Don't get scammed by Everlasting Estates

I haven't posted about this yet, but i feel like i should warn others as to what happened to me. If you are renting land through a covenant situation, and doing subscription payment through pay pal, be very careful with this group (Everafter Estates). I was renting a half sim, decided to release it back to the group, gave 2 weeks, 1 week, and the day I released it back to them, notice by note card, IM, and e-mail, and they took another payment anyway, and as of today, have yet to refund it.

As with most of these groups they want payment in advance, so they took the payment for the next month ($150 USD) and I had neither the use of the land nor any privilege to it.

I have begged, pleaded, done everything I know to do, and its been over a month, and they have refused to refund. So i am left with only one thing I can believe, they do this often, and its a scam to get money they have not earned from their renters.

I called pay pal and they showed me how to cancel the subscription, which is not made clear on their website at all. So be warned, if you are paying by subscription and want out of the rental, be sure and cancel it through your pay pal account. As of this date, I have filed a formal complaint through pay pal which is being reviewed, so its still a big maybe if I will ever see that money again.

I highly recommend if your using pay pal in a subscription situation you cancel it, and pay manually by the month either in game or by pay pal, because I trusted someone that's highly recognisable in game, and what I thought had a good reputation, I have learned a a very expensive lesson.

There is a policy on the SL forums that you're not allowed to name individuals; however, I don't think it applies to groups so I'll consider this thread kosher.

Linden Lab doesn't get involved in resident disputes; and I don't believe in-world disputes can satisfactorily be settled in a civil court, either; it's a can of just too many worms that a lot of people, including lawyers and judges, might not be keen on opening. Or maybe so - I dunno. HOWEVER....since you weren't paying within Second Life with linden dollars - that is, since you used PayPal to pay these people directly using "real" money - I think you might have a chance at an actual civil case here should you choose to pursue it. Talk to a real lawyer about it first, of course, but I think there's a chance, FWIW.

What is the reason they refuse to refund?

zenda!!! I'm so very sorry to hear this has happened to you and I definitely hope you get your money refunded.

Saw your name and wanted to say greetings. Please give my best to Kurr. I may have to come over your way and visit soon.

I believe you can dispute payments with Paypal. Give them a call.

As a general rule: Never pay high amounts in advance to any SL business. Sorry this happened to you.

She already did and they are reviewing it.

Ah didnt read that far. I'm a skimmer.

I have spoken to one of the managers, not the owner of the group (she won't reply to me), he states that i did not send the e-mail correctly to their web address, it did not contain my email address that i use in pay pal in the body of the e-mail, however the e-mail came from the only email address i use on the net, and it is the one i use in pay pal as well. Little did i know i needed to redundantly repeat it to not give them the loop hole they used as an excuse. Or at least that's the last convo I had with him 3 weeks ago, I even resent the original e-mail with a new message stating my e-mail address as used in pay pal, from the same e-mail address i always use..no luck, no refund as of yet.

To be fair, if they should refund, I will definitely post that here too.

It is useful to know for others that might come in such situations, that you are not depending on them alone to terminate payments. You can go to your paypal and cancel any periodicly automated payments to any company/business.

Could you not have gone into your PayPal account and cancelled the autopay before the next scheduled hit? Then if PayPal paid anyway you would have a way to get refunded and your former estate owner would have to battle with PayPal or vice versa. As it is right now, it's a (s)he said/(s)he said thing without any real way to prove or disprove anything.

Sorry this happened but when real money is involved (especially to the tune of 150 USD) it's always best to cover everything. Cancel the payment by cutting off the method as well as notifying the payee of your intentions. Depending on the payee to cancel it for you is naive.

edit....

Benski said it first.

easy: DON't do direct cashflows (like with paypal) on monthly basis, with an unknown "firm".
And if you need to do it, be sure that BEFORE you apply the subscription, you know HOW to handle things (how the system works, how to cancel it etc etc etc).

The group is called Everafter Estates, pardon the error

I'm surprised that an estate would take paypal at all.

Paypal allows chargebacks. Say paypal asks for any kind of evidence that the estate owner rented land to you in say, June and July... that's gonna be very hard to prove, for the estate owner. In some areas, chargebacks of up to 180 days are valid. Meaning that yeah, you could rent a region for six months, ask for a chargeback and the estate owner is out maybe 2000 USD with very little recourse.

