Stopping the "Estate Land Sales" scam

Q: how can we go about getting LL to fix the exploit that allows estate land to be listed for L$1 when ther is no land at that teleoprt point to be bought?

Being a sim owner myself with 11 sims, I have seen my ability to get fresh land buyers to my sims decrease a 10 fold over the past 6 months. running a quick land sales search I find the top 5 pages of the estate land sales search dominated by trickery, misinformation and outright lies, the culpirts are far too many to list and I presume most are doing it on the "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality.

But unfotrtunately, it seems that if I cant restore the flow of buyers to my legitimately sold properties, I will have to stop buying sims from LL, inwhich case I would think that LL would care about this?

any imput from other sim owners with the same problems?

I had no idea that was done on purpose. I thought maybe the land was sold and the tp was set somewhere else. Sure hope LL looks into this, perhaps a JIRA ticket should be created on this?

Jackson, not everyone shares your opinion. Go here for the full debate:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/showthread.php?t=509

Steve, you missed the point of his post. He's not talking about people who list at L$1- he's talking about the ones who are listed that way but don't have any L$1 lots at the TP point.

I discovered how this works by accident and won't post the exploit here. It's a bug, AFAIC and should be fixed.

i hate this for another reason entirely.

i have been looking for new land. i have to get past the first 5-6 pages in order to find valid proprties, but then the search times out saying i did too many searches, and i have to start all over.... obviously it's a viscious cycle, because i can never get beyond the 5-6 pages.

so, i've resorted to using my map. i just TP all over those yellow blocks. sooner or later i'll find what i want. well, i did, but it sold seconds after i TP'd there, so i missed out. still on the hunt!

i haven't used the forum classifieds, but i might consider that too.

good luck Jackson!

Here's the research I did on the topic, before I figured out how the scam worked:

/327/c9/182677/1.html

a bugged side effect of the way some land rental is handled...

those 1$L listings act like a confimation that someone wants to buy, then tehy must pay a box within X mins, or they don't get the land...

for fun one day I did this on an island that used to use the boxes and paid the 1$L, had about 1/4 sim for about half a day before they noticed =)

was a friend so all in good fun, and hey what else can you do for 1$L and enjoy it =)

I guess I did. However, they are one and the same IMHO. I know not everyone agrees with me, and that's cool with me.

I always thought it unfortunate you never defended your stance on that thread you linked to (and started). I'd like to understand your reasoning.

My point is really simple. When you are renting or selling land, why not just put either the total purchase price in that field, or the amount of the first month of rent ? Yeah, your land won't show up for 10 damn pages but at least when a potential renter or buyer shows up, there is NO confusion about what is going on. I have never had anyone get confused with my listings unless they fail to read anything that says "for rent only" on the Land Covenants or on the listing. The rare potential renter who is confused, I set them straight very quickly and life goes on. The rare renters I can count on one hand during my entire business.

My stance costs me real USD every month, I'm very sure of it. However, I sleep very well at night and NO ONE can ever accuse me of being misleading. I have no irritations from people asking me about L$1 sales or what is this all about. Others can do as they please. This is my stance and it will never change. As I said on my blog one time, I may go bankrupt in the land business but I will ALWAYS sleep well at night.

actually this has been going on for atleast 6 months now, even talked on the phone, to....errrrr, was it pathfinder? can't remember the linden said they would look into it as it was obviously "gaming" og the system, but alas nothing yet has come out of it..

maybe the loudest and clearest message that sim owner can send LL is that...

"IM NOT BUYING ANY MORE SIMS TIL I CAN HAVE A COMPETITIVE, EXPLOIT-FREE, FAIR MARKET IN THE LAND SALES SEARCH"

LL will not get my 1675 USD setup fee and my 295 USD per month til the problem is fixed

Won't ever happen, Jackson. Mark my words.

Fascinating.

I haven't looked at (or used) the land search mechanism in months (years?)

I guess I'm a tad out of touch...

Well I don't do L$1 listings either, and honestly I'm not sure it's costing me any money. During the brief period I experimented with it I had so many false starts with people who didn't understand land rentals that it wasn't worth the time and extra management, and probably resulted in lost legitimate sales as I waited for the clueless deadbeats to respond to my IMs.

