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.
Showing posts with label support. Show all posts
Showing posts with label support. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
If you're having problems with our system, check it's our fault before complaining
From the official Second Life Blog:
"We’ve received a recent rise in reports of inventory loss, including inventory resulting back to default, including your avatar. We’re actively investigating this and having already helped a number of Residents, we’re continuing to work on individual cases.
In order to help you better, as with bugs and issues in general, it’s important that if you think you’re affected, that you rule out other causes first."
The entry then goes on to blame everything else, such as if you're using a wi-fi connection or if you might have given items to someone else by mistake.
To me, the entire tone of the posting is disrespectful. The point of it seems to be an attempt to blame ANY other cause than the system. It's even technically misleading, since although wi-fi "hotspots" can indeed cause high packet loss if there's 100 users all sitting in a massive lounge (at an airport for example) surfing wirelessly at the same time, but a home user with two or three PCs linked to their wireless router is not ever going to experience the same degree of packet loss unless they have faulty equipment. I've got Sympatico High Speed Unplugged, what could be termed the ultimate in wifi (the modem doesn't even plug into a phone line) and yet I can still play SL without any issues. Also, many people who play SL play other online games as well, and if they had an important issue such as high packet loss, the other games would be unplayable. In all the cases I've heard of, or spoken to people about, this hasn't been the case.
Inventory loss means the item has gone. If you give it to someone else, you receive notification "Unfortunate Victim has accepted your inventory offer." If you get it returned, you receive a notification "Your item 'Linden Prayer T-Shirt' has been returned to your lost and found folder from plot testbed due to auto return rules" - people complain of inventory loss when they log on, open their inventory and half of it is missing.
In an attempt to aid Linden Labs in their diagnosing, here would be my checklist:
Have you just logged on? If you've just logged on, and half of your inventory isn't appearing, then you may have inventory loss. If you get it during a session keep an eye out for server messages in your chat log. A server message such as "Can't find- " may indicate it's the by now infamous asset server that's creaking under the pressure yet again.
Have you cleared your cache? This is actually not a bad idea, since SL doesn't seem to know some of the time what to do with its cache, and in any case it crashes so often it frequently doesn't clean up what it was doing in a previous session, and this can lead to problems.
Is there an obvious message in your chat log to explain your loss? Such as the ones I've detailed above. Yes, it is also possible to drop entire folders into objects, but it's uncommon since a lot of inventory loss doesn't occur at home, and involves packaged items rather than folders. I would also say here that to drop ONE folder into an item by mistake is unusual. To drop SEVERAL folders into items is so unusual as to be not worth considering. People complain of inventory loss when they have no idea what happened to folders, they don't generally complain of it when they were using that folder a moment ago.
In your inventory's 'Recent Items' tab, do the items appear there? This means you were using them, and can clear up if you've dropped them into items. If it doesn't appear here, you haven't been using these items recently.
As for "search the knowledge base" - well, that's a laughable attempt to sidestep responsibility. If someone's got a problem and they HAVE caused it themselves and not realised it... trust me, they are NOT going to know enough about the situation to be able to find answers in the knowledge base, and those that know how the system works will already know whether or not the knowledge base can help.
I've often wondered why, if items are "ours", they're all kept serverside. If we've created an item surely the details of that item should be stored locally, on our own system, and uploaded to Linden Labs only as required? Looking at my inventory I've already got over 3000 items; people whose accounts are older may have tens of thousands of items. Is it not putting LL's asset server under too much pressure to have to store ALL of these serverside? Especially if a lot of them are attachments. Why must these things all be serverside, and prone to vanishing if a server hiccups?
Linden Labs, surely it should signify a problem if SUDDENLY there's been a rise in inventory loss complaints. Yes, there'll always be a level of complaints, from people who haven't actually lost anything... but if for several days you have 100 complaints and the next day you have 1000, then there's obviously something gone wrong or those 900 other people would be complaining on the other days too. It would be helpful - and respectful - if you made sure your own house was in order before trying to blame everyone and everything else!
"We’ve received a recent rise in reports of inventory loss, including inventory resulting back to default, including your avatar. We’re actively investigating this and having already helped a number of Residents, we’re continuing to work on individual cases.
In order to help you better, as with bugs and issues in general, it’s important that if you think you’re affected, that you rule out other causes first."
The entry then goes on to blame everything else, such as if you're using a wi-fi connection or if you might have given items to someone else by mistake.
