Direcly from JIRA posting SVC-2911:

Sunday, August 24, 2pm, Second LIfe was closed to logins due to the following reason:

“Due to higher-than-usual load, logins to Second Life have been temporarily disabled.”

Fact: Second Life currently boasts over 20,000 sims. People are paying anywhere from $75 to $350 per sim per month in tier fees. At the time of Linden Lab shutting down logins, the concurrency was 67,335… which is a little over 3 people per sim.

Our group is paying over $1,200 per month in sim fees. When I can’t log in to service my own group due to inappropriate policy in handling a concurrency of 3 user per sim… we are not getting our money’s worth and neither is anyone else. We do not pay such high fees to have our group members blocked from logging in at 67,335 concurrrency

If Linden Lab is going to host 20,000+ sims, then it would follow the company needs to install the asset servers, support equipment and network bandwidth to handle the number of users those sims will require.

For as long as I can remember (literally from day 1 of joining Second Life almost 4 years ago as of this writing), Second Life has had a problem loading textures.  This is a specially debilitating problem because the entire environment is built around textures.  Textures define what we see, where we walk, signs that we may wish to read.  It effects our shopping– which is totally reliant upon textures to present the product.

On Second Life, textures often take 10, 20, 30 seconds… sometimes up to 2 minutes to load.   This is inexcusable.  Can you imagine trying to look through hundreds of items at a market with each texture taking up to 2 minutes to load?  No wonder people get frustrated with the experience.  Not only do they often leave the market, thus depriving merchants of much-needed sales… they often leave Second Life, telling their friends of a lag-filled, second-rate boring game.  And no wonder it’s boring; they can’t see anything.

What adds insult to the injury however, has been Linden Lab’s continued insistance on blaming the customer for the experience.  Those of us who have been on SL for some time are well-acquainted with this phenomenon.  If your sim lags, it’s because of “customer content”; you have too many prims, too many scripts, too many textures… and it’s never Linden Lab’s fault.  No, of course there’s nothing wrong with the servers.  They’re professionals and they deal with such things every day.  You need to cut scripts, cut textures.  This customer-blaming attitude is so prevalent among Linden Lab, that a joke phrase is well known on Second Life:  “An empty sim is a happy sim.”

The real problem here is that all of such claims are pure corporate propagandistic BS.   Yes, it IS indeed possible for customer content to severely lag a sim.  This is even quite often the case on Mainland, which is largely unregulated and unmoderated.  But in my experience, most privately-owned sims are honed.  The sim owners keep an eye on such things as prim and script usage (at least, as much of an eye as lax SL tools permit).  Still, they experience problems. 

The TRUTH of the matter is that Second Life is a genius product poorly implemented.  The asset servers don’t work properly, internal communications simply don’t work, and YES LINDEN LAB, THE TEXTURE LOADING SYSTEM IS TOTALLY BORKED.

Consider:  at this time– and this has been the case for over a year now– group chat times out and stalls on a regular basis.  Public chat often severely lags and ones own postings appear out of order and even disappear entirely.  Group notecard delivery appears to have about a 50% success rate.  Now what can we honestly say about a software program that can’t get simple chat and notecard delivery right? 

Yet, when I and others have posted on the JIRA (Linden Lab’s method for bug reporting) that such things as textures are not loading properly, do you know what kind of answer we get?  Here is a word-for word Linden reply.  Note, this is not an uncommon reply; it is typical to the experience:

“First, I assume “Textures loading worse than ever since new upgrade” means
“Textures loading is slower in the 1.20.15 (92456) viewer than in the 1.19.1.4 and older viewers”. If that’s wrong please correct me so I may redirect my testing.

wayfinder wishbringer, I have a couple questions about your particular setup:

What resolution do your run SL at? SL run at higher resolutions > downloads larger, higher detailed textures > greater time for texture download completion.

How much Bandwidth is your avatar + attachments using? You can find this by going to an empty region or face the ocean at the edge of a region, turn on View menu > Statistics Bar. Watch the Bandwidth meter, just below the FPS meter and see what your average Bandwidth is. The Bandwidth your avatar uses contends with the Bandwidth for downloading textures.

