Who should we report this to?

harassment in your eyes perhaps.
in any case the advise still stands.

sure, the landlord is 'well within his rights' to make a habit out of it if he wishes. he can sell entire islands off then unceremoniously eject, reclaim, and relist while pocketing all the money. of course that is sleazy and that is wrong.
nobody said it wasnt his right, in fact it has been suggested it is his wrong.
learn to read, chris.

thats why i always have added a day when sending the group invite, and telling them i added the day before they can even question the matter.
on mainland rentals i actually gave them an option to join the group immediately for a refundable fee.
sure, there are ppl that are unreasonable, but i cannot think of a single good reason to kick a tenant/owner and not refund them their $.

Nina, it's nice to hear that you take responsibility so thoroughly.

But no comment on this one...
/114/a4/269677/1.html

And why exactly does Judith post the same "BEWARE" note?
/115/cd/269696/1.html

What I absolutely don't like is that both notes seem to tell only half of half the story with a wrong emphasis - MadameSynnful said in her first post in this thread, that she and her partner decided to leave - I'm bold enough to say to break the rental contract - because they didn't like the surrounding as it turned out to be not totally lesbian orientated. This was followed by an agruement about a refund option, which eventually led to the ban.

But the Beware posts claim that MadameSynnfu and her partner were banned without any action from their side... kinda bending the story to one's own advantage, hm?

The OP wasn't ejected and banned until after she whined and bitched for 3 days. Most rational people would have done the same thing. SHE was the one wanting to break the contract. So if she loses the money she paid in, it is her own fault.

It is also harassment in LL's eyes.

As just a general observavtion, I wouldn't pay for ANYTHING in SL for a year in advance. You can't tell what will happen. You could quit SL in a week or a month, or the landlord could. When I was paying Premium, I even didn't do that on anything but a month to month basis. I'm curious as to why the OP paid up for a whole year.

Yes it's true. Paying a year up front is a bit of a stretch for a rental property.

The main rule in SL is caveat emptor. When you rent, you're totally subject to the landlord's control, especially on private islands. Research helps. There are quite a few "lesbians only" communities in SL that are quite reputable (if a lot more expensive than the prices that the OP cites). I've never lived in one, because I've never felt that much a need to be a separatist like that, and at this point since I live on an island we own, it's a moot point, but there are a few good lesbian communities that have rentals available that are "reliably lesbian". Research is your friend.

While I often side with the "bleeding heart" camp--that it's just too easy to make mistakes with Estate rentals because the language of "Buy", "Covenant", etc. is just plainly deceptive, in this case it feels very different to me.

First, L$10,400 for a year. That's L$200/wk. Unless this is to rent a broom closet, the price is very low. Granted, I've rented out Mainland 58-prim broom closets for L$50/wk to newbies and FoFs, but that was a while ago, and I lost money on every rental. The point is, if this was for anything more than a couple hundred prims including any pre-existing structure, Big Red Flags of "too good to be true" should have gone up.

Then, the whole bit about "a Private Lesbian community" apparently not being Lesbian enough. I'm trying to imagine myself in the position of the landlord here, facing an interested prospective tenant who might be straight (or heaven forfend, *male*), and turning them away because they just weren't Lesbian enough for my community. Now, in this weird virtual world, I guess that's all permitted, but the day I'm expected to screen tenants for sexual orientation is the day I take down my For Rent shingle. To each his own, but the whole idea is, to me, intensely offensive.

Finally, my suspicions were really aroused by "we were only asking for a refund on the remaining 355 days left, we were not cocerned with the days that we had spent there." So, for all the trouble of setting up a rental and issuing a refund, the landlords should be compensated ten *days* of the (very low) year-long prepaid rent? And (one senses) this is considered being generous? Ever tried breaking a RL lease, anywhere in the civilized world?

This all smacks of a sense of entitlement that would be unfounded in even the most consumer-protective jurisdiction of real life. (To me, it's so blatant, it almost reads as a troll.)

I don't personally feel the need to live separately like that, but I do understand the motivation. Many heterosexual men have a good deal of erotic fascination about lesbians, at least how porn portrays lesbians, and have a lot of fantasies about being with two "bi" women at once, etc. In a place like SL, if you made lesbian sims and lesbian clubs wide open to straight men, they just wouldn't work --> the venues would be packed with straight men trying to pick up "hawt lesbians". And, no, the fact that you have "lesbian" in your profile does absolutely nothing to deter men in the least, in fact it may make them pursue harder in some cases if they have a particularly powerful fantasy. It's a problem specific to lesbians, again, because of the way that so many straight men fantasize about us. So I can understand the desire of some to be in women-only spaces (virtually all lesbian clubs are like this, with security to enforce that restriction).

The key here, though, was that when something sounds to good to be true, it generally *is* too good to be true.

OOH! i like you! nice to meet ya!

