Chic at Ebbe's Place

What's a girl to do when frustration gets overwhelming? Well put on her skimpiest bikini and get in a little beach time.

It started a couple of days ago when I read that a merchant had their store deleted during the upload process of the new marketplace.

Now I was looking forward to the new and improved market. Admittedly, marketplace listing is at the bottom of my fun to do list in the retailer area, right above "networking" which I simply do not do. But still, improvements are good and I could see in part the wisdom of having store inventory kept in databases of the shop owners. Well it seemed like a good idea.

Then I found out that a friend of mine who I work with sometimes had his store corrupted somehow. Now he cannot delete unlisted items (maybe he never could, I don't know if that is a feature or not) OR upload anything new (now that's a biggie). His numerous existing items seem to be OK -- at least for now.

He is of course not happy and had that "leaving the building look" in his eye (OK, it was an IM but you get my drift). So he is taking a break in hopes that they fix things. Support was of no help. Many of us have been there before :D.

In the meantime, I have been working my key combo fingers to the bone in Blender making a cycles rendered skybox -- not a simple thing and at the fineness of my renders it takes 40 minutes to process with many tries to get what I want. Lesson learned there -- well part way through and it was learned, but I am a stubborn gal and so I finished with many house cleaning breaks while Blender looked at numerous light sources and various textures in an attempt to be real.


I got my skybox finished and up on the Kitely Market in OpenSim. I had already tested much of the build in SL on the beta grid and even had most of the SL physics correct (First try! I was so happy). Planning to upload and use in SL and put in my store ...

And here I am today.

Do I want to take the chance of losing my 100 items store (for awhile most likely but awhile translates into dollars) OR the ability to upload items (again maybe short term, maybe not so short).

A long time friend of mine of real world status who has been working in e-commerce backends from the beginning of e-commerce explained that the "live" nature of the market while pretty impressive makes it also very difficult to  -- well "fix" works in layman's terms.

Indeed my market store friend with the issues received continuous emails  (many pages worth deleted) of "unlisted due to failed delivery" messages even after reporting -- and he apparently has marketplace notifications off.   I don't want to deal with that either.

Since I believe that stumbling blocks often offer opportunities I tried to look at the last few days in that light. So what could I do if I was unwilling to take a chance with the current state of affairs?

Well I could, it seems, make a new account and upload things that way. I couldn't find anything saying that was against the rules although it might be in there somewhere.  Could I have my alt (already with payment info on file and mesh upload certified) make a store? Much easier.

Well NO, apparently not. She could not get the website to accept her acceptance of the marketplace terms. There is also a note on the marketplace front page stating that the viewer based browser won't finalize orders for some folks -- so apparently website problems. 

I could ask my RL ex to make a store (he has my RL credit card so that is about as trusting as ya get), but I didn't want to drag him into all this -- and what is to say he would have better luck making a store?  I could possibly partner with a good friend who already has a store (although empty at the moment) and give her part of the profits for uploading hassles.

None of these options are making me want to do a song and dance.

Now I know there are always issues when a big change occurs. I know databases are often problematic; I have certainly lost plenty of virtual  things over the years due to there quixotic nature. But in the back of my mind I kinda feel like the SL folks are being used as beta testers. Is this leading to the improved Sansar Marketplace?

There seem to be many good changes, but at least in the old days a store owner could often fix their issues. With this new model, most of the power is with the tech folks running the show. I am not sure if I like the trade off.

So, after a very long day and lots of thinking, I guess my plan is simply to do nothing so far as the Marketplace goes. I have noted lately that a lot of the big name folks are NOT on the market -- or are not uploading anything new. This was before the changes, so not due to that. Maybe it is the percentage deducted?  I have no issue with that; the Marketplace is a service after all. Maybe the just don't like the extra hassle?  Well I really get that one.

Perhaps taking a step back to when shopping was inworld wouldn't be such a bad thing.  There was a certain charm there. Exploring. Experiencing.

And so ends my very long and frustrated musing of the day. May the issue rectify themselves soon.