Beware Of Crooks Dont Get Ripped Off Like Me

Beware of Crooks “Phobos Jamberoo” and "Rich Grainger "
I would like to share my story with the sl world. I have been ripped off, lied to and decived by two so called business men in sl who boasted about how much money he has made from the game (i can see how, by ripping off peoples hard earned money)
My Wife and i purchased 12592SQM land from “SKI RESORTS” http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ski%20Resorts/114/38/24 and paid 1 month tier of 24K lindens. This was not the first time we purchased land we had many parcels before which we conducted business in and never in my wildest dreams did i think i’d face something like this.
Once we purchased the next day the sim had massive lag, so much to the point which we could not move, even though it was only my wife and i on the entire sim the lag was killing us. We thought maybe there might be a problem with scripts on other parcels as we had not placed anything down and couldn’t due to the lag. We thought we’d wait in hope the lag might go away. ... IT DIDNT!!! The next day it was still really bad so i decided to write to the estate manager “Phobos Jamberoo” (now this is a avi to stay far away from unless you want to be ripped off as well) I expressed how the sim was really bad so much lag and that it was possibly scripts on other parcels and that he should check the scripts using the estate menu and see what is causing it. SUPRISE SUPRISE the next day came along and nothing was done, the lag really bad still there RED on the lag meter and my wife and i couldn’t move. I wrote to the estate manager again and explained i wanted to start building my store and open it up for business but this lag issue was bad and that we couldn’t move. He said that the problem was with our computers (what a load of bulldust, i have a brand new pc ) So i invited 15 of my friends to our land... Funny none of them couldn’t move either. I explained to him that i in no way could put my store here as i wanted my customers to be able to shop not lag so much that they couldn’t move. I said either relocate us or give us our money back so i could buy land elsewhere. Neither was done.....
Day 4...... Yay guess what the sim is still in lag, nothing had been done and even after writing to the estate manager for 4 days straight he refused to admit there was a problem. Frustrated my wife and i rented out another small prim sim and started putting up our business there. I again expressed my concerns to “Phobos Jamberoo” and he refused to refund our money said he would give us another sim free of charge in other words relocations.. hahaha yeah right what a load of bulldust again. He never got back to us.
The next day the estate owner Rich Grainger (another name to watch out for BIG TIME CON ARTIST!!) wrote to me, claiming there was no issue with the sim, lucky for me i took screen shots showing the lagmeter and had proof the the lag levels on the sim. First i tried to explain the situation to him in a calm manner however he wasn’t listening and was insistant that there was no problem the sim was fine.. IT WASNT!!! We still couldn’t move. I asked for my money back as this was now day 5 i told him to keep 1weeks tier however refund me my 3 weeks worth..... He refused and said he would give us a low prim sim.. hahaha What a lie, later on in the conversations he said we had to pay again new tier for the new sim he was going to give us.. (yay rip me off twice??? I don’t think so) I mentioned to him i was going to report him since i then i have, and funny the next day the sim was fine (of couse it would be all the laggy scripts were returned) He must think i’m a idiot but all he kept saying was the sim is fine now.. too late buddy!! This rude and arrogant man further more went on to blaming me (what a cheek!!) He said if i wanted money i should sell the land but he wasn’t going to refund the 3 weeks money i paid him.
So i went on to trying to sell this land, by now it is day 7 and i tp’ed myself to the parcel to show a friend, “Phobos Jamberoo” was there and out of nowhere... reclaimed my land and banned me from the sim... so now they not only stole my money but my land as well.....
[22:48] Phobos Jamberoo has frozen you for 30 seconds. You cannot move or interact with the world.
[22:48] Phobos Jamberoo ejected and banned you from this land.
[22:48] Your freeze expired, go about your business.
[22:50] Cannot enter parcel, you have been banned.
[22:50] Phobos Jamberoo ejected and banned you from this land.
[22:50] You are no longer allowed here and have 15 seconds to leave.
[22:50] You are no longer allowed here and have been ejected.
[22:52] Teleport completed from http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ski%20Resorts/114/38/24

Yeah great business people alright, so much for customer service, first i get ripped off then i get booted from something i own!!!

