The discount that costs more than the original

So in preparation for voice being introduced to Second Life, they've partnered with a company to sell headsets, and are offering this "discount" deal costing a mere $80. One should note two things here, however. Number one is that this is the "featured" headset, meaning it's the most expensive, the one they'd love you to buy. If you click the "Selected Headsets" link, there are cheaper offers. Number two is that you can buy it a LOT cheaper elsewhere.

Let's look at some figures. All of the figures don't include postage and packing, but I have no reason to believe that the prices of other stores are vastly different.

The "discount" store has the Plantronics Audio 450 Portable PC Headset priced at $23.42 The cheapest I could find this for was actually from Hewlett Packard's store, where it was $17.28 - no sign of a discount here.

The next most expensive is the Plantronics Audio 370 at $36.82 - ZipZoomFly.com were cheapest for this one, at $28.50; again, no genuine discount in sight here.

Next up we have the Plantronics Audio 510 USB Headset: "Discount" price from Linden's partner: $46.87 - so what price can I get it for with a quick google search? $35.68 from TheNerds.net - three nil down.

Their next most expensive headset is the Plantronics DSP-400 PC Headset weighing in at a hefty $53.57 from the "discount" partner of Linden Labs. Best price I could find? $36.90 from Techonweb.com - can we make it a full house?

Apparently we can. As previously mentioned the "feature" - read "most expensive" - headset is the Plantronics Audio 550 Binaural USB Headset with DSP at a stonking $80.37. Quick search on that one and Mwave.com are the cheapest, at $51.91 nearly $30 cheaper than the "discount" offer from Linden Labs.

So I have to ask, Linden Labs - Where the hell is the discount you (or rather your partner) is promising? Every single headset they're selling is not discounted, it's actually more expensive than other retailers, in some cases nearly $30 more expensive.

This is false advertising. There's no discount. There's a backhander. We're being ripped off. And then they want to us to trust their choice of "honest" companies with Integrity for age verification?

No thanks!

The Open Letter Project

In my experience, 1.15 has been the worst viewer release since I joined Second Life. I've had all kinds of problems with slow rezzing, slow speaking, slow responses to control phrases on channel 0, disappearing inventory, teleports failing... the list goes on and on. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw on the Official Blog a reference to an open letter that had been sent to Linden Labs about the problems.

The letter is located here and addresses a number of the issues I - and lots of other residents like me - find to be a problem. I would ask visitors to this blog to at least look at the letter, and if they agree with it please also sign it too. The more residents that sign the letter, the more seriously Linden Labs will have to take it.

Quite frankly the customer service has become a joke. Firstly online status was hidden, supposedly to give privacy to residents - but more likely to stop Lindens being IMd when the help channel was ignored. Then the help channel went entirely, live help being removed and replaced with two links to websites. Now residents have been forced to register and use a third party website to draw Linden Labs attention to what we're saying. In the meantime LL is trying to press ahead with new things, which - admittedly though the new items are nice - will put even more strain on the grid. Voice support... nice, but watch bandwidth usage rocket. Sculpted prims... lovely, but the prim building system we've got already is flakey enough; even though LL say it won't, will the introduction of sculpted prims strain the grid even more?

It seems the only thing that works consistently is the billing system, and even that got compromised last year... The open letter calls for Linden Labs to concentrate their resources on fixing what we already have rather than looking for new features. I for one agree with that approach. I've seen this approach in shops, they start up, offer a good product with good sales support and after sales support at a good price. This encourages growth, and they grow and expand... and everyone slowly changes from a customer to an account number... and before you know it the after sales support is gone - and people start looking elsewhere. Then the day comes when you drive past the shop and it's closed.

We don't want this to happen to Second Life.

Please... go read the letter, and sign it. The more support we can get, the better the chance Linden Labs will listen.

Be well.