My estate land was stolen!! Yes, STOLEN!

..and... The only time I've met Governor Linden... she was female.

Yes, the guvnuh is a woman.

Yes, the governor is a woman, and doesn't wear a suit.

Actually, in the interest of leaning more toward duplication of good estate management, which has not been LL's forte, they now label reclaimed due to nonpayment land with contact information and a delayed auction date so that the previous owner has a couple of weeks to catch up their billing.

Jopsy, many of the larger estate owners allow you to pay your monthly or weekly tier via paypal subscription. That works both ways, they rip your land, you cancel the sub, even retroactively or in small claims if necessary. It's only when fees are paid in "worthless" lindens that you leave yourself vulnerable. Still, if you prefer Mainland and are more comfortable with it, stay. Be happy. But in all fairness, if you're going to warn people that they shouldn't trust estate barons because they charge lindens for services that may not be provided, you'll have to warn people to not purchase inworld classified adds, or buy land from auctions listed in lindens, or ever pay another vendor again because they might not get anything and the owner would have their money and they would have no recourse.

Oh, too, there is still a lot, and I mean a LOT, of first land abuse going around. New residents are being led down the path to sell off their first land for much less than it's street value. Another tactic is convincing them to donate their premium tier to a group in exchange for a month's use of 1024sm. Then they're no longer eligible for first land and the land they were "renting" is generally sold and unavailable. How can those estate managers allow this to continue? LL should do something to force estate owners to ensure that such things aren't continually perpetrated.

I venture to say that more land swooping and other land-related forms of abuse occur on the Mainland than all of the estates put together. The short version is that all of the reputable private estates, of all sizes, are operated with far less drama and angst over land "ownership" than the Linden estates have ever managed.

I would not doubt that for a minute, Jopsy!

... and I can not help but question, if this suspiciousness is fuelled by bad experience or if you simply assume that estate owners will cheat on you? Because, according to what I have seen myself and heard from others I can only aggree with Khamon (one more time):

{disclaimer: I haven't had my coffee yet, I'm articulately challeneged without it!}

Sure the bad apples will be reasonably few in number, and loudly complained about so that the ?17%? of SL users that follow the forums (while they last) might be aware enough to avoid being scammed by the better known re-occuring crooks. (It won't help with ponzi-scheme style estate managers that behave reputably until they cut and run when they've made their mark.)

But my cynical outlook is only based on the above in part.

Estate managers can fall on hard times, make mistakes or just grow bored with the whole venture and give up. No malice, just common misjudgements or circumstances that could very well result in their customers being gyped out of something they paid for.

The way I see it, by buying land from an estate manager at least doubles my risk of being adversely impacted by business decisions and circumstances that are completely outside of my control.

If I'm going to invest a lot of my time and creative energy into building a location and its reputation up I want to elimiate as much of that risk as possible.

If it were just for a residental spot that I wanted on the cheap, and didn't care about relocating, I'd probably not care, and would try for cheaper estate land.

(btw, I still have my first parcel, purchased 2-5 years ago... it's grown from 512sqm to over half a sim since then. What percentage of today's estate managers do you really think will be around 2.5 years from now? )

I remember when JarodGooberBrain arbitrarily sold off a piece of the land he was accumulating in Teal because he was sure that this young upstart was way talented and a fine addition to the world. Boy that's for sure. My almost exact words to him were "how long do you think this guy will build all this fabulous stuff in Teal before he sells that lot off to some silly griefer type?" Boy was I wrong.

*BLUSH* I'm a homesteadder, what can I say? =)

(Of course, having great neighbors certainly helps too.