Balpien Hammerer, I see the stall in the middle of texture downloading. I’ll look into whether that stall is new or has always been there.

So far, my texture download testing indicates textures are downloading at the same speed they did back in 1.12 and 1.13. I’ll keep investigating.”

Now mind you, at least this Linden is replying, and I have to grant that it appears he is actually trying to solve the problem.  However, this is rather astounding, considering the reply of user Maggie Darwin who posted a simple Linden Lab webpage post:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_Pipeline_Improvements

Now when one goes to this wiki webpage, we find out that the techs at Linden Lab are fully aware of the texture loading problem, have been aware of it for some time, and it’s on their “top priority” list for getting fixed (now why it’s hasn’t been fixed yet is one of those universal wonders, but there it is). 

In addition to his post, user Balpien Hammerer made some tests of his own, and found out that texture loading almost in every case took 10, 20 or 30 seconds… always increments of ten.  Ah, the puzzle starts fitting together.

And no, the problem is not “bandwidth”, or screen resolutions, nor the flippin’ avatar we are wearing, thank you very much.  It has to do with the foundation-method Second Life uses to send textures to a customer.  Apparently these are sent out in packets via a method called “UDP”.  If a packet is dropped… instead of simply re-sending that packet, Second Life starts at the beginning, sending the entire texture all over again.  A dropped packet takes 10 seconds to time out… thus the 10, 20 and 30 second texture rez problem.  Comes the dawn.

But there is more to it than that.  Apparently instead of just sending the texture across all at once where it can rez instantly, an experienced tech friend relayed to me that the texture is sent across in “pieces” of varying resolution.  That is why we see a texture first appear gray, then blotchy gray, then blotchy color, then out of focus color, then finally.. finally… finally rez. 

In the computer field we have a technical term for such process:  amateur.  This method of texture loading was ill-conceived, ill-designed and poorly implemented.  The fact that Second Life has operated for over 5 years on such a process tells us two things:  1) customers are really gullible and 2) Linden Lab really needs to get their act together.  (And yes, I know LL is raking in money hand over fist.  The question is: how long will they continue to do so now that the Virtual Food Fight is on?  And could they have done so if they had any viable competition all this time.  I think the answer to both is NO).

But in truth, texture rezzing, as important as it is, isn’t the main issue of this article.  The main issue is this:  we, your customers, are getting tired of having smoke blown up our tails.  Yes Linden Lab, your customers are people, and people really hate being mislead, misdirected, misinformed and outright lied to.  Linden Lab has been aware of this texture issue for how long?  You have known what causes it and you have had plans to fix it (intentions, intentions), yet when this matter hits JIRA, instead of simply posting that website yourself… one of your customers has to do so? 

Seriously, how lame is that?

Communications folks.  I’ve said this from my earliest days on Second Life.  We can put up with bugs. We can put up with lag.  We can handle issues and will even applaud you when you fix a serious one.  What I do not tolerate, never will tolerate– and what brings blog posts such as this– is being lied to.

Wayfinder’s Recommendations to Linden Lab– A Challenge to Get it Right 

For quite some time (about 3 1/2 years now) I and others have been regularly making recommendations to Linden Lab of ways to improve their system.  Some of those recommendations have been adopted (Estate Tools, Group Tools, the ability to invite people to a group directly from their avatar).  Other good things have been added by LL themselves.  But many very-much-needed things have been ignored, while exhaustive time has been spent on eye-candy, lag-inducing additions such as flexis, sculpties, voice, videos and most of all– Windlight. *

There are far more important things to consider, things that are essential not only to everyday use, but to growth of Second Life itself.  As a user of Second Life who is online every day, who uses the system everyday, and as the founder of one of the largest fantasy groups on the grid (in other words, someone with in-world experience out the ears), I make the challenge to Linden Lab to address and implement these issues with all due haste, for the good of both its customers and the good of the company.*

At the top of that list we find…

STOP THE MEMORY LEAK.  There has been a severe, graphics-related memory leak on SL for more than a year now.  It causes regular crashes, memory overloads and severe lag.  Any company worth its salt would have stopped such a leak at breakneck speed.  That this has continued for over a year, to be frank, is inexcusable.  Call in a third party consulting firm if you have to, but THIS NEEDS FIXED.