These men claim to have over 100 sims, now that scared the living hell out of me as i feel sorry for the people like me who put their hard earned money into the game only to get ripped off by crooks like Phobos Jamberoo and Rich Grainger.
To all of you reading this please watch out and no not do business or buy land from these men as you will regret it. Sadly enough SL still allows criminals like this to rip off people. THEY SHOULD BE BANNED!!!! And be punished for taking peoples money and not providing a service and land that they promise.

naming names = not a good idea

1) Naming names is verboten on the forums.
2) You gave him your money.
3) It is a serious problem trusting other residents with your money. Do research before just giving anyone any significant amount of money, ESPECIALLY for land.
4) The Lindens will not intervene normally in affairs between residents.

That said, you can try to file a ticket against the sim owner, but don't hold out much hope for anything to come of it because of #4 above.

being it is their first post, I do not think they are too concerned about naming names

this just saddens me, to think that ppl would feel it is ok to rip off other ppl like this
and even if this one is untrue, doesn't mean all the stories we hear are untrue

just solidifies my stance on using mainland hehe

Eh I just went to that region and jumped around and had a great 30 minutes

OK I'm no estate manager but could someone tell me how this could have been resolved correctly? I mean could the manager have proven that they don't see lag on their end? And do people always pay so much without getting any good real-life contact information? Is this how estate sales are usually run? It seems like there is zero accountability.

There is so much that I could say about this, but it's all been said in other rants about being ripped off. Naming names, and leaving them in the OP, makes it sound like sour grapes and get's you nowhere. The Lindens won't get involved... except to give you a warning about the names remaining in this post.

The estate manager offered you other land, it sounds like you didn't even consider it. Why not? Seems like the owners may have been attempting to resolve the situation, if you ask me.

All the more reason that we need a proper payment system for private islands like the one I proposed ages ago:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-950

No-one really seems willing to vote for it though because this has never happened to them, but if we ever want private islands to be taken seriously as rental locations then we really need something like this, as it's a complete gamble at the moment. Renting private land is in fact no better than investing money in SL "banks", and we all know how that one went.

I of course mean no offence to any of the respectable, honest, and fair rental companies in-world, I know of a number of very good ones. But even renting with them there are no real guarantees.

I just wonder if the OP went to the land previously to buying it, obviously it was ok when he went to see it or he just didn't check it out.

SL does have issues and although the land was very laggy for the OP and his wife, there is a possibility that this did only effect them for a few days.

Well lesson learned, no more 3rd party for me either. I think the naming names is a bad idea, but there is a specific land baroness who shall remain un-named, who owns a tonne of SIMs, let's call them "Screamland" and I have not met a resident who has not been burned by her. This isn't really new to any of us, sadly. And it is buyer beware. I am done with land in general, I would suggest finding a trust worthy landlord and rent land. or buy from the Lindens. I think you know this already.

Sorry for your loss. But as an estate manager myself, well retired, but you know. The whole it's your computer not mine, is fairly true. And just because it's brand new, means nothing. I ran of a brand new dual core Mac G5 last year, crap, back to PC, brand new PC, with a 512 meg video card, by ATI, crap. So new isn't really always a guarantee.

In fact most of us estimate that only about 10% of the computers on the current market can really run SL to it's real levels. Sad but also true.

just becouse you have a brand new computer does not mean that is not the problem!

Dell and gateway are imfomuse at selling inexpensive computers that don't run well.well dell is gateway charges more for the same kind of crap.(don'tget me wrong gateways higher end boxes are nice and dell well they would not sell anything i would call higher end)

you may only have 2 gigs of ram vista needs 3 gigs min 4 for optimim preformance,it may have an on board grafixs card which would use some of your computers main ram which would couse a slow down and if you do have a seperat grafixs card it still might be the issue if it's a pos ati,needs to be a gforce 8600 mim and with that it stilll may lag are your settings for second life set to high?

and it might even be your broard band provider having to many users on a line or some other bottle neck

Just kind of scratching my head here. *shrug*

Naming names is against TOS in the forums......but beyond that....from what I just read....there's no real proof of anything here. Lag is a tricky issue....as a few folks have said....a good computer doesn't mean squat. There's so many other possible causes.....internet connection being high on the list. But I'm not even going to get into it. Always check out land very thoroughly before buying. Always.

I live on a great sim.....love the ladies that own it. They have been nothing but cool and accomodating to their residents. I have owned a few different parcels before settling where I am now....and also rented....never ever had any kind of nightmare land issue. Chalk it up as a lesson learned. LL wont get involved. Not much else you can do.

