Issues with supposed freebies

Ok, first off, I've scoured this forum to find the right place to put this... So, if it isn't in the right place, my apologies.

Ok, this happened twice to me just this week. I go hunting for freebies because I don't have Lindens$. Night before last I found a freebie, that stated it was 0L$, so I "bought" it. I was deducted 11L for it, the same thing just happened again to me, the item stated as 0L$ and 5L was deducted from my account. I had 25L's to begin with, now I'm down to 9L's... I'm not really happy about being taken and I don't know how to get my money back. Any ideas, suggestions would be great! The money was a gift and was trying to save it...but seems SL doesn't want me to

Oh and isn't a freebie supposed to be free? I keep seeing freebies for 1L. That's just wrong imho.

Thanks!

Sythe

There was a time when you could not sell anything for 0L$ and quite often you will see 1L$ items items shown as free partly because that was as cheap as they could originally go and also to help the track what is moving.

Anyway, it is common to call these dollarbies instead of freebies just to avoid that confuion. Still ... when you hit "buy", look to see how much is going to be taken out of your account. This is simple personal protection you should be doing every time anyway, no matter what you are buying.

Okay, to make sure I'm clear, is this an item that you rezzed after having gotten? And then it started taking money out?

Or is it just someone is lying in the flip title and not putting the correct price on the object?

I do just that, check to see if it will cost. Every time it said it was a freebie, it said 1$L or 0$L. In this case, I saw 0$L and ended up paying anyway..

I opened the first item, not realizing until after the fact, the second item I noticed the deduction right after I used "buy" and started walking off. I believe the latter occured. It was 0L but not...

Not sure how it can say 0 when you buy it but then take away 11 or more. But I guess it's possible.

Open Transaction History and see what happened in there.

Are these happening in the same places, or different?

could you show me the item (for sale not the one you bought) in world?

might help to actually see it, and see what it says etc

After you buy the zero dollar item, when you rez it, OPEN it, do not buy it. It is your item and should open just fine and copy to inventory. IM the person who got the money, they might refund you.

Sounds to me like you've been shopping at one of the places where the owner mixes the odd 1$, 2$, 5$ and/or 10$ items in with a group of 0$ items. Its a bit sneaky to do this but some places do, and it pays off for them, because of peoples impulse to shove as much free stuff into Inventories as quickly as they can. Kid in a candy store and all that.

Like others have said, best to slow down and check all prices that display on the Buy dialog, before we click the button.

correct me if i got that wrong.

you saw an item for sale. it "said" free, or 0L$. Where and how did it "say" that?


but when you "bought" the item it actually cost 11L$ instead of 0L$?


So you're getting all worked up about 0.04 US$?

When you only have 25$ then 11$ is significant. Lindens, rupees or reales, it doesn't matter IMO. The point is the OP was overcharged and didn't get the item at the advertised price.

I agree with Airt Pexington, I can and have lost £50 ($100) in real life a few times, but I can afford to shrug it off, but I know many people couldn't and would be physically upset if that happened to them, so I never say it's only £50 ($100) get over it.

Also when I started I saw L$10 has being a huge amount and even though I am pretty well off, it's one of those strange psychological things which doesn't make much sense but at various degrees it exists in all of us, like 'fears'.

Ok then, first off: Welcome to the Forums! I think you picked the right place to post your question.

The confusion in the responses and all the follow-up questions are summed up with Airt's comment: "Like others have said, best to slow down and check all prices that display on the Buy dialog, before we click the button."

Note that mention of "the Buy dialog" because what shows on that blue pop-up box is what's going to be charged, regardless of what it says on the poster you clicked to start the buying process. (Now, if you somehow were charged a different amount from what it said on that Buy dialog, then we need more details about that. That would be an exploit or a very bad bug, neither of which is known about.)

If the posted price differed from what showed on that Buy dialog, there are many reasons that could happen. Some places do that on purpose, which is fraud, and you can report it to Linden Lab using Help / Report Abuse, or right-clicking on the abusive object and choosing "Report" from (somewhere on) the pie menu. But it could be a mistake, too: until you've set up stuff to sell, you may not appreciate just how many things can go wrong during the process. Or the seller could be some decrepit old-timer--like from 2003 --who didn't get the memo that even L$0 items can be sold and recorded in their transaction histories. Or, some other randomness.

The questions about whether the charges happened at time of purchase or when you rezzed the objects from Inventory are referring to a very nasty trick that allows an object to take money from your account without your approval of each transaction. But the object must first get overall approval to take money from your account, and getting that approval is another rather scary-looking dialog--as well it should be!--colored a kind of pale orange, as I recall. You'd probably not miss that dialog. If you see it, you almost certainly want to say "no". It's an advanced functionality, used mostly by folks splitting the income from items they're selling.

I remember visiting a huge freebie mall in SL in my earliest days. Some $10L items were mixed in with the $1L ones and I did not find a sign making this clear. I don't know if it was an oversight or on purpose but it was poorly organised at least.

When people have to camp or such to earn every $1L they feel each one.

I thought about this argument the other day, in which some claim the $L as bought for real dollars. But, I think that's a fallacious argument in this way: This is not the real world, obviously - and not a necessity. So, for someone with a limited entertainment or SL budget, THAT is the scope of the sum total. NOT all of their wordly dollars and possessions.

It must be scaled to the actual game dollars, not brought out into the same world that they must pay for real rent, food, gas, insurance, and other essentials. In that way, $5 may be all they can afford for that month for SL, and they must budget it accordingly.