Landlord Fraud?

My Girlfriend and I have been renting 14,000 sq meters on a private estate for the sum of 95$ USD a month (25,000 L's, more or less). Yesterday, I noted that my friends, for some reason were not allowed to teleport into the sim. Today, after I got home from work, I go in, to find that the entire sim is blank, all my items returned, and a different person's name is on the land, with it all up for sale. Since I had paid a month in advance, I still had two weeks coming to me, at @ 50$.

I sent my Landlord a message (BIG SURPRISE: he wasn't online), and said I wanted my unused rent back, and asked him why he hadn't notified us he was selling the sim out from under us...

If I don't hear back from this guy, is this a case of Fraud, and are there remedies for the situation? The original contract was 500 L$ for each of 3 pieces, and 25,000 Lindens a month tier. As I said, we received Landowner rights, and the next thing I know, I know longer have land, which is leaving a very BAD taste in my mouth...

In the event the guy has cheated us, is there a place (a Better Business Bureau type of thing) where I can post what I have on him, so he doesn't pull this stunt on others?

"Always Look For The Worst In People...You'll NEVER be disappointed "

Sorry, but you are out of luck. Private Sim owners are like Fuedal Kings, they can do whatever they want with the land, whenever they want. That's the major caveat of private sim living. Nothing you can do. LL will not get involved in these matters.

Sorry to hear this happened. You are not the first person to post something like this.

No, there's no better business bureau in SL.

LL will not get involved in any way. You have no recourse and the money is gone.

If you feel the need to name and shame, you can do it over at SLUniverse.

This is why we advise time and time again to go with an established and known Estate owner with a stellar reputation.

Yup...ditto.....LL is not going to get involved in any kind of land dispute, period. The ONLY thing that you might be able to do is contact the new owner of the sim and see if they will request a roll back so you can properly retrieve your things. If not....you'll have to go through your lost and found and objects folders for your returned items. Chances are they'll show up as a little cluster icon in your inventory because all objects were returned at once.
I'm sorry this happend to you. If you're interested in trying again.....my landlord is really great. I live on Saraluv which you can search on the map and check out the little rental building to see what plots are available. The owners are a group of women that own a few islands and they are nothing but cool and accomadating to the residents.

I had it happen to me before now I only buy on mainland (with all of its problems)
over 50$us there is not really anything you can do about it, if it was more and you both resided in the US then maybe small claims would work but but thats a whole nother can of worms.
So do what most do when it happens to them, consider it lesson learned and move on.
Buy mainland or really and I mean REALLY research your next landlord because when you buy on estate you never trully buy you are renting in a since.
There are some really good estate owners our there and usally thier paracle are always filled.
But good luck to ya
ohh and as far as reporting you cant do it here on the fourms but tell people your experiance if they ask for a recomendation as to where to buy land and let them know to stay away from that estate

FWIW, folks have lost a lot more with the same problem because they payed a substantial up-front fee to "buy" their estate-leased parcels. If I read the OP correctly, the up-front fee here totaled L$1500, so the loss is two weeks rent, which is annoying enough to put one off the idea of Estate rentals, I suppose, but not the worst instance of this abuse by a long shot.

It so sucks for the reputable Estate owners when this happens. Yeah, it drives a few into the relative safety of the good ones, but it's a lot more effective at discouraging folks from Estates altogether, and I suspect in some cases, from SL as a whole.

i have a horrible feeling we are going to hear more and more of these tales with the rise in cheap land and new landlords not really knowing what they are doing

Im really sorry to hear you had this happen, it must be heartbreaking ~big squidge for you~

Do you know the names of any of your neighbours? You could try contacting them and asking if they've had any communications with the old landlord.

Complain to the new landlord too, they'll throw their hands up and say it's not their problem, which is true but they should have had the decency to inform you that they'd taken ownership too.

Seconded. LL won't lift a finger to help you, but, although it's rare, every once in a while you hear about the new landlord in these types of cases trying to make things right, even though it's not their fault. You never know, the new landlord might be one of those upstanding sorts that will give you a discounted rate on the 'new' estate, esp. if they're looking to lease the land out to long-term residents who are likely to stay.