To me, the entire tone of the posting is disrespectful. The point of it seems to be an attempt to blame ANY other cause than the system. It's even technically misleading, since although wi-fi "hotspots" can indeed cause high packet loss if there's 100 users all sitting in a massive lounge (at an airport for example) surfing wirelessly at the same time, but a home user with two or three PCs linked to their wireless router is not ever going to experience the same degree of packet loss unless they have faulty equipment. I've got Sympatico High Speed Unplugged, what could be termed the ultimate in wifi (the modem doesn't even plug into a phone line) and yet I can still play SL without any issues. Also, many people who play SL play other online games as well, and if they had an important issue such as high packet loss, the other games would be unplayable. In all the cases I've heard of, or spoken to people about, this hasn't been the case.
Inventory loss means the item has gone. If you give it to someone else, you receive notification "Unfortunate Victim has accepted your inventory offer." If you get it returned, you receive a notification "Your item 'Linden Prayer T-Shirt' has been returned to your lost and found folder from plot testbed due to auto return rules" - people complain of inventory loss when they log on, open their inventory and half of it is missing.
In an attempt to aid Linden Labs in their diagnosing, here would be my checklist:
Have you just logged on? If you've just logged on, and half of your inventory isn't appearing, then you may have inventory loss. If you get it during a session keep an eye out for server messages in your chat log. A server message such as "Can't find
Have you cleared your cache? This is actually not a bad idea, since SL doesn't seem to know some of the time what to do with its cache, and in any case it crashes so often it frequently doesn't clean up what it was doing in a previous session, and this can lead to problems.
Is there an obvious message in your chat log to explain your loss? Such as the ones I've detailed above. Yes, it is also possible to drop entire folders into objects, but it's uncommon since a lot of inventory loss doesn't occur at home, and involves packaged items rather than folders. I would also say here that to drop ONE folder into an item by mistake is unusual. To drop SEVERAL folders into items is so unusual as to be not worth considering. People complain of inventory loss when they have no idea what happened to folders, they don't generally complain of it when they were using that folder a moment ago.
In your inventory's 'Recent Items' tab, do the items appear there? This means you were using them, and can clear up if you've dropped them into items. If it doesn't appear here, you haven't been using these items recently.
As for "search the knowledge base" - well, that's a laughable attempt to sidestep responsibility. If someone's got a problem and they HAVE caused it themselves and not realised it... trust me, they are NOT going to know enough about the situation to be able to find answers in the knowledge base, and those that know how the system works will already know whether or not the knowledge base can help.
I've often wondered why, if items are "ours", they're all kept serverside. If we've created an item surely the details of that item should be stored locally, on our own system, and uploaded to Linden Labs only as required? Looking at my inventory I've already got over 3000 items; people whose accounts are older may have tens of thousands of items. Is it not putting LL's asset server under too much pressure to have to store ALL of these serverside? Especially if a lot of them are attachments. Why must these things all be serverside, and prone to vanishing if a server hiccups?
Linden Labs, surely it should signify a problem if SUDDENLY there's been a rise in inventory loss complaints. Yes, there'll always be a level of complaints, from people who haven't actually lost anything... but if for several days you have 100 complaints and the next day you have 1000, then there's obviously something gone wrong or those 900 other people would be complaining on the other days too. It would be helpful - and respectful - if you made sure your own house was in order before trying to blame everyone and everything else!
Monday, March 26, 2007
I called you... but you weren't there...
I've had some pretty appalling waits for customer service departments in the past, but Linden Labs - you just outdid them all:
My Skype log for today, at the time of writing, has 6 entries for the Linden Labs number. The first four I tried to get through to the general enquiries department. I was told "The average wait today is five to six minutes." After 14 minutes on hold EACH time I was asked to create voice ticket, the automated version of "You can rant here but we just erase the tapes every day so don't hold your breath for a call back."
I decided to put my priority up, by instead selecting billing services (indicating that I was a paying customer) - Strangely enough, the average wait time there was "five to six minutes", although the music on hold was better and interspersed with "Thank you for holding, your call is important to us, we'll be with you shortly." messages.
20 minutes later, with still no answer, the system transferred me back to the queue for the general enquiries (with it's absolutely AWFUL music - if you can call it that - on hold, interspersed with random Linden wisdom all about how to spend money and view forums and stuff like that.) As if a 20 minute wait on hold wasn't bad enough, it then left me on hold a further 14 minutes for the general department - and then, guess what?
