How nice

Either the Linden people are incredibly insensitive or they are extremely mean spirited. They wait until a Friday night to snatch a large amout of lindens from my account and further dock me another 18k for something that apparently happend several months ago.... Knowing full well that no one can be reached about it until Monday. If I bought lindens from a hinkey dealer they could at LEAST say who it was in the e-mail so I could start some sort of action. Instead I can sit here this weekend and scowl at a large minus balance. While I'm here I'll add... I and many orthers would not have ever went looking for outside sources if LL didn't have the ridiculous limits on new accounts buying lindens here, from them. Between the twirling adfarms, the thoughtless treatment and total lack of support, this game is getting less and less fun.
-----

Dear Second Life Resident,

Your Second Life account was reviewed due to violations of our Terms of
Service (ToS). For your convenience we have included below the relevant
sections of the ToS. We took this action upon being informed that you
purchased Linden dollars that were fraudulently acquired by the seller.
This information came in the form of a fraud dispute initiated by a
credit card holder through their issuing bank. Upon conclusion of our
investigation we have reason to believe you were not aware you were
purchasing fraudulently obtained goods. We therefore will not be holding
your account. As the goods you received were fraudulently obtained, we
are unable to allow them to remain in your account. You are encouraged
to engage the fraud recovery channels available to you that are provided
by the site where you purchased these goods, and/or your payment service
provider.

If you have questions, please do not reply to this email. Go to
https://secure-web7.secondlife.com/community/support.php

Sincerely,

Linden Lab

Was it eBay? They really seem to be cracking down on eBay purchases lately.

I don't have any way to know what they are talking about until I call consierge Monday, I have bought lindens from a half dozen sources. I gotta say though it really sucks not being told *exactly* why your acct is being docked, in fact I'm pretty much aghast at the unprofessional way they are handling the situation.

They really had no choice at all but to take the action they did. You apparently purchased a supply of Linden dollars that were obtained previously with a stolen credit card. This is precisely the reason the buy and sell limits are in place on the Lindex. It is also why you should be extra cautious about where you purchase Linden dollars outside of the Lindex. It certainly is an inconvenience to have to spend a weekend with a negative balance, but how about the inconvenience to the original victim of credit card theft? Should you be allowed to keep and spend those Lindens at their expense?

What? At their expense? I paid for the lindens and have the credit card receipts to prove it... in fact I am paying for them twice as of this moment. My real bitch is that I have NO information on why I am being docked. How hard is it to include in the mail who the alleged buy was made from or someone to contact from the complaining CC co about it? They are messing with my money and it is pretty darned unprofessional not to give me any details at the same time. You don't know the facts regarding this issue anymore than I do, sheesh.

P.S. I still think their newbie limits encourage folks to go other places to buy lindens.

You were, unfortunately, in receipt of fraudulently obtained Linden dollars. This is why you're being "docked". Just like in the real world, if you are a party to a financial transaction which results in you taking possession of goods that had been previously obtained through fraudulent means, you are not legally the rightful owner of said goods, even if your purchase was made in good faith.

Your right to know the identity of the parties upstream from your transaction is likely limited to the identity of the person from whom you purchased the Linden dollars. Your own credit card transactions will lead you down that path of discovery. That is the person messing with your money, not Linden Lab. You have various remedies available to you within the legal system to recover your money. Linden Lab's primary obligation is to the victim of the original credit card theft.

And again, this entire mess you're in is PRECISELY the reason for the limits in place on the Lindex. If you're going to work around those limits by purchasing from a 3rd party exchange, the responsibility for due diligence is entirely your own.

*nods*

you bought stolen goods. the police are taking the goods back, returning said goods to the rightful owner, and probably going to penalize you as well. no jail time tho, so that's lucky. the end.

hopefully next time you'll research before spending your hard earned dollars.

LOL, you are either truly cluless or you're trying to get my goat. Either way, hahaha! Stolen goods from Who? When? Where? Good grannie, duh... ok, I'll just take yer word fer it, shucks.

if the rl police confiscated funds from your bank account you would obviously be informed of the who/why/what. LLs practice is closer to that of the gestapo- clearing your bank account and posting you a nonpersonal, uniformative, canned statement.

shez I feel for you, it makes no sense why they would not tell you which purchase this pertains to.

I mean heck you need to know which trail to follow. If you had just one purchase then you would know, but you mentioned that you had several.

It is not very smart nor professional of them to not disclose more info to you. Looks bad for them, makes it hell for you.

As a person who used to sell lindens to ppl in need, I gave up due to me being screwed. I was doing it to try to help ppl who either were over their limit or did not have payment info on file, figured be a nice person and do what I can.

I would buy direct from lindex and resell to the person buying from me, with a very small markup to cover paypal fees and the lindex fees

well I got screwed via paypal, a few ppl did a claim that the creditcard used was non authorized AFTER I sent the lindens of course. I know a few others this happened to as well. After being burned for a total of around 1K US, I just stopped.

now if a friend needs them I will do it, other than that, it is a big big chance.

