The strange issue of the land that never existed

Hello people.

I have recently encountered an intresting issue that have also caused me a little distress, and after some pondering and running around I've decided that it would be a good idea to trow this over the community's general direction.

So here's the thing.

At wednesday, October 13, afew hours before 15:00 (SL game-time), Abbot poofed out of the Grid.

And when I say Poofed, I do not mean the Sim disappeared - I mean that the Sim was cleared.

The entire Sim became a single, huge public parcel. All the prims disappeared, and terrain have reverted into its default flat form, abit under-water. This ofcourse, caused a small bunch of curious avatars to gather and cruise around. I was one of these avatars.

While looking around, one of us found out that he could purchase a small parcel. He bought a 16m parcel. Out of curiousty, I did the same - and bought a tiny 16m parcel right next to his. We were positive that once the Sim gets restored, these parcels and our ownership will poof away with it - and indeed thats exactly what happened. When the sim was restored, all was back to normal without a sign of our prior activity.

... that is, until 2 days ago.

I own a 1024sq.m parcel on which I have my house. Thanks to that, I pay a price of $8 a month. I cant really afford more then this - USD conversion rates are pretty expensive in Israel. Unfortunatly, 2 days ago SecondLife billed me for $15 for going above my 1024 land peak.

I mailed Billing an asked for clarifications - and the response was, that no matter what the circumstances were, even if I was "playing around" and bought a parcel on a Sim that was roll-backed shortly after, I have crossed my peak and thus must pay as stated in the agreement I signed.

Basicly, what this means, is that they are charging me $7 for a 16sq.m parcel that existed only for afew hours on a curropted Sim that officialy did not actually "exist", and that was pretty recently after deleted and reverted back to its original state.

What SecondLife is basicly saying is that even though this is all true, I did make a purchase, and thus I must pay - even if the item was not supposed to exist and was quickly removed from the grid and my possession thereafter.

I am abit confused at the moment and not certain how to proceed.

Do you think this is fair and that I should abandon this case, or do you think I should pursue it further?

I'd call it the $7 lesson.

I don't think LL would make that statement unless it was solid and backed up by the TOS or something.

Did you go to the website and confirm that you wanted to increase your land tier? I was under the impression that your billing couldn't increase without doing that.

Did you get a dialog box indicating that if you were to purchase that land that you would have to agree to a larger land tier?

That's what has happened to me when I purchased land that put me over my tier. I had to go to my account page on the web site and accept the new tier before the sale of the land was complete. Perhaps if this did not happen you may have some leeway in getting this issue resolved in your favor?

Alas, it is a $28 dollar issue, not a $7 one - as Crystal said, it is quite expensive to play from Israel with the exchange rate.

Given that the land was rolled back, and she was not compensated in any way and had the land taken - she should not have to pay the associated tier. I am honestly surprised LL is being so inflexibile over 16m of land. I suppose because she is not buying sims at a time, they won't let anything slide - even when it was their own flaw that caused this situation. Any player who bought land in Abbotts during that time should not be held to the land tier, as they had no ability to use it, or to sell the land - the release was forced.

Shoulda released a 16m square from the land you own and then it would have been fine.

I'm not familiar with the term 'oatiown' but I agree with everything you said, it's pretty outragious that you were charged for that, Cyrstal.

But then, if you did get the confirm box and visited the website, then there's not much you can do about that.

For a few mins at the most

You were asked to confirm the higher tier, right?

If you weren't, then you have a case. But once you confirm the tier change, you confirm the tier change. The land ownership code doesn't differentiate between 'corrupt' land and non-corrupt land. It just counts how much you own.

BLAH damn you for quoting me before I fixed the typo, cut me some slack I am on a horrible laptop right now

Wait... wouldn't it still be $7? it would be a little over 34 New Sheqels. But, it's still $7.. albeit it may be expensive if you're paying in Sheqels.

Hiya.

I did not get the confirmation box since I allready clicked "Yes" on it, afew months before. When I purchased my 1024 land it originaly was abit more then that, so I used a 2048 tier while I sold afew pieces of it away to turn it into 1024.

Once it turned into 1024, I did not reduce my land tire in the site since I was allready being charged $8 following the next month anyway.

Now, here's the thing really - I am not so much surprised by the fact that I was charged for a higher land tier, as much as I am being charged for something that:

1)was not supposed to exist
2)was quickly removed from my possession very soon after.

Having to pay $7 for this rigidly, without really concidering factors if this case just seems a little extreme from my point of view.

This is where i get confused sometimes with land tier. According to what I have read on the billing page, you are charged according to "peak amount of land owned" during that month.

Now say, you have a 1024 tier according to the website, but during the whole time you have that tier, you have only owned 512 sqm. Would you only be charged that 512 tier amount?

If not, then it would mean that you have to manually change it back down through the website or your are charged it again. A bit unfair.

One thought, if that is true, is that a similar reminder as the (you are over current land tier) popup message should be provided if you only own an amount of land that could be paid for with a lower tier than what you are currently paying (if that makes sense.)

