Who should we report this to?

OK, ok! You can join too. Just step in the back of the line like the rest.

Evidence?

Your objectivity is showing.... not

~B

No...gee, it must be awfully small.

you know...I dont know where madame got her ad from, but i didnt see it and have rented from this property for 3 weeks...

they have been generous and helpful... would definitely rent from them again....agree w 3-ring binder... one either takes responsibility for ones experience, or plays the victim...

I just wanted to stop in here and let everyone know that I have known the owners of this place for almost 4 years now. I assure you... they are NOT scammers. The majority of the people that have and do rent from them have for the most part been happy renters. I wont say every single renter has left happy, but hey as we see here, you cant please everyone. I also know for a fact that the land manager there is always willing to bend over backwards to help someone if they are in need of assistance.

I assure you that the OP is not telling the whole story. Aside from jumping in and renting a years worth of land that she knew nothing about, she fails to mention the actual reasons she was banned and ejected from the land and groups. If others saw this post that know what really happened, I know they would tell you they are glad she is gone. =)

Then either that or where it was is wayyyy too large and spacious. Not good, not good.


Slip sliding away.

Hmm.. now this makes the the sense.

Hello Everyone, My name as you can see is Meaghan Astonia. I have know the owners of this land for 3 years, and have officially "worked" as Manager over the islands for 8 months. I am sorry that OP'S have had a very "rough" experience with us here. I always try my best to please all of our residents, because with out them, we can not have a community. When first told about this OP's position and concern, we were told that she herself had found another place to stay, and she wanted her rent back. We rent out what I would say as decent nice houses, 200 Prims, Typical price is 400L week. At the time, we were having a land sale, and thew op's had received it at 200L a week, for as up to as many weeks in advance. Well, since she paid a year, she must have originally been happy with what she found, or, she was kind of new to renting and may not possibly understand that everything changes.
She requested a refund, and at first, me and my manager, the owner of the island, had turned her down. Our covenant states no refunds, and we stick to that policy, Especially because this was a SALE, not normal price. After several disputes and break out spams in group chat, and personal im's, The OP decided to change her "reason for leaving" to being misled, not that she found a new place. She kept telling us she wanted a full refund, and since our policy, like MOST Rental places in sl, is no refund, we decided to make an exception, but we were not going to give her a full refund, but being nice enough to give her the majority. It took us a few days to be able to get everything sorted out. WHile the manager was trying to get details and figure out how they were going to do this, I was trying to convince the OP not to leave, and trying to accomodate her in anyway that I could.

On the 3rd day, after totally rudely spamming group chat, the op decides that she has had enough, and starts demanding 30k for "Pain and suffering" because her concern was not "finished" in a timely manner.

We are always sad to lose a resident, no matter what the reasons may be. And I am very sorry for all that this kind of behavior is having to be brought out. I am thankful that many of you have not passed judgement over such people, and I thank the people who have taken the time to let me know that this post is going on. I am not here to bash or bruise anyone. There are always two sides to a story(I just happen to have my side logged). We hope that this forum has not tarnished what people may think of Enchanted Isles, We have rented out for over 2 years, and have not ever had such a problem as this.


Thanks for this chance.
Meaghan Astonia

Folks, please take the great advice offered by many different posts in this thread.

If you have a problem inworld, file a complaint properly.

That is the ONLY way that a Linden will a) KNOW you have a problem and b) have any chance to offer solutions and c) the only way Lindens can TRACK if a problem happens over and over.

Make sense?

Please, help us help you.

Simply discussing these types of issues in the forums does not notify anyone who can help.

Thanks!
-- Katt Linden

its very unfortunate what happened to you.
That's just the tip of the iceberg regarding scams, many people have lost 100's if not 1000's of real USD's. Sad but true.

are you suggesting a linden will say anything other than 'we dont involve ourselves in resident disputes'?

when did this policy change?

That's great news!

I've been getting the impression that it's "buyer beware" in SL. Do your research, and if you get ripped off, it's your fault, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Any action you take at all, whether in-game or out, even just complaining about it, is improper.

For the record: I don't feel that I've ever been ripped off in SL. I've rented from several estate owners, and the worst that's been done is re-terraforming the sim into those ugly little island squares, but I only paid a month in advance, so didn't have much to loose when I left.

And if I were Queen, based upon what I've read so far, I'd probably rule in favor of the estate owner, not the OP, although a refund for unused time may have been in order.

But it did bother me reading all the comments that basically said "suck it up, there's nothing you can do - there's no law that prevents you from being abused, but there are laws that prevent you from retaliating in any way".

So if that's not true, I'm glad to hear it.

Katt, I applaud your optimism, but I'm sorry, I think you are too new here to know what you are talking about. Robin announced your join date last March, less then 4 months ago. For years LL has said they will not get involved in private disuputes. I seriously doubt that LL has adequate staff to do so, even though you (apparantly) and many others think they should take more responsibility for policing the grid.

I am a current resident of Enchanted Isles.

I am very happy with the property and the management, especially Meaghan. She is good people. When we first moved in, Meaghan bent over backwards to give us the property and floor plan we wanted. Our house is very nice and spacious, and a very good value for the money.

Unfortunately, though this thread/post makes a nice story, it's not what really happened. I was with Meaghan when the whole thing went down, and though I can't tell you everything that occurred, here's what I know.

