Federal Trade Commission

Ok so you go buy a Condo in the city. You make the decision that you can afford the 200k for the condo, and the association fees are 200 a month. They tell you oh this is a great deal and what you intend to do is fantastic, and this association fee has been stable for quite some time. But they dont tell you that they are planning to increase the fees because somone made a mistake, knowing full well that the increase will be coming, with the intent of making the sale.

So you buy the property, you spend another 100k doing rehab work, you spend months getting it to be the place of your dreams. Then 6 months after you buy this place and sink all this money in, the guy in charge of the association decides, well hes going to raise the fees to 400 a month.

Now you have a couple choices.

Try and sell the place (Which by now no one wants cause its too expensive)

Walk away, and loose all your invested time, money and work, the association doesnt care, they already got thier money telling you "So sorry, if you look deep in page 254, paragraph 300 it says we can raise the rates at anytime."
Or
Fight it in court because even tho there was no contract saying the price would remain the same, the increase is inconsistant with the reality of the condo, and had you known that a mistake was being made by the association you NEVER WOULD HAVE BOUGHT IN TO BEING WITH.

Whether or not this is a legal issue is up to the Lawyers and judges to eventually decide.

But ethicly this is abhorent.

Tell people what a great thing these OS are. Confirm, Sure you can use them for residential, thats why we upped the prim counts. Sell tens of THOUSANDS of them at 275 a pop.

Find out by doing this, that you have cut off your nose regarding Mainland sales and property values, which is taking money out of your bottom line.

Then, to cover your own short sightedness and ignorence of the market, try to recover your bottom line by pricing them out of the reach of many if not MOST of the owners who have invested conciderable time and money into the product to drive your own land values back up, claiming unintended use, unintended resource allocations, and support costs, is WRONG!

If I ran my company like this, do you honestly believe that any of my customers would ACCEPT a 66% increase in thier monthly cost of doing business with me, because I didnt plan appropriately? Hell no, they would sue me right out of my office for breach of trust, breach of promise, and unfair pricing practices.

LL should expect the same.

<End Rant>

It's not the consumer's job to determine whether or not a law is being broken.

In the U.S., if you feel you have been defrauded in a commercial situation, the FTC, state Attorney General offices, and other resources are available to you to make those determinations on your behalf.

And as for people's slapstick answers about the price of eggs, gas and cars:

If you visit the farm for your eggs and have a discussion with the farmer in which he tells you that eggs are $0.50 per dozen if you pay a $5.00/monthly fee to "buy the chicken" that lays them - and you make that $5.00/mo payment for two months and buy your eggs at $0.50/dozen -- until the day you show up and the farmer says "Hey, your chicken costs $7.50 a month now, the cost of feed went up" --

Or, if you buy that Mercedes for $400/mo until Mercedes decides that you've had too many warranty claims on it and you've had it in for service one too many times so now your payment will be $600.00 a month or you can return the car.

This isn't a matter of someone arbitrarily raising prices on a service that they're providing to a market, this is a matter of the prices being raised after SUBSTANTIAL amounts of non-refundable monies were paid into the sims at $250.00 each in order to be able to get the service at an agreed-upon price.

I paid $250.00 for the privilege of having a sim for $75/mo.

If it were $125/mo I wouldn't have paid my $250.

If I were paying $75/mo without having paid in all that money as a startup down payment, I wouldn't have much room to complain that they were raising my rate.

Yes and every member of the European Union since the 15th of October have implemented domestic laws as the directive require. And yes as I (again) mentioned earlier for the ones who hae paid set up fees lately to make use of open sims for a while the LL should find a solution. Try reading my topic more carefully pls

Damn Rosie.... YEAH WHAT SHE SAID.

Perfect examples..

To all my relations;

The performance of OS regions has been an ongoing issue since the days when they were called 'Voids' and the definition of what, exactly a Void is, handled softly. Now the lack of oversight has caught up, and the reckoning has to be done.

Without this uptick in pricing LL has no operating capital, and with the announcement come many who were led to believe (through lack of documentation) the untruths about OS being able to handle the resources it was allowed, feeling taken for a ride.

IMHO the shady business is not Linden Lab™, but the landowners who have benefitted from this 'wiggle room' and advertising the land as suitable for residents to use as they would private or mainland full-prim (15000) sims.

Today, the definition of a Void is the space-between-sims-that-you-can't-go. An openspace sim is a new term and rightfully, people are not happy about the clarification coming with such speed that the business models and hopes for the economy are now in jeopardy.

Thinning out is what will result. Business models will adapt. SL is not in danger of operating beyond its means. Youthful vigor will not turn back the clock. In this way, the nature of the new management team at Linden Lab™ is revealed, and residents will have to roll with it.

Looking forward, there is hope that the business that survives will be better for it. I dont think there is much to be said about the response except that when people are mad, they get downright vocal and without a place to put this anger they can share these feelings in the place best suited for this, the forums here at secondlife.com!

Peace out!

So because you wouldn't ever pay $125/mo then they are never allowed to raise their price? I understand that I have no contract with LL about the price of my full region. I also understand that at any time they reserve the right to either raise or lower the cost of service for my sim. I challenge anyone to show me where it states any of us have a fixed price for our service.

They're allowed to raise the monthly rate, but then I want my $250 back. If they knew in August that this was starting to be a problem and they sold me my OS anyway and I am living within the terms, which i am, then if they choose to void our contract by changing the price and I choose not to accept the new terms, then I want my good faith investment back.

And I'm owed it.

A contract does not have to be on paper, a contract in business terms, which can be upheld in ANY court of law, is a meeting of the minds.

The day I made my first tier payment of $75 and they accepted it, we had a meeting of the minds.

I don't have to keep my OS, but they shouldn't get to keep my startup fee either.

I'm sorry but this is the funniest thing I have read today. Yeah, let us inundate the FTC because we are upset at a rate increase that falls in line with a binding contract that each estate owner has agreed to.

Maybe we should just go to Congress and tell them our right to virtual housing is being taken away because of the predatory Linden Labs.

How close are we to this action being labeled as racist and a hate crime?

Is there a virtual ACORN in SL that can bully Jack into letting everyone pay what they can't afford for islands?

But it is not an investment. It is a setup fee. Now I do agree that they should refund the setup fee for anyone that purchased in the last 30 days, but that is it.

If they knew this was a problem in August, as they have admitted, then they need to refund the setup fee for anyone who has purchased since then.

But, it's my opinion that they should refund the setup fee for anyone who's living within the guidelines they provided, since we upheld our end of the meeting of the minds.

If LL wants to have flexible rates on island sims (full or os), they should do away with the non-refundable setup fees or make it a more reasonable fee... not enough to cover the cost of the hardware. The new land store did away with most of the cost of setting up manually.

This could eliminate the possibility of what to do with them when you no longer want to pay a monthly fee, simply return the parcel back to LL to use for someone else.

This high fee is what most people are complaining about right now, knowing they have no way to recover any or all of it if they no longer feel that the monthly fees are within their allowed budget for parcel ownership. And the fact that LL now has the hardware that you paid to purchase and will resell it to someone else is also ruffling a few feathers.

Can you imagine the increased number of tiers that LL would receive if they only charged a minimum setup fee and tier only for private island sims?

For everyone's attention..

ooh, come on now..... lol

And which Article of the Directive do you think this contravenes?

Whoever suggested the BBB unfortunately LL ignores them. I don't have the link at the moment but look for the California Better Business Bureau on Google and search for Linden Research Inc. (I think that's what they're listed as) and you'll see that LL has quite a record with them and quite an ufavoreable one at that. Unfortunately since they aren't a member other than making LL look bad the BBB is powerless to do anything. The FTC and/or whatever California's state consumer protection agency is are probably the best bet.

The reason LL thinks it can get away with this, is because they know nobody will seriously file anything against them, hence by not acting, they win.

Seriously, if anyone made a real action against them you will see them settle with that person and everyone else for risk of setting a precedent.

When you go the grocery store you are not offered a deal that if you give the grocer $250 up front you can then get eggs for so much a month only to find that within less then a years time they up the price 66 percent. A grocery store that 3 days prior to announcing they had to increase the price of your eggs found it could auction off smaller lots of eggs with the bonus of a slab of bacon thrown in ( double prims) at a much higher profit. Now since since it can only store so many eggs at a time if by charging you more you will not want to pay for the eggs they do not lose because..... This will provide them with a supply of eggs they can auction off making far more money than if they had sold the eggs to you at the price you agreed to when you put up your $250.

And if you have not noticed you can not announce to everyone that you have eggs to sell like the grocer can on the their front door!! (This refers to the advertising for Nautilus every time you log into SL. I think LL has a problem on their hands too.

I know your post was meant to be comical. I almost choked on my eggnog!!!

"The reason LL thinks it can get away with this, is because they know nobody will seriously file anything against them, hence by not acting, they win.

Seriously, if anyone made a real action against them you will see them settle with that person and everyone else for risk of setting a precedent."

I doubt that. This is all but guaranteed to end in a courtroom. What's needed is a class action lawsuit.

There may be several areas in which Linden Labs could fall flat on their faces on this one. if you purchases an open space sim:

a) were you directed to the terms and conditions page and were you fully made aware of what you were buying when you paid out $250?
b) Were you ever given a warning that you were breaking the conditions of the open space sims usage?
c) did you ever ask concierge for support on those sims and were you ever advised that you were misusing them
d) increasing tier money on something that was advertised at one rate without you agreeing to an increase where you were not asked to agree to 'terms and conditions'.

All of these could be unlawful. I suggest that residents band together in groups and seek out legal advice from a US lawyer.

As a European Union Resident i do not know the U.S.A Federal Trade Commission that much. So may be American residents can have a solution for this problem. But for us in the E.U that is nothing illegal.

Whenever my ISP provider decides to increase their prices, all i can do is to find one other (that won't happen for sure - unless that provider wishes to run for bankrupcy, but anyway...).

Whenever my local store decides eggs, vegetables, meat or whatever are raised by xYZ %, all i have to do it go get another local store.

As well, any "antitrust" act would not be appicable in the E.U in that precise context, as far as i can understand it.

Yes and that is excatly the point (with a touch of humor).

Some would tell, "eggs" are not a reccurrent "kind of service" with subscription fees, but only a one-time consumed product, adding that you are not obliged to eat "eggs"

Linden Lab lawyers would reply you are not obliged to subscribe to SL, and that if you did, well that was your own decision (which btw is absolutely true - since all the more you can be in-world for free, i.e.: without consuming SL "eggs". That is all the same.

Or did i miss something?

You missed the part where the mob hangs Lindens and cut their belly open.
And then poke them with a stick.

And I'm all for it, I mean, nobody forced them to sell services to a furious addicted mob.

So I gather by all the post on this forum. That a class action lawsuit can be filed, because LL's have raise the land tier fees since SL opened?
I sure LL's have spent 1000's of RL dollars going over the legality of this issue.
I heard McDonalds is raising the price of the big mac. Can we go after them next?

The Lindens had this same legal problem in 2006 when they took down all of the telehubs. The Class Action Suit residents showed on many occasions that Linden Lab advertised the land around a telehub to be more valuable than other land. Then Linden claimed all land was worth the same and removed the hubs - making everyone's investment around a telehub worthless.

Linden Lab soon caved and offered to buy all land around a telehub for a fair price.

This proves that not all of Linden Lab's decisions approved by their legal team hold water.

.

In this case I guess you are also aware that a women in the US won the case when she took McDonalds to the Court because she gained weight of the hamburgers..