*nods* And it's LL's interpretation of harassment that counts, since they wield the ultimate ban-stick.

If the managers did refund L$7000 like they stated and as usual for SL, it didn't get to the OP, then the managers probably think that the OP was bitching to be an entitlement brat. Banning and muting was the best way to handle it as far as they were concerned.

Edited: The fact that they did give a transaction number makes me wonder two things: Which of the partners did they pay it to? Which one was the land renter? (Since land can only be on one name or group name.)

Or they could take steps to protect themselves from mistakes, misunderstandings, and outright predators, the same as they have to do everywhere else in the worlds.

Check yourself, I might of left it with you. Feel anything?

Originally Posted by Ann Launay
Speaking of, how's that male enhancement program working out for you?








Ouch!!!

But nice.

Check Yourself, before you Wreck Yourself.

LL won't get involved in the dispute.

However, they WILL help find a missing L$7,000. If that refund was really sent, have your ex-landlord send a copy of his transaction history to LL, or to you, on a notecard. Include that and YOUR transaction history in a support ticket.

Next time, buy mainland direct from LL
or
Do more research on your proposed landlord and the land you propose to rent
and
Don't rent for more than 4 weeks at a time. Things change fast in SL, including your own preferences...a year's rental is unheard of.

advertising your estate as something it is not is wrong.
telling new tenants 'too bad so sad' is wrong
kick/banning them without a refund is wrong.
every step of the way the estate owner seems to do whatever suits themselves best, and that is wrong.
its that simple to me.
i get tired of people on one hand always saying 'its the landlords right', 'there is not recourse', 'you should have researched better (even though nobody can ever say anything negative about anyone or name names)'.

fuck that. ive offered op some recourse and i dont feel sorry for it.

I personally dont feel any of us are in a position to say who is right or wrong without hearing both sides of the story...having been accused of things and harrassed by an irate customer....trust me....no one really knows the story except those involved. Also, to encourage someone to publicly slander someone on the internet, in the forums, etc. is extremely childish and as far as im concerned completely out of line. I am concerned much more for people who feel this is an appropriate way to handle a conflict than i am that the conflict itself exists.

yes it is much easier to tell someone how the landlord has rights to whatever they wish, ll wont do a thing to help, youre on your own, you deserve this for not researching their reputation, dont post their name anywhere, dont do anything to hurt their reputation, etc etc.

its no wonder scammers are increasing in numbers every day. you ppl have been conditioned to accept (even advance) them and their scams.

no thanks. non refunding landlords that ban tenants are a big part of the reason that so many of you are now telling ppl to 'just buy mainland'. isnt that obvious?

No one here but you are making assumptions about right and wrong. The only thing that has been pointed out is that the knowledge needed is there for the taking for those who can be bothered to even look.

Assumptions have never been a good thing. Your reactions show you to be rather immature if you can't see that what you've been going on about is made up fact. As it's been pointed out there are two sides to this story and you've pulled the other side out of thin air.

Well done to you.

~B

But nobody dies, either way. I mean, worst case, the OP is out US$40.

Assuredly, that's a pittance compared to others who've paid those ghastly up-front fees to "buy" Estate land, without picking the right Estate. Anyone who reads this forum regularly sees at least one of those each week

So leaving aside this OP, in the big picture, this *is* a real problem, and the reputable Estate managers are usually first to post how it screws up the Estate land market.

Listing options the OP might follow to get revenge isn't the same as doing them oneself. I think it's prudent that others have pointed out how some of those actions, were they to be taken, could have very negative results--vastly worse than the original small monetary loss. So now everybody knows all the risks.

Case closed, as far as I can see.

strangely enough, im operating with the evidence actually posted by op, while the landscam apologists are pulling theirs out of thin air.
shove off.

god fucking forbid somebody say something other than 'its the landlords linden given right, you SOL'

sorry, but if you join a game, then run in and spend real $$ in it without really knowing what you are getting in to, then you are only to blame your self for your irresponsibility.

why is the first reaction always to blame someone else? take responsibility for your own actions, and accept the consequences accordingly.

i'm not saying that even a seasoned player can't be scammed, but in general it's not as likely because we know to ask around and shop around before plunking down a wad a cash.

so yes, it IS their own fault. be inworld awhile, make friends, ask around.... all BEFORE investing in a virtual world. no one forced them to do this. they made a choice. now they live with the fallout.

the problem is that ll have fostered a community that accepts the scamming and offers residents NO recourse at all, not even naming a name.
and the instant somebody does name a name or tries to take some action everyone starts crying and pointing to the tos and looking for every excuse they can to dismiss the scam as the fault of the victim.

no one is accepting it. these are two different debates.

1) choose and live with your choice
2) scammers in SL

also, it is debatable whether we can name names. it says we can. i think we should. BUT.... both sides need to be able to present their viewpoint of any given situation.