Plus, if you are dealing in currency like dollars or euros or something, these transactions have to be entered into proper accounting software (quicken, peachtree, something like that) or on real 'books' in accordance with generally understood accounting practises. That's the law in most western countries.

Can't just be kickin' paypal balances around and 'run a business'... such practises will ensure that the US IRS (as well as many foreign governments) will consider it just a hobby at that point.

With the net effect is that one would have to declare *all* miscellaneous income as taxable income, and likewise, one *cannot* expense region tier. Meaning that region tier has to be paid with after~tax funds. That's easily a 30% hit. 30% of 295/month is about 100 USD, or essentially, just about all the profit you might possibly make...

Anyway, my guess is that paypal will decide in your favour... they aren't keen on "virtual" item transactions anyway.

If anyone doubts all this, realise that one of the biggest estates on the grid went from paypal subscriptions back to taking $L instead, about a year and a half ago.

* * * * *

It's also generally a good idea not to pay too far in advance, at least not without some kind of prior understanding. Consider the case of Second Life blowing up... unlikely perhaps, but if it ever happens, it might be real hard for estate owners and tenants to know who they were actually dealing with, in the aftermath. Anonymity can be a bit of a problem...

pay pal subscriptions are set up through paypal and you can cancel the subscription. If this person is abusing the paypal system by not using the subscription system for subscriptions then that would be a better angle of complaint.
Unless paypal changed their system since the last time I used subscriptions anyway.
A merchant should not have the data (customer password) needed to cause a charge to happen at paypal without the customer's interaction. a subscription the customer set up involved the customer's interaction and the data remains at paypal.

Hey Moo, thanks for the advice, if you look up Everafter Estates, it is owned by an avatar that's been around since SL started, i truly thought i was dealing with trustworthy individuals. The main reason for this post is to educate everyone, that's doing a subscription, that it can be cancelled on the payers end, something that's not made known on the pay pal web site, i had to call them to find this out. Had i known, you betcha i would have cancelled the next payment before i released the land back to them.

But be that as it may, they took an unearned payment, and have made every effort not to make a refund, highly unethical in any world.

ooh i know who that belongs to....then it doesn't surprise me!

Wasn't it a month or two before VAT was introduced that one of the largest estates went from Paypal to taking $L instead?

However on your main point I agree wholeheartedly, paypal and virtual goods are not happy bed fellows.

RL or SL.

Most people won't do so in RL, so why do they do so in SL?


IBTL

assuming LL cares anymore

In all fairness, most of the businesses i deal with and there's alot, all take pay pal, its excellent for the consumer, as it does safeguard your credit card information. Having just dealt with credit card theft on the net, i will just be using pay pal from here on out.

As for kicking the charge, to me, it appears they are much more on the vendors side, i am being reviewed, but have been told verbally not to expect alot from their own customer service person.

I was told, and i think its the norm, with these land rentals they all want the month in advance, which i can't blame them for either, i have been a land lord in SL, its hard to collect on a pixel house once the month is over.

I did however ask in all of my prior notices to them, if there was ANYTHING i needed to do to sever the rental, to please advise me, and i asked that they be careful to end the subscription payment on their end. I was advised later by paypal that it can be cancelled on either side, by the payer, or the receiver, I just had no idea that i could do that myself, until i called them. It would have been nice, had the land lord explained that to me, i rented from them over 18 months, and was a very good tenant.

I still think this is an ethics issue, and until it is resolved, i will continue to believe so.

Yeah... something like that, I don't remember the exact timing. The whole "naming names" prohibition in official forums here makes it kind of awkward to talk about even slightly controversial stuff.

oh man zenda, I remember when you and Kurr used to rent from us, great people, thats a real shame, I sure hope paypal decides in your favor. Come on back to us anytime, we have missed you guys!

If its any consolation, those that treat their customers this way, are the real losers, you can bank that your probably not the first person they have done this to, news travels fast.

oh man zenda, i hate to hear this, i remember when you and Kurr rented from us, you were great folks. i hope paypal decides in your favor, that really sucks.

If its any consulation, you can bank on your not the first person they have done this to, and news travels like the speed of sound in SL. Come on back to us, we miss you guys!

You would think with the grid showing a lot of yellow and the state of the economy, that they would show a little more respect and appreciation to someone that has stayed that long. . . sheesh, so much for loyalty. . .they are disgraceful. Sorry this happened to you.

You can. PayPal will give an instant refund in any case involving digital products. Well they use to anyway. Many companies won't accept paypal because fraud is so easily commited with it.