I wondered the same thing. Since performance in the region prior to purchase wasn't mentioned, I assume the OP didn't check it out at all.

It's also important to check out the estate owner's reputation. Giving up on estate land and only considering mainland is one option, but you might miss out on the best solution for your situation. My shop is in an ideal location. When I was looking for a place, I considered both estate and mainland; I not only looked at available parcels, I learned about the owners, plus I read the covenants and looked around to see if they were enforced. And I was buying a much smaller parcel than the OP. I now have a place on an attractive sim with friendly, trustworthy estate owners whose managers solve problems quickly.

Just curious as to whether or not this land was in an "open" sim....buyer beware!

Sure, sure, it’s against the TOS to name names, but if LL claims to truly not “interfere” in disputes of this sort, then they SHOULD allow people to name names. If it’s none of their business, then NONE of it is their business. Of course, LL has so many other disasters that exploring the issue of naming names is not even in the kitchen, let alone on a back burner.

So here’s my temp. solution. How about simple anagrams of the evil doers’ names? Like:

MAJOR BEBOP SHOO and RAG REICH GRIN

Then we can all enjoy a few minutes with an online anagram generator to figure out who they really are. Oh, here’s a bonus name of a some-say-is-evil someone not involved in this rip-off in any way:

AGNES HUNCH

I just loves her!

Kisses and hugs,
Arab Yoga Truck

haravikk, I looked at the proposal and there is one additional drawback for estate owners related to the one already mentioned, I and I suspect other estate owners use the collected tier to trade on lindex making an aditional 0,5 % per 3 days, however tier that is payed but not available to the estate owner can't be used for this and effectivly wastes money meaning the tier has to be raised to compensate for this. Nobody wants this offcourse.

Oh and IBTL

I agree, I was i the real estate business in SL for a year and I would never buy land on a private island. You dont really own it, and you can be banned and lose your land any time. Youre completely at the mercy of the estate owner. I know someone who lost all his land because the estate owner defaulte don tier to Linden Labs and they removed the sim.

Always consider land on a private island to be a rental, whatever the terminology.

you're the dummy who paid someone without researching them first. it's your own fault. for the same monies, you can BUY land and control it yourself. take personal responsibility for your own actions. it's been YELLED to the SL world many times.... DON'T "buy" estate land. your bad. move along now.

Why would anyone rent a low-prim parcel for a shop anyway?

There sometimes happens this out of "natural reasons", meaning technical fault at LL's end.

So first proof the sim is laggy:
press ctrl+alt+1, it brings up a list with lots of numbers There's time dilation somewhere there, if it falls below 0.96 (1.00 is very very rare actually), there's problem, if it stays there.

Often even some popular scripts (ie. Hipporental boxes) cause it to visit under 0.90, but if it stays there is a problem. You can expand the menu and see what particular portion causes the lag (scripts, physics etc.)

Estate manager can fix this by looking at scripts, which cause it, and returning laggy scripts, check for collisions, moving objects, physical objects.

I've been led to believe that when an void sim (openspace) is restarted it aswell swaps server, not sure of that, but that's one of the "cures".

If the problem cannot be hunted down, estate owner can contact concierge, and they look if it's a hardware fault or something in their end.

No reaction, no explanation from these people is really bad customer service. These things are usually rather easily solveable afterall.

BTW, I just hopped onto the Ski Resorts sim and had zero lag.

There are two sides to every story, aren't there?

Do you mean Ctrl+shift+1 perhaps?

JulieAnne

Hi Koray,

Welcome to sl forums, you got screwed pretty good in game, now you get to be knocked over the head and kicked in the rear by the asshats you've seen posting here so far.

Yep, in the world of sl forums you are always the problem, the world is a nasty, corupt, evil, place, and the victims are always deserving of their fate for not realizing that.

Well take heart, as a board warrior of many years, I can honestly tell you, most of the trash you see posting here are a very tiny minority of very vocal, ego driven, self centered, wanna be experts.

Sorry to hear your story, might want to re edit it and take out the names, and good luck.

Hey, you are preaching to the choir here, pastor. I was just being informative, not delivering a sermon.



Hehe. That would be fun.

Aura All Nuts