The financial dangers of island living - LL complicit but shirking all responsibility

Mine is a tale of woe - perhaps not unfamiliar. But none the less painful.

Some months ago I used the Linden Labs ("LL" search capability to look for some land on which to build a house. I found a lovely island lot on this page, visited it, purchased it, and built.

This weekend the SIM on which I had purchased my land disappeared. My land, my house, all my objects gone.

When I couldn’t log in, I contacted support. The first answer I received was that the reason I couldn’t get to my home was some "maintenance activities". As the weekend progressed it became apparent the SIM was gone. It started to disappear from the map. Worse, the person I bought the land from has disappeared! I can’t IM then because search cant find them. LL has sent me a wonderful message saying that "they cannot be involved in Resident to Resident transactions. Please contact the resident directly". The term for my situtation is "screwed".

Right now I have strong feelings about all this. But I want to express a couple of things:

1. Linden labs shows land from islands in their Land Search page along with mainland land. As a land purchaser, they is no warnings posted that the land purchased on islands is "not guaranteed". It is shows along with the mainland, and as it is presented there is no indication that the transaction of purchasing the land is any less secure. Having purchased the land, I was listed in the SL page as being the "owner". The same status as some one from the mainland.

My assertion from all this is that Linden labs are misleading residents about the status of their purchase of island land.

2. Disappearing SIMs & "Second class" Resident's property rights

Being a listed land owner of a parcel, I find it disturbing that LL didnt provide warnings about the termination of the SIM on which I lived. Clearly they knew that I and the other land owners had parcels on the SIM. There was no notification from LL that the SIM was being removed providing the owners of land the chance to contact the SIM owner and work something out prior to the SIM being removed. No return of the residents property prior to the SIM closure. Although I have no personal experience with land being returned or abandoned on the mainland, but I would guess that the contents are returned as a matter of course.

Differences in handling of land communications and owners properties highlights that island land is "second class" and that owners of island land are similarly "second class".

LL needs to look at their handling of island land. At the present, it - and residents who purchase there - as second class.

Well that's my rant. Buyer beware.

i don't understand how a sim can "disappear"

i feel for ya tho. i hope you can get this worked out.

It's a private estate. It disappears when the owner stops paying for it.

Burgundy: Sorry to hear about your landlord screwing you over. Did you lose any no-copy items when the sim disappeared? If so, you may be able to convince LL to re-open the sim long enough for you and other residents to retrieve your items. I remember seeing at least 2-3 similar complaints in this forum within the past month, and in each case LL let the residents get their stuff back (but not their money back from the owner).

If I were to "purchase" (actually lease) a sim from Linden Lab and "sold" parcels (actually sub-lease) on that sim to the Burgundy and then either:

a) defaulted on my monthly lease payments to LL, or
b) was accused by LL personnel or the Risk API of malfeasance and locked out of the game

it is possible that the sim server would be reclaimed by LL with all of my sub-lessors left landless on sims that had disappeared.

I'm somewhat surprised that we'd not seen a public outcry from displaced sub-lessors when Bragg's account was terminated and his sims liquidated by LL (or perhaps I missed it).

Burgandy, you are correct that this is an abhorant business conduct by LL. I cannot think of any other realm of commerce where such would be allowed nor accepted.

It might be slightly worse if the failure of LL to receive the lease fees was through fault of LL's notoriously flaky billing system.

It's true. You did a seach under "land sales". You made a purchase using this system with no warning from LL. The only official verbage you were exposed to is just whatever covenant your estate had in place. But at no time did you even own the land you lived on.

It's a flawed system as you are experiencing first-hand. Working within the system the way it's set up, there are no guarantees if you go the estate route (or rent on the mainland, which is the option I offer).

Your best bet safety-wise is to buy mainland. But if you go the estate route, do your research and choose a known estate owner with a great reputation and lots of time in SL and lots of islands to their name, because these folks are doing something right and are much less likely to disappear tomorrow.

This is usually where I list the names of the estate owners I know and trust, but I invariably get crap for it, because I always leave a few of the good ones out. So please IM me or send a PM here if you want my list of all-star estate owners (like Sarah Nerd, Kandee Herrey and Darien Caldwell TO NAME JUST A FEW!)

There is plenty of people who buy estate land who dont even realize its any different from the mainland. My frined got all confused by her tier cause she owned both for a while.