200 GROUPS. Current group limit of 25 is totally inadequate. Preferrable: plan for future growth and change the group-membership database from static to dynamic nature, allowing unlimited groups.  In the time I’ve been online SL has gone from less than 400 sims to over 20,000.  25 groups is not nearly enough and before long… perhaps 200 won’t be.

FAST TEXTURES. Goal: no individual texture at any time should take more than one second to fully rez. Region textures should bulk-load on an even faster basis, with a goal of maximum sim load time 1-3 minutes per 1000 textures. A texture requires 100k or less dataspace. It should load across the internet in the blink of an eye. The current rez rate of 30 seconds or more is inacceptable performance.

STOP INVENTORY LOSS.  SL is at deep-core, a database system.  Losing data is the #1 crime of any computer programmer, systems director, or company.  Inventory costs your customers money, building time, effort.   Can you imagine some huge department chain suddenly losing data on Accounts receivable?  If McDonalds lost data on their thousands of franchises, do you think there is a chance someone somewhere would lose his/her IT job?  You bet.  Data loss can be prevented.  People are losing inventory on a daily basis.  We receive “object missing in database” messages on a regular basis.  Needs to stop.

FIX GROUP CHAT. Stop the timeouts and failed discussions. The inability to perform CHAT properly is simply a disgrace to Linden Lab programming ability. As has been stated before, “If a company can’t get simple chat right, what can we really expect?”

FIX GROUP NOTICES. Group notices should be delivered to all members without fail. The “opt out” option on group notices should NOT be the default, nor be able to be trigggered accidentally. Again, the inability to send a simple notice to a simple list of group members is shameful.

MEGAPRIMS. Remove the 10m prim limitation and expand it to AT LEAST 64m (256m would be far better). Megaprims have been tested, they work, they are not detrimental to the system if used properly (and if old-wives-tech-tales are properly ignored), and they ALREADY EXIST in several forms. So why the excessively-cautious attitude? Make them officially available so we builders can get down to some serious building.

REMOVE ARBITRARY LINK RESTRAINTS. There’s no need for such. Link restraints don’t stop griefers;  all all they do is restrain legitimate builders.  We would love to be able to build a 64m castle or an 80m spaceship and have it all linked and flyable– in one piece. If both link restraints and 10m prim limits were removed, we would see some amazing builds on SL.

IMPROVE FLIGHT. The inherent ability to fly higher than 200m. Users are very tired of having to wear “flight feathers” and similar devices just to fly.

SCRIPT TIME TOOL. Allows builders, sim owners or anyone to measure exactly how much script overhead time is required by an object. Takes into consideration the actual average-operation-time of the object, based on all scripts within the object. Purpose: to help reduce region and asset-server lag. Script time should offer two measurements: server time, client time.

SPECIFIC ROLE NOTICES AND IM. Groups have need to contact specific roles within groups without the entire group being notified. SL is currently sadly lacking in communication abilities– abilities that exist in other worlds far less complex than SL.

DETERMINE PRIM TOUCH. The ability to determine on what face and where on that face a prim is touched.  This would come in extremely handy on prim-based menu systems (such as multiple teleport locations) and control panels (such as spaceship panels and HUDs).  Imagine being able to create a multi-function HUD in one prim, or a multi-location teleporter in one prim.  (NOTE:  This is actually being implemented at this time.  Good for Linden Lab.  Waaay past due.)

I will likely be adding to this list as time passes.  Look for a new date at the top of the list.  Again… there is little time to implement such issues.  Competition is not only coming– it’s already here.
 

* Fact: while sculpties and flexis are visually nice, both greatly increased the “lag” time of an already lag-ridden platform. While Windlight and Dazzle are appreciated by some, just as many rue the day they were brought to the system… and thousands left Second Life as a result.

