How to lose 2000 USD.

6 plots? Heh.

I'd say this: Knock on wood. Pray someone like Elanthius or Zorr is on when you do eventually screw up - because one day you will. And if they catch it, you are lucky.

Right now you just haven't done it nearly enough, but more than enough to avoid the newbie transfer mistake Landbot Merlin just pulled that cost someone another 5,995L

So, please, be lucky.

6 Plots.

Ad spammers can move in within 72 hours. Within 24 hours. Within 1 hour. Heck, within microseconds of the transaction. Is it fair to the seller to have to carry the weight of what *might* happen in 72 hours?

It's not like bulldozers are needed in SL, you know. 5 seconds after sale, someone might decide to open the everpresent casino/brothel combination that every newbie seems to think is an original idea. Or you could have someone like me move in next door and really rattle your cage.

Be thankful I'm on an island.

See, 72 hours might work if there was zoning. But we ain't got none on mainland. And we ain't got nothing to do about that. And we ain't gonna got nothing to do with that. So we ain't exactly got 72 hours to wait around while the entire landscape changes faster than a fruitfly can have a thought.

Fruitfly's last thought. SWAT.

Heh. Dude. This is like waiting for Daisy to go off in Dukes of Hazzard.

"We ain't worried about her, son..."

So you're admitting to being a thief yourself? How - very - candid - of - you.

I am new to sl and was trying to work out how to swap a parcel of land with a neighbour, i foolishly set it to sell to anyone for 1 linden, thinking this was safe as there was nobody else around, bang the land was gone to what i now know as a land bot. He sold it on for a profit to someone who sold it to nobody fugazzi, who very kindly and generously gave me the land back. us new residents should not be left to be preyed on by the likes of landbaron merlin, i can't understand why it is allowed to continue.

Wow that is very generous and interesting. how convenient for you that such a person exists in SL who will take a loss just to give you back your stolen land.

Ok came off ruder than I wanted, just thought it was a bit crazy. And bots hit me hard, but by no means made me go broke. Unlike bots I don't rely soley on stealing land and quick sells.

Yea hard to believe we arn't all greedy f**Ks eh? Maybe you should have a little more faith instead of coming up with so many conspiracy theorys. In my rl experience the people like that is that they are a bit off. Not trying to be rude again...Just saying... Oh wait..Heres my theory, Could it be that you are involved with these landbots? why else would you be so accepting of something that screws innocents over and takes advantage of peoples errors?

Hi there,
I don;t often post in the forums - I'm just a browser, but this time I have to say something.

A month or so ago, I sold my land where I had my shop as I was going to leave SL (I must have been crazy!!!) and I put the land up for sale for L$16500. It sodl to a MR. Elanthius Flagstaff within about 15 seconds. But when I checked my account - no money??? So I IM MR. E politely - he insists he had paid and tells me to wait for a while, which I do. After a couple of days, still no money and I start to get upset with Mr. E, and he with me as he instists he paid for the land.

Anyway, we meet up, and go through the transaction carefully. And the result was, that in my haste to sell the land, and prolly due to the fact that I was quite upset at the time (personal stuff), that I had set the land for sale for L$1650!!! MY fault entirely!!! Because I don;t check my account balance very carefully, I hadn;t noticed that I was L$1650 better off.

What Mr. E did, which was amazing, was to immediately sell me the land back for L$1650 with no hard feelings once he realised my mistake. I actually sold him the land back in the end, as I was so happy that there are some nice, honest ppl in SL.

My point is this, be very carefull how you make deals, and remeber that most of the ppl in SL are very honourable, like the lovely Mr. E.

Just in case you;re wondering, I wasn;t a friend of Mr. E, or had ever met him before or since.

Xara

This is exactly how he should do business.

With the exception of Swindlers I think we all expect most business people in SL to be honest.

I had a Customer overpay me 2400 Lindens ( Bought an extra 8 copies of my no transfer products) during a time of extremely lag. She wasnt even sure how much shed over paid. I returned her the money as soon as I could sort out what she did.

I dont say this to dismiss Elanthius' customer service - since several people have brought this up about him in these landbot threads.

I only say it to say most business people in SL are fair - Ive gotten refunds or exchanges nearly everytime a problem came with merchandise.

I have made no secret of the fact that I am good friends with one of the bot runners (not Elanthius), and he has bent over backwards to make sure mistakes are corrected and that people who do get land bought by his bot know how to contact him just in case it is a mistake. So yes when I see generalizations made I do get defensive about my friend because he is trying hard to keep unfortunate mistakes from happening.

But LL's inability to deal with what is considered by many of us to be unfair and dishonorable - including you - does paint this picture of bots as SL being bad.

As a programmer, you know I'm much more ambivalent about the whole thing. Clicking search all the time is boring and a programmer would think at least every other time clicking "there must be a better way". But as Sarah points out, there is an imbalance.

Personally, I believe the imbalance is in the ToS. I think that the way you and Zorr and even Landbot Hax (I seem to be the only person in SL who has gotten land back from Landbot hax) do things is at the least *acceptable*. But bot owners are not being held to something like that, and the speed with which they operate does help create these situations.