PS. Sorry Cris, it's rare to see you make a typoe, and a four letter introduction into a three letter word was a rarity

Write again, ask them to explain what happened to the plot you bought but never sold.

If it was reposessed by LL for no recompense without your consent, they shouldn't be charging you for their mistake.

The fact is, regardless of any other circumstances, the land existed because of a glitch. We all put up with outages, problems, crashes, inventory issues, etc. out of a good faith belief that Linden Labs is doing the best it can to provide an environment we can enjoy. When there is an issue like this, it would be far better for Linden to return the favor with a small credit to CS than to create ill will over what to them is an ill-deserved, even if minor, bill sent to a long-term member.

Gotta go w/ Salazar and Molecular on this one. If you didn't confirm the higer tier on the website, my understanding is that they would not charge you the higher tier and the land you purchased goes to auction.
As far as how far you should take it, that depends entirely how far you want to take it. I would certainly write Colin a nice email explaining the situation and see where it goes from there. I have found LL to be sincere in their desire to resolve issues equitably.
If that doesn't resolve your issue you always have dispute resolution from your credit card, just be prepared to be banned from SL if you go that route.

'Tis ok, I do occasionally make a typo, but have yet to make a typoe, so right back at ya

Hmm, I think that the point about not being compensated for LL taking your land isn't quite valid unfortunately, as far as I know LL reserve right to take anything from you without warning.

Even still, it's not nice.

Did you check to see if your 16L$ you spent on land were returned at all?

(PS - again - Cris.... touche.)

On a slightly oblique note, I wonder if land purchased on the preview grid would be treated in a similar fashion. I noticed that when I bought up 1024m2 of public land in New Simulous today for the novelty of it, the dialog box reported my main grid land totals when doing the transaction.

I would have bought up the whole sim to see if it asked me to go confirm a tier increase at that point, but my mouse finger was tired by then

I seem to remember, with the 1.4 preview grid, that even though the sims I owned land in were not visible or accessable, I could still see the 'land total' for the moment in time that grid backup was made into a preview.

I also noticed that when trying to buy more land than I would have on my tier, that I was presented with the upgrade box. Ofcourse I chose not to upgrade, especially for the preview.

It would be a good idea for LL to disable this in upcoming preview grids as it can lead to confusion, perhaps they could counter the need for it (to stop certain high land tier people buying up the whole preview grid) by limiting anyone who enters to 512sqm. This would give people the chance to play with any new land features and not worry about addition land tier fees.

That is correct, if you have acccepted a higher tier in the past you will continue to be billed for it, no matter how little land you own, until you manually lower your tier through the Land Use Fees web page.

Crystalshard, I think Linden Lab should compensate you for the money you spent buying that land, since you purchased it and it was taken away from you. But from what I can tell, you would still owe Linden Lab whatever tier amount you had agreed to. Since that is something we have to adjust on our own. It doesn't scale up and down automatically depending on how much land we own. If you've only owned 512 sq.m. for the last two months, but had set your land use fees at the 1/64 Region level ($8/mo.). Then you would still have to pay the $8 per month for that time period.

I don't think that's true, Salazar. I am on the 8096 tier (I think, might be higher), but I only own about 3300sqm, and I've only been charged for the 4096 teir for a couple of months now.

Interesting Princess... that would be good news indeed. Does anyone else carry a larger tier but own a much smaller amount of land that could confirm this observation?

Or perhaps a Linden could speak from above on the matter?

From what I recall, if you own 512m2, and have a tier of 65,535, you only pay for the 512m2.

So it looks like Crystal's tier was set to the higher level on the web page, but as only a portion of that tier was being used, the billing charge was of the lower tier. Then this snippit of land was purchased and the tier (that was pre-approved to be at a higher level) jumped up.

The moment you decided to buy land over your current tier (even knowing that you were bound to lose it again shortly) you did, in essence, agree to pay more that month since you had pre-approved the increase in a previous month and never withdrawn that approval.

Then the sim was rolled back and the land was returned to its propper owners. Your purchased was taken from you and (I'm guessing) the L$16 you spent was not returned to you.

I think you can do two things:

a) Demand your L$16 back. I think they'd be happy to oblige. Heck, I'LL send you L$16 if you want. (But this isn't very satisfying...)

b) Call up innocently and ask why you are over your tier? You don't own that much land and never did. Ask them to check what parcels you owned at your peak. See if they can find the land they claim you owned. DON'T tell them the whole story. They're in Customer Service... They've heard all the sob stories there are. Let THEM find the story on their own, and in the process, either give up and give you back your US$, or see that it was all a mistake and give back your US$.

I think it was your mistake in not lowering your tier permissions when you scaled back your land ownership. If you had, you would have gotten the warning about tiring up when you tried to buy at 16m2, and you would have canceled. But it WAS centered around a bug, so maybe, with the goodwill of LL, you can get the mistake wiped from history. (And accounting.)