None of the additions I’ve recommended above are “eye candy” features. They have all been needed for a very long time and have taken a back seat to time-and-resource consuming eye-candy features such as Windlight.  Windlight required thousands of man-hours of programming, hours that could have been spent on far more beneficial things.  Adding eye candy on top of an unstable, buggy platform merely adds to the instability and bugs.  All of the above suggested features are very worthwhile, would greatly improve the SL experience, and need to be implemented not a year or two years from now, but NOW.  SL is about to come up against the strongest competitive market anyone could ever imagine. Linden Lab needs to get on the ball NOW if they are to have any hope of retaining a decent market share.

Summary: We have the environment.  We have the foundation (even if somewhat unstable).  We need the tools and features to make SL work like it should be working.   It doesn’t make sense to spend money on toys when the table is bare.  The SL paying customer base is not growing.  In fact, as of this date, SL has lost 7% of its paying customer base over the last 7 months (easy math: that averages 1% a month).  How much more of a loss will it take to convince LL that it needs to pay more attention to customer needs?  We need improved functionality, useful tools, added VALUABLE features and elimination of unnecessary restraints.  Only by catering to customer needs can Linden Lab hope to retain those customers.  Otherwise, the eventual outcome is predictable.

–o–

(Intro in the About post above)

Greetings all and welcome to Wayfinder’s Blog.  Thought I’d start off by discussing the general state of the virtual world today.  There will be those who agree with my posts– and those who disagree.  If there is any defined goal in my posts, it would be to get people to really think about what is going on around them, and to help people make wise decisions when approaching virtual society for the first time. 

Without a doubt, VR is the future of the internet.  Within the next 2 to 5 years (given current society remains intact), the entire internet will move more and more from a 2-D text based system to a 3-D immersive society.  Many are calling VR the “new internet”. 

But like the internet in general, VR is not without its perils, not the least of which is addiction.  Anyone involved in VR knows of this.  People become so immersed in their virtual life, they start ignoring their real life.  The addiction is real, it’s recognized, and it can be dangerous.  It has cost people jobs, mates, families.  Perhaps worst of all, it has cost them their personal identity, as they abandon any RL accomplishments they may have gained for whatever questionable accomplishments may be made in virtual society.

At this time, the unquestionably dominant VR world is Second Life, where I began my role as Wayfinder Wishbringer.  Second Life is without a doubt an amazing, incredible and yes, addictive world.  People can take on any character they wish, can build homes and autos and entire worlds, can “script” (write in-world programs), play music, socialize and dance.  There is truly almost no limit as to what can be accomplished there.  It is a very versatile system. 

There is simply nothing else like Second Life on the planet– currently.  Unfortunately for Second Life and its residents, the host company Linden Lab leaves much to be desired.  The company has a long, established history of poor customer support, an extremely shaky and bug-ridden platform, arbitrary knee-jerk decisions quite often detrimental to their customers, and less-than-truthful PR announcements and communications.   This has created a very dissatisfied user base akin to that common of Micro$oft and its Windows system.  In addition to this, Linden Lab has charged ludicrous prices that many believe have prevented thousands of users from enjoying the VR world to its full potential, and prevented Second Life from growing beyond its current levels.  The company has often focused on eye-candy projects while ignoring serious bugs that last for months and even years.  These issues are common knowledge among the system’s users. 

I don’t intend to spend all my time blasting Linden Lab, but neither will I sidestep issues in these blogs.  Where they do well, I will state so clearly and with full applause.  Where they mess up I will not only point out the problem, but also try to present a solution.

Why?  Because as I have already stated, Second Life is one of the most incredible VR systems on the market today.  I would love to see Linden Lab wake up to the needs of its users, stop focusing so much on their stockholders and bottom-line profits, and allow the system to reach its full potential.  They can only do that if they listen to their customers.  If they don’t, sure as griefers grief, they will lose their market to a company more savvy and user-friendly.

