Rent Cubes Broken

Anyone else experiencing problems with their rent cubes?

I use rent cubes by two different makers and BOTH of theirs have broken on me because I cannot open the settings notecard anymore. Trying to open them results in the error "Notecard missing from database".

I rezzed new copies and all of them do the same thing.

What is going on? The problem is affecting ALL rent cubes that I've checked, even ones not owned by me. If you see a rent cube that available and click on it, it says that the weekly rate is $0 -- thats how you know it was affected, and it's not every "brand" of rent cube.

I've bugged this three damn times now and the Lindens haven't even the professional courtesy to reply to a paying customer, which is a whole other topic.

Maybe this is being caused by the same error that's creating the profile problem....

The rent cubes I coded for the USL MegaTower rental system work correctly, and they read their settings from notecards.

I hate rent cubes - they're so impersonal

Aaron, Remove the notecard and drop a new notecard in with the settings you want then reset...that should do the trick. I had the same problem and that cured it.

Impersonal, Maybe, but it reduces all the bullshit. The renter knows via IM from the rent cube when their rental period is almost up and lets the owner know as well. It saves a lot of headaches and the majority of people that have used my small market like it.

I had seen this a few days ago - err atually I think it was in a place where Talen has said cubes if I remember the name well. And yes they're impersonal, but I tend to agree that they're also quite convenient. There are places where I sell my clothes, that I got to by talking to their owners, and doing it "the human way"; but there are other markets I'm ealy not sure of, I have a stall "to see how it is", and if it doesn't cut it, I know I can leave easily - or renew easily as well, without too many headaches. Not -such- a bad deal in itself...

Point taken, but *sigh* one day I'll have XML-RPC working well enough that rental reminder IMs will be sent from my web database to the avatar (currently, merchants have to log in to the web site to check when rent is due).

By impersonal, I mean that they allow anyone to come set up shop in my mall without an initial IM conversation first - and besides, they're ugly-looking things! When I see a mall with rent cubes and/or the little Info boxes by each space, the message it sends to me is:

"Whoever's running this mall doesn't care enough about it to be around much - they let it run itself".

Couldn't be further from the truth. I care about the people I have selling at my market . I don't have a thousand stalls just about 24 in a nice garden type enviorment and its attracted some excellent merchants .

I actually live there at the moment and tend to the market daily and I'm constantly doing what I can to get more people there so the merchants do well.

There's a place for vending machines in the real world. In fact, people try to deliver as much as possible through them from phone cards to sandwiches to sodas to lockers to push carts at airports -- why not rental spots? Automation lowers rates by lowering the time that has to be spent, right?

This should also be the case for SL, too. SL just happens to be setup better than the real world for automating tasks. In theory, though, it frees up the landlord to spend more time socializing and enjoying their SL when they are jacked in.

Just my L$.02

-Zax

Oh, this was by no means a slam against you, Talen! I'm sure there are very caring mall owners who still use rent cubes. I'm just worried that they make it too easy to buy a block of land, slap down some walls and a row of rent cubes and sit back while the money comes in!

The things that concern me about their use are:

1. They allow anyone at all to come along and set up shop without any personal contact with you first. You haven't confirmed if they've read the rules, if they're selling porn in a PG sim or if they're someone you've been warned about (but not actually banned).

2. They're ugly!!!!

As I said before, I am slowly working on my own system for automating rent reminders and payments. That's all to the good. I may end up with something like a rent box that sits by each stall (or more likely - like a collection of rural mailboxes - at the mall entrance) and performs many of the functions of current rent cubes. But - they will not perform the functions of initial allocation of space or group invites, and they will not be large white cubes with blaring text all over them!

You may be misunderstanding me - I am all for vending machines! Heaven knows, I'd never sell a thing if I had to be there for each sale! I'm talking about the scripted objects which automate the process of letting merchants set up shop in designated spaces within a larger mall. I have the process of adding merchants to my own mall fairly streamlined with the result that I can set up a new merchant with space while continuing to mark my morning bingo card over at Bingoland Park! But I still communicate with them via IM during the process, and I still fly over there after the game to take a look at their set up!