Totally Screwed--land owners & renters

Hey all, I just wanted to share a frustrating situation with everyone.

Recently a fellow visited my studio, liked my products, and told me about some club/mall space he has up for rent...he thought my film equipment might be perfect for the spot (of course I know he's more into personal gain, but that's business)...I checked out the location, and for the price it was very reasonable, so I decided to rent.

I paid the rental box L650 for 4 weeks (an additional week was added to sweeten the deal, making it 5 weeks.) My prim count was 30.

After setting the small shop up, I met the neighbor who owned land next door. He liked my stuff too...and told me he would give me a parcel of land for a flat rate of L200. He said I had a prim count of 600. Of course I took this deal, and began building another studio next door. They liked the studio so much, they asked me to prefab it for them...which I did...and they used it elsewhere on the land too (as long as they didn't sell it was my only stipulation.)

Now...I spent 2 days building the studio from scratch, interior design, even buying a few sculptie furniture pieces here and there...

A week later, the dude deletes EVERY object on his land...without warning. I was pissed...I don't spend days working on projects just to have them ripped out from under me...how incredibly unprofessional right? I told him this...he didn't care.

Well, if THAT wasn't enough, to add insult to injury, the club owner next door returns all of my goods also...he decided to stop the mall portion of his club...didn't even tell me. I was only a week into the renting...I had already paid L600...I asked for a refund, he gave me L100...oh nice..thanks for nothing.

So, the point of this diatribe? Don't trust landowners in SL...the majority of them are unprofessional and completely uncaring. They don't see the dedication and investment other people put in...so they freely wield a hand of God...

Make sure you really scrutinize your landowner BEFORE you rent. I could of sworn these guys were mature and straight forward...turns out they don't give a hoot...a total waste of my time...they surely made out in the end...with my money, AND my awesome prefab studio.

Blah. What can be said. Caveat.

I hate hate hate reading stuff like this.

Check your trash, Michael, for the studio.

Ill rent you a little space and 30 prims on my land for free =P

Course.. noone comes there yet but...bah

ANyway, sorry to hear about your bad experience =(

Unfortunately it's true. THere are so many land owners out there that the most common form are immature and don't consider the implications of their actions. THere are plenty of good ones too but.. they're harder to find because they don't rush into things

Luckily I had taken a copy of the prefab...of course.

As far as ALL the stuff inside...I'm hoping he returned it all to me. To be honest, I'm so frustrated, I haven't even looked in my inventory for the stuff...frankly, I don't care. Most of the stuff is already there from before...the nocopy furniture is the only thing I might not have had returned...

Is an AR even worth it for these two neighboring nincompoops?

Unfortunately, I don't think this is something that would cause any action from LL if you AR'ed it. It counts as a resident dispute and their policy is not to get involved.

I'm sorry about this Michael. It's a crappy situation. The loss of all your time and energy probably stings more than the L$ you're out. It sounds like you put a lot of labor into it and you deserved better treatment than you got.

DOn't AR.. no point since it's a 'merchant dispute' kinda thing. LL doesn't get involved with personal problems and to them, that is what this is.. don't AR, you'd be disappointed and it'd technically be abusing the system I think

Maybe, maybe not. I think the best bet us just add them to the 'black list' and warn your friends.

I've dealt with entirely too many 'nincompoops'(lol) that own land in SL. I finally bought land for some things I don't want to just 'poof' one day, and rent several other parcels from one individual. It took nearly a year to find this said individual, as far and size vs price and compared to other landlords he's got the best deals and a very good businessman. I'd recommend him to anyone.

Michael,

Would a system like Better Business Bureau help? In RL the BBB is suppose to resolve such issues. While the RL-BBB doesn't actually work that way the concept is sound. If you had a place to report these clowns. People could come in and look them up before doing business at least you would save others from dealing with these people.

Another thought would be an eBay style ranking system. I worked hard to get my ebay rank high and keep it there.

All I have is my reputation.

"G"

Sorry to hear about what happened to you Michael; glad I visited your shop before then.

Very interested in what you do..I'm in film in RL and it appears you have RL experience as well.

Really nice work with the cameras and lighting set ups.

