What can be done if something is purchased and it is never delivered?

I was in a shop and bought an animation for over $400. The animation was on the wall in the shop and looked completely legit as that seller had many items in the shop. When I made the payment, the animation was never delivered and all IM's have been ignored for weeks by the seller. I even put in an AR and got an answer back that the situation was resolved but I still have no animation and the money was not refunded either. What can I do to get some sort of satisfactory resolution?

Have you tried sending the seller a notecard with the pertinent info? Sometimes IMs get capped, so it's possible they didn't get yours.

LL has very odd definitions of the word "resolved" .

In the case of an AR, resolved simply means that the abuse report was closed (and hopefully read), it doesn't imply anything about what was done about it. In your case, you have a resident dispute with someone which LL won't get involved in so the action taken is simply to do nothing and toss the AR.

The very first thing to do would be to clear cache and relog and wait for your inventory to finish fetching. After that do look in your trash to see if it didn't end up there (if you were busy while buying it, or sometimes it just glitches that way) or search for it by name to make sure it wasn't simply misplaced elsewhere.

Look at the profile of the creator and see if they're a member of an open enrollment group and join. Then open the group window, scroll down to his/her name and you'll see when they were last online or if they're currently online. If they aren't a member of an open enrollment group, you could still track their online status with a script.

If the group shows he/she has been online recently (after you sent your first IM), it's possible that the IMs were capped. You can try sending a notecard instead (at least you'll get an accept/decline for that) or simply refresh the group status periodically to see when they're online (looking at a profile won't do it since most sellers seem to have online status turned off for non-friends).

If nothing you do gets a response, then you're unfortunately out of luck. There is no rule that really compells any seller to answer IMs, do customer service, or even actually deliver purchases. It's also possible that even if you do get a response, it'll be that they don't feel responsible for SL failures and won't provide a new copy.

(Edited to add that you should also look at their picks. Some store owners have business hours listed in their picks and will ignore any customer IM outside of the indicated time)

Keep trying. Have the date of the transaction in hand, IM the seller, send your issue on a notecard and drop it to them. Repeatedly.

Some content creators take 30 day hiatuses or longer, especially the older ones.

Most people in business are pretty good about it, but especially in the middle of summer, with a creator who may now be a level 30 elf in World of Warcraft, fast return service might take a long time from an SL perspective.

Good luck and I hope you get through!

Tsk, that's not very high...s/he needs to work harder.

Check to see if autoreturn is enabled on the land. As others in the thread have said, check to see if the money went to the actual person selling the product.

One time I discovered somebody throwing invisible prims down in front of real items, and people were buying copies of the invisible prim, not the item they intended to buy. From there on, I never operated the mall without autoreturn. Thats an awesome feature.

And are absolutely you certain it was never delivered?

If it was sent as an animation, it would route to your "Animations" folder. BUT, if they seller boxed the animation (and many sellers do box their items, so they can include an LM & notecard), then it would route to your "Objects" folder. Or, perhaps it was sent in a folder of it's own. Did you run a partial word search on your inventory? Sometimes the merchant delivers the object with an unexpected name. For example, hypothetical store Sam's Object Store sells you Animation #1. When delivered, it arrives as "SOS Animation #1" (many merchant's insert their name to differentiate their item from someone else's with a similar name). If you look in the A's, you might not notice that it is really down in the S's. A partial word search (in this example, "#1" or "animat" should locate it.

If it really hasn't been delivered, then the other advice you've recieved here, should be listened to. Many merchants get so many IM's that they reach their limit and can receive no more till they login. Send a notecard in addition to the IM. They'll see it on their next login.

Filing an Abuse Report over non-delivery of merchandise wouldn't go anywhere anyway (excluding the virtual circular file) as this is a dispute between two residents and the dispute does not violate the Terms of Service nor the Community Standards (see Section 5.1 of the Terms of Service).

Let's review:

* The equivalent US$ value for the L$400 piece of merchandise is: US$1.50

* The Lindens will not be stepping in to refund your money.

* The merchant most likely assumes that your merchandise was delivered.

* If you had "decline all inventory offers" checked in your Preferences the merchandise is _possibly_ in your Trash folder. If you emptied your Trash since the purchase it's not up to the merchant to replace the objects you tossed out.

* The non-delivery of the merchandise might have been caused by a client bug of some sort and the merchant doesn't feel it was their fault, but the fault of your client software.

* The non-delivery of the merchandise might have been caused by a sim bug of some sort and the merchant doesn't feel it was their fault, but the fault of Linden Lab.

* The merchant's IMs have reached cap and as they haven't logged in they haven't seen your messages (or notecards).

* In any event, the Lindens will not be refunding your money (nor providing the merchandise) as according to the Terms of Service you accepted your experience within Second Life "as is."

Don't get too discouraged Gwylym. Very likely their im's are capped or they have not been on or both. Just drop a notecard, make sure to change the title to something they will assume needs to be read, and try again.

Now, contrary to Elex, $1.50 is a lot to me at least. But if you get no where, just chalk it up to initiation into SL. Lost inventory happens. So sorry.

Yes, yes and yes. I checked my inventory via a search. Looked in animations and all over.
I sent a notecard to the seller and have not heard anything back yet.