I don't think a rental or lease at L$1 is any less confusing to the average user than the same thing at standard rates. How many people have you encountered who didn't understand that they actually have to PAY RENT after they acquire the land? It's the Second Life land "sales" system that's confusing, not the numbers used to draw customers.

I'm not angry at the people who do L$1 listings (so long as there's actually land listed for L$1 at the TP point and their ads and descriptions are clear about the true terms). Instead I blame the current land search system, that lumps mainland sales, island leases, and island rentals all into the same search box, with limited description fields and not enough information to convey to users what they're really looking at.

I sleep well at night too, but it's mainly because I have informed and generally mature tenants who bothered to skip past the L$1 listings or knew me by reputation or word-of-mouth. If I could get more REAL customers with L$1 listings without all the utterly clueless folk, I'd do it too.

I do understand and appreciate your position, though. Thanks for finally explaining.

Garanteed I wont purchase another sim till its fixed, I dont have any choice, my purchases depend on being able to fill the sims with land buyers, my only other alternative would be to "join" them.

Theres enough sim owners that do read this residents answers forum, enough of us to make a difference anyway. I don't like calling LL out as I think they got alot on thier plate already but regular sim buyers that invest 20-50k+ USD on a yearly basis deserve to be listened to, and deserve a enviroment inwhich they can conduct business in a fair and ethical manner, but we have to speak up.

Well two things for me. I didn't know about this exploit. I have arrived at places before and found the land wasn't for sale and assumed it had been purchased.

Secondly, legitimately listing land for L$1 and then asking for more money within two hours, that should be an AR offence, it's plain misleading.

Agreed. I'm going to have a look into this.

It's only misleading if your ads or parcel descriptions or signage say nothing about the real terms. If people buy it without reading ANY of the terms (remember, you have to agree to the covenant even to buy a piece of island land), I don't think you can fault the landowner for being misleading. Fault the person who didn't read anything for being hasty.

I'll not agree with you on that one, listing a parcel for sale for L$1 when you have no intent to actually "sell" the plot for that price is misleading from that point. We must remember people search the land sales search, to find land " For Sale" hence the name, anything less than outright sales listed on the land sales search is misinformation

Listing the land for L$1 is misleading unless that's what it costs. It just games the system.

If you're renting land, it shouldn't be in the land sales search anyway.

There are two things getting confused in this thread....

1 is the ability to set land for $1L and charging another fee for a weekly/monthly use. This is legitimate.

2 when you tp to a island and its not for sale, but a misleading TP, exploiting the estate sales land listings.

The latter is a horrible exploit allowing honorable sim owners to lose a lot of potential customers and the SL customers are not being served well by the current system.

LL has not fixed this exploit.

LL never took action against landbots and their strong advantage over human land brokers.

LL is not explaining why there is no land coming to auction.

LL does not have an updated wiki to explain the ins and outs of a very complicated real estate market.

LL depends on land to stay in business.

WTF are they doing?

Well you're correct there, rentals and sales get intertwined because there are two different systems and everyone wants a piece of the pie.

There's a land sales search full of rentals.

There's a land rentals classified section full of land sales.

The poor potential land owner/tenant/renter/leaser/blah blah blah has a right game wading through that lot.

I would think that LL finally realized the over saturation of the market where land is concerned and decided to allow the value to rise a bit again. after all mainland for the most part is a ghost town, im not too sure what the last few sim auctions went for, but if they where lower than the set price for private estates its pretty easy to figure why they have stopped. they do lose 1200 a year off the tier fee already as compared to private estates

Land bots effectively killed the competitive market between actual land barons, again that was a total debacle that LL should have addressed as soon as landbots appeared, Im sure they look back on that as a mistake too

LL doesnt know or understand half much about the land market in SL as a seasoned land baron, so maybe thats why they havent pointed th ins and out very well. I think on this point they are humbled by some of thier residents expereince

I understand why they are not releasing full sims, but lately they have stopped releasing smaller reclaimed parcels as well. Just would be nice to hear from Jack again. He's due for an update.

Sorry to derail an estate thread with my typical Mainland talk.