I was asked to create voice ticket, the automated version of "You can rant here but we just erase the tapes every day so don't hold your breath for a call back."
So let me see, that's ONE AND A HALF HOURS waiting on hold and still I never got to speak to anyone. Remember, this is also at a toll free number, so once the call was answered, Linden Labs were being billed (thank goodness) for each minute I was on hold. If I'd had to pay for the one and a half hours on hold as well, I'd NOT have been a happy customer. How much, I wonder, did my unanswered calls cost Linden Labs, and how many other people cost them that much, given that I obviously didn't speak to anyone because the lines were to busy?
While I appreciate that some technical support lines might feel a bit like the three dead trolls in a baggie internet helpdesk sketch there can be no excuse for making paying customers wait 90 minutes on hold and STILL not have anyone answer the phone.
Come on, Linden Labs, lets have some service around here!
My Skype log for today, at the time of writing, has 6 entries for the Linden Labs number. The first four I tried to get through to the general enquiries department. I was told "The average wait today is five to six minutes." After 14 minutes on hold EACH time I was asked to create voice ticket, the automated version of "You can rant here but we just erase the tapes every day so don't hold your breath for a call back."
I decided to put my priority up, by instead selecting billing services (indicating that I was a paying customer) - Strangely enough, the average wait time there was "five to six minutes", although the music on hold was better and interspersed with "Thank you for holding, your call is important to us, we'll be with you shortly." messages.
20 minutes later, with still no answer, the system transferred me back to the queue for the general enquiries (with it's absolutely AWFUL music - if you can call it that - on hold, interspersed with random Linden wisdom all about how to spend money and view forums and stuff like that.) As if a 20 minute wait on hold wasn't bad enough, it then left me on hold a further 14 minutes for the general department - and then, guess what?
I was asked to create voice ticket, the automated version of "You can rant here but we just erase the tapes every day so don't hold your breath for a call back."
So let me see, that's ONE AND A HALF HOURS waiting on hold and still I never got to speak to anyone. Remember, this is also at a toll free number, so once the call was answered, Linden Labs were being billed (thank goodness) for each minute I was on hold. If I'd had to pay for the one and a half hours on hold as well, I'd NOT have been a happy customer. How much, I wonder, did my unanswered calls cost Linden Labs, and how many other people cost them that much, given that I obviously didn't speak to anyone because the lines were to busy?
While I appreciate that some technical support lines might feel a bit like the three dead trolls in a baggie internet helpdesk sketch there can be no excuse for making paying customers wait 90 minutes on hold and STILL not have anyone answer the phone.
Come on, Linden Labs, lets have some service around here!
Thursday, January 11, 2007
From an illegitimate complaint to a legitimate complaint
It's interesting that this story should break just after I'd blogged about the Bragg vs Linden Labs issue. As I've already said, I believe the Bragg case is without merit; he broke the rules and he got caught. Case closed.
And now comes Furnation, who appear to have been quite deliberately targeted for victimisation. It's well known that groups that love to have something to sneer at or go for often target the "furry" community and this appears to be a carefully laid plan to do just that.
You can read the details at this posting: The Shady Side of Second Life but basically, somebody came forward pretending to be wanting to donate to the community, and donated fraudulently obtained funds. They then hacked into sim administrator accounts not just once, but TWICE, destroyed items and tried to irretrievably destroy sims and basically sabotage the entire community.
Now you'd expect Linden Labs to be very hot at tracking down the perpetrator and banning them (especially if they can hash identify hacker's computers) - surely they could work out who had hacked the accounts, and hash-ban them, then unfreeze all the furnation accounts they'd frozen to stop the fraudulent funds being distributed, right? And then restore all the funds but the fraudulent ones, which they would seize. That would be the proper way to handle it.
But no. They failed to deal with the compromised account - TWICE - and then first froze, then confiscated the ENTIRE funds of the sim owner. Legitimate questions the sim owner asked were either ignored or fobbed off with "We can't answer that, because doing so would compromise sensitive information".
Just as I have no hesitation in delivering a blog-slap to Bragg for wanting his access restored after purposefully and deliberately committing fraud, so I believe that Linden Labs have not delivered ANY degree of customer service to the Furnation community in this incident. The confiscation of all the managers assets has left the entire operation in virtual-financial difficulty, as some of the virtual funds was stored in banks and used to generate interest that in turn was used to fund the operation. Not to mention alienating over a thousand users (yes, this particular furry community is BIG) and jeapardising the future of 9 complete sims.
