Tag: Direct Delivery

SL Marketplace Issues: July update

Posted on by Inara Pey

On July 31st, The Commerce Team issued the most recent update in the ongoing saga of SL Marketplace issues. The update reads in full:

UPDATE: July 31, 2012

We continue to work on testing the next Marketplace update, which includes a required upgrade (for the Marketplace, not for Residents). One benefit of this work is that we are seeing performance increases with page load and purchase completion during our testing. We are working to get this update completed as soon as possible.

Last week, fixes to help with WEB-4600 were deployed with viewer 3.3.4. We have also been working with Third Party Viewers to make sure they are handling the Merchant Outbox correctly going forward. In addition, some Third Party Viewers now support the Merchant Outbox on Linux. Please see the following Third Party Viewers if you would like to use the Merchant Outbox on Linux:

If your Third Party Viewer is not on this list, and it supports the Merchant Outbox on Linux, please send a notecard to CommerceTeam Linden. Please include a link to the download location, and it will be added to the above list.

Below is the updated set of outstanding issues with Direct Delivery and the Marketplace.

Direct Delivery

Here are the outstanding Direct Delivery issues:

  • WEB-4600 (Merchant Outbox failures): There are still outstanding issues with the Merchant Outbox, in addition to the issues addressed above. We continue to investigate and address these issues as they come up.
  • WEB-4554 (Test delivery permissions incorrect): This is on hold while we work on other issues.
  • Limited Quantity Support (Merchant does not have rights to copy the items for sale): This is currently being worked on. Magic Box migration will not be required until this is supported. (Note that Merchants can sell items that have next owner rights set to “No Copy”.)

Overall Marketplace

There are also several issues that occurred around the time of the Direct Delivery launch that we are still working to address, but are not issues with Direct Delivery.

  • WEB-4587 (listings with the wrong images): This will be addressed after the next Marketplace update.
  • WEB-4441 (Orders stuck in “Being Delivered” state): We have been able decrease the number of orders getting stuck and continue to work on preventing all orders from getting stuck.
  • WEB-4592 (Orders marked as “Delivery Partially Failed” on success): This issue is currently being worked on.
  • WEB-4138 (Confirmation emails failing to deliver): We are currently working on a solution to this issue.
  • WEB-2974 (Listing enhancement stuck in “Charging, cannot edit right now” state): This issue is on hold while we work on the other items on this list.
  • WEB-4696 (Deleted listings appearing in search results): This issue is on hold while we work on the other items on this list.
  • WEB-4567 (Bulk delete fails for some merchants): We will evaluate the priority of this once we have completed the above Direct Delivery fixes and features.

In the meantime, the due date for Magic Box migration has again been extended (as of July 26th) to October 1st, 2012.

Direct Delivery issues: June update

Posted on by Inara Pey

On June 7th, and missed in the build-up for SL9B, the Commerce Team issued a further update on the stains of ongoing work to fix various issues relating to both Direct Delivery and listings problems. This appears to be the latest in what seems to be monthly updates. The latest post reads:

06-07-2012 02:53 PM

Below is the updated set of outstanding issues with Direct Delivery and the Marketplace.

Direct Delivery

The following Direct Delivery issues have been verified, but have not yet been addressed:

  • WEB-4600 (Merchant Outbox failures): We have been working on this issue and will not shut down Magic Boxes until this is addressed. In some cases, logging out and in from the Marketplace and then the viewer may resolve this problem.
  • WEB-4554 (Test delivery permissions incorrect): This is currently under investigation.
  • Limited Quantity Support (Merchant does not have rights to copy the items for sale): This is currently being worked on. Magic Box migration will not be required until this is supported. (Note that Merchants can sell items that have next owner rights set to “No Copy”. Please see the Knowledge Base article on Object permissions for more details on how permissions work.)

Overall Marketplace

There are also several issues that occurred around the time of the Direct Delivery launch that we are still working to address, but are not issues with Direct Delivery.

  • WEB-4587 (Listings with the wrong images): This is currently under test.   
  • WEB-4441 (Orders stuck in “Being Delivered” state): We have been able decrease the number of orders getting stuck and continue to work on preventing all orders from getting stuck.
  • WEB-4567 (Bulk delete fails for some merchants): We will evaluate the priority of this once we have completed the above Direct Delivery fixes and features.
  • WEB-4592 (Orders marked as “Delivery Partially Failed” on success): This is currently under investigation.
  • WEB-4696 (Deleted listings appearing in search results): We continue to investigate this issue.
  • WEB-2974 (Listing enhancement stuck in “Charging, cannot edit right now” state): We are investigating this issue.
  • WEB-4138 (Confirmation emails failing to deliver): We are currently investigating this issue.