Advanced caution:  If you’re a die-hard Second Life fanatic and Linden Lab Loyalist, you might not want to read this post.  It’s a bit scarey.

The Virtual Food Fight… it’s coming.

Do you think Second Life is the only game in town?  Go to Google Search.  Enter VIRTUAL REALITY.  Prepare to spend several days visiting sites.  Agreed, Second Life is somewhat unique at this time.  But that is changing.

Search HiPiHi.  See what you find.  Search Open Sim.  See what happens.  Definitely not the only game in town.

Now for some real fun, visit http://Lively.com.  Check out who sponsors it.  Uh oh.  Google.

Welcome folks, to the Virtual Food Fight.  We’ve been warning Linden Lab about the VFF for oh, some 3 years now.  What it entails is other companies figuring out that VR worlds are profitable (Linden Lab sure proved that) and entering the fray.   Fortunately for Linden Lab, that takes a while.  There is a lot of planning, hiring, designing and coding to be done.  Not an overnight project.  Unfortunately for Linden Lab… they spent most of that time  alienating or even making enemies of the vast majority of their customers.  Company policies, unstable platform, griefing, lost inventory, blaming the customers for company problems, knee-jerk decisions, you name it.  The record is not good.

Vast majority I say?  Absolutely.  Look at Second Life’s supposed “residency” figures.  Now look at their active member figures.  Ouch.  As of this date, approximately 95% of all those who have ever signed up for Second Life no longer use it.   That is MILLIONS of people.  Triple ouch.  Add to that their loss of 7% of their paying “Premium” user base over the last 7 months (that’s 1% per month folks), and the future does not bode well.

So what happened to all those people who were interested in VR but who found Second Life to not be worth their time?  Many switched to Second Life’s greatest competitors, online games such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and numerous others.  Others turned to other areas of the Internet; there is surely no shortage of activity there.  Some… including once-active SL customers… simply returned to “real life”, fed up with Linden Lab policies and the instability of Second Life.

During this time, all the up-and-coming companies have been designing their products.  They are now poised to pounce.   Already VR environments such as HiPiHi are showing up, along with FREE online VR games that rival the graphics of anything SL has to produce.  Granted, most of these systems have limited or no building, limited or no scripting… but they are viable and stable… and they do not have the extremely high learning curve of SL.

That brings us back to LIVELY.  Lively is a (as of this writing) brand new item from Google.  It’s widespread, it’s hosted by one of the worlds largest and most well known computer companies… and it’s TOTALLY FREE.  That’s right, free.  No membership fees, no tier fees, no setup fees, free free free. 

On the SL blogs, most users had the same comment:  Lively sux.  Lively is nothing.  Lively doesn’t hold a candle to SL.   And you know what?  They’re almost right.  On almost every count. Comparatively to SL, Lively almost doesn’t stand up.  Almost.

But what a small handful of commenters noted, and what is absolutely true, is that most users of Second Life do not build, do not script, do not own land.   They are freebie users.  They chat, they dance, they buy L$ by the ton.   In truth it is they as well as the Premium users that keep Second Life afloat.  Why?  Because typically Premium users get to the point they don’t buy L$.  They earn L$ from sales, rentals, services etc, but they don’t buy on LindeX.  They primarily buy islands either for their own private use, or so they can run their malls, rent out land, and sell things to those that do buy L$.  Without people to buy L$, the land barons and merchants have no real reason to ply their trade.  Take out the free user quotient, and SL would undergo a virtual earthquake from which it just might not survive.

Lively should have Linden Lab shaking in its boots.   Because in truth, Lively is kinda interesting.  People can easily design their homes.  The avatars are downright cute (gotta love that pirate tiny).  The learning curve is nowhere near SL’s “spend 6 months just learning the ropes” monster.  I think SL users are biased and ready to disgard Lively as an amateurish attempt at VR, but news flash:  the majority of the population of the U.S. and other countries are not SL users… and they just might be attracted to the user-friendly and grief-free environment of Lively.

