PSA: A note about island sales scams.

I recently bought an island from another resident. We submitted our transfer tickets at the same time over a week ago, but as of yesterday morning the transfer still hadn't taken place. (Island transfers can take significantly longer than new island deliveries, for some reason.) During this period, the seller got charged tier for the island and panicked a little bit. They contacted Concierge and asked if they could halt the transfer, because they were afraid I wasn't going to pay their tier (mind you, this all happened before I even knew there was a problem).

Anyway, I later learned that Concierge told them that once both parties submit their island transfer tickets, LL will not halt a transfer without consent from both parties. While the seller was kind of upset with this response from LL, I was quite relieved! It gave me a little more confidence about doing this in the future. (I immediately paid the tier, by the way.)

You can still get scammed if you send your money to the "seller" and they simply never submit a transfer ticket. I always request the ticket number from the seller (and from now on I'm going to request a copy/paste of the entire transfer ticket, since it doesn't contain confidential information and can prove helpful if they enter any specifics wrong), although I will only deal with "known quantities" in SL. People whose reputations are too important to be sullied with a shady land deal.

Even though this wasn't the first time I've bought an island from another resident, I didn't know, until yesterday, that island tier due dates remain fixed throughout the island's life, rather than resetting at 30 days from the time the new owner takes possession. (When you buy an island from LL, you get your first 30 days tier-free.) This is why you often see people asking when the tier due date is in ads when looking to purchase islands.

Oh I guess I'll also add a few other island-buying tips:

- Make sure you actually visit the island in question before even thinking about purchasing it. Check the covenant tab in About Land to ensure that the avatar selling the island is the one listed as owner in the covenant tab.
- If you do a PayPal transaction, only proceed with the funds transfer if the recipient is a "verified" account. "Verified business owners" are even better. This way, when you do transfer the funds you have a better chance of getting some accurate RL information about the recipient by checking the details in your paypal account history. (LOL I've actually learned some surprising things by checking this...)
- And seriously, prefer to deal with folks you know personally or are relatively well-known/respected in the community.
- I've done a fair amount of research on third-party escrow services, and I'm afraid it's just not cost-effective (or sometimes even feasible) considering the rates and complications with international funds transfers. I'd love to find a flexible, affordable escrow service that was appropriate for SL.
- IMPORTANT: Before agreeing to buy, call Linden Lab or get on Concierge Live Chat and confirm the island's class and tier. Old-tier islands (Class 4 and even some Class 5) WILL remain at their old tier for the time-being, when transferred. But there are very few real Class 5s at the old tier, so you really should get LL confirmation on this.
- Make sure both parties file the island transfer tickets and send each other the ticket numbers.
- If you're ever worried the other party isn't holding up their end, contact Concierge and ask if they've submitted their transfer ticket and paid their $100 transfer fee.
- Island transfers take between 6 and 10 business days, whereas new island purchases rarely take longer than a week.

I wondered about how trustable buying an island is, and it seemed to me that it's a case of trusting the seller to actually go through with it after you've paid the money. But your post made me think...

Could it be done where, upon your agreement to buy, the seller submits the transfer request to LL, and proves to you that it was submitted. Then you pay the seller and submit your end of the request. That way, you can't be scammed, can you? I'm assuming that LL require both requests before going ahead.

[added]
It just occured to me that you could scam the seller by submitting your request and not paying. Oh well.

It is technically possible, yes. I have yet to encounter a seller willing to do it that way, though. They don't wanna get scammed any more than the buyer does.

i sold my island with the buyer sending me the money and then i create a ticket and give them the number

also from what i`ve heard, LL is cracking down hard on island scams, even heard of a case where the buyer got refunded and they applied the 150% penalty on the scammer, 150% on $1500usd defenetly hurts hehe

That is good to hear. I imagine that only applies to islands bought with L$ instead of via PayPal though, yeah? So far everyone I've dealt with has required PayPal.

they can`t see paypal transactions, only reason why i never considerd it along with reporting to paypal of a so called "fraudent" transaction and you endup with nothing but a hole in the wallet

they screw you ingame, LL will screw them over in return

I'd like to see a statement about this new tough approach, from LL.

What did Dr. Strangelove say about deterrents?


"Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the fear.....

........Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! .....Why didn't you tell the world????"
"

Does anyone know how long it currently is taking LL to transfer these island purchases?

don`t know where i saw it but there was a post of a linden saying they got fedup with these scams

i know that one person who tried to scam an island sale 3 times got banned, the money returned to the buyers and the island transferd to the first person (don`t ask what happend with the money tho as i have no idea)

My most recent one took 7 business days. This is a best-case scenario, where both parties file their tickets at the same time, with no errors or vagueness in the tickets, and the seller has enough $ in their USD account to sport the transfer fee. I've had situations where the seller made a mistake in their transfer ticket that resulted in 3-week delivery times. Also, they won't transfer the island until the seller ponies up the $100 USD transfer fee, even if the seller files the ticket. This happened to some friends who were buying an island and that also took 3 weeks to settle.