Learning the Hard Way

I posted a more complicated tale of woe in an existing thread on groups here but since it began to get buried, I thought I'd ask a simpler question which could be the main component of my hideous newbie error:

Can you buy land from yourself without any penalty? I had oft-times heard of people buying from themselves for various reasons, and it was even suggested to me in Live Help that I could just sell to myself for a $1.

Not?

For example, it was suggested that as an officer, I could opt out of a group and sell to myself to take the land out of a group purchase -- indeed, I was warned, that's the danger of groups, that any officer can sell out of the group. But that wasn't the problem -- all I tried to do was sell from one group to another, new group.

Somehow, when I sold to myself for a $1, in order to buy from myself and my old group as a "buyer-for-group" in a new group we created, when I was automatically taken to the SL website to confirm the purchase, suddenly I found myself being dunned for double the land in a new tier! The land was 10,000 and some change, and I was suddenly forced to tier in the 33,000 plus level -- thought I never had that much land.

Could this be because the system calculates your tier available to make a new land purchase, and then ADDS the new land purchase to that existing tier, as if you were hanging on to the old piece? Perhaps it can't "know" that you are selling to yourself...

It gets worse...I did this once...began to suspect something could be amiss and it could be double-booking this way...then tried it another way between two different alts buy first making an individual purchase, then deeding to the group...and the same damn thing happened, with a doubling of the tier.

I've dealing with a really big cash burn right now.

Can any one enlighten me?

you can pull your tier out of the group first. The groups land wont get released for days after its under tier. once done give a few minutes fir system to update, then buy it

You cant pull out of the group and then buy the land because then you cant set the land for sale. You need to set the land for sale to yourself for 0 then buy it leave the group.

you set the land forsale to yourself for 0 $

you reduce your tier donating to the existing group to 0. this will signal an alert that the group does not have enough tier allotment to maintain its land holding. but you can ignore it since the land will be sold anyway.

you purchase the land for the new group, donating (recently freed) tier with the purchase.

it's tricky moving land out of group ownership. group land options have a lot of room for improvement. a lot!!!

there is a SEVERE lacking of group features, that said heres what you should do

first if the land is owned by a group, and you are an officer you can sell it for any price to anyone even if the price is 0$. first set the person it will sell to, to your name by clicking the set button near the price. next put the sell price to 0$. then click the sell box to put it on the market. now you need to think about land alocation, if you have land alocated to the group to support the land in the group you will want to right click yourself and in the pie chart click group, then select the group your taking the land alocation back out of and select info on it. its normally a good idea to activate this group to prevent any mishaps. when you get the info open look at the top tabs for land and click that. then unalocate the selected amount of land your purchasing. dont worry about any message saying you need to alocate more land to the group to support the land in it, since you will be buying it soon. let me take a break to explain the workings a little for this. when you dont have enough land tier to support any purchase you have 24 hours to remedy the problem before any land is released to the public, so as long as you dont log out or wait 24 hours without finishing the deal your ok. so after you have marked the land for sale and rearranged your land alocation buy the land for yourself. then select the land and look at the about land window again. set the group to the desired group and deed it over, it will ask you if your sure and remind you that the group will be responcible for land alocation to maintain this land, click yes. right click yourself and go back into the group list and make sure your alocation to each group is correct, sometimes there is a bug that dosent show you the correct amount of land alocation if it seems to be doing this, just log out and log back in then go back into the menue and check again, make sure your old group has all the land alocation they need to support the remainer of the land and then go to the new group and make sure they have the nessessary amount of alocation to support the new addition of land. still with me? i hope so! cause if you are then your done. go dance on the new land and be merry!

Thank you for all these responses. The bottom line is, I already did this, and already got burned big-time, and yes, the group land purchases are just WAY TOO COMPLICATED and somebody really needs to iron these features out big-time.

From what you all have said, I've tried to extrapolate to understand what my error was, and I don't see it. I should have made sure to remove my allocation of land from my old group FIRST. Because I had allocated land over to that group, probably the system figured when I made the purchase for the new group that I didn't have anything to offer because my land was tied up in the old group? The data base wasn't updated???

However...because everyone said to allocate to the new group, in fact we did allocate to the new group first. I don't think I had anything left in the old group, it said "0". I also saw that warning message about the group having "too much land" or something, but I figured it would go away or I'd have 24 hours to resolve it. So yes, the group was taken care of...but I think the problem is when you try to buy from yourself, the system demands that you have double the tier.

I saw this on a smaller scale with my first 512. I thought I could take the 512 on my already-purchased land, and donate that 512 as an allocation and as a land into a group. But the system demanded that I go up to the next tier level of 1000 plus before it would let me donate 512.

Despite these precautions, I still got automatically tiered up when I went to the website, and it wouldn't let me chose my own tier. It forced me to chose what it was calculating, which was in error, at least as far as the actual land amount was concerned. I knew that I could lose the land in 24 hours if I didn't have the proper tier, so I was forced to go along with this. I did try reloading the page and re-logging, but kept having the same figures.

If SL wants to be the WWW of games-within-games in this gaming space, they have GOT to figure out how to make it easy for people to form groups, buy land together, distribute their tier requirements, work together seemlessly on the land on group objects, etc. etc. They need to make the thing error-proof especially for newbies, and buttons like "release land" really should be changed completely -- they are misleading because you might think you were releasing the land into a new group or from yourself into a group by pressing that button.

I suggested pulling his TIER out, not himself