Update: As of 20 January, ATMs appear to be online. I’ll be watching out of curiosity to see if they remain online.
In the belly of the beast (L to R): Dutch Box (DX’s ATM payment bot), Telephone DX,
Groupinviter DX, Bart Melendez (Owner of DX). They were “busied out”
together in the server room, which amusingly is underwater. The publicity
brochure on the table is titled, “Geen Paniek” (“Don’t Panic” in Dutch.)
It has been four days now that Dutch Exchange’s inworld ATMs have been offline.
On the 14th, Stef DX (“DX Inworld Manager”) sent the following notice to the DX users group:
Dear DX Exchange Users,
We are actually experiencing some issues with our banking system (unexpected delay to get the ls we’ve bought) , we consequently have to close down the system till tomorrow. We will keep you informed about any change that could occured by the next hours.
We are sorry for that inconvenience and remain at your entiere disposal for any question you would have.
Best regards,
DX Exchange Management Team
After three days of silence, a notice from Rosa Rolls (region manager for DX’s Rotterdam office):
I sent this notice because yesterday and today about 50 people asked me when will the atm’s be working again. I have no idea. I hope very soon. I only work inworld for DX. Best is to look from time to time.
Greetings Rosa Rolls.
DX advertises itself as the largest L$-exchange office in Europe. For such a boast, it seems very odd that they seem to be out of funds – or at least so low on funds that their business has been paralyzed while they wait for the fulfillment of an inworld currency order from Linden Lab.
You would think that they would be making every effort to reassure their customers that all is well, but there is no signage in the DX office that indicates the reason for the outage. Attempting to use a DX ATM returns a message blaming the downtime on grid issues:
Due to problems on the SL grid our DX Exchange system is currently offline. Our excuses for this inconvenience. Meer informatie is te vinden op: http://status.secondlifegrid.net/
I contacted a DX representative over the weekend, asking if there was any idea when the ATMs would be returned to working status:
Me: “Any idea when the ATMs will work again?”
DX Agent: “Linden labs have informed us they can’t get the L$ into Dx until tomorow (monday)..sorry for the inconvenience”
Me: “So DX does not have their user’s funds on hand? Or they were appropriated by LL? I’m confused. Is DX still solvent?”
DX Agent: “DX is solvent….Just Linden Labs dend the L$ to us…we buy in advance and linden send them to the DX system..but being sunday they were slow to do this.”
It is now Monday evening and the terminals are still offline. While I hope that everything is as they say, I can’t help but get an uneasy feeling about all of this. After the previous outage, my commission (for hosting a DX ATM on the Holland sim) disappeared. I filed a support ticket asking:
I recently received a commission for my terminal in Holland. When I went to withdraw funds, I was told that the system was down due to SL malfunctions.
When I went today to withdraw those funds, I was told that my balance is L$0. Could you check this for me? Thank you.
The response I received was:
iam sorry but ur account has 0 l$ so thats why u cant withdraw .
kind regards
Olivia DX
Apart from the SMS-speak, I knew that my account had L$0 in it. My question was not “Why can’t I withdraw funds I don’t have?” but rather “What happened to my commission?” My follow-up to this ticket has, as of yet, been unresolved.
DX needs to provide a clear reassurance to their customers that their money is safe. Otherwise people are left to wonder.
People like me.
Tags: dutch exchange, dx, finance
Lol they should buy their Linden$ from VirWoX. Not only would they get them immediately, they also would get a better price. In fact many other resellers buy from us nowadays.
I don’t know if you’re an official representative of VirWoX. My point is that the customers who were disadvantaged by DX during their outage were also given reassurances that buying from them is prompt, fast and reliable as well. It’s easy to make promises, but its another thing to deliver on them. Or at least to keep your customers in the loop when something goes wrong, rather than blaming it on “grid issues” which are nonexistent.
I’m not bashing DX. I’m simply holding them accountable to their customers – partly because some of their customers are my customers, as well.