Now your point about a human is not lost. And this is why I'm beating the ToS drum instead of the "hang bots up by their binary files and let a magnet sort them out" drum. Yet the fact that land dealers are not being discussed is also an important point. There haven't been recent issues that I know of with human land dealers - or even bot owners that much..

I'm sending Philip Rosedale the bill. Don't worry.

Be careful with that. We all may decide to send him some bills of our own. LOL

If someone disses someone I help, I get defensive. Your comments to someone who LOST money in the context of what we are discussing in this thread seemed condescending and inflammatory, as well as a veiled poke at me. Well, here I am.

To claim that one goes to the defense of one's friends is well and good. All my friends are grown up and can handle themselves. Elanthius has held his own in this debate, and while I don't agree with him on some points I respect his opinions and have not dissed him. I cannot speak for Sarah, she is someone I consider to be an acquaintance and perhaps a friend - but more important, she is someone I respect. Sarah's anti-bot, and with her own reasons. I am somewhere in between. Elanthius is a bot owner. You're a friend of a bot owner, which means probably Landbot Hax, Zorr or Landbaron Merlin. These are all possibilities. But I haven't heard any solutions from you, really.

Sarah can handle herself. But dissing someone because I *helped them*? How do you negotiate that into this honor system you have where you defend your friends? I do not understand that. I do not *want* to understand that, so please don't trouble me with an explanation.

What this thread is about - I *hope* - is about resolving the problem and coming up with solutions. The solutions presented so far are not all I agree with - and I have engaged in debate - which is what I think we should all be doing at this point. Now, Tristan, what are your thoughts on coming up with a solution that allows for human error and does not reward dishonorable practices - for both bot and human?

Services Rendered: Making SL more livable.

You think I'm kidding? I'm dead serious. I provided a service for LindenLab.

I agree something should be done to stop the thieving that this post originally started as. But as always it evolves into a "burn the witch/bot" thread. I can agree with people like sarah on some points and the bot runners with a conscience on other points, but the point of this thread is about someone who is using a bot to steal land by taking advantage of user and system error.

As far as a solution is concerned, LL needs to revamp the current system because it is bugged and broken. As far as the user error is concerned, they could have 50 pop ups when you set the land for sale asking if you are sure and there will still be that one person that makes the mistake.

BTW, we all know who the dishonorable bot runner is so I think that sorta rules him out as my friend.

*One last thought*
Believe it or not the bots do provide a service. If someone does need to unload land fast, especially crappy land, the bots are great for taking it off your hands instantly.

Well I was going to say that you wern't defending your friend, you were pissing on a poor girl already taken advantage of, But Nobody has said it perfectly, well stated and with alot less F word's than I would have used. And which do you care more about the well being of your friend or the well being of sl residents as a whole? Bots benefit 4 maybe 5 residents finatially in second life, but as a whole they hurt more residents.

There are a few dishonorable landbots, not just one. Yes people will always make errors but LL has the ability to help keep it a minimum like when they changed the way the buy window is set up. If a human makes a listing error, there is a few second grace period where they can notice and fix the error quickly. Or when all of a sudden alot of people tp in they can quickly hit the cancel sale button. Bots insta buy in a split second before anyone else can blink. I don't this power should be able to be used. Right now from what I can see there are 2 "decent" bot owners, and 2 "dirty" bot owners. So a 50% chance if you make a human error, or lag error, your screwed. Those arn't fair odds in my opinion.

Well I only know Z.Z. and he is honorable. Now I agree that the system should have maybe a 5, 10, or 15 minute grace period before the land sale even enters the listings. However this does not help the issue of the bots being able to respond faster than humans. For that issue I would like to see an option where private offers can be given to the land owner and then the land owner can then choose which offer they wish to take and who to sell it to.

Whatever the case some action needs to be taken by LL. This whole situation is way out of hand.

Don't know if anybody is interested at all, but here is my "me too".

Today I bought the sim "Bietschhorn" at the LL auction and was just subdividing the land in parcels and setting up the price when suddenly my client crashed.

Maybe it was my mistake, but when I was back in SL about 30,000 m2 were bought by "Land Baron Merlin" (Owner Paper Olivier) for just 6600 L$. This is the price, I sell the 512 m2 parcels for.

Of course I IMed Paper immediately and asked him not to sell the land until everything is settled. No response so far.

Of course I ARed this issue to LL, no response so far.

And I also sent an IM to the German concierge Ethan Linden asking for an advice.

Well, no big problem, "we" big land barons throw away 1500 bucks every day, so why should I complain? this is business ... throw money away for just nothing!

I am not a big player ... and I had a long talk with my husband ... *sigh* ... not sure ... how often I (and he) could accept this kind of loss.

Mel

Oh ... and check out http://cosyhome.org/cgi-bin/auc_statistics/auction-stats.html

Sadly this is becoming more and more common. I don't feel LL should allow this type of power just because 2 out of all of them are willing to give back errors.

Landbaron Merlin, $4500+ US. SecondLife Terms of Service and Community Standards: 0.

Right. We're almost on the same page. Now, how many more thousand dollars - real dollars - before something is done?

We're at $4500 US right now. I figure... what, $10,000 US? Maybe $20,000 US?

And there's an unconfirmed rumor that ACS has been hit too. And Anshe thought flexistuff was bad...

Who's shouting cyber-rape now?