Land Sale Mistake !!!!!

I've made this kind of stupid mistake a few times and winced, but I never dreamed of calling the Lindens, just because I think it's a general principle that we don't want Lindens rushing to the scene of every single player transaction or dispute. There have to be more mechanisms built in by players themselves to resolve disputes before they escalate.

I agree the figure of US $2000 appears to be a great overvaluation.

What should be determined is the precendents for Linden's past intervention, and then invocation of the right then to claim in fairness they should intervene again. But better long-term solutions are needed to keep these types of mistakes from happening, i.e. "are you sure you want to sell this land for $4900" popping up to prompt you to write $49000.



You can be quite sure that when the LL people set up their TOS, they had precedents, law, and lawyers to go through and work the TOS up and down with a fine tooth to make sure they had "limited liability for litigation" i.e. so no one would sue them frivolously.

A court even accepting a case involving a TOS in a game? People love to cite South Korean cases as proof this could happen anywhere. Yet I can't imagine this happening in the US, which is a common-law system working by precedent with a hugely rich culture of torts litigation and therefore protection from same.

In general, all talk of "suing" LL or other players belongs to the realm of the angry pitchforked mob and the litiginous belief that using law enforcement and judicial agencies will solve problems the belong rather to the realm of civic relations and business practices.

People have to realize that a private club that provides an entertainment does not have the obligations of a government or public institution in the US, where such a lawsuit would have to take place. It would be near impossible to show in a tort case that a person suffered damages from the loss of his expectation from what will be seen as a video entertainment. It will be seen as similar to suing a movie theater or a film company for a movie you didn't like, and saying the popcorn was lousy, too.

No court in the US is going to be able to behave "crazily" enough to intervene in a private club (that's how an Internet game with a subscription will be viewed) and overturn its internal charter, if that TOS can't be shown to violate US law (which it doesn't). So it's pretty absurd to even imagine it. Angry people often reach for lawsuits to solve their sense of loss based on their sometimes overweening sense of entitlement. What's needed in SL are better mechanisms for solving player disputes either through simple councils of respected older and younger players mixed with some Linden representation that merely do simply conflict resolution and compromise, or more elaborate judicial-type mechanisms that investigate, find facts, and adjudicate.

I personally take a default position that any money spent on land in SL is money thrown down the rat-hole. Thus, when it is still there when I wake up in the morning, and still continues to entertain and inspire, it is a surprise and joy.

Ellie...perhaps you should take another look at Coniston. I paid dearly for the waterfront property that I had...as a matter of fact the person that bought my land has a home on the "water front property" and has sold land to another person which also has a home on "the water front property". The remainder of the property is set to sell for 100,000 L$
As far as me recovering my land...I have been told by Customer support ... a couple of Lindens and a Supervisor of liasons that I need to work it out with the new buyer and there is nothing they can do about it...I was even told that it was a FAIR sell. I would not be posting in here if I thought I had a chance of recovering my land. I have mailed Philip Linden twice and no response from him. I do not know what else to do...I just sit back and watch the new buyer build on the property and cut it up for sale.

I will not respond to rest of your post Ellie..you sound just like the guy I spoke with from customer service *rolls eyes*

my sympathies sasi the lindens must have changed their policy in intervening in player transactions. and filing abuse reports well... i reckon they are as effective as um.. something not very effective at all. (my brain fails me it is friday)
i reckon they get sent straight to the bin when you click on send. it's sad when people bring greed and treachery into what should be a fun and relaxing game. sl is getting a bit too rl for comfort :/

Sasi,
send me the name ingame,

Might not be but a drop in da bucket, but theres 70,000 meters they wont be on
and the greatest selection of Sex Balls in SL at the
Tango Room, the latter is really going to hurt................

Sorry about this.

-Waves

i have read all the posts about this topic and still can't see any justice being done, if one simple mistake can lead to a large sum of money being lost then surely it is up to the people who run that program to make sure it can't happen. If as some of you say what has happened is legal then fair enough, but is it moral or ethical and i for one don't want to be part of a program in which the people who run it condone this sort of behaviour. Ellie you should get your facts straight before putting pen to paper, there is a waterfront all round the land, unless ships and boats sail on dry land and i'm sure Sasi knows how much she has spent on the land.

I'm sorry this happened to you Sasi. We had a lot of similar things happen in There and and There Inc, never really did anything to help. After this happening too many time to too many people I knew. I lost my love for There and so began the downward spiral. I hate to see the same thing happen in SL.

When you are about to work on your land, FIRST, before you do ANYTHING ELSE, check OFF the "for sale" checkbox on ALL of the parcels you are going to work on.

THEN do your work.

THEN set the price, and check it twice.

And only then, after all that, THEN click the "for sale" checkbox.

ALWAYS.

Buster

I have to agree thats what you need to do now with the way the software is tricking you, into instant activation of sale upon ticking instead of closure of window. That doesnt help people who are used to how normal these kind of boxes would work in this layout, ie tick the box to allow use of the price window and then activate upon the closure of window or on a confirmation/enter button, by having the tick box FIRST its totally misleading in the way the system is working. And like other boxes when you hover over this box there is no hovertext help associated with it, like enter price first before pressing this.

I suggest Linden Lab does one check: if the L$ per sqm price of the land is below one certain value there should be a special warning. I don't think that people should always be bugged with one thousand popups and dialogues, but one little check could trigger special dialogues when the land is very big or the price very low.

