The story of a land

Hello all . I am going to tell you the story of a land, and be aware about what can happen to you.

About 11 days ago, I saw an announcement posted by one of SL residents - I will name him X - about a 16k sq land that he was selling for L$2500, with an original tier of L$7999, to which he was offering a discount, so the final tier would have been L$6999. I asked him to show me the land, I read the covenant, I asked permission to open up a building school there, and he said that his partner, the owner of the island - I will name him Z - is with him on MSN and he said ok about the school.

I was happy with the land, so I bought it in the classical way, by right clicking on the land and buying it. The money went to X, and I became the owner of the land. YAY! I was so happy! I was already imagining where I will place the school's class, and where will I place my house. I could finally have my Japanese house and garden, and the school as well.

So, I placed the house in a corner, but unfortunately, RL was calling, so I postponed the building of the area for later or the second day. Next day, my external mail announced me that my things were returned from that land, so I logged in, and went there. I was no longer the owner of the land, and no money were returned to me along with the things I placed there.

Of course, I politely contacted the owner of the island, asking him what happened. He didn't bother to answer, so I told him that he should not worry too much, as I will report the incident. And guess what? All of a sudden he jumped in and answered! He asked me to tell him the story, which I did. And he told me that that guy had no right to sell the land, as the covenant was stating that the land can be sold only by him. Yeah, maybe, but you see, this guy - X - was part of a lot of land selling groups, and the money went to him when I bought the land, so ... why couldn't I assume that he was an agent entitled to sell that land?

I told Z that I am going to report X and he said that he will do the same: reporting him for pretending to be his partner. All this time, I gave Z the benefit of the doubt that he would be part of that. However, I told him about me not being happy with him that he returned the things without checking the land ownership. I got no answer to that.

More about this: the second day, X came online, and I contacted him, telling him what happened, and asking him what happened, as well. Guess what? The very next moment he deleted me from his friends list, and muted me as well.

Anyway, 9 days later - which is today - I contacted the LL support, in order to see what happened with my report. And I think that you know what followed from here on. I have been politely informed that LL cannot interfere in the citizen to citizen disputes, and nothing can be done about this.

I went back to SL, and IMed Z, telling him about this, but I also told him that I will tell the story to the world. He said that he reported me for threatening (although I never threatened him!!!).

Conclusion:

The toughest one is that Linden Lab is encouraging the scamming of this kind, by not taking any action against people like X and Z. I am sorry, Linden Lab, but you are not supporting in any way the paying residents against being scammed. And people like X - who, btw, is not a paying resident - run free all over Second Life, continuing their scamming activities.

I am absolutely sure that they way things go, LL will take actions against me for the "supposed" threat on Z, but they took no action against the scamming.

I kept wondering lately why so many people are giving up on SL, and I start to see why. I mean, what is the reason to pay real money each and every month (mainly now, when we all are under recession), and be treated like that?

Anyway, this was only a story meant to make people even more aware about what can happen to them, and let them know that they will not be supported by any official!

You can't name names here, unfortunately you're likely to get in more trouble for that than the people involved in the land deal.

Does the covenant mention only being able to buy land from a certain person?

Hey Tiana- nice to see you here but word to the wise - can't name names, against the TOS - edit out the Resident's name so your post can remain.

ETA - You can name names in the SLUniverse forum so feel free to tell your story there.

Sadly, you have learned a hard lesson - the only assurance you have as long as all of SL doesnt poof, is to buy mainland from Linden Labs themselves.

I edited the post, although if I don't give names, how are people supposed to be aware about who could scam them? I mean, hey! Scamers ARE protected, while the honest residents of SL are not???? No wonder, really, under the circumstances!

You should remove the names, from here......I am curious to know, though, how the guy's name got to be on the land as owner in the first place if he was not the owner. Unless, like the next poster says, the covenant said anything about only the sim owner or one person being allowed to sell land? I do understand how you must feel, if the person's name was on the land you'd have no reason to think they didn't have a right to sell it. I hope you don't let it sour you.....can see why you'd be gunshy though.

you can tell it in SLU - not a SL forum so you can say things there you cannot here.

Treasure, you should delete her quote 'caue it's got the names

I'm sorry this has happened to you.

If you are "buying" (renting) private estate land, ALWAYS check the covenant to make sure the current renter has the right to resell. An IM to the estate owner is also a good idea...to check on that, and the "tier discount" that you were promised by the seller. It's the estate owner who sets the tier.

In the current market, you should not have to pay an up front "purchase" fee for estate land, or at most a very small one. L$7999 is way too much.

