Is there any recourse in rental disputes?

Hello. This is my first post here, so forgive me if it's in the wrong forum. My situation is as follows. I rented a house from someone I'll not name and paid for five weeks. Here at the end of the first week, things start to go screwy. The doors won't open so I can't go outside without teleporting elsewhere first. This also includes my swimming pool which is outside the bedroom door. The blinds will not recognize any of my commands which is a problem as I change clothes a lot and most of the walls are glass. I can't rezz anything there anymore even when wearing the rental group tag. All of the built in pose balls in all of my furniture stopped working. I'm not talking about complicated multi pose sex beds, I'm talking about basic one pose low prim stuff here. They worked fine when I tested them at a friends' place.

I IM'd the landlord and informed him of the problem. He did not reply. Several hours later, I IM'd him again (I'd seen him go offline and on a few times in the interim). Still no reply. Still several hours later I IM'd him again. Still no reply. Today I IM'd him and told him specifically all the things that were going wrong. I also told him I thought it was unfair for me to have to pay for something that didn't work.

I've still got 34 days left on the lease which amounts to right around L$1000, not a huge amount, but it is if you work for it in SL which I do. Do I have any recourse in this matter? Or am I just stuck in a bad situation and out that much money? Someone please let me know, and thank you in advance.

It sounds like some kind of scripting fault on the land. This _could_ be an SL cglitch caused by the server upgrade, or perhaps the landlord accidentially disabled scripts?

I suggest you continue trying to contact the landlord. If all fails, you could AR under "failure to deliver" or "land fraud" but I'd wait to be sure it isn't a glitch, first.

I hate to say it, but you're pretty much stuck. There's no court system for resident to resident disputes like this. You're only option really is to try to work it out with your landlord. Maybe it was just things being broken in SL or the land accidentally got set to a different owner or group. Good Luck, and I hope it all works out.

Might try dropping a notecard on the landlord. If he's insanely busy, the IM's scroll right over to the right and he won't see them. Notecard is hard to miss, though.

Usually people are glad to help you. Sounds like something is seriously wrong - no landlord wants to mess up that badly. Also - house, swimming pool, furniture, and over a month's time for a mere $L 1000?

That sounds like an *incredible* deal - unless you have only, say, 150-200 prims making the whole place he's not even making tier.

I smell inexperience, not malice.

I agree with Desmond, a notecard is your best bet on communication with Vendors and busy business owners.
Almost sounds like scripts are disabled on that parcel. You can check by clicking on the about land and then Options tab.

Either way good luck. Hope you get it sorted

Just remember rule number 1, the person with the delete button is always right.

sounds very like your furiniture and possibly even the house were not placed wearing the right tag for the group (if its grouped land) it easy to change though in the details tab under edit mode. Check your own stuff first and see if that helps.

Fai x

Yup, I tend to agree with Desmond on this one....it sounds more like scripting issues which may either be an SL glitch, or the land owner accidentally turning off scripts. And if that's the case...then inexperience is probably the cause. (that's extremely low rent for 5 weeks.....like, unheard of) Drop a notecard explaining your problems, into his profile....you might also want to talk to some neighbors and see if they're having similar issues.

Also, check that you haven't accidentally muted the landlord. It does happen and, if you you've done that, he may have replied every time but you won't see them.

When we used to get non-deliveries daily, due to SL being bad, I had a customer IM several times about not receiving an item. She eventually threatened to AR me. I replied to every IM but she behaved as though I hadn't. It turned out that she'd accidentally muted me. It does happen.

Yep besides the above selections, iff you Landlord won't help or at least return communications after a notecard, then just walk, $1000 is only $3US down the drain, there's plenty of landlords about nowdays, find one with a good 3-6 months in SL.
That price sounds damn cheap, he's running at a heavy loss I suspect, though tennants are scarce at the moment too,so maybe he can weather out the store and keep his sim if he gets some income rather than none.

Notecards are not foolproof. If the recipient doesn't have things sent to email when not logged in, then a notecard can be completely missed if it's sent when the recipient isn't logged in. I doubt that many people check in Recent Items for things when they log in.

shameless plug: If you can't get your super to fix the pipes, pack up and come over to Lebettu. The doors and windows work, and Zoe our harbor seal pup is lonely and needs company (and someone to feed her fish).

As a landlord myself, and one who tries very hard to go beyond the average in terms of support and aid, SL happens. Scripts can and do go wonky, which is what it sounds like here (repeating what others are saying here).

The landlord should do a script reset.

Also, maybe some of the items are group only, so make sure you have your group set appropriately to interact with the items.

If the landlord's not replying, likely muting one way or another is the issue. Resolve as follows: (1) contact another tenant or friend of landlord to send a message on your behalf (after you check your mute lists), (2) find out where the landlord hangs out on his/her property and erect a nice sign with a notecard and notecard giver script to get their attention.

Good luck. Oh, and sometimes landlords can't respond within 24 hours. It sucks, but few of us make so much money that we can ditch RL jobs/lives and stay in world 24/7. If you've been completely unable to use your home for a certain period before the landlord responds, they should add that much time to your rental free of charge (it's what we do when SL happens and we can't resolve it straight away).

1. Is it mainland or estate land?

2. When you have the group tag on (or any other tag) are there icons at the top of the screen such as a little box? These can indicate is scripts/building etc. are disabled.

3. Check that the land and the house belong to the same group.

I agree with Lucrezia.

Obviously, we all know SL just craps out occasionally. I had the very same problem that a tenant reported yesterday: all the stuff in the house just stopped working. The OP's landlord appeared to have things set up correctly at first, because the OP reports that they lived there for a whole week before things messed up yesterday, just like in my case. And in my case, nearly everything was working again by the time I got in-world to check it out, and one of the items needed to have its scripts reset.

3 hours, or even 8 hours, is pretty soon to start getting mad and demanding a refund. It's particularly unreasonable to expect 24 hour concierge service for 1000 L a month. Yes it would be better if your landlord had managers covering all time zones, but some operations just aren't that big. Give them a little time to get home from work or finish their night's sleep.