When are the consumers of services and products going to get the same protections?

When are the consumers of services and products going to get the same protections that the seller get on second life? I am from the USA and do believe in the old addage ""buyer beware"" but when someone is so blatantly unethical I believe the powers that be need to setup some kind of recourse for the consumer to seek out and use with complete confidence that their position within the second life community will be enposed.

Apri 1 2007 (wow what an apporpriate day) I purchase what I thought was going to be my virtual home. I chose one of the many estates on second life because I didn't want live in a skybox or have a cassino next door.. I spoke to 3 sources to get references for the person I purchased from. The lot offered double prims so for a 3600m lot I received 1600 prims which was so cool.. It also offered a stall in a marketplace owned by the estate and given for the use of members of the community. the problem I personally had was that it was a little out of my price range so I spent a little time discussing the situation with the owner..

I explained I was a veteran just back from Iraq and the fact that I was a full time student and that my budget only allowed for me to spend 3000 a week on tier. she agreed to the price and gave me a month tier free because the asking price was a little high for me as well. all was set and I was so excited. She seemed very nice.. so I purchased the land..

The next few days I worked on a few things I wanted to place in the market and I began to research how to build.. but something happened on day 5 of my ownership I was sent a notice that informed me that the stall in the market would no longer be available because no one used them.. I was frustrated but what can you do? not a week went by when I noticed that marlet was in fact in a skybox in a parcel owned by the estate in my backyard. I panicked and contacted the owner and she moved the skybox so I wouldn't have to deal with the lag. I felt all and all this made up for the loss of the stall.

4 weeks go by (it was a few days after I paid my first months tier) and I get my second notice from the estate owner. Telling me that my tier was going up 600L a week because her husband was mad.. I panicked I explained my situation to her before I purchased the lot and now I had to figure out how to get that money together.

One more week goes by and I get my third notice which was frightening because it said she was changing the make up of the island. Claiming she was saving all the lot owners 1000s of dollars by having it tarraformed into a mountain retreat. I bought a small corner flat grassy lot I loved and now out of no where I was going to be placed ontop or at the side of a mountain??? I freaked to say the least. She offered to purchase back land at a fraction of what we purchased. I paid $29000L plus a months tier and she was offering back $26000l she sent out her notices regarding the offer April 7th at 10pm and by the morning of april 9th she rescinded the offer.. but the thing was I sent her a notecard requesting to discuss the situation with her in hopes to get at least the 29000L I spent. all of a sudden she was leaving town for the week and I was sending out e-mails trying to get the situation taken care of.

I recieved from her a nasty IM telling me she has a death in the family and real life took president over virtual issues. But here's the thing. Though I am sad for her lost that 90 dollars USD I forked over to purchase that land wasn't virtual it was real. It was a special amount I saved up to spend in second life to have fun and for some one to belittle it like that angered me.

I placed my land forsale for $38999 and chatted with neighbors who were just as upset as I was about the big mountain that was in our backyards. we discuss how poorly we were treated and mentioned how I felt the estate owner was untrustworthy and that was why i was leaving.

Seems the estate owner had a spybot and it logged what I said she in turn stole back my land paying $26000L for it I've lost my tier and am banned from the sim.. I placed the parcel for sale at $38999 she didn't have a right to pull what she did.. no where in the covenant did it say I wasn't allowed to bitch about poor treatment.

I just think we the consummer should be granted some kind of protection from this sort of stuff...

I'm sorry for what happened to you, although from the sound of it, you were lucky in that she gave you any money for your land. Nothing required her to do that, she can reposses when she feels like it, it's her sim.

It doesn't matter what the covenant says, it's not a legal contract. You have no rights as a tenant, just the goodwill of your landlord that he or she will keep up the agreement with no recourse if they don't.

Very unfortunate situation. However, the estate owner acted in good faith by giving everyone advance notice of what was going to happen. Remember that she pays a lot of money to Linden Labs every month to have that island and she has every right to do what she wants with it. She did not steal the land back from you - on an island, you don't really own it to begin with, you lease it from the island owner. You would never have been able to buy such a large amount of land with that prim allowance outright on the mainland. Sounds like she was being rather generous to you, in my opinion.

You paid $29,000 to lease that island plot and you knew there were going to be changes, so you turned around and tried to sell it to some other unsuspecting person for $38,999? I think people can draw their own conclusions from that.