The very same people that are free users on Second Life, the ones who have no choice but to do their dancing and chatting on a highly unstable platform, the ones who sometimes are not allowed to log in because Second Life has “unusually high concurrency”, those who have to put up with lag and lost inventory and griefers and other goofiness… now have an absolutely free platform where they can EASILY design their own home, have their own virtual space, invite friends over, chat and dance to their heart’s content on a stable platform… absolutely free.  With cute avatars no less.  Most people, if they look good they couldn’t care less about building and scripting.

Sure, it’s not SL.  It’s no where near as sophisticated, no where near as versatile, no where near as flexible.  But it is free, universal, simple and from feedback thus far– it works.  Further, Lively can only go up from here.  Google had the good sense to START with a stable platform (at least so I’ve heard. Mind you, this is a brand new system.  More on that in a week or two as the feedback comes in).  Start with a stable platform, and you can just add bits and features here and there until your system rocks.   So people can’t build now?  What about in 6 months?  People can’t script now?   What about a year from now?  Lively can go wherever Google decides to take it.  What’s worse… Lively is not based on the Linden Lab software platform, so there goes LL’s dreams of ruling the market by licensing their technology to third party companies.  Google doesn’t need Linden Lab.  They’re quite capable of writing their own software, thankyewverymuch.

But that’s not what’s really scarey for Linden Lab.  What’s really scarey are the more than two dozen VR companies out there right now that are poised and ready to hit the market this fall.  And those don’t even count the top secret projects designed to directly compete with Linden Lab and do their very best to take over the market.  They have had a chance to watch LL, to observe the mistakes.  They’ve read the forums and the blogs and not being right inside the corporation, are able to clearly see the issues and where LL has failed.  This is known as the “BIG BLUE STRATEGY”, a philosophy used by IBM for decades now:  let the other guys design and make all the mistakes, then produce a better product and take over the market.  That’s how the PC came to be.  (Of course IBM made their share of mistakes.  Whole nuther blog).

HiPiHi is China’s entry into the fray.  It’s been in open, beta development for years.  HiPiHi is multilingual.  They know that they need both a Chinese and English version of their program if it’s going to catch on.  China also moderates their systems (an area where LL has failed miserably) and believes that users are responsible for mature and honorable conduct on their system.  You can bet China’s government isn’t going to allow kiddie porn and other illegal activities, even in a virtual world.  That should attract a lot of people who are sick-and-tired of constant griefings on SL due to LL’s historic failure to consistently and quickly handle such matters in a problem-solving manner and who are tired of the garbage, attitude-laden environment of mainland. HiPiHi isn’t likely to tolerate that nonsense.

Open Sim.  Now there is an eye opener.  Designed by users to be a direct clone of Second Life, Open Sim even uses the SL viewer.  Granted, it’s in infancy stages.  It’s laggy, it’s shakey (some would argue largely due to using SL’s Viewer), but according to programmers its development is actually ahead of schedule.  When it arrives, users won’t be consigned to paying Linden Lab ludicrous fees just to have a piece of virtual property.  If they want to… they can host their OWN virtual worlds.  If they are not so technically inclined, they can for as low as $75 a month purchase sim space that will grant from 25,000 to 45,000 prims… quite a bit better deal than Linden Lab’s $295 a month for 15,000 prims.  Not only that, but Open Sim has the potential of being the Internet of VR.  What kind of prices will develop when it gets rolling and competitive?  Sim hosting for $50 a month?  $25?  Free if you allow banner advertising?

Open Sim is the bulldog puppy.  If it remains healthy as it grows, it could very well be SL’s most damaging competition.   Evidence indicates that Linden Lab hopes to score by offering an “access license” to allow people to interchange assets (inventory/avatars) between SL and Open Sim regions.  But in truth, there are already ways to pull inventory from Second Life to other sims.  Programs already exist.  And in a year or two, why would anyone even want to?  They’ll have already been developing their own sims, new products, new scripting, new services, all on Open Sim, which will allow them to port such anywhere within the Open Sim grid.  That grid promises to be far more vast, far more stable, and far more flexible than Linden Lab’s current 20,000 sims.  It is very likely that the future of Open Sim will NOT be financially based as is Second Life.  With sim prices so low, people won’t have to sell things just to be able to afford a sim.  A brave new world could arise, freed of the contraining L$, land barons and high-priced merchant items (I mean really, L6000 for a skin?).  There’s nothing wrong with land barons (thanks for the rentals guys… free users appreciate it).  There’s nothing wrong with merchants (I love shopping as much as the next guy).  We just don’t want our virtual lives to be ruled and overrun by such concepts.