In addition to the above issues, there have been reports of Direct Delivery purchases silently being delivered and the Merchant not getting paid (the order is marked as “Failed”). We have not been able to confirm this report and would like to investigate further, so please file a support ticket with details if you see this.

While progress is welcome, for some merchants the wait is beginning to to tell – and quite understandably so.

Marketplace Update: DD migration pushed to August

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updated 19th May: The Commerce team have responded to payment issues. See the comments after this article.

The Commerce Team issued a further update on the status of ongoing work to fix various issues relating to both Direct Delivery and listings problems. Indeed, the announcement itself may have been prompted by a cascade of Tweets directed at Linden Lab’s CEO by frustrated merchants late on the 16th May These both requested help with the non-payment issue (outlined later in this piece) and appealed for news on Direct Delivery issues given the revised migration deadline of June 1st is fast approaching without any clarification on matters from LL having been received since April 26th.

The update is reproduced here in full. For those concerned about Direct Delivery migration, please note the final paragraph of the announcement.

[UPDATE: May 17, 2012]

We continue to work outstanding Marketplace issues.

Performance continues to improve on the Marketplace web site. With our deploy last week, we fixed a couple of JIRAs and order processing sped up, which led to some orders getting stuck in the Queued state (which means no money has been taken from the customer nor have any items been delivered). Orders got stuck because other portions of the system struggled to keep up. Stuck orders were Aborted, and a fix was made to decrease the number of orders getting stuck in the Queued state going forward while we work on a longer term fix. 

Here is the status of the remaining issues:

  • (WEB-4587) Listings show up with images from other Merchants listings
    Current status: we have identified the problem and are working on testing the fix.
  • (WEB-4696) Deleted listings appearing in search results for consumers and in Merchant Admin.
    Current status: we continue to work on this issue, and have decreased the incidence of these occurrences.
  • (WEB-4441) Orders stuck in Being Delivered
    Current status:  we are actively working on this issue and will focus our fixes on Direct Delivery purchases.
  • (WEB-4567) Bulk delete failing.
    Current status: the work-around on this is to delete each item. We continue to work on resolving this.

One other question that has come up frequently as we get close to June 1, is around Direct Delivery migration dates. We will not be requiring Merchants to migrate to Direct Delivery before August 1, 2012, and will give at least a 4 week notice for any shutdown dates. [my emphasis]

The Commerce Team

In the meantime, Merchants are becoming increasingly concerned over the non-receipt of payments from good sold. The crux of the issue has been raised in a forum post (which itself links to an earlier and more involved post on the subject). A JIRA has also been raised on the issue as well. So far, there has been no response from the Commerce Team on this latter issue.

Marketplace update April 26th

Posted on by Inara Pey

With trying to cover / enjoy Fantasy Faire last week, I missed the following when it came out.

On Friday 26th April, Commerce Team Linden (CTL) provided an update on attempts to sort out the ongoing issues with the Marketplace. The update reads in full:

[UPDATE: April 26, 2012] We are continuing to work on outstanding Marketplace issues. 

The most significant issue that has been addressed over the past week was slowness on the Marketplace website, which occurred intermittently between April 18 and April 21. Page loads should be much faster now. 

Here is the status on additional JIRAs:

  • (WEB-4587/WEB-4601) Search results, best-selling lists and related items showing up on other merchants items or images. Current status: other merchants’ listings should not be appearing in store search results, best-selling lists, related items, etc. Other merchants’ images may still appear on your listings, but this is less likely to occur as we work on a solution.
  • (WEB-4676) ANS for SLM does not populate the Location field with internal ID. Current status: this is in progress and will be deployed soon. 
  • (WEB-4696) Deleted listings appearing in search results for consumers and in Merchant Admin. Current status: we are working on resolving this issue.
  • (WEB-4441) Orders stuck in Being Delivered. Current status:  the orders stuck here due to unicode problems was addressed, and we continue to investigate remaining orders stuck in this state.
  • (WEB-4567) Bulk delete failing. Current status: the work-around on this is to delete each item. We continue to work on resolving this. 
  • (WEB-4574) Direct Delivery products are re-delivered to purchaser instead of recipient. Current status: we are working on resolving this.

We continue to work on the other Marketplace JIRAs and will provide additional updates as soon as possible.

My apologies for not catching this at the time of publication.