Btw, this problem can not happen to you on Dreamland continent: we have additional safety layer with our management team to prevent such problem.

the best way is when in doubt IM a Linden, IM Live Help, study the faq's be absolutely sure what your doing. There's all kinds of help out there, use it beforehand and save the grief of mistakes.

Thanks for you input anshe, thats a good idea, its good to get feedback from someone who would be using this function alot and i can see how a dialogue would slow that down, and i think a good mix is needed for everybody, I think the dialogue is a good idea it shows the land size and that you've got the price right, but should perhaps have a tick arrow for largescale landsellers like yourselves to opt out to a low price warning only.

This would give people confidence in the system, but still allow you the flexibility to have a dialogue free sale and only a warning unless the price is too low.

That is a very good idea Nathan (the opt-out for large-scale landsellers) and I will be modifying my proposition 348 to reflect it.

I've started a discussion thread for this proposition, the link is in my sig, I invite anyone interested in discussing this topic and prop to come over and give your feedback and suggestions.

EDIT: crap, nm, I can't edit a proposal after its been submitted. I will post your idea in the discussion thread however as I think that this opt-out would help calm fears that the pop-up is a little too much intrusion.

Would the script that would have to listen for this lag the sim?

This would be simply be in the software no need to script, the software knows the land size, and knows the price in the box even if you not entered it backwards before you ticked, if it works out at a value below a certain L$ per sqm it pops up the warning

I accidently set a 512 lot to $0L and someone bought it right away. He then imed me to ask if it was a mistake. I told him it was an mistake and he returned it. That's an honest guy.
Recently I was looking for a tiny parcel to fill up my tier, once I did I realized there is a market for tiny parcels for prim usage I divided one 512 lot into several small lots anywhere from 16m to 256m. Some newbies wandered up looking for land and almost bought one of the 48m lots thinking it was a great deal, not realizing it was only a tiny plot of land. I explained first land and told them how to get it and sent them on their way. Later i realized a girl bought one of my tiny lots and was trying to build a house, I asked her if she knew about first land, she told me she sold her first land for a tiny profit not understanding the first land rules. She only had a small amount of money to replace her first land. I bought the tiny lot back from her because I realized her mistake was honest. and offered to sell her a 512 worth $4k for $1800, $1k down and payments of $100L per week for 8 weeks She never took me up on the offer, but that was the right thing to do. I then imed the person who bought another tiny lot to offer a buy back, that person said there was no mistake, they wanted the 16m land.
One day I found a 512 for $1500 in a pg sim, I bought it thinking not a terrible deal. The next day the girl imed me explaining she put it for sale out of frustration with SL and regreted doing it, when she arrived home it was empty as I returned her stuff. When I let her buy it back for the same price she was very happy. The very same day I found much better land and sold lots of my things. It was proof to me that good deeds will come back to you.
The person who takes advantage of another persons mistake will eventually pay much more than was gained. So... my suggestion to the person who bought that property due to an error on the part of the seller should sell it back for the same price, or you will end up losing more than you gained in that transaction.
I don't think this is an issue for LL, they can't reverse a done deal. We can't expect them to give away $2000us to make good the mistake of the seller. We can't demand the buyer sell it back because it was perfectly within their right to do as they did. I'm just saying if the buyer would try to walk in the shoes of the seller he/she may realize how it feels.
However, for those who negged the buyer, please think of this possibility, you are at a yard sale in rl, you see a wonderful painting that you feel would look nice in your house, after selling it the seller realizes the painting was mismarked and is worth thousands more that it was sold. If the seller calls you and asks you to sell it back for the $5 you paid, since it's really worth $5000us,would you do it? Or would you tell the seller you are sorry for their mistake and keep it? Everyone has different morals, to me returning the painting is the right thing to do, but would I return it in rl? I can't say, never been in that position, I hope I would, but I can't say that as it's hypothetical. I won't neg the buyer, but I would warn them of the reality of carma( what goes around comes back around) or the golden rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you).

Thanks azazel, I've set my remaining votes to this and I hope other people can find votes for this too, linden need to listen up and protect out assets better. Not like now where they just leave you to work it out yourself.

That's what you get when you put over 2,000 dollars into a virtual world.

Im glad there are some really honest people still out there and i totally agree with you what goes around comes around, as far as sasi getting the land back that isnt going to happen, when lindens refused to seize the land until some form of dispute resolution even though it was a system error due to inssuficient software controls/misleading controls the land has since being parcelled off to different parties, the largest chunk is now owned by a land baron and is in tiny chunks for sale. sasi is in a game she used to love and now is in dispair because the lindens dont seem to care or even want to engage in talks with her, and i really did think the lindens were here to help the people who followed the rules and thought they were doing the right thing.

Well now they admit the process is confusing

/invalid_link.html

Nifty! I PMed a Linden to try and find out if these means that the proposition is essentially approved, or if I should cancel it and give people their votes back.

I'm glad to see the Lindens agree that this process needs clarification/improvement.

They have agreed to the post i linked to this thread too

/invalid_link.html

This reminds me alot of the florida recount in 2000. Theres a name, a dot, and an arrow connecting the dot to the name, and people still complained it was the systems fault for their error.

Nobody is saying its anybody's fault but their own, Ryan. The Lindens admit that the interface is counterintuitive and needs to be updated to prevent mistakes from being easily made. Given that plus the fact that land can be a VERY costly mistake to make, and the amount of time Lindens have to invest in dispute resolution in cases like these, and it seems to me to make sense to correct the design flaw and give people the option to have an extra layer of security.