I recommend ppl to use slexchange, they are legit and the rates are reasonable.

IF someone did not mind waiting and wanted to send me a money order for lindens I would do that, they could send money order and when I got it I would then buy and transfer the lindens to them.

(that would only be useful for someone who has no creditcard or paypal, so therefor other options are pretty much non existant)

It is a common practice of the IRS to confiscate funds from bank accounts and not inform the party involved. Well not inform them till the victim has bounced several checks and calls the IRS. Nonpersonal, uniformative, canned statements?............wow you must have never had any dealing with a government agency or official.

just curious, why would you need such a huge amount of linden dollars anyway?

Ummmm....you knowingly used unreliable outside sources. Also knowing that practice is agsinst the ToS.

Reguardless of the trading limits (which are there for a purpose), you are at fault.

LL is being nice. They didn't sieze your account, which they would be well within their rights to do so. Instead, they left you're account open and only removed that which was obtained ~illegaly~. Paid for or not, the purchase was illegal.

LL had no way of knowing that you purchsed L$ from multiple sources in this mannor. (Though now that you admitted such on a public forum of their media, I'd say you should expect them to delve deeper into your account's past records.) I would expect that they assumed you would contact them for such information if you required it, though it was a resonable assumption on their part that you would know where you obtained the illegal L$ from. It is an assumption that you did so once, by mistake, not knowingly doing so multiple times.

No pity here.
~Jessy

No kidding. Well said. I'm not going to let my knee jerk and over react because there are so many pluses in SL, but I gotta admit, the bloom is off the rose now. Oh and not only is the canned statement not informative, they add insult to injury by pointing you to some of the most useless support resources I've ever seen.

I needed more babies for the barbeque.

are you sure? not in america anymore, better read that patriot act...

I'm really sorry this happened to you. I can understand it's frustrating. But... I have read nearly the entire website over the time I've been here, and everywhere all you see is "Do not buy Lindens except from these places" To look at the flip side, imagine you're an LL employee, you send out dozens of those emails a day, trying to keep a hold on CC fraud and etc. I'm sure they don't have enough time or manpower to explain in great detail the where's why's and what's to everyone who purchased Lindens from outside sources that happened to be fraudulent.

I'm just as frustrated as you are, I cannot buy Lindens because of the bug or whatever. But I do know better NOT to go to a non sanctioned outside source such as Ebay.

Consider yourself lucky they did that amount of investigation. I've read posts where people were banned for buying unknowingly from a fraudulent source.

Thanks for sharing that totally useless bit of self righteousness. A detailed account of why my acct is docked isn't an unreasonable request. But, you could save the thread by sharing where you got the list of 'sanctioned' sources. TIA

I think the frustration here is that 1)they do these things on Friday leaving someone frustrated all weekend because they cant be contacted 2) they do these things without giving at least some better in depth explination instead of a canned response. No matter *what* the issue, it is so frustrating to sit an entire weekend until you can contact them and make good on the situation. I've come out of a weekend with bald patches from waiting myself

Does calling them the gestapo invoke Godwin's Law?

Here's a q... did you know that the TOS says that you aren't allowed to buy from outside sources or at least recommends that you don't?

I'm not saying that ignorance is an excuse, but it does allow for a little righteous indignation. If you DID know that you're not supposed to buy from these places... well...

Here's a detailed account of why your account was docked:

http://secondlife.com/developers/api/risk.php

It is your responsibility to ensure that sellers you do business with are using the Risk API according to Linden Lab's Terms of Use, and that you're dealing with a reputable seller, such as:

anshechung.com
tradelindens.com
slexchange.com

Nobody's being self-righteous here. You made an error in judgement, and then came to Resident Answers to let us all know that you're not well with the consequences of that judgement.

You have both your Second Life transaction history and your credit card transaction history. Follow the trail, and at the same time, open up a support ticket, and ask them if they can give you the specific transaction number that flagged your account for review. Once you figure out where you purchased the dirty Linden dollars, you need to use the dispute settlement process on that site. Understand that the seller might possibly be under criminal investigation, and Linden Lab aren't likely to release his/her identity to you in any case, unless you pursue legal remedy in court, and it becomes necessary to subpoena the information.

i have plainly laid out the ample clues here for your further analysis, and i surely don't need your goat. Zaphod has kindly laid out a great plan of action. good luck on Monday finding out from who, when and where.

Silly question...you say you have purchased lindens from afew different sources. Were they all the same amount? If this amount is different (like, say, from an ebay auction) you can always go by that if you are looking to file a dispute with ebay or paypal etc. LL is likely noooot to tell you who it was from regardless of if you can get a human on the phone. I know its also a pain to not be able to go out and get the best price for lindens that you can, but better to be safe than sorry next time.

***SAVES THE THREAD!!***

'Sanctioned' sources :: LINDEN LAB

~Jessy