How is this legal?

I suspect that's exactly what started it...seems the multiple alts is what finished it.

well thats a sort of "catch 22"

If you are banned you aren't supposed to make Alts to get around the ban...

But if you make alts all the will do is Ban you .. which they did already.

Get your friend into therapy. NOW.

Anyone so strongly invested in an online world that she can't function if things go wrong needs some serious help. Including some training in how to deal with normal life problems, such as disputes with service providers.

She doesn't need to get a Second Life until she's managed to get her First one.

Alright. Her other friends and I, who have her e-mail at least, are working on her realizing that. Though, you'd probably be surprised at how many people around you do feel that strongly about Second Life. (Doesn't make it healthy at all, of course...)
I assume it was the most recent alt, combined with her deceptive practices to hide it, that did it. But this is the first definitive statement she's gotten on the subject... ever. (You tell me what "disputed Lindens" means without searching the forums -- which is the way I found out, and obviously not an option for Micheille -- and we'll decide how clear that was. Plus there was the constantly saying that she's not allowed to know what the dispute was about. Add the false solution proposal and it almost sounds like intentional psychological abuse. ALMOST.)
But she's going to write a letter, snail-mail it, and request an explanation of why her account's been permabanned, including the lack of notice beforehand, and then she SAYS she's going to try to move on with her life. They're going to miss her in Hayao, more than they'll miss me (and I may not be gone for good; I'm just taking the time to decide that I'm not as hooked into this as she is), but it's much better for her in the long run if she puts this behind her.

Disputed lindens typically = money obtained using stolen credit cards. She probably received money from someone, a bad source known to LL. To protect the criminal (?) investigation, they do not release those details.

QFT.

I do like the "Kindest regards" tag at the end of the GTFO. A nice touch.

I thought you said she was already Permabanned before any of this?

Like I said, she only knows this because I heard it from you. It's damn near impossible to find in the Knowledge Base, as is RiskAPI. And ... if it WAS a criminal investigation, she'd have a hell of a lot more rights than she does.
And why would it take six weeks or more to decide what to do? ... besides the fact that her third and fourth avatars probably had to be dealt with. (A mutual friend, the one that loaned her the money that instablocked her fourth avatar, now thinks that the constant attempts at circumventing were restarting the clock, so to speak, on the investigation, which, for several reasons, sounds possible to me.)



Have you ever seen such an obvious form letter in your life? (I mean, my brother has managed to see several -- for some reason the Nigerian scams target his e-mail quite often, go figure -- but that's besides the point.)



Must not have been clear about it, but I thought I said this: She was told she was *indefinitely blocked* six weeks ago because of the investigation. She wasn't told anything else specific until this week, when she was told about her violation of Terms of Service.

Phoenix is English her first language?

I respectfully disagree. Someone who's blocked can't get to the forum, if I'm not mistaken. Furthermore, a person who has a question or needs help should feel free to come to these forums. Also, just because you have no help to offer doesn't mean that it's impossible that anyone might have helpful suggestions or illuminating ideas.

Come on, folks, please show a bit of sensitivity.

Lear, read the whole thread before commenting.

Not being funny, if it's a suspension or a banning issue that person has ONE place to go, and that is LL support, whether that is by phone, live chat or ticket that is the only recourse they have. Anything else is provoking either bad advice and/or a permaban, which is exactly what happened in this case.

Funny, my experience has been harsh with using paypal.... I have been trying to get assistance with a paypal issue and LL for about 8 months. I have to use CC because I get the pass the buck thing when trying to resolve.

As a matter of fact, when I last submitted a ticket.. the reply was "clear your cache and try again" ticket marked resolved!

But, I've not been banned or locked out.... Obviously there is something else going on..

I have found that once you have a paypal issue with SL, you're pretty much SOL with using it again.

All my problems started when I changed using paypal to credit card for a month, then tried to use paypal again...

How many alts are you allowed?

Not sure, but I've never had a problem communicating with her.


This was about Lear's response to your earlier statement about 'getting on the horn' with Billing and 'not leaving til (she) gets a straight answer'. Thing is... they refused to give her one beyond the 'disputed Lindens investigation' one. And again, I can't think of anyone who would be satisfied with that answer. I mean, when I type 'disputed Lindens' into Yahoo Search, I get nothing on the subject (though I do get an entertaining mention of how SL lost in court regarding the arbitrtation system mentioned in the Terms of Service... probably not relevant to the situation at hand, but I did kind of laugh my ass off nonetheless).


And I'm also being serious when I say that no one would tell her anything of substance. No suggestion of what was being investigated, no suggestion as to how long the investigation would take, nothing. So, in effect, she had NO recourse whatsoever (and no solid information, beyond her lawyer friend telling her that there are disputes still unresolved, and accounts still blocked, for two years running -- which, I'd really like to know his source, because I can't find anything on that myself, so I hesitate to classify THAT as solid).


It was the three unpaid alts, two of which had measures taken to be undetected, especially the most recent, that was the cause for the ban. At least, that's my theory. They STILL didn't say how she violated the Terms of Service.

Carl Sagan wouldn't even know any more.

Ha, interesting...I just went to double check the alt policy in the Knowledge Base and it looks like they've moved away from the "we don't care, but we may charge or suspend you if you abuse the system" and changed it back to five per household.


Amusingly though, this paragraph is still present:


So, you can have as many as you want, as long as that isn't more than five, and if you happen to build an army, they *may* charge you. Masters of clarity...

You sure thats current?

How does this jive with the trafficbotters?

Well he died in the mid 90's, so I'm guessing he doesn't know much anymore.

If I recall correctly, it used to say something like this:


And don't quote me when I'm editing!

I was referring to the "Billions and Billions" line.

I was only teasing Colette, I know diddly about Carl Sagan except from what I learned watching Cosmos as a kid and a general idea of when he died.

Sorry..

hehehe

is cool

I was thinking "How many alts can you have?"

"Billions and Billions ... " of Trafficbots

I stand by my comments.

That may be the official position, but it is not actually how it works in practice - I can vouch for that from experience. I have my main, my alt, my real life partner's main and her alt all paid for from the same paypal account. I have encountered no problems with this at all.