I agree that LL should not allow rental land to be listed in land sales as that is what buying land in a private sim really is. Unless you actually own the private sim you can't own land there no matter what the sim owner says.

There needs to be a warning that unless you are paying LL for your land you own nothing.

Alas, according to Linden Lab, even if you are paying LL for your land you still own nothing.

For too long, Linden Lab has been playing fast and loose with all sorts of claims, representations, and established meaning of contract language. Unfortunately, the only thing that seems to get them to properly represent their services and/or goods is to mount an expensive lawsuit against them. Then again, no one ever faulted them for clarity of communication in any form.

Every newbie should be given a notecard or at the very least a URL of where to find FAQ regarding SL real estate. Ideally it would include the difference between mainland and estates, how to deed land to group without getting double billed, the danger of setting land to "anyone" etc. It would be great if you could not search for or "buy" land until you had checked a box saying you had read the information.

Alas, most people learn the hard way. How many threads do we see a month with these issues? And those are just the folks who bother to post here...

Covenant and Mainland should have seperate listings. They should have from the moment they added covenant land to the land search.

Was a bone-headed move to do otherwise.

Reading?? I HATE reading. http://bluebuddies.com/help/jpg/GrouchySmurf.jpg

You can filter by mainland only or estate only, but, yes, the default is "All Types" which displays both. I see no purpose to a search of both mainland and estate listings at the same time. You either want Mainland or you want Estate, and you usually know this before search. But, even if you don't know which one you want, you cannot compare the prices of each, at least not with the information summarized in the search window, so putting them both together does not help you make a decision which way to go. The default filter should be one, or the other. My vote is for Mainland until more detailed information (weekly rent rate) can be provided within the search window. Only then will entertain suggestions that Estate should be default.

What's the solution then? Make all land mainland? Are you kidding? While that would not be terrible per se, it wrecks the idea of having a landlord that cares, if the landlord isn't a full sim owner like Raymond, Lord, myself or the few others that care to invest in mainland for development and not exploitation. Again, the whole idea of needing to be premium to own land is probably past its prime, but if you want to keep that model, the islands serve a very necessary function in providing a place where people can live with a landlord that, more often than not, cares about the community they have built.

Who said that was a solution?

Listen to the argument that is being made here - that LL is **complicit** in the ripoffs that occur when a sim owner disappears with people's money.

From LL's point of view, what is the solution to not be complicit, other than to make everyone own land outright and only be subject to LL when purchasing parcels of land? That would mean making all land mainland.

This is (misdirected) anger at LL again. The land system is confusing in its complexity, but it somewhat HAS to be, in order to support certain business models. You either eliminate the business models, or you force the populace to understand the complexity.

Since people don't like to read, and typically have to learn the hard way, what other option is there for LL, to avoid "being complicit" and "treating renters like second class citizens"?

I think this rant is ill-advised - the anger should be at the sim owner more than anything else. Is there something LL can do? They could send some kind of message 2 days before reclamation, but it will always be a source of complaints for people that don't log in every day, and it won't protect people who do not own parcels but rent (sub-sublet) from someone else on the island.

I may think I own a 4096m parcel on a private estate island. But I don't. Likewise I may think that I own a small 512m parcel on a mainland sim (putting my pretty much useless premie membership to use). But in reality I don't own anything here, period. I merely rent here in SL like everyone else. None of us owns anything here. That is unless your last name is Linden (which mine is not).

There are pros and cons to mainland and private estates living and long term stability is a better bet on mainland sims. But with mainland we don't know what ugliness will be there tomorrow. Pros and cons. If people aren't able to accept losing 100% of their investment, then they should not be staking claim to any SL land regardless if it is mainland or private estate.

Had I known then what I know now, then sure I never would have forked out money for my 4096m parcel on a private estate island. I have pretty much given up on ever recovering the money I paid to take control of that land on the private estate. Live and learn. But I am rather surprised that the objects on the island for the OP were not returned before the sim was shut down. You would think the Lindens would have done that at least before they pulled the plug on the island.

No one anywhere said to get rid of estate land, unless I missed something. I think we just want it to be clear that you are at the whim of your estate owner if you live on an estate and LL does not make that fact clear or the land search easy to understand and negotiate. This issue has never changed and we never seem to get resolution on it.

I prefer estates myself because I hate ad farms with every fiber of my being. The void borders and higher tier are the only reasons I chose a mainland sim for my venture.