There are a lot of landowners, some of them you can trust and some others no, but I wont take "Don't trust landowners in SL" as a statement.

I own land, i've shops for rent and I'd never do that. I'm a designer so I rent shops in other places and never happened to me. So if you are going to rent a place you have to be careful, check owner's profile talk to neighbours, see if there are other shops rented, etc, etc etc.

Majority? Really? If they are all screwing people, how do most stay in business?

because there is always a new group of the unenlightened newbies to prey on..they make it look attractive and the renters dont know better because names arent allowed to be called in the forums so people know who to avoid. Not saying that all landlords are thieves. Ive been renting my sim for over a year now without a single problem...but he seems to be the exception rather than the rule. I saw an ad saying a sim was for sale for 950USD ..and then the clincher..you pay tier to the seller. In my books thats renting, not buying..and 950$ is a chunk of change to invest up front with no guarantees.

MOST don't actually. The successful ones you generally see are few and far between. For every probably 12 sims bought, I'd say 10 or 11 of them end up flopping within a few months.

Look around the grid, find an empty but built sim, and then check back after a few months.. it will either have people or just be gone =/

Funny you should bring this up...I'm seriously considering starting a small company & group for this very reason--SLBB, or DBB, SLB...something. I think it would be very popular, and a great resource for 'suspecting' renters. Hmmmm...as long as it's in the business sense, not purely for slander, and each case is anonymous...this might go over extremely well in Second Life.

The problem is that many people running 'businesses' in SL are not business people.
They have no concept of what it takes to start and run a RL business. Unlike in RL, they don't *have* to care if they don't make a profit or if whole thing goes down the tubes. It's pocket money, just a game to them.

Failure to empathise with others is a classic Internet thing. Out of sight, out of mind. Anyone with even minor sociopathic tendencies is going to have them amplified in SL.
They wouldn't even get a business off the ground in RL, nevermind keep it running for more than a wet week.

In RL, there would be local knowledge to advise.
In SL, there is no real neighbourhood or history in which peoples' cards have been well marked already. There is no reputation system in SL that is widely known or would have any influence over the activities of random residents.

In RL, one can take such a landlord to court or small claims. In RL one can be in their face.
In SL, they are untouchable under the TOS.

That's SL. We have to work with that.


*Anybody* can buy land and become a landlord for the price of a night out.
The bigger the piece of land, and the newer the avatar is, the greater chance that it won't last beyond next billing date or the one after.


I've never considered renting.
The RL cost of a small bit of SL land is not significant. How much would you spend on a night out? Ditto for tier on a small plot.

The RL cost of the time we put into SL *is* significant. I prefer not to have my SL experience depending on some unknown amateur dabbler in 'business'.

--Reputation systems

For newer players, we used to have a rating system within the game. One player could rate another, and the rating points would show in their profile. That got taken away.

As a substitute, there has appeared a ratings site for escorts (http://sl-escorts.com/).

It would make sense to have a ratings site for other second life businesses. The easiest way I can think of to do that is for businesses to use http://www.slexchange.com/, set up an item for "sale" thats just a set of notecards and photos for their business. Make it a free item, and then people can rate and review the business using the existing tools there.

--Recourse

In real life, enforcement of contracts has a long, long history. I'm surprised at how many people in SL will do business with each other on an anonymous/no recourse basis. Im not talking about buying a clothing item for a dollar equivalent in real money. I mean things like renting a sizeable piece of land for what amounts to your cable or internet bill, or thereabouts. Doing it from someone totally unknown to you, and with linden labs telling you (in the TOS you agreed to) that if you get screwed over, tough, they wont help you.

If the amount you are paying will hurt to lose, then go outside second life. Make the transaction somewhere that gives you a way to get paid back if you are screwed over. That can be PayPal, a credit card, or a paper contract and a paper check. Get real life contact information for who you are doing business with. If they are not willing to do
any of those things, maybe you should reconsider doing business with them.

Different shop. My main studio (the one you visited) is on Silicon Island, run by V3 Group--they are extremely professional. Silicon Island caters to mainly RL companies who are crossing over--the island is PG and confines to strict design schematics.

