Remove stores with inactive owners
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Cooter Coorara
Just imagine if Walmart had to compete with Sears, Montgomery Ward, WT Grant, Woolworths, and so on who had open stores with merchandise but no employees.
As a prefab builder, it seems that everyone wants to build houses. There are over 37,000 homes on the MP. Many of these homes and MP stores are, no doubt, left behind with no active avatar to run and manage them. We've all TPed to a store using "see this item in Second Life" and found ourselves in someone's back yard or plunging to the earth from a now nonexistent skybox. As a retired RL businessman, I know that the most effective way to build any business is customer service. This obviously can't happen with a long defunct SL membership.
I understand that LL makes a profit from every MP sale, but it is hardly fair to the rest of us merchants working hard to make our businesses cost efficient. We have tier and marketing to pay for.
I would like to see the MP store removed if the account of the owner has left SL, or hasn't logged on for an extended period of time such as one year.
If the Lindens wonder why so many have left SL for greener pastures, not being able to maintain a profitable business is one reason.
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DimplesApplePie Spicy
Yes, it's need, because a bunch of creators are sadly passed in the real life. Also to keep a marketplace fresh, it's a real need.
DragonLady Merlin
:( Some of my favorite stores were created by avatars who have passed away in RL, and I haven't bought all their great stuff yet. I would literally cry if some of those shops just vanished. I do want someone at the helm providing customer service, but I don't care if it's the original avatar or not.
Tech Robonaught
I agree with this, "I would like to see the MP store removed if the account of the owner has left SL, or hasn't logged on for an extended period of time such as one year. "
Kehl Razor
I don't know what has been talked about or what is already being done. I just ran into this thread.
Why not just delist stuff if it hasn't sold in 6 months. If items are from older eras in SL and still selling and wanted by people they wont get delisted, regardless if the store is active or not.
If items are not getting a single sale LL should take them down. Don't delete the listings just 'unlist them.'
If a user cares enough they could log back in and click relist for another 6 months (which they can do in a few single multi item batch clicks) then fine, someone is there running a brand that wants to keep the items up. Even a manager could do this for someone with health issues or unable to access SL.
If a seller is so inactive they literally would never bother and their stuff never sells then who exactly is missing it? No one makes any money off items that literally don't ever sell... not even linden labs.
But a huge amount of items clogging the marketplace searches, keeping people from items they DO want will cost everyone sales and maybe even newer players that come to second life who can't find stuff they actually want.
Drake1 Nightfire
Kehl Razor Wow, way to kill off the small new merchants.. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get any sales of the MP? Most small merchants barely see any sales at all from it, most purchases come from inworld.
Delisting anything that hasnt sold in 6 months is silly.
Jaden Beaumont
As a creator I'd disagree with this and prefer some type of "flag" that informs the customer the owner is either no longer active or the store as a whole has "not been updated since XX-XX-XX". Should they log in after a long time away it turns active again. There are many items from the old days that were still good to have and even hard to find replacements for because no one else makes them anymore. And when someone asks me where I got something and I tell them it's no longer available it's a sad response to tell them the MP store was shut down. Having filters for search and some type of flag system to let you know they are no longer active would be better. There's a lot of things that bring nostalgia for those of us who have been on SL for a really long time and want friends who want them to also have the opportunity to get it.
DimplesApplePie Spicy
Jaden Beaumont Simple fix, if the product is updated, then it's not removed.
Lucky Clover
I think this would be best done as a "exclude items older/newer than:" feature in the search bar, alongside the other request of showing an item's upload/most recent update date. The traffic light system another requested here also would help people judge the risk of not getting item support. Most items don't even need support, so losing the ability to buy them forever would suck
Ecko Soulstar
Personally agree with the need to somehow filter older, outdated, unsupported items more effectively. As a merchant it makes sense. As a consumer it does too. It's a hot mess out there!!!
But I can't support purging other peoples stuff, just because it's 'in the way'.. as the way to go tho.
There's a better way to achieve a compromise. Maybe a more sophisticated filtering option. As a shopper & maker, I've wanted to find the newest highest rated things plenty of times. Nope. What if I want the best selling, newest stuff, with the highest rating that cost the most, and has the lowest prim count? Nope! Access denied.. expanded search filters at every MP layer, would solve a lot of what you point out. I thought much like you until personal experience opened my eyes a little.
I have a RL friend who hasn't been able to log into SL for 5 years, most of which he's been dying of terminal cancers, and still working a FT RL job.
Last year his accumulated MP sales helped him cover some emergency expenses when he was out of work sick. Not all cases are so cut and dry, and not everyone who is absent, are dead or otherwise somehow... obsolete. His items are older but still quite popular during certain times of year, and among certain groups of builders. No, there's no customer service at this time, but he's not dead yet. If he decided to come back before he dies, he shouldn't have a total loss upon re-entry. That'd just be shitty. There will also come a day that I won't want to see my friends listings when scrolling for Halloween things, because it will make me cry. But.. I will want to know they're there making other folks spooky season extra fun. We can do better than throwing other folks hard work away en masse.
Cooter Coorara
Ecko Soulstar that's an interesting viewpoint. I like it. Perhaps an addition "merchant no longer a member" to each MP page of an owner who left informing customers that there is no support would suffice.
linda Foodiboo
As a consumer I partly agree, I realized that I bought several things in a shop whose owner no longer responded to requests for assistance, the group of that shop still exists and periodically someone complains because after the purchase the seller does not respond to any requests. if the seller does not respond for a long time, perhaps you could forward the support request to linden lab since it does not delete the shop, it could at least try to inform the seller and buyer
RestrainedRaptor Resident
As a customer, I definitely don't want this. Many products out there are one-of-a-kind. I want choice and I want to be able to do my own research. Just deleting perfectly good stuff would be ridiculous.
If you wanted a boost in the search results, or some kind of seller activity metrics to show off on your store profile, that would be fine. Something like this: https://feedback.secondlife.com/web-features/p/traffic-light-indicator-how-active-the-merchant-logs-in
Linn Darkwatch
I see the point, but - as a consumer, it broke my heart when a store from a friend who'd died was removed from the Marketplace. Her items were still well-made and valuable, and I was sad and frustrated that I couldn't point friends to them anymore. Just because a creator doesn't log in regularly doesn't mean that their items might not be worthwhile. The Lab already removes accounts of people who don't log in and whose items don't sell. What's really needed is a better way to search and find what you want.
Cooter Coorara
I'm sorry about your friend's passing, Linn. I'm concerned about all of the products left on the MP whose owners have passed or left SL leaving the rest of us vendors with products that have to compete with those. We still have tier, membership costs, and upload fees to pay. We active merchants are still creating content with new updated features with mesh and now PBR making SL a better, more attractive place, which may retain new SL members at a higher degree than products created in the olden days. It is often sad when someone leaves SL, but their MP store should leave with them for the overall good of the SL community.
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