Thanks for mentioning my name up there with Lord, even though I just have my one lil modest sim compared to his awesome various themed sim offerings.

One Sunday night about 11:00 PM my estate manager told me to go get my stuff or lose
it at midnight. I was furious becuase I had just talked to him a week before becuase
his damned payment thingy did'nt work and I had spent the entire week putting
up a house--landscaping it buying furniture and all of that.

I thought I "owned" it too! Nope--that is a scam. You are really just renting rights to
the place and if you give them money to "buy" it you have nothing really--you might as
well rent. They can pull it right out from under you at any time and you have no real
recourse.

I did get my money back though--one of his partners was a lot more honest than he was. He was a bastard from day one. After I contacted his partner she looked it up and sent my money back to me about midnight--maybe out of her own pocket--along with a note saying she was really sorry. She also advised me to buy nothing but Mainland from now on and that is what I have done. I think she was giving me a big tip with that advice!

Man--I feel for you bro. I was pissed for a week and I got my money back!

I don't see this as rant at all. The OP stated a problem and proposed two reasonable solutions in an organized and thoughtful way. 1. provide some kind of warning in the search pane that says Estate land does not offer the same level of LL-backed security and end-user/customer support as Mainland. 2. give parcel owners who are victims of a failed estate a warning and a chance to come get their stuff before the region is taken offline forever.
I'm not inclined to read in between the lines on this one.

My view is that these complaints will always exist, even if LL put in such warnings. Why? Because people don't like to read. Can you imagine what such a warning would look like, to be effective? The whole screen would have to be blue. And even then, eyes would glaze over and just click "ok" or "ignore."

LL cannot win on this one. They can make some improvements... but they can't win. There will always be people making this kind of complaint.

I'm not sure it would take that much explanation. I can condense it to 4 words each. Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Mainland - Lease Directly From Linden Lab
Estate - Sublease From Private Resident

Not bad, but it won't protect anyone from what the OP experienced because the implications of what that means are not remotely clear*. Don't know what will work to be honest because you have both stated that people won't read, and I agree. We get proof every time someone sets their land to anybody and a landbot nabs it.

Making them separate in search by default would be a small step in the right direction.

*How about:
Mainland - Lease Directly From Linden Lab. You have control over object management, terraforming, dividing land and land reselling options.
Estate -Sublease From Private Resident. They have ultimate control over object management, terraforming, dividing land and land reselling options.

I would have had two tabs rather than filters. "Linden Land". "Covenant Land"

Since they aren't at all the same- Why do they need to be set up to compete in the listing?

One affects your LL Bill directly, the other you pay to someone else. Thats enough of a reason to keep them separate.

Lol, yes, I'm sure LL will strangle the estate land sales market by eliminating estate sales from the default search. It won't happen.

And, "weekly rental rate"? From the perspective of my personal cash flow, purchasing from the Lindens was the same as purchasing from my estate owner. I paid a bulk purchase price up front, and I pay a monthly fixed rental cost analogous to tier. I can resell the land. The land is provided without any building on it. I have a land menu; the available options on that menu vary according to the estate owner's policy. In return for those limitations and the risk I accept by not buying direct from LL, I get two things: "zoning" (the covenant), and prettier land.

Before I rented/bought, I attended a landbuying class at NCI. The instructor referred to estates, but did not cover anything about them. Was unsure as to the relationship between the word "estate" and the word "island" - only really knew about mainland estates.

I think few people know the ins and outs of both mainland purchasing from the Lindens, and purchasing from an estate owner. It is certainly complicated by straight rental situations such as those you refer to, Adz - where there is no purchase price and you can't resell.

Even so, I think LL could fairly easily distinguish unambiguously between estate and mainland purchases in land searches. And I further think it would be quite possible for LL to have automation that would warn owners within an estate when the estate owner is in default, shortly in advance of the sim being taken down. I am puzzled as to why this latter, rather simple, function does not yet exist. It would certainly save LL support dollars.

All your post proves is that a highly intelligent person will be able to navigate the wacky thing we call land ownership in SL quite well. And that the more research you do before buying (like taking a class), the happier you will be in the long run.

But estate ownership is much more complicated than owning mainland. For example, how many people know there are so many variables with estates regarding reselling and upfront fees in addition to tier? You can resell your land, but many other estates don't allow that. Some estate land can be leased with no upfront fee. Other islands charge huge fees up front. It's just so damn confusing...