate is the most obvious and probably in the long run the most lucrative pursuit. However, the very top names in the fashion industry (Blaze Columbia, Gurl 6, Torrid Midnight, etc) and also obviously making a rather large amount of money--you can tell by simply examining their overhead, such as land owned and classified ad space purchased. I can guarantee you that none of these people are running themselves into the ground with their expenditures.

If they are capable of turning this kind of profit with their businesses, there is apparently a fairly high demand for their products.



SL is based in a financial sphere, so this is pretty unavoidable. It costs money to own land. It costs money to rent land. It cost money to import textures and sounds. In order to create things in SL (which is what drives the entire user-created world), you need to do these things, and therefore you need to spend money. Therefore it's not an unreasonable desire that people would like to at least mitigate some of the cost of fully participating in the SL world.



The lovely and unique thing about Second Life is that one has the ability to realize almost anything one likes, so please feel free! I look foward to seeing what attractions you can come up with.

I just figured I'd post a bit of an update... it has been one month to the day since my $81,000L classified ad disappeared, and as far as I can tell, LL has not even attempted to resolve the issue after countless emails, web-tickets, phone calls, and voice-mail entries.

I've decided to issue a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, for what that is worth, and I wanted to encourage anyone else who has had a similar experience (even if it was only a small amount) to do the same. If as many people who are being abused by LL were to issue these kinds of complaints, I think LL may be more motivated to take care of of their customers.

A good part of SL's marketing revolves around the fact that you can buy/sell/earn $L and cash it out for real-world money. To simply seize $L that is worth any amount of real-world money for no reason and without explanation--be it $1USD or $300USD (as in my case--is unacceptable and is a failure to render services as promised.

A few interesting things I've noticed during this last month:

* The day after I posted this thread and received a large amount of replies, I received not one but three emails from LL assuring me that they were working hard on the problem and I would "not be forgotten". This was nearly two weeks ago. I haven't heard word from them since.

* During the many, many times I called the customer service number, a recorded voice informed me that "today's estimated wait time" was about "five or six minutes". Every. Single. Time.

* I waited nearly twenty minutes. Every. Single. Time.

* Each time I was forwarded to the voicemail system (which was each time I called, I never was able to contact an actual human being), a recorded voice informed me that my call was very important, and they would respond to each and every message as though it were an actual phone call. This was 100% true, as they never responded to any of my calls OR voicemails.

It is my conclusion that the voicemail is NOT monitored, or that someone just pulls out a couple and follows up every now and then as the mood strikes them.

Has anyone actually gotten through via phone (to an actual person), ever? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Anyway. Off I go to the BBB. If LL has taken any $L at ALL from you (in the form of disappearing classifieds or ANYTHING) please, please do the same. Rolling over and taking it only encourages more of the same behavior.