Beware Of Crooks Dont Get Ripped Off Like Me

We are deviants, too!

laughs



...seriously tho, I don't understand this - in the current market, how or why would anyone not bend over backward to help a resident?

Also - I don't know, maybe I attract the classier residents or something but I haven't had to toss *anybody ever* in well over two years of operation, unless they just plain didn't pay tier. Even then, there's no anger - a lot of those come right back when their finances are in order.

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this regard.

Hey estate owners out there, have any of you actually kicked and banned anybody? Or maybe just one incident out of hundreds of people? (I realise there's probably a legitimate case or two).

Glad you asked Des.

I have taken back land once, and only because the person was on expired tier by 3 or 4 days, and had the land placed for sale.

Other then the above incident, I have never reclaimed land.

I have never banned a resident.

I have never had an altercation with a resident.

I would say no one has every left my estate angry, but, it's really not MY estate, I share the estate with the residents who live there, because, without them, there is no estate. We are a community. No one has every left our community angry.

Frankly there is no such thing as a reputable private estate owner who "sells" you land...
as soon as the put in that word "sell" they become scam artists.

Judgmental much? Not to mention flatly wrong. The people on this forum are incredibly helpful the vast majority of the time, but there's nothing any of us can do in this case and it WAS up to the OP to do his or her homework. Not like s/he wanted help anyway...this thread was just a rant, thinly disguised as a warning.

Those are some strong words

Well here is the problem question. On May 16, 2008 jpLinden wrote on his blog post about Sl fraud:

http://blog.secondlife.com/?s=fraud

"If you’ve been the victim of fraud, contact our fraud hotline at 800 860 6990. Then, talk about it. Post your experience to forums, blogs and chat. Tell others about who it was and how it happened." jpLinden

I commented at the time that naming names was prohibed on the forums, yet here was a Linden advising us to post "who it was and how it happened" on the forums.

Is this a change in Linden policy or just a lack of familiarity with the rules and lack of communication inside LL?

It still is against the forum tos to name names. I know Katt has edited at least on thread because of it since that blog post came out.

I had one case where someone purchased a plot of land, and I happened to be in the area, so I flew over to welcome her to the island. Already she was placing a bunch of crazy crap on the land, like these weird cartoonish crabs. Anyway, when I said "Hello" the person immediately ripped into me, insulting my appearance and complaining how ridiculous the concept of real estate in Second Life was. Eject/Ban/Refund.

There was another time when two guys bought adjacent lots, and again, I happened to be on the island. When I greeted them it became clear that they had no concept of tier or rental fees. They thought that when you "bought" land it was yours (despite my "for rent" parcel description and VERY CLEAR covenant), and you didn't owe either the island owner or Linden Lab anything after that. I was very polite with them, explaining how land works, when suddenly one of them told me to F*** OFF and pulled out a gun. Eject/Ban/Refund/AR.

Finally, I had a guy set up a little office then create a group with a group title intentionally designed to make it look like he worked for me. He approached his neighbors and said he was collecting their rent. My tenants were smarter than that and reported him. Eject/Ban/NO REFUND.

That's it. So, it happens... but honestly, I don't see any other way the above cases would have worked out. All those people would have been toxic neighbors, and it's my responsibility to keep things peaceful.

From the phrasing, I think he meant 3rd party forums. It could have been clearer though.

The autopsy on sooo many huge Linden-made messes start with that exact phrase...


I'm beginning to wonder if phrasing things in an unclear fashion is one of the requirements of the Tao or something.

It's always fun to tell someone who loses a lot of money by saying, "It's your fault for not knowing ___ and ____ and ____."

Of course, there is no place someone can go to find out ____ and ____ and ____.

Linden Labs loves to advertise the wonders of "buying" virtual land, and all other wonders of throwing money at Second Life. Nowhere with those advertisements does it link any basic consumer information one might need to know to avoid being ripped off in the Second Life "economy."

The fraud to which the blog post refers is not the kind of fraud that involves one party ripping off another through fraudulently inducing a transaction.

The fraud to which the blog post refers is fraudulently obtaining passwords.

