Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
A Second Life designer (who asked to remain anonymous) had an interesting experience with a customer recently. Well, maybe I should say this experience was with a 'customer', because their interaction with this designer casts a lot of doubt on whether or not they ever bought a single thing from her in the past. Either way, it led to an amusing story and a few tips that most SL designers will be able to appreciate.
It starts like a lot of customer service encounters in SL start: A notecard with an explanation that an item had been purchased and lost to some technological snafu or another. it happens, and it's usually the truth. This note also came with a snippet from their transaction history to prove the initial purchase:
Septermber 13, 2014
Order #1373338995
Order Status: Delivered
Total items: 1
Order Total: L$39,998
[...]
Providing your transaction history, essentially a receipt, right when you contact a designer is a thoughtful thing to do since it saves you both time. Unfortunately it's easy enough to fake one end of this receipt, and not every designer will bother digging through their own records to confirm that a transaction is legitimate. That said, maybe you've already caught the most obvious clue that this 'customer' was trying to take our anonymous designer for a ride, and that brings me to the first tip:
Read Transactions Carefully
If this was indeed copied and pasted from the user's transaction history, then someone needs to let Linden Lab know that that's definitely not how you spell September. There are lots of ways that a scammer (especially a lazy scammer) could slip up, including typos and formatting. Most people wouldn't retype their transaction history when they could copy and paste it, so it's pretty hard to excuse errors like "Septermber" in particular.
Save your Transaction History So You Can Consult it Later
This scammer probably though they were being very clever. They used a purchase from September for a reason. Although they overlooked the fact that Second Life Marketplace transactions are stored indefinitely, Second Life's in-world transaction history doesn't go back more than 32 days. That means that if the designer involved didn't regularly download and save that history from the website they would have no way to confirm an in-world transaction themselves. Downloading your transactions at the end of every month may seem like a hassle, but it's worth it.
Remember That No One Knows Your Products Better Than You Do
This scammer made another very big mistake: The product they were requesting be resent hadn't actually been released on the date provided in their falsified transaction record. No one knows all the intricacies of your products, from the release dates to the locations of vendors to the contents of notecards as well as you do. Well, you and someone who actually purchased the product from you. When in doubt, use that knowledge to your advantage to figure out whether you're dealing with a legitimate customer or not... And most will be legitimate, so remember to keep your Columbo charm at max and save that "one more thing" moment until you're positive that they aren't.
Do you have any tips of your own to help designers separate the real customer service issues from the scummy scams? Share them in the comments below!
TweetJanine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.
The designer might not be that anonymous, not from that info, considering how few single items cost 39998, and were released AFTER Sept 14th of 2014, and considering there's a rather famous item that was released soon after that date for that price.....
There's also a way to help keep track of Marketplace transactions, you get an e-mail every time someone buys something from you on marketplace. Use filters to put them in a folder, then you can search them easy.
It's a mystery to me why LL doesn't have an account option to automatically e-mail you a copy of the regular transaction history.
Posted by: CronoCloud Creeggan | Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 09:40 PM
Well, if I can't find any transaction details, then I'm usually telling the "customer" that there's possibly a bug in the system, and that I'm going to fill an AR describing the bug, as well as attaching convo, "customer's" name and that forged transaction info they gave me. Most of time, it's just enough to blow their cover. As long as I remember, there was only one person who managed to keep poker face during whole conversation, never called me ever since tho. And yeah, I actually report those people. Because fuck them.
Posted by: Ugh | Friday, January 23, 2015 at 12:51 AM
Third-party vendor systems often come with various sales reporting features, be it an IM, email, or a web-interface with a transaction list (going back further than 32 days!)
So if you use a vendor system, do read up on its reporting features and use them!
Posted by: Jackal Ennui | Friday, January 23, 2015 at 02:24 AM
I'm surprised to see a discussion like this in 2015. Fake transaction IDs have always been pretty common. Generally they come from young people, or people who -for some reasons- can't list payment infos, or from a Sunday morning scammer. As merchant there's a simple task that really helps: Transaction History allows to see and export last 32 days transaction (there's not the 500 transactions limit anymore). Every first of the month, or any other day, I export the last month as an .XLS file (I exclude the 0 L$ transactions, but some may find this useful for statistical purposes). It's something that takes 1 minute to be done. Among these logs you will be 100% sure about who cheats and who doesn't. One could paste them or index them with an application of choice for a quicker consulting. To the previous commenter: 39998 L$ could be the total of an order, and not necessarily the price of a single item, he/she (tried) to request the redelivery of only one item among them, using the bundle of orders as excuse, because in such circumstance the failed delivery could appear (more) possible.
Posted by: Vee | Friday, January 23, 2015 at 07:16 AM
This sort of happened to me. The only difference was there was no transaction info sent and no request for replacement. The person wanted to know how to do something with the product. I replied back with an answer, and then, as I always do, I went to log the question in my database. I keep a copy of every transaction and issue for every customer. What was weird was this: That customer did not appear in my records, which I have kept from day one. I messaged back and asked where the product was purchased, just so I could ensure they were not forgotten, and that individual never responded. I thought this was very strange. Anyway, thank you for the article, these were great tips!
Posted by: Luhkey | Friday, January 23, 2015 at 08:51 AM
Luhkey, that smells like a stolen product to me.
Posted by: UCMO | Friday, January 23, 2015 at 02:01 PM