Overall, it sounds like you made a bad choice to settle in there in the first place. I realize it's difficult to make the right choice, but a good first stop before committing to a private estate is right here in the forums. There is a wealth of personal experience to be shared. That being said, if she did in fact have a chat recorder out collecting public chatter, that is a big no-no, even for a private estate owner. It's forbidden by the Community Standards. If she isn't aware of this, she should be made aware.



Uh-huh.

As a matter of contract law in the United States, you are incorrect. The covenant provides the terms of the sale. When someone makes a purchase based on those terms, those terms create a contract through the doctrine of offer-and-acceptance.

Too bad LL doesn't respect that.

Think about if they did respond to disputes between citizens? You think things are slow now, they'd crawl to a stop with all the litigation LL would need to wade through.

When she said she raised the rent because "Her Husband got mad", I would have right then and there looked for another place to live.

The only real way around this is: when you buy land, don't pay L$. Insist on paying in US$ into a PayPal account.

That way it's an RL sale transaction with an RL person for RL money and you can bring the law, plus PayPal's dispute resolution system, to bear upon it.

Bear in mind this will probably freak out a lot of sellers, though..

I always say that this is one of the ways in which SL is a satire on RL - in SL it is much clearer that the law exists to protect property and assets, not to be "fair".

I think the awesome thing about bringing issues into public view is that we all get to learn from the sight of others.. Hind sight is indeed 20/20.

The second person to respond was so correct I should have probably abandoned the land when I realized how untrustworthy the estate owner was. It was not fair of me to try and push my headache off on another but to be honest I was moving through the panick of the situation.

I want to thank you all for the words of wisdom. Have a great day.

Jami,

FIRST let me thank you for your service. I honor and appreciate it. Second, to answer your question about when we will get the same protections, the answer is NEVER or at least not in the foreseeable future. There are some ethical land people out there. I dont want to leave any of them out but Sarah Nerd and Raymond Figtree come tomind. Rockwell Ginsberg to. Not sure how many of them are active right now, but contaact them and I am sure you will be happy with their ethics.

Best of luck to you and [salute].

Susanne

Actually, much to my unhappiness, I learned firsthand that PayPal will not have anything to do with protecting you from getting defrauded when purchasing virtual items. They absolutely do not provide any kind of protection for virtual purchases at all. PayPal will not protect you if you buy Lindens with it, land with it, pretty virtual office furniture with it - nada, nothing, zip. Even a game subscription itself, or a subscription to a web site - these are also not protected things.

This is why I would never pay such a price to live on a private island. I got a much better deal for my plot because my landlord is a friend, but even then - it's not something I would do as a normal course. There is a certain threshold that is just too much, especially when compared to other lots on other islands where the "purchase price" is merely your first month's tier, or some small amount under 2k.

He got nothing but special treatment from the landlord, then whined when she had to buckle down. Double prims, discounted tier, and a free month? Sounds like you got a pretty good deal. The Entitlement culture rears it's ugly head once again.

There will never be LL controlled land protections outside of the mainland.

It will be even worse when Open-Source servers exist.


Dont spend more on land then you can afford to lose

Its amazing Virtual property has retained its value for so long as it is.

thanks for the feedback all

There are three golden rules of SL, and one of them as previously stated is:

Don't ever pay more than you can afford to lose.

This is because there are no guarantees. As you learned, there are no gurantees that the land (or the landlord!) you have today will be the land or the landlord you have tomorrow. But in the much, much bigger picture that everyone forgets:

There is no gurantee that Second Life itself will be here tomorrow.

Read your Terms of Service. LL's obligation to you and to SL is minimal and almost entirely at their discretion. The buyer accepts all risks - that the object bought today won't be in inventory tomorrow, that the land rented today will be renegged tomorrow, that the yearly service paid for this afternoon will be ether in the morning.

It's a fundamental of SL. You accept this risk in your LL > you dealings, in your merchant > you dealings, and in your peer to peer dealings. So don't ever, ever, ever pay more than you can afford to lose.

eh maby, but it doesnt really matter much if the person is gonna constantly screw with the service, free month, for a rent hike, dubble prims to re-terraform after services are sold, husband hissyfits and even after making some form of a profit, they took more and then banned them

when your dealing with real money, esp in a measurable amount, you cant be playing around .. get your crap together if your gonna sell anything big


needless to say this is why i like the mainland, you dont have to deal with hissyfit bubbleheads who cant make up their minds, screwing with the land that your paying for (that is if you cant get your own estate)