You cannot name names in a dispute on these forums, because too often people use the Court of Public Opinion to trash someone who doesn't deserve it (I'm not saying you are doing this...but it does happen.)

If you can't get satisfaction from the seller or the estate owner, about your only recourse is to post the dispute in other third party forums, such as SL Universe. A bad reputation spreads quickly. It won't help you, but it may keep the next person from making a mistake.

Yes, the covenant was mentioning that the land can be sold only be Z and someone else who was not X. But again, that parcel owner was X, and he is part of many land selling groups, so, based on the fact that he told me that the owner - Z - wants to sell the land, I assumed that he was an agent, and this is not a stupid assumption, is it? On top of that, the money went to him, my account history proves that!

The land is still not sold, so the island owner doesn't seem too eager to sell it. And all that he did and the fact that he never made me an offer to buy that land from him make me think that X and Z are both hand in hand in this, and probably more and more people will be scummed by them.

Well the island owner maybe should have asked if you wanted to stay being as he's now short of a tenant, so that seems a bit of a silly way of doing business.

I'm not the first to observe that LL tends to let residents do whatever they want until a type of activity comes to be seen as a problem by LL, either because the Lindens think it is leading to too many complaints/tickets, or because the Lindens think it is causing bad publicity. Then LL bans that activity. Examples include casinos, banks, ad towers, and renting/leasing on openspace regions. I think that the Ursula continent can been seen as part of the same pattern.

Based on situations such as that described by the OP; on the continued problem with land-cutting that LL is finding difficult to resolve; and on the many empty parcels on LL's pet projects of Bay City and Nautilus--parcels empty because of land-flippers trying to sell the parcels at very high prices, I expect that LL will, within the next year or so, ban resident-to-resident sales/leases/rentals of land. I expect that there will be a number of large, well-established estates (for example, Caledon) grandfathered in. I also expect that limited rentals will be allowed on estates and in malls, say, on a week-by-week basis, with no upfront "sale" payments permitted. In all other circumstances, land will be bought from LL, period, and abandoned if its owner doesn't want it anymore.

As with banking, casinos, ad towers, and the openspaces, I expect many people will say that LL can't ban land transactions because too much real money is invested. I think it will happen anyway.

I'm not saying I think this *should* happen, only that I think it will.

Unfortunately, unless you buy mainland or buy an island from LL, you are not the 'owner', but simply a renter, and ultimately have very little recourse. Therefore, you should only be a renter from people with a decent reputation inworld.

Sorry this happened to you. In the grand scheme of things that is a small amount of money to lose for the lesson learned.

You don't need tenants when you can resell the land every few days

To be honest, I am not very sorry about the money, even if I work hard for them as class runner and building teacher.

What I am sorry about is that such things are allowed, and encouraged by LL by not taking any action against that!

You tell me that I should rent land only from owners with good reputation in world. Is it written all over them: I am reliable?

A learned lesson? What lesson did I learn from that? I will tell you: never ever trust ANYONE, and never ever do ANY kind of business with anyone because. I know very well that it is wrong including all in this category, and I don't want the honest ppl to be insulted by this, but think of it: how can I trust anyone in buying/renting land or anything else?

Yes, very true, and the more I think about the situation, the more I think that this was the case in here! And - again - this is encouraged by LL, by simply not taking any action about that!

This is why, in spite of its other flaws, I really do recommend mainland in most instances. There *are* reliable land people out there, such as Desmond Shang (Caledon) and others -- but I suspect they're a rare breed compared to those who are out to scam you.

This is just one of the many things about LL that cause my heart sink so very often. In this case, and in many others like it, there is no way in the world that they should be running a system where real money is involved and simply turn a blind eye to scams and such, but they do. I know it would be difficult for them to deal with everything, but that doesn't excuse them for not dealing with such things. They deal with it when someone uses bad language but they don't lift a finger when someone steals another person's money - resident to resident disputes.

There have been many times when they've caused my heart to sink in recent months, both for things that they've done and things that they fail to do. It's been very disheartening over a long period of time, and it's a major cause of me deciding to close the store if they tell me to move it, or part of it, to the adult continent. I have very little heart left in SL and it's largely down to LL's failures.

In a lot of ways you are right, however there are some very reputable landlords out there that have been doing business in SL for a while. As to how you know if they are reliable -- the same way you would know in RL: ask people here on the forums and other renters inworld, and how long have they been in SL and doing their business, things like that. Definitely do not ever trust any easier or faster here than in RL.

what it sounds like to me is... X and Z are the same person.... X is Z's alt and after being scammed by X.... Z blames X and X is gone takes off friends list and mutes. then Z has the money for the sale and tells u X is a scammer ... next sucker... i mean buyer .

