Free groups that take your money

Yes, I do I think the reason that "Pay Liabilities" is checked by default is because it used to be a benefit for group members, back when Dwell gained more each week for a group than the Places ad ever cost. Over a year ago, when I was new, I used to earn more from group dwell payments than I got from my Basic tier. When they killed Dwell, I started losing money for belonging to some groups, and I dropped a few of those. I agree that unchecked would be a far better option for the "Everyone" role.

Aside from a Places ad, I think the other case where group liabilities can occur is in the case of group owned mainland parcels. I seem to recall that if the group owns more than 512 M2, and if the owner of the group doesn't have sufficent funds to pay tier, it could try to charge the tier that was owed as a liability to the group members, if the roles were set to allow paying liabilities? Something like that. I don't ever buy or sell mainland, so I never looked into that aspect much.

I did once get a payment out of the blue because group land got sold. Wasn't my group, and I was just a casual group member. The land owner hadn't realized the effect of those roles, and when they sold a group owned parcel... Poof! Most of the money vanishd to other group members. I returned my part, but I'll bet others didn't.

I also belonged to one group where the group owner had to franticly eject all the group members except her own alts, because she sold a very large parcel of group land and the options were checked for Pay Liabilities. Fortunately, she was able to do that before the payments got split, and was then able to reform the group once that was cleared up. Needless to say, she became much more aware of group roles after that! She had only intended to sell one parcel and buy a new one in another sim. Not to give most of the money to the group members!

i must laugh...30L is 10 cents... look in your chair your sitting in, prolly enuf under the cushion to buy a new dress

The owner of one group I belonged to accidentally sold deeded land - that was a bit of a panic, and I don't know if he got all of it back. Hopefully so, since is was a small and close-knit group. I imagine in larger, open membership groups it would be more of an issue.

I'm also one of those terrible, souless group owners who had their members paying for land listings for a good while before I realised it. And I didn't mention it on the group info page, because I had no idea! I was pretty certain I'd checked all the roles' abilities (paraniod that something might go wrong!) but apparently I didn't spot that one. It really ought to be set to off by default. I don't think there are many group owners who would wish to make their members share the burden of L$30+ a week for no good reason, so it really ought to be set in their favour, and those who do want to do it that way - let them have to tick the box!

I think for anyone opening a group, it's a good idea to go through the "everyone" role and uncheck everything except for "can receive notices" then work up from that.

There are some group member permissions that can hurt you with deeded objects. One owner of a group I was in lost some relatively expensive security gear because it was either accidentally taken or stolen by a group member.

So you start out with only "receive notices" then add things like "can set home on group land", "can rez objects" etc.

It is good that this is explained here. We were very surprised when my spouse, who has a free account turned out to have a negative balance WITHOUT EVER HAVING BOUGHT ANYTHING.

I also remember I got into problems when I wanted to sell some group land: I had to find a way to get the land back out of the group, otherwise the money would have been split up between the group members.

I had no idea there was a way to set things so that all benefits and liabilities are for the group owner. That would have prevented the negative balance for my spouse and the problem with selling the group land. There are so many settings in the group management window, I never took the time to try and understand them all, let alone fill in smart values in all the boxes...

Bear in mind that the person may not be doing this maliciously. Just as you didn't know about this, they may not either, and would correct it right away if you tell them. Thing is, this is the default setting and if you don't specifically change it, group liabilities are charged.

Frankly, it's pretty annoying that the default is to charge the entire group. The tier on group owned land is still charged to the original land purchaser, so should the parcel ads (at least until you change it to charge the entire group.)

Incidentally, how much are you talking about? It should only be a small amount, like a few lindens a week. If it is a large amount of lindens, then there's a bigger problem here.

EDIT: lol I should have read the thread before posting, this was all covered vociferously already.

Not true.

If the object ownership is set to a group, it still pays in/out to the owner only.
If the object deeded to a group, it can takes in money to the group, but this object can't pay out.
So, it is possible to set up a group of beggars with group donation boxes, but only the object owners can pay money out.
Basically, group owners are noobs who don't untick default group liabilities for Everyone role (unless it is a group dedicated to buy/sell land with property agent/landbot roles).

Simple explanation: a group can take money from anybody and distribute this money evenly among group members with Liabilty Option checked (by default) and a group can pays out money to Governor Linden (but not his slaves, as you are) by default.