April 2014 – Page 3 – Ciaran Laval

April 18, 2014

Transaction ID’s Should Be Preserved On The Transaction History Page

One of the issues that has been raised regarding the new Transaction History page is the issue of transaction ID’s not being present. The argument goes that as only a portion of the transaction ID is present on the page, it’s not guaranteed to be a unique value and therefore is not as useful as it could be. The full ID is available in downloads and will continue to be available in downloads.

However, part of the transaction ID being present is better than none of it being present. Here’s a scenario, a customer has an issue, the merchant asks them for the transaction ID from the SL website, the customer complies, the merchant finds the transaction and from there, they can see what happened with that transaction or at least engage with the first steps in finding out what happened.

Some people seem to believe it’s better to ask customers for date/time, item, price etc. instead of trying to go for a single lookup via a transaction ID. I’m finding this all somewhat bemusing as the chances of the portion of the transaction ID on the SL website not being unique in a certain range is minimal for the vast majority of merchants and customers, the only strong argument against their inclusion is that they are incomplete, but as the issue of duplicates is not likely to happen often, it seems odd to want to withdraw this.

Again this seems like it’s something that busier merchants may find less useful, but busier merchants are in the minority. There should be a happier compromise here, collapsable fields. Therefore those who don’t want to see a certain field can hide it, but for those who still find it useful, it will still be there.

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April 18, 2014

Which Merchants Have Got Linden Lab’s Ear?

The greatest trick the FIC ever pulled was convincing the world they did not exist.

There are rumblings afoot regarding just whom Linden Lab are talking to and trying to appease with some of their recent changes. Let’s take a look at the recent initiative to standardise clothing descriptions. In the blog post Linden Lab said :

In order to make this easier for shoppers, we have worked with Second Life content creators to define a way to clearly communicate this to customers.

This seems completely reasonable to me, but there is a concern regarding just whom these selected Second Life content creators are, prompting Sassy Romano to post a thread in the merchants forum : Commerceteam Linden and the secret meetings :

So, let me get this straight…

There was a “project” that merchants helped with (who?) yet not one single mention of this project or initiative mentioned here, in what should be considered one of the primary communication vehicles and now…

NOW… LL asks that all merchants standardise on the outcome of this covert project when they were all but nearly all excluded.

Here’s the thing, Sassy has a point. Why wasn’t this discussed in the merchants forum? Where was it discussed? Who were the merchants involved? Where’s the transparency? I have been one of the few who sees the merit in this initiative and I do think this sort of standardised labelling is a step in the right direction, but surely the discussion should have been made more public considering it’s an initiative that Linden Lab want the wider public to embrace.

Then there are the changes to the transaction history page, which some now suspect is being changed in the interests of some of Second Life’s most successful merchants.

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April 16, 2014April 16, 2014

Linden Lab Seek Feedback On New Transaction History Page

The new transaction history page is back, but as an alternative page for the time being. Linden Lab have blogged about this, it’s a brief blog so I’ll copy it:

Last week, we made a new page available as a replacement for the old Transaction History page. Due to your feedback, we rolled back the changes to this page to allow us to gather more feedback, and we are now providing this new page for review, without removing the old Transaction History page.

We have not yet made any changes to the new page, because we would like time to collect your feedback and review it. We have created a wiki page giving background on why changes were made to this page, where the new page is, and how to provide feedback. We will be closing feedback on April 30, 2014, so please take a look before then.

The link in the blog post at this stage for the new transaction history page actually links to the wiki, which then has a link to the new transaction history page. I don’t know if that’s on purpose or not, I suspect not.

The new transaction history page was initially panned by some users, to such an extent that Ebbe Altberg stepped into the thread and LL then rolled the changes back. Now it is back and rather strangely it’s back in its original form, without any changes. This seems rather odd as a starting point.

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April 15, 2014

The Elder Scrolls Online Extremely Odd Subscription Requirements Take New Turn

I’ve blogged before about the strange issues regarding subscription payments for The Elder Scrolls Online. The crux of the matter seems to be when is 30 days of free game time not 30 days of free game time. Whereas my previous post was largely about the odd pre-authorisation charges whereby customers were reporting they were temporarily having the full subscription charge held on their accounts after setting up payment methods, the latest issue is more about those for whom a credit card wasn’t an option and this remains a very odd issue.

Due to confusion over the issue an official statement has been released :

Every customer that purchases the game receives 30 days of play included. Upon registration, customers are required to choose a payment method for the subscription fee associated with game play beyond the first 30 days of service.

Customers who choose to pay for a subscription with a recurring payment method, such as a credit card, are advised they will not be charged until the first 30-days of use included with the purchase of the game expire. Further, they are informed that they can cancel their chosen payment method up until the first 30-days included with the purchase of the game expires.

That sounds reasonable, you buy the game, it includes 30 days of game time, you setup a subscription method and can cancel before the end of the 30 days. However where matters have taken an odd twist is with their attempts to be more flexible with their payment methods :

In order to give our customers the most flexibility in how they pay for their subscription, we also offer non-recurring payment options, such as Webmoney and iDeal.
Customers choosing to use a non-recurring payment method for a one-time subscription purchase are advised they will be billed immediately for subscription and that their purchase is final. Customers who utilize these non-recurring payment methods will receive immediate access to the 30 days of use included with the purchase of the game plus the additional amount of time associated with the subscription plan they selected – e.g. 30, 90 or 180 days.

Whoa back up there, those who are using non-recurring payment methods are therefore not getting their 30 days of game time included in the game, unless they pay for more game time. That’s not really the best way of going about matters, if something is being included with 30 days of time, that should be honoured and it will be to a fashion now. The Elder Scrolls Online team also insist they were open and upfront about this and to reiterate that fact, they point this out in the official statement as well as explaining how they are going to be flexible over the issue, even though it’s not their fault ….

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