But with systems such as Lively (and who knows what else currently in development), Open Sim itself may be dead before it gets a chance to prove itself.  Lively pretty much took the computer world by surprise.  Very well guarded secret, all in all.  What else might be out there, ready to hit the market at any time?  A totally free VR platform with building and scripting, funded by advertising?  Woohoo!  Sign me up! 

We can only imagine what is about to hit.  Virtual Food Fight.  Fasten your seatbelts folks… it’s coming.  Oops!  Too late!  Already here…

LINDEN LAB RESPONSE to the BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU

Let me first say that like everyone, I realize that Linden Lab is a busy company and that they have a lot on their plate.  I don’t envy their employees the tasks assigned to them.  As a Concierge told me one day, multitasking is a rule of the trade.  Not an easy job by any means.

Nevertheless, that’s what they do.  They are bottom-line a customer-service company, providing an entertainment product and they charge a tremendous chunk of cash for that product.  That means that dealing with people should be top priority.  When a customer service company fails to provide customer service, then there are problems.

To discover how successful Linden Lab is at doing so, one only needs visit http://BBB.org … the Better Business Bureau.   The rating of LL is “unsatisfactory”.  BBB has a policy of not getting into details, preferring to provide general headings of resolution or failure to resolve. 

The heading “company replied but not to customer’s satisfaction” basically means the company didn’t take care of the problem in a satisfactory manner.  If they had really offered a reasonable solution and the customer still wasn’t happy, BBB notes such.  But if it just says that the customer wasn’t satisfied with the reply, it means Linden Lab blew it both from the customer’s view and the view of BBB.  Thus, the “Unsatisfactory” rating.  Businesses do not want to have an Unsatisfactory rating.  It’s the BBB thumbs-down and a warning to all potential clients.  Bad mojo.

There are several posts on the site.  I feel there would be a lot more if A) more people realized this is a viable alternative when LL proves to be buttheads and B) they weren’t afraid of being kicked off of SL as a result. 

Following are excerpts from a customer’s actual filed report against Linden Lab.  I think it leaves little question as to why such reports are filed in the first place…

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Facts:
* I filed a JIRA bug report.
* The employee cancelled the bug report, telling me the problem was with my computer
* I re-opened the bug report (as is my right according to JIRA policy) and told the employee that as I am a “real life” computer systems analyst and my system is a top-of-the-market quad-core system, there was nothing wrong with my computer. I pointed out this bug had been reported again and again for more than a year, and that Linden Lab continuing to deny the problem exists was improper.
* She again closed the report and cancelled my ability to file JIRAs

The request made to the BBB was simple:  reinstatement of my JIRA status and a letter of apology from Linden Lab.  Linden Lab’s response:

“… we would therefore ask that this not be categorized as a “complaint,” as no monetary or consumer issues are raised. We regret that Mr. Resident had a bad experience on our platform. However, it does not appear from his complaint that any refund is in order, or at issue.” — Charlie Linden

["Mr. Resident".  Now there is a personal response for you.  What are they doing now, setting up form letters for reply to the BBB?  Not to mention the "no money is involved here so we can treat this user any way we want and the BBB should butt out" attitude.  Sheesh.  Continuing with the complaintant response to this...]