I wouldn't necessarily blame the new landlord for not informing you when he/she took possession - who knows what the previous owner told them about the status of the leased land.

Good point...unless there is fair & honest communication between the seller and prospective new owner...things can be misunderstood or go wrong very easily...

True there is no BBB in SL.......but there is a BBB in RL. You would have to name LL though since they own the "business". If enough complaints were recieved LL might be more inclined to get involved is such things. I doubt it though.

Linden labs already have enough press coverage. do we really need to give them more?

This happened to a friend of mine not once but three times in as many months recently. She paid upfront for a month at the first place, two weeks at the second and at least at the third she knew it was coming and had her stuff out of the way (and it was apologised for and they bent over backwards to sort her out.

Sorry to hear that you have had this happen. Personally I'd never go anywhere near Estate owners (with the exception of Sofia Westwick who is fantastic, and Ciaran cos he is Ciaran) ever again. It's an exercise in trust and it's one way.

So bad behavior or poor service is rewarded by silence because "we don't want any more 'bad press'"?

Awwww I owe you a pint!

If this type of fraud reoccurs multiple times with 1 avatar, I would like to think that LL would recognize it and prevent it from occurring again. I hope.

I wonder if a news organization would think there's a story in how many people get swindled in LL...from Ginko to landbot theft to estate fraud/estate ownership change. Even ad farm extortion.

To me there is a newsworthy story here with this headline: No Recourse--Buyer Beware in Second Life.

Nope.

save your money.. buy your own land, its yours... unless sl goes dead.. no one will do this too you again...

renting land from anyone but sl is another brick in the wall.. hang on to the first brick.... sl owns those and at least has a determinable accountability for what happens to them..

A landord does that, SL is obliged to the landlord, not you..sadly i think, and often, a lesson learned the hard way..

A well-intentioned idea, but scary at the same time. I had someone's rent expire, where the boxes automatically IM the tenant 3 days before expiration, and again at the time of expiration, and again one final time after the 3 days arrears ends. I IM'ed them and asked if they intended to stay, and didn't hear back. I let almost a week go by and then autoreturned their stuff and rented the place to someone else. I got an IM asking what happened? Why did you return our stuff? I IM'ed back and and explained the whole thing. A day later I got an IM: "This is unlike you. Are you going to give me an explanation?" I finally IM'ed him from an alt and sent notecards too.

They're back in another of my places now and happy again, and yeah, yeah, I know I should use notecards more and not trust IMs. (Although a notecard is just as easy to lose and never notice as an IM). But the point is, there are 2 sides to every story, and sometimes neither side would even be a lie. I try my best to make everybody happy, but at the same time I'm certainly glad there isn't some poorly-managed system in place for LL to shut me down based on business transactions. The AR system is abusable and scary enough as it is.

Not LL's fault though. Why should they be responsible for the conduct of residents...

Yep, totally agree. Every time someone pulls this it makes the rest of us look bad.

* * * * *

I'm gonna say something fairly controversial, but it needs to be said.

If an estate owner isn't literally making tens of thousands of dollars from being an estate owner, there is only one thing making them continue to be a landlord - and that's just plain wanting to do this as a hobby.

So that 10 or 20 hour a week hobby had better be really, really, really personally rewarding, because it's essentially a part time job. If someone has maybe a region or two they are going to make a few thousand bucks a year off it, maximum.

For that: constant service to other people, horrific drama, being screamed at... all of it. Oh, and if they aren't very good at finding tenants: they get to pay anywhere up to a couple-few hundred a month for the opportunity to serve you, when occupancy dips too low.

How many think that is a stable situation?

Some people will enjoy having a region as a great hobby for years and years, or compensate if they exit.

But be very wary of the small time operation doing it 'for the money'. The numbers just don't add up against the time required, or the skill in tough times.

Sorry to hear about what happened.

That's like saying why should Starbucks keep customers from openly robbing other customers.

They should do it to keep people using their product. I know they won't because of manpower issues. But it's one of the major issues in SL and LL constantly turns a blind eye to it, with the Ginko fiasco being the most glaring example.

I looks to me LL IS taken an active role. By making it so you can do anything even if you get in world, that will cut down the swindling quite a bit, I'd think.

Bad publicity.