ripping

Don't know where to ask this question, so give it a go here.
Start renting a kioskplace, the owner was talking to me and cleared the space after i payed the rentbox. When i logged in today, i had this message:

Your tats are too similar to the ones already sold in this plaza. I am sorry but if you had asked before renting i could have told you that. I am returning your items. The owner will have to decide if you get rent back. It is in the terms of service which you are given.

So, i want my money back!( another person should reurn the items and the rent in a case like that)
What can i do?

Well, I've become convinced that the only rule here is what someone can get away with in any given situation. If you received the Terms of Service notecard *after* you rented and discovered only then that they say "you can't sell anything like anything else sold here," you might still be able to argue that there is no way you could have known there would be a problem before renting. If you got it before, though, then I'd say that you're screwed and should look to rent from a reasonable adult (I think there are a few of them here on SL, appearances to the contrary).

What a ridiculous policy. I don't know what mall that was (and don't say it out loud here), but remind me never to rent there, just on principle. Competition is what makes any market great. It's good for customers, and whether they understand it or not, it's good for merchants too.

By stifling competition, the management of that mall is harming everyone in ways they probably can't even imagine. They do it out of fear, out of weakness, not out of confidence, strength, or the slightest understanding of how business actually works.

In RL, there's a McDonald's right around the corner from my house. Know what's next door to it? That's right, a Burger King. Guess what's across the street. Wendy's, Arby's, and Taco Bell. Know what's next door to those? Walmart. And guess what's inside that Walmart. Another McDonald's. Hey, and guess what's a couple miles down the road. K-Mart, and another Walmart. Know what's almost right next door to those? A big honkin' mall, and guess what's in there? McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Arby's. And guess what's across the street from the mall? You got it. Another McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, & Arby's.

Why are there so many businesses all doing the same thing? Are they worried about losing business to eachother? Of course not, or they wouldn't be there. What they're doing is simple common sense marketing 101. They know that no one business can possibly service every single customer; there are just too many people. Does McDonald's worry when Burger King opens next door? Not in the slightest.

And is Burger King there to steal customers from McDonald's? Not at all. They're there because they know that success breeds success. If McDonald's is already doing well in that location, it stands to reason that Burger King will too. The more, the merrier.

What you're witnessing from whomever wrote that mall policy is what's known as "scarcity mentality". Some people (who never went to business school) see life as a kind of pie. There are only so many slices to go around, and if their's is bigger than the next guy, they feel good. If someone else appears to have a bigger slice, they feel bad. It's such a limited way of thinking.

People who are a bit more mature in their thinking develop what's known as the "abundance mentality". They realize that life is not finite. There's plenty for everyone. If you have the abundance mentality, and your neighbor gets a big slice, you feel happy for him. It doesn't diminish your slice in any way. One does not grow by taking away from the other. Both can grow independently or together (and often the "together's" have an easier time of it).

If I were you, Patty, I'd take some satisfaction in knowing that neither the owners of that mall nor their tenants will ever be as successful as they could be. You may have lost one month's rent, but they lose far more than that every day, and they don't even realize it. If you really want to feel good, save up to buy the land next door to that mall, open your own, run it the right way, do 10 times more business, and laugh all the way to the bank.

Last time I had a shop in a mall, I was booted after the mall was sold and they gave me under 3 minutes of warning (I happened to be online at the time.) Annoying, but I was planning to abandon that location anyway so it just pushed my plans forward a week. Mall owners can be a bit lacking in business management skills.

It's not uncommon for malls to have lease agreements that prohibit competitors for certain types of businesses. Obviously not for clothing and shoe stores, but a drug store or a specialty restaurant in a mall might. These restrictions raise anti-trust issues, so a search for "restrictive mall leases" will turn up a bunch of legal discussions.

In SL, it's just plain dumb to do that. A RL mall has a more or less captive audience, but SL doesn't. Besides, tattoos are a lot closer to clothing than pizza - people want to look at several stores for a tatoo before making a decision, so they're more likely to go someplace that has several.

So well put. What Kidd says is true, too.

coco

Chosen as usual your comments are right on the mark I am posting here to make it easier
to reference this post in the future.

As I am fairly sure I can remember my own name for future searches, lol.

What a great response Chosen and Patty your Tats must rock so take it as a compliment.