On Monday November 11th, Linden Lab issued a Commerce blog post indicating that there were changing the requirements which much be met in order to sell goods via the Second Life Marketplace.
The move, clearly aimed at preventing the ease with which suspect accounts can create a Marketplace presence and start selling goods which may have been ripped from elsewhere was announced thus:
To increase security for Merchants and shoppers alike, all new Second Life Marketplace Merchant accounts will be required to enter payment information on file (PIOF). If you would like to check your account to see if this requirement has been met, please see the Mesh Upload Status page.
Only newly created accounts will be required to meet this requirement at this time, and existing Merchant accounts will not be affected. However, we strongly recommend that all merchants complete the steps necessary to meet this new requirement.
If you have difficulties completing these steps, please file a support ticket or file a JIRA.
Unfortunately, the announcement was immediately followed by confusion and negative feedback, largely as a result of the system not appearing to work as advertised, and being relatively easy to circumvent.
I contacted Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications about the announcement and confusion, and received the following reply:
Hi Inara,
Thanks to reports from Merchants, we have discovered a bug in the system that determines whether an account has payment info on file. We are working now to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and expect to release a fix in the next couple of weeks.
In addition, we have had some questions about the 5-day age requirement for accounts trying to become Merchant accounts. This requirement is not new, and there are no current plans to change it.
best,
Peter
This update has now been appended to the original blog post, and will hopefully help alleviate immdediate concerns, although it may also lead to further questions as to why the update was not more thoroughly tested.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
This is the Merchant Support Team we’re talking about. Their test scores for communication are far from being impressive.
LikeLike
Sadly true. Nor is the lack of ability to impress restricted to communications.
LikeLike
A 5-day requirement is too low in my opinion.
I would have set it at 100 hours of ‘game time’ / logged in time – counting only where an account was not AFK flagged (any time after 5-mins of inactivity not counted).
If you’re an active user you can rack up that much time in 2 to 3 weeks, even with an alt, without noticing.
LikeLike
And how do you want to count AFK ?
as example thats the first thing yu tuirn off. so anoyying function.
But agree, hours would be a better count then days.
now people make acount and wait 1 week, and the payment info. not sure if thats a secure way.
LikeLike
Not sure it was the best idea to announce this bug, also makes one wonder how long it has been around.
LikeLike
Also, I would strengthen the marketplace abuse report system with a far wider range of violations in its list, so that sales of griefer HUDs (that masquerade as “combat” HUDs) would be culled.
LikeLike