Have you ever paid for a land parcel 3 or 4 times ?

This morning I got an email from a total stranger on SL, claiming that he/she overpaid me 19 times for 57 land parcels. I was WTF and said I wasn't going to refund any money because I THOUGHT that was IMPOSSIBLE to pay for one land parcel 3 or 4 times. Scam was the thought I had right away.

I called LL customer service, and YES YOU CAN PAY FOR ONE LAND PARCEL 3 OR 4 TIMES. Apparently if you click like a crazy person, the server records all those clicks and just blindly takes your money for the SAME land parcel. The other scenario is if a server reboots, the information somehow gets corrupted.

I'm going to, very carefully, talk to this person about which 57 land parcels he/she bought and try to make sense out of all this. To me, this is WRONG that this can happen, but hey, I'm not in software or IT. /rant over

on edit: There were 76 "mouse clicks" to buy instead of the 57 that were needed.

Look at your transaction history.

Transaction history does not identify specific parcels. I've already looked. It only records money paid and the time and says it's for a land transaction.

Well, look at your transaction log. If they really did make a bunch of purchases rapid-fire, each payment will show on your log, as well as who from. Count the transactions. Should be easy enough to determine if the buyer is actually owed a refund. Lag could cause a transaction to appear to fail.

Though with that many purchases, I suspect it was someone's poorly-crafted land bot that did the purchasing, using that account that contacted you. I could see this happening for one parcel. It seems very odd to me that it "happened" for so many, unless they were using an automated method to scarf up under-priced land.

Understood. BUT, if he paid you 19 times there would be awhole PILE of Ls in your account, no? You could also know how many times he paid you x amount of Ls. Make sense?

If you pay for 57 land parcels, in a perfect world, there would be an identifier for each parcel that is being paid for (i.e., parcel XYZ in Sim Blah). RIGHT NOW that is not the case. So, you have to very tediously go through this and verify that only 57 parcels were bought and that indeed, the mouse was clicked 76 times. Right now I don't know if only 57 were bought. I see 76 transactions. I'm MORE than happy to refund money to an honest person. First, I want to verify the truth here.

What both Ceera and Susanne are saying is count the number of transactions before furthering the discussions If they bought exactly 57 parcels, then there should be 57 transactions. If there are more, then look further into it! (It looks like you did count... Gah.)

But I agree with Ceera. This sounds like a very poorly coded Landbot that got the short end of the stick, if they did overpay 19 times! A smart human would have said, "Hmm.. you know I'm getting screwed at least a good portion of the time. Maybe I should stop buying for a bit? Or slow down a bit?" after the couple of times. A poorly scripted bot will just keep on trucking.

*nods* It's going to be a long discussion thing.

I always do the right thing. However, I'm not stupid or naiive. I see 76 transactions. How do I know, on the evidence LL gives me, that ONLY 57 parcels were bought ? There is NO way of knowing this from the transaction history. Go buy a specific land parcel 5 times and then look at your history, and you will see exactly what I have to deal with here. Again, I am going to verify the truth and I always refund money when an honest mistake was made.

On edit: A representative land transaction is displayed below, with real SL names blotted out:

TN: 273264605
Date: 2007-04-17 09:51:24
Type: Land Sale
Destination: Land Buyer
L$4608 (under the Credit column)

If it was a bot, keep the money.

Holy Starax-cow! Maybe send them here?

If this was a bot-gone-bad, are the transactions timed very closely together?, I'd be tempted to keep some of the money as a charge for the hassle of digging thru the records.

download the XLS log from transaction page it tells you the date time price and how big the land was that was in the transaction

and i would tell the 'buyer' all sales r final, its not YOUR problem to fix. its LL 's

EXTRA ! EXTRA ! READ ALL ABOUT IT " Land bot goes nut's and bite's back at the barron "

LOL ..sorry could not resist .

Ok .. here's the thing .... i have a huge pot of L$ and i think ok ..im gonna buy 57 plots of land .. So " I "

1 , Go to the plot and click buy ... agree and transaction takes place .