ANS launches: “I have some good news and some bad news…”

Posted on by Inara Pey

The good new is… Automated Notification of Sales (ANS) rolled out yesterday for Direct Delivery. ANS allows information on sales to be forwarded to an external URL, allowing merchants to not only track sales, but to perform a range of different analyses on their sales and customers, in order to provide things like more focused support, identify product trends and so on.

Originally, it had been hoped that ANS would form part-and-parcel of the overall Direct Delivery roll-out, and many merchants were disappointed that this was not the case, with ANS being delayed for reasons unknown.

Yesterday’s announcement that ANS is now available came with a highly-informative user-written wiki article on how to make use of ANS. This is extremely well-presented and spells-out exactly how ANS data can be received and used.

However, it’s not all good news, sadly, as Darrius Gothly reports in the forum thread making the announcement:

 Sadly the ANS for Direct Delivery has a Severe bug and IS NOT SAFE TO USE YET!! The ANS Transaction being sent via the Marketplace service is duplicating the Item ID# (the numeric part of the Product’s listing page) into the Location field. The Location Field is supposed to have the Order Line Item ID number instead, showing which line item in an Order correlates to the ANS Transaction. As long as that field contains the wrong data, you CANNOT track an ANS transaction back to the specific line item in an Order.

Darrius has raised a JIRA on the matter, and merchants who use ANS / have an interest in using ANS are urged to log-in and WATCH the JIRA.

When putting the “lab” back into “Linden Lab” might need more consideration

Posted on by Inara Pey

The recent Marketplace issues are not precisely news any more. LL are working to resolve matters, but in the meantime are coming under increasing backlash from users as in response to the overall management of the situation, both in terms of the manner in which the company has handled open communications with merchants on the matter and in the way the Marketplace as a whole has been handled over the years – which frankly, has been far from stellar.

My thoughts on LL’s handling of communications on the core issues is a matter of record here. Others feel the same way, so much so that a vexed comment from Sera Lok on Twitter lead to a response from Rodvik:

On the one hand, the honesty in Rodvik’s response is to be applauded. Free from BS, it speaks to the heart of the matter in many respects. However, it has to be said that one apology via Twitter isn’t actually enough.

Not One-off

The problem here is that the current Marketplace issues are not a one-off situation; the fact is that the Marketplace as a whole has effectively lurched from controversy to controversy ever since XStreet, its progenitor (so to speak), was purchased by Linden Lab back in January 2009. Indeed, some of the problems being experienced today are as a result of issues relating to the re-coding / relaunch of XStreet as the SL Marketplace back in 2010, as LL themselves note in updates to their forum posts on problems.  As such, it has caused merchants and SL commentators to give voice to the widespread sense of frustration many feel towards LL and their management of updates and changes:

And herein lies the rub: one can well understand the managing, maintaining and updating a beast such as Second Life, which has had an organic growth over its 10-plus years of life,  to be nothing short of a major headache. It’s a difficult and complicated monster to control without sometimes breaking things; but the same cannot be said of SLM. This is a product that was originally purchased  as XStreet in a reasonably robust and working form, thus LL had no reason to rush through its redevelopment  and implementation  – yet that appears to have been precisely what happened in the drive to replace XStreet with SLM.

There can be no excuse here: the entire process appears to have been mishandled from start to finish, frequently with deadlines seeming to come ahead of consideration as to whether code was ready and often missing critical functions.  Even the recent roll-out of Direct Delivery trod this all-too-familiar route; while merchants openly pleaded with the Commerce Team not to roll out DD without ANS (Automated Notification of Sale) with some even posting precisely why ANS is vital to many merchants. Yet, when launched, DD brought with it the statement that ANS would be enabled in “next couple of weeks” (a time frame which itself, unsurprisingly, has slipped given the ongoing problems).

“Putting the Lab back into Linden Lab”

In a recent interview with Games Industry,  Rod Humble indicated that one of his goals from the start of his tenure as CEO was to “put the ‘lab’ back into Linden Lab”. Well, the mark of a good lab is its ability to rigorously apply robust and consistent processes and procedures to the work it carries out. At the moment, particularly with reference to the company’s management of the Marketplace, it would appear that much more needs to be done before the “Lab” is anywhere near being back in “Linden Lab”.

While it is very good to know the team is “crunching hard” to resolve issues, one very much hopes that the outcome will be more than a simple “fix it and move on”, leaving the door for the same mistakes to again be made in handling future Marketplace updates. Rather, one hopes that a long, objective look will be taken as to how things are being managed and the necessary checks and balances implemented to ensure that product roll-outs are no longer subject to the poor level of quality that  – as Tateru points out in her Tweet – users have been forced to expect and accept over the years.

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