If that isn't clear from the post, then the OP could test it for us by calling up that 800 number to discuss that land sale problem. I'm sure the first response the OP will get though (if getting any live person) is that the 800 is not for disputes between residents.

The reasons for not allowing people to name names here should be obvious. It's too easy to post hurtful lies about residents on a forum and very difficult to undo any damage done by such posts. A perfect example is the OP. We're only getting one side of the story here. Suppose it is completely or materially false? There are no easy remedies to address defamation on internet forums. Just as anonymity makes it hard for residents to go after residents that are running con games it makes it very hard for them to go after people libeling them in internet forums, and the policy against potentially defamatory statements in the SL forums alleviates this problem.

Kyllie, There's no doubt that the typical concept of "ownership" doesn't apply to "purchasing" a parcel on an estate. But I have to disagree with you because of two points:

1. The people who own the estate I'm on ARE reputable. It's an understatement to say that there's a very long list of residents who have dealt with them and would confirm it.

2. When I shopped for land, I considered buying and renting on mainland and on private estates. Regarding estates, I found that in almost all cases, I would spend LESS by "buying" a parcel than by renting an equivalent parcel. After a few months, the rental fees surpassed the initial price + monthly tier. That said, it was difficult to find commercial parcels for rent that were equivalent to the higher quality parcels for sale; the rental parcels were more often in ugly regions with covenants that had not been enforced.

Totally, I don't get that either. I even give total refunds for time unused for any reason. You wouldn't believe how much repeat business I've gotten over that policy. It's entirely worth the temporary inconvenience and time-wasting.



I've had my share of troublemakers on my estate and mainland. Griefers, gay-bashers, sim-crashers, and ad-spammers. But I've never had to kick or ban a resident.

I guess the closest I've come to having to ban a resident was a few cases of relationships gone really sour, and the resident asked me to ban the other party, who technically had been a resident while the relationship was going on.

I also had to ban some creditors. No joke; they would come and harass the whole sim to try to extort money they said one of my residents owed them over a failed business partnership.

I never rented parcels out when we had a PI. That said I have had to ban a few persons in my time.

1. Numerous people that visited Paul's Gay Sex Animation shop entirely to bash Gays.

2. People coming to shoot orbit or otherwise grief visitors.

3. A group of about 10 AVs who were exploiting a fault in a vendor and stealing merchandise.

The only persons I have banned are griefers (usualy kid haters) and scammers that resell parcels without paying tier (not that bad, only costs me a day in tier of that plot at most) and worse making falls claims about the tier so inexperianced people are more eager to pay for the overpriced parcel.

reclaiming I only do when tier expires and the tennant doesn't respond to reminders.

Normaly i don't do refunds but with long term tennats wanting to tier down I gladly make an exception, they already proven that they care about the sim as much as I do afterall.

B.S. this has never happened to me, or any of the people i associate with. we all do our homework before dropping down chucnks of change.

It's sure a contradiction for a Linden to be advocating conduct on a third party forum that violates the rules inside SL, but sadly, consistency is not something we can expect from them!

Their ToS only covers Second Life and I have seen them suggest taking disputes to 3rd party sites before...they have some degree of responsibility over what is posted here, but it's out of their hands once it goes offsite. CYA move on LL's part, but at least people still get warned.

Maybe the huge lag was the one a lot of other people encountered over that period that basically rendered the game unplayable.

Did it perhaps coincide with a grid sweep for content bearing the names of 3 av's whose items were being removed? anyone remember the huge lag during the search and destroy of casino items??

When you hear thunder it means the angels are bowling.

When you feel lag it means the Lindens are deleting your stuff!

I just visited there, and even with 26 people in the sim, mostly at a club in the NW corner, the lag was not bad.

24 fps,
0 packet loss,
time dilation 0.99,
sim fps 45,
physics fps 44.8

If the club gets even busier it could get worse, but I did not experience a problem.

I agree however that it was totally improper for him to ban you from land that you paid for, and to prevent you from trying to resell the land to recover some of your investment. That is shady to say the least.

The Victorians were some of the biggest deviants

Nuuuu! however I suspect they play with it all the time when I am not there