Our unhappy renter asked for her rent back as soon as she discovered that there were guys living on the island. Which, as Meaghan tried to explain to her, shouldn't be a problem. It has never been a problem for me, for instance. And you can't keep guys from flying through, anyway. Plus we have nice privacy features in our condos/houses. And while, yes, the classified ad mentioned the word lesbian, nowhere (that I could find) in any of the renter information provided at the actual property is there any claim made about exclusivity in terms of guarantees that the management would discriminate against certain groups of people and not let them rent. It seems to me that, if one were part of a group that has often been discriminated against, one would want to bend over backwards to give other people the benefit of the doubt, if for no other reason than to avoid appearing to be bigoted oneself. But maybe that's just me being naive.

Anyway.

Meaghan was very nice and professional to her, even though she was quite rude and, eventually, belligerent. Meaghan told this person that she would need to contact Chelse to discuss her issues because she (Meaghan) didn't have the authority or ability to deal with this particular situation, at which point the renter stated that there was no room for debate or compromise, and that she would only accept a full refund. She also stated that if Meaghan couldn't give her satisfaction immediately, she would need Chelse's personal e-mail address.

The reason I can tell you so much about this, is that much of this conversation was had in group IM. The IMs started just shy of accusations of fraud and got worse from there. She not only aired lots of dirty laundry in public, her tone was accusatory and downright rude.

The following day, she was still accusing Meaghan and Chelse of being crooks. She did all this (again) in group IM, and there were several witnesses.

So, I fully support Meaghan's version of events. I can't speak to whether the refund was made or not--and it seems like this should be pretty easy to prove, one way or the other, with a quick peek at the transaction logs--but I was privy to most of the events due to them being carried out in public IMs. I can't vouch for every single thing Meaghan posted, but the 80% that I can vouch for agrees with her version, and I have no reason to doubt the truth of any of it. Again, my experience with Enchanted Isles and Meaghan have been nothing but pleasant and above-board.

What exactly would be the proper procedure for filing a complaint Katt? I think there are a lot of people who have had estate rrental problems who would like to know since there does not seem to be an option for this. Thanks.

And Katt.. bare in mind that the majority of renters on Estates are Basic Account holders with the only option of Support Tickets and ARs.

what happens after C) ?
you just track it?
i have had a similar problem when void land came out a linden told me they cant rent void islands. and that was the end of the help. i was out the rent and banned from the land
i have never seen help from reporting in all my time in SL.

When voids first came out, I guess there was a lot of uncertainty about just how bad their performance would be, so maybe some stray Linden imagined a policy about that. (It must be fairly difficult to keep policies straight when they're managed as oral tradition. )

FWIW, I've had really excellent response to support requests when they were actually important, and slow or no response for things that were less essential. In this case, though, what I really think LL can help with is the mystery of the missing L$7K transaction--if it really stayed missing more than a few hours. (We've not heard from the OP lately; I'm guessing the L$7K only got lost in translation, not a lost transaction.)

As far as LL actually stepping in, were the case to be one of the Estate scams (which it seems clear it wasn't, in this case), I frankly have my doubts--it's not clear to me what they could do without setting themselves up as a Board of Arbitration for disputes over values less than 10 minutes of a Linden's loaded labor rate. But that doesn't mean such problems shouldn't be reported: LL needs to get a better sense of just how widespread those problems are, in order to rethink tools that might actually make Estate "sales" binding on both parties. (Or--my preference--to remove the deceptive language of "Sales" and "Covenants" from the UI. It's a *rental*, no matter how much lipstick you put on it.)

Bump so Katt can hopefully address this often asked question with official policy.

See above for questions about your post, Katt. Thanks.

I am very sorry that you have had this problem.. LL should be able to track the transaction by it number for you.. Do be sure the person named in the transaction was you personally and not a group. I had a refund sent to me once, but it actually went to my partner. So have both of you check your transaction histories.

The big lesson here is to not rent too far out into the future.. Even someone with very high morals can have problems and lose their sim do to RL issues. Paying a month in advance is about as far as you should go.

Oh a side note, I do know a legitimate residential lesbian sim that just opened up. It has a small mall area where I just rented a small parcel for my shop. I will send you an IM in world with the info, feel freed to contact me.

That is actually complete nonsense. Sorry. In RL, depending on the level of transaction or relationship and the location, there is the BBB (actually, still good in some places), D&B, background checks, SSAN pulls, and others if you are willing to go into the high hundreds or above. In SL there simply is not sufficient feedback that is in itself reliable. My worst experiences were with the most established providers - won't mention their names.

On the other hand, my worst losses were thanks to the LL land expansion. I lost $L 30,000 on the last two transactions alone. So the other issue is don't ever put more money down in a virtual world that you can't walk away from. After all, if I die tomorrow, my wife would have only the vaguest idea or interest in recovering anything from SL.

Now I'm going to work on setting up my new sim computer. At least that my son would get...

that wasnt a troll, it was advise.
im starting to realise what your real function is here. ll hired you on as an axeman to kill off this community so they could pull the plug in peace.

I strongly disagree that this is trolling, how absurd. If Linden Lab would take some responsibility for eliminating the crooks in SL then the community would not have to stoop to measures such as these to battle the scammers. LL has created a world where crooks thrive and then LL punishes the victims when they try to defend themselves.

I have to agree. It's common in (free) society for people to speak out when they are mistreated by corporations, and can't get satisfaction. People set up web sites or find other ways to educate fellow consumers. How is what Nina suggested any different? Or is it the case that such information sharing between residents is against Linden Lab policies?

Agreed. I don't like Nina's advice, but it's not trolling. I honestly can't believe that we're discussing Linden Forum moderation in yet another thread.