2 , move to the next one and follow step 1

Wen i get to plot 2 and hit buy .... and it dont buy but takes my money ... I STOP !!.

As stated above ...this is .. WHITHOUT A DOUT a land bot buying the land .

Now .... this is the intresting part ..... you yourself selling " 57 PLOT'S " ? ..can i ask how big each plot was and the price of the plot's ?

To be honest if it was me and somone using underhanded tactics to swoop land up and got stung ...i would just laugh at them and move on ...And i'm a realy nice guy ; )

someone who buys 57 parcels at a time wouldnt be dumb enough to overpay 19 times if they were doing it manually.

Its obviously a bot.

They need to get a better bot.

This sounds like a case of simple Karma.



Steve, Id donate part of your unexpected windfall to people who have land stolen by bots.

The other person and I tracked down all 57 land parcels he/she had bought. It took about an hour to do this. We mutually agreed that I owed him/her L$87,552, which is roughly $325.47 USD at current exchange rates. I just got done paying him/her after having to buy Lindens. We agreed the matter is now settled. Some of us in the land business have morals and ethics and are good people.

Ok i musta been wrong.

Reminds me never under-estimate peoples capactity to do dumb stuff. LOL

Steve, shes very lucky your so honest. Perhaps shes also learned not to continue clicking when lag has delayed a purchase. A good lesson for everyone.

Anyway - good job working things out Steve.

did you confirm it was a /broken bot/ that did the purchases?

No but at this point I don't really care. I'm just going to do what I can to prevent another incident like this one.

So glad to hear that you two managed to work it out amicably!

Heh.

I recall last night, just finishing up a convo with someone. Setting up some vendors, and pondering some code for performance testing... I clicked on Land Search.. Something I do far far less of late. Just to get an idea where the market was.

First page was covered with identical 512^2 parcels, description the same, price the same, and at a 9.0 per ^2 meter price. I figured heck, I just got a nice payment for a wee bit of software... Might as well fill in some holes in the tier... After all, it makes sense to keep a tier topped of nice so you get more value for the dollars spent.

I teleported in to a madhouse. Those plots disappeared in like 2 minutes flat. I would click on one, start the process to buy, and it would return with a failure. So around the sim I went.

Then I read this posting... And yes, sure enough, that land was all posted by Steve Mahfouz, and the price being the same, I am quite sure it was all in the same simulator. So I went back and double checked my transaction history. Seems that in that flurry of activity, something like 120ish plots were sold, in a quick 2 or 3 minutes. I bought 14. Now, I feel my connection is quick, my machine is fast, and my ability to drive the interface high... So, thought that was a rather good ratio. I managed to pick up 10% of the plots offered for sale, moving as fast as I could. Without any error. No mischarged transactions.

But, to be able to do the same thing for 57 plots??? I know that I was stuck with many that said forsale, allowed me to hit the Buy button, but returned an error that stated unable to complete because of a pending transaction.

It was a mad house for those few minutes though. Sim filled with people quickly, and every parcel was sold in minutes. A few minutes more and a few of those were for sale again buy the flippers.

BTW... Any one out there got into that same rush, and ended up with 512^2 pieces all over the place... Let me know.. Perhaps we can work out something to consolidate a bit and join those parcels up nice by trading tween us. Would be nice to have contiguous space...

Well done, your right some people do have ethics and even if he did use a bot (fairly unethical in my book) that doesn't automatically mean that you can't be ethical in your dealings back.

Think of the amount of clicking it would take a human being to buy 57 lots 19 times: 57x19x3 = 3249 mouse clicks... And only then she realizes she is making a mistake?

You actually paid this gal for her malfunctioning landbot?????
Serves her right to loose an awful lot of money!
And it was not your mistake, was it???

But if you have to buy lindens to pay her "back", the money has not ended up in your account??? That makes things even worse! You actually paid several hunderd dollars??? I don't understand!!!

No I don't.

And I think someone with an amount of L$ in her account that enables her to make a mistake like this has