“Contrary to Linden Lab’s claims, this matter DOES affect monetary issues.  I am a “merchant” on Second Life and my daily sales hinge on Second Life working properly.  When it does not, when a major problem occurs, JIRA is the system by which these problems are reported.  Their employee arbitrarily cancelling my ability to file JIRA reports has a direct impact on my ability to conduct business on Second Life.  Linden Lab’s reply ignores the primary issue… that their employee barred a client from an everyday-use function of the system… and focuses on “monetary issues”.  Such attitude is part of the primary problem with this company– that of ignoring customer needs and services and focusing exclusively on the dollar and their bottom line.  BBB reports against LL reflect this issue time and again.”

Following is LL’s response:

“We appreciate and consider users (and non-users) suggestions as to how to improve the free aspects of our service. However, we reserve the right to block abuse or harassing behavior from those free aspects of our service. 

We are very sorry that Ms. Resident feels she has had a bad experience on our site. As a gesture of goodwill, we have placed into Ms.Resident’s account the sum of 5000 L$, and we very much hope that her experiences on our platform continue to improve.

We again would respectfully request that the Better Business Bureau attempt to confine the complaints it sends us to those involving some type of monetary or compensatory issues, rather than those involving user suggestions about our platform.”

This response wasn’t signed.  Not all that surprising.  I replied to the BBB:

“I am trying my best to respond in a business-like manner to Linden Lab’s reply, but after reading their response… that is difficult to do.
 1. There was no abusive behavior by me on Linden Lab’s system.  The abusive behavior was from their employee, who is known for disregarding customer feedback. 
 2. Linden Lab’s referring to me, a male customer of Linden Lab, as “Ms. Resident” is a blatant example of their attitude toward their customers. 
 3. Their continued efforts to reduce such issues to “monetary or compensatory issues”, and their deposit of L5000 to my account rather than simply restoring my JIRA status as was requested, leaves little doubt as to the focus of this company.

It costs the company nothing to drop 5000 “L$” (monopoly money) in a customer account.  The action rather than positive, is frankly insulting. I’m a merchant with total sales topping a half million L$. I don’t need more L$. This issue isn’t about L$… it is about Linden Lab response to platform performance issues and their handling of customer complaints.  L$ are not the issue; they don’t even come into the picture.  That Linden Lab would consider this a supposed solution to this issue is shameful.

Rather than simply addressing and correcting that issue (restoring the function), Linden Lab has responded in a depersonalizing, condescending manner, labeling a MALE customer “Ms Resident” and making a conscendatory gesture that does nothing to solve the issue.

I don’t need more L$.  What I and all of Second Life customers need is a company that is responsive to customer feedback and requirements.

 These things stated,  I am absolutely NOT satisfied with Linden Lab’s response to this issue.  Frankly, I don’t think anyone would be.”

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

This issue is so glaringly obvious, I don’t think I really need to comment further on the matter. 

Linden Lab, you want to know why people are upset with your company?  You want to know why so many claim your customer service is terrible?  You wonder why you have an “Unsatisfactory” rating with the Better Business Bureau?

This would be why.

 

POST SCRIPT 

Why am I reporting this here?  For two reasons: 1) to inform users that unprofessional nonsense like this is not unusual  and 2) (and more importantly)  to wake up Linden Lab.  They have a new CEO who claims to be intent on improving things.  There is soon going to appear something I’ve coined ”The Virtual Food Fight” [see another blog title].  When that happens, Linden Lab will predictably be in major trouble if they haven’t corrected problem policies and attitudes such as the above, then follow that up with reworking their entire user policy/customer response system.  

Stories such as the above fall into two categories on my “Corporate Attitude List”:  1) Bullheaded Nonsense and 2) Fix or Die.   The solution to this is simple: restore the avatar’s JIRA and apologize for an employee’s attitude and lack of judgement.  LL’s path so far:  Moronic replies, stubborn non-compliance, and a “tell the BBB to flake off” attitude.    Indstead of taking the obvious step of restoring the customer’s JIRA abilities, Linden Lab would rather battle it out… even trying to tell the Better Business Bureau how to run their organization.  Most businesses would realize that such an obstinate, unyielding path is unwise, if not suicidal.  Abusing, insulting and alienating your customers is actually a BAD thing.  Insulting and alienating the Better Business Bureau is even worse.

–o–