We're not talking about trivial amounts of real world cash here either. Consider this: 1,100 users of an active community, the bulk of whom came to Second Life as a side effect of already belonging to the community. Furry roleplayers demand detailed avatars, which has led to the establishment of a thriving community of builders and scripters (the average avatar goes for between 800 and 1300 Lindens) plus all that that entails, such as premium accounts and land ownership.
Now, if Furnation decide to pull out of Second Life, that presence WILL be felt. NINE full sims, costing $200 a month in rent alone - $1800 PER MONTH lost immediately. Let's say half the furry community have premium accounts (furries by and large don't do things by halves - if they dedicate to something, they go for it fully) so that's another $10 per account per month. 10 x 550 accounts = $5,500 per month. So without counting any extra money that might be used to buy the virtual currency, Linden Labs are putting on the line $6,300 per month by failing to offer support and help and by being heavy handed. I ask - does this make ANY financial sense, particularly given the fact that it should be possible to track down the user who perpetrated the entire vandalism and hash-ban them permanantly.
I have no doubt if a group message went out saying "Furnation is moving from Second Life - please support us by joining us on a rival system" the vast majority - 80% or more - would close their Second Life accounts within days.
Surely it's not asking too much of Linden Labs to give some quality support to a big customer?
And now comes Furnation, who appear to have been quite deliberately targeted for victimisation. It's well known that groups that love to have something to sneer at or go for often target the "furry" community and this appears to be a carefully laid plan to do just that.
You can read the details at this posting: The Shady Side of Second Life but basically, somebody came forward pretending to be wanting to donate to the community, and donated fraudulently obtained funds. They then hacked into sim administrator accounts not just once, but TWICE, destroyed items and tried to irretrievably destroy sims and basically sabotage the entire community.
Now you'd expect Linden Labs to be very hot at tracking down the perpetrator and banning them (especially if they can hash identify hacker's computers) - surely they could work out who had hacked the accounts, and hash-ban them, then unfreeze all the furnation accounts they'd frozen to stop the fraudulent funds being distributed, right? And then restore all the funds but the fraudulent ones, which they would seize. That would be the proper way to handle it.
But no. They failed to deal with the compromised account - TWICE - and then first froze, then confiscated the ENTIRE funds of the sim owner. Legitimate questions the sim owner asked were either ignored or fobbed off with "We can't answer that, because doing so would compromise sensitive information".
Just as I have no hesitation in delivering a blog-slap to Bragg for wanting his access restored after purposefully and deliberately committing fraud, so I believe that Linden Labs have not delivered ANY degree of customer service to the Furnation community in this incident. The confiscation of all the managers assets has left the entire operation in virtual-financial difficulty, as some of the virtual funds was stored in banks and used to generate interest that in turn was used to fund the operation. Not to mention alienating over a thousand users (yes, this particular furry community is BIG) and jeapardising the future of 9 complete sims.
We're not talking about trivial amounts of real world cash here either. Consider this: 1,100 users of an active community, the bulk of whom came to Second Life as a side effect of already belonging to the community. Furry roleplayers demand detailed avatars, which has led to the establishment of a thriving community of builders and scripters (the average avatar goes for between 800 and 1300 Lindens) plus all that that entails, such as premium accounts and land ownership.
Now, if Furnation decide to pull out of Second Life, that presence WILL be felt. NINE full sims, costing $200 a month in rent alone - $1800 PER MONTH lost immediately. Let's say half the furry community have premium accounts (furries by and large don't do things by halves - if they dedicate to something, they go for it fully) so that's another $10 per account per month. 10 x 550 accounts = $5,500 per month. So without counting any extra money that might be used to buy the virtual currency, Linden Labs are putting on the line $6,300 per month by failing to offer support and help and by being heavy handed. I ask - does this make ANY financial sense, particularly given the fact that it should be possible to track down the user who perpetrated the entire vandalism and hash-ban them permanantly.
I have no doubt if a group message went out saying "Furnation is moving from Second Life - please support us by joining us on a rival system" the vast majority - 80% or more - would close their Second Life accounts within days.
Surely it's not asking too much of Linden Labs to give some quality support to a big customer?
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