So...not the same shop...thank God.

OH, and thank you...of course.

There's already a SLBB in place. It has gone nowhere as far as I know, because they have no teeth.

Hmmm...

I think a good way to start is knowing other influential companies in SL--like M2, or Avastar, TRU Textures, Electric Sheep...someone big. They can help in many different aspects: spreading the word, sponsorship, business models...perhaps even a piggy-backed website.

Not sure I have time for it...but SOMEONE should do it. And when I mean do it...do it right.

please don't put all land/business owners in the same box, for they are not all bad, or the same. I'm not and I as well know many many who are the same as I. I hate you went through such a terrible thing, it would make me just as angry. But don't toss all land and business owners out with the dirty wash water. Some of us take this sl experience most seriously and to heart.
Wishing u many many blessings, successes and joys in all your future adventures, as well investments!

I rent a lot of mall spaces, and yes, I've been cheated exactly as you describe, a total of two times. So I don't know that I would go so far as to say that the majority of landowners are untrustworthy. I think the 50 or so people renting from me wouldn't agree with that assessment either. It does make one extremely angry when something like that happens, but please don't take that out on the mostly fine and upstanding landowners of SL. In SL, just as in RL, most people are basically good.

@ Michael - sorry you had to go through that experience; but as others have posted, there ARE many good landlords/estate owners out there. Those who behave in the way you describe will soon be biting the SL dust, so to speak - my reputation as a landlord/estate owner/land baron/whateverrrr is something I guard very jealously because I know my business would fly out the window if people started ascribing those sort of practises to me.

(I could have a mild rant of my own about renters - especially store renters - who sail wildly past their prim allocation and then act all huffy/pick up their prims and leave when I point out them, politely, they've gone over and I'll need to adjust their weekly rental amount. But I won't )

@ at the concept of a Business Bureau - not interested and never will be. How on earth does anyone see such a thing being regulated? Let's say I'm a house builder. I want to play dirty on my competition. What, for example, is to stop me creating a number of alts and using the majority to complain mightily about some imaginary/set up scenario about a competitor's business and using the other as my 'mole' inside the BB to righteously uphold my own complaint?

In other words, the 'verdict' of any BB on any business is about as trustworthy - imho - as the landlords Michael has such unfortunate dealings with.

Inc

Upon reflection, I think you might be right about "the majority." And it's probably prudent to follow the "Don't trust" advice in SL, as in RL. Or perhaps Reagan's famous "Trust but verify" formulation--to your point: I've often thought that some kind of "Angie's List" for in-world establishments might be helpful, but I always get myself tangled-up in implementation details (how to make an automated rating-weighting system that's immune to gaming). And there's the nasty chicken-and-egg problem of getting the thing off the ground before any useful ratings are yet available. (Somebody like OnRez might have been able to do it, but they've got their own credibility problems. Kinda has to be somebody who doesn't actually try to sell the stuff themselves, I think.)

I know...I just said MOST... That's not ALL of them. Let me restate this: shop around, and do some extensive research.

I even stated how professional the land my main studio is on is...I know they are out there...but now I'm not so sure the ratio is leaning towards a positive.

Thanks for the blessings.

My best advice is to not commit to anything long term when renting. If someone pressures you into making a long commitment, or gives you some fantastic deal that will keep you for a long time, you should pause. If you have to give more than 2 weeks of rent as an initial renting period, you should pause. There are far too many stories just like this.

I personally wonder about people giving away a free week of rent just to fill their places up. To me, that says that you are willing to eat up to 1/4 of your month's tier at some point. That should set off alarms if the person is not a large landholder with significant developments and holdings, and can probably afford it because of a large group bonus of land that makes the offset profitable. How large? I'd say concierge level, at the very least. 1/2 sim.

People have to take their time land shopping to know what is a fair deal and what is not. Doing the math about the equivalent tier per square meter is the first step. Knowing approximately how much land the landowner/group has is the next. Knowing their policies concerning refunds, and polling their existing tenants would be the third.

If you are with a relatively small landowner, you shouldn't commit more than 1 or 2 weeks' worth of rent.

Just some thoughts.