Well I have been scammed as well out of 2,5 week rent for a quarter HS sim, and AR-ed the guy. with my, 78 more renters were scammed. And indeed, the fact that LL does not protect renters in any way is sad. They do not respond to AR's it seems, and the scammers can do it again and again.

Yet, I still do my business on estate land, not all estate owners are bad. Just have to check the estate owner out.

I have had several problems recently with people selling estate land that they rent from me. In all cases, the "buyer" didn't read the covenant. In one case, within a space of a few hours, someone had "bought" 1/4 sim for my standard 99L$ deposit, "resold" it for 2000L$ to some guy, and that guy tried to resell it to a third guy! Guy #3 was a sim owner, smelled something fishy, and alerted me. None of these people had paid the rental box, which I state in my covenant and in the rental sign notecard is due immediately. I IMed guy #2 to tell him I was reclaiming the land and banning him for not paying the rent and trying to resell. Only when he replied to me did I learn of the existence of the first person, the original scammer.

What's even more insane about all this is that guy #2 had the gall to ask ME for the 2000L$ he paid to the scammer girl. I told him I was sorry that he got scammed, but as that money never reached me, I couldn't pay him back and he would need to ask her for it. Hopefully he will learn a lesson from this!

Although my covenant clearly stated no reselling, I have since amended it to read:

Land may not be resold. If you wish to transfer land to another party you MUST contact your estate manager FIRST to arrange the transfer. Failure to do so will result in both you and the new tenant forfeiting the land and any rent on the box. (In other words, no refunds. No exceptions). The new tenant will be required to pay the 99L$ deposit to us and will be asked to verify that you did not charge him/her a fee for the land.

Moral of the story: READ THE COVENANT. If you are not sure whether someone is authorized to sell the lot, contact the estate owner. I am sorry when people get scammed like this, but it really is your fault for not researching carefully before buying.

And why the heck are you paying thousands of L$ for estate land when people like me and many others have it for a small deposit + first week's tier? I really don't get that. I had that 1/4 sim sitting for a week at 99L$ and suddenly it changes hands twice while I'm asleep, for thousands of L$.

Estate owners can sell land and disable resell, estate managers can't do that unfortunately.

The problem is that if you disable resell, people can't deed land to a group. So I'd be getting daily requests to have it turned on so people could deed their land.

When I had an Estate parcel I was fortunate. I had a very trustworthy landlord. We had resale rights, we could sublet if we wanted, there were very few covenant restrictions , etc. But it doess seem that scam artists number too many. Sometimes I think the words buy and own should be taken out of private estate transactions beyond the original sale. Call it rent if resale is not allowed or maybe a transeferable lease if it is. It's a shame, Estate living has some nice things going for it, different from Mainland, but between the dirtbags and LL's unwillnness to keep things on the level, it really gets mucked up.

I'm really sorry to see anyone go through this kind of crap........land purchases and rentals are a slippery slope for sure.

So far I've been one of the lucky ones......but that could change any moment for any number of reasons. What strikes me tho.....is the fact that in the real world......it's really still not that easy to police all the scamming that goes on. In a free trade society such as most of us live in.....scams are almost part of the norm.

Where do we begin.......lets see.......ooohh.....top of the list for me is Acne treatment products.... there are sooo many companies thet prey on the vulnerabilities of those who suffer with certain issues. Diet scams....whew....those are everywhere.....weight loss scams...... patent scams.... poetry contest scams.... (gimme a break...oh look, you won....now buy the book for $49.95 LOL)

The internet is LOADED with scams.....get rich quick scams...... phishing scams.....and they work. They work because people want to believe. Sure there's laws in place to protect buyers.... but it's just so dam easy, sadly, to mess with people.

In SL.....given the virtual venue....it's dam near childs play. I'm not entirely sure LL is prepared to become police...or to make SL, a 'police state' so to speak. The potential pitfalls are still being discovered. I'm guessing at some point down the road......as virtual worlds become more 'the norm'.......the land scam issue is going to HAVE to be addressed.

But.....I would stake my life on the fact that it WONT be dealt with until SL.....and virtual communities in general become enough of a social norm......until enough impact is made on society .... until it is imparitive that it be policed.

The reason I say that is because as with ANY new discovery...be it technology....or other.....there is a window where that new thing is totally and completely vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. Hell there are STILL phone service scams going on.....and telephone service has been around a loooong time now. But the fact is....these just don't get regulated until it becomes so widespread that it literally does effect enough of the population as to be critical.

Until such time......it's best to lick our wounds and do a LOT of research before laying our money down for virtual property that really isn't anything more then pixels on a screen.