If someone is selling you an island ATM, beware!!!

If they haven't the power to determine the validity of player-to-player transactions then it seems Linden Lab ought get out of the business of transferring ownership as by that argument, how should they know when a transfer is bona fide?

If you'd like to make the argument that they should allow legitimate transfers but not fraudulent ones, that would fail miserably in this instance because they did initiate the transfer and then aborted it. On the other hand, if you'd just like to win the debate, you have.

This is actually not entirely true, Eboni. During my live help career, I can not tell you how many times the Lindens have become involved to help fix accidental problems involving release land, accidental sales to the wrong person (hitting the checkbox and inserting L$0 instead of hitting the "Set for sale to specific person" option first). If its an obvious mistake, LL is quite often willing to help out with regards to land.

As far as permissions errors, its a risk in a growing society that LL really can't acknowledge without putting their own ToS in joepardy. Fixing other peoples' mistakes not caused by them is one thing, fixing their own - and the potential liability this would admit to - is a different story.

Regards,

-Flip

She's gone from find, YAY! Well deserved. This is obviously a scammer.

Also, not too BRIGHT a scammer. She was obviously trying to sell for the same price as Linden does, which is US$980... not L$980. For L$980, it would be quite a bargain (~US$4).

Regards,

-Flip

You are my freaken hero Malachi

I am truly sorry this happened to you. Though I do believe that everyone must use caution when dealing with money outside of SL. Everyone is talking about how bad business dealings are, corrupt or dishonest people in SL.. well SL is a mirror of the real world. You need to use your RW common sense in here.. proceed with caution.

This issue has been resolved.

I want to thank everyone at LL, in these forums, and IW who have helped me. I am amazed at the amount of help you have offered, and am truly grateful.

Due to time constraints atm I am unable to address all the issues that I feel should be discussed. There have been some good points raised from this incident, and I will take the time to respond to them in this thread when more time becomes available to me.

I feel it should be stated that this was indeed a case of fraud. I have no doubts on this.

I have suspended legal actions against the perpertrator of this crime, as per my promise to the individual. The deadline that was set by me, was indeed met.

I am not certain if the proper outcome was achieved by legal pressure, social pressure, LL's use of common sense, or a combination of all of these. At this point I can move forward with this particular project and look forward to discussing some of the issues brought up by this with you all.

Once again, thank you to everyone who offered assistance.

-Schwanson

Excellent!

Pleased to hear this has resolved itself.

always good when scams get taken care of, especially when theres this kind of cash involved.

The person who lost their land isn't my friend. I just think the rules should be applied equally to everyone not just people with a lot of money or old accounts.

You have one point and I went back and removed her name from my post. It is indeed hard to define where to draw line and others could take it as one invitation for slander.

I resent the implication that this was handled because you beleive I have alot of money or because of the length of time I have played SL. I can assure you I receive no better customer service than anyone in SL.

I am not familiar with the incident you are comparing this to. I am assuming you are refering to an accidental release of land to public. Something you should remember, accidental release of land is something prompted by the user, there is a warning screen advising the user of the consequences of their actions, and they must click through that warning to release the land. I do not see how that is remotely similar to what happened here.

If you are refering to another type of incident, with which I am not familiar, disregard the previous paragraph.

I received an offer to buy a tropical island a few days ago. I can't remember who sent it, I think it came through a group IM. But I remember is seemed very fishy, so I disregarded it.

The issue as I see it is... it is like selling the same item to many people on Ebay. Ebay warns users not to use western union or billpay or any cash transfer system like that. They explain they can't protect buyers using such payment services. However, the seller is indeed legally responsible, and could be charged with fraud, as it is clearly fraud to sell the same thing more than once.

My guess is the seller came to the realization the consequences are far greater than the reward. This should be a warning to anyone who might consider sending money via cash transfer companies such as Western Union. If the seller refuses to use Paypal escrow it would raise a red flag and set off alarms for me.

Paypal doesn't insure transactions that are for non-tangable items. For example, a buyer isn't protected by Paypal's protection programs when buying $Linden or any other thing you can't receive in the mail or pick up.

That's why escrow is the only real option when dealing with intangable item, in my opinion.

From what I've seen, having an old account doesn't appear to factor into whether they help you when you get ripped off.

of course, even paypal, when dealing in intangible items, is not safe either.... and anyone who's had 2 week old payments reversed will tell you that Even when dealing in tangible items.. who waits 2 weeks to ship an item? and if paypal is waiting 2 weeks to process the transaction (that was supposed to be done instantly) then decides that it can't be completed... who is at fault? paypal, or the purchaser?


just a few more things to chew on

If anything, you've had worse service, in several cases.

Good to hear this turned out OK though.

I've had no issues with Paypal itself, through my experience with Ebay and GOM and a couple others. But my concerns would be more towards trust. I do not happen to know the person in question, but since I don't I'd want to spend quite some time in an interview In-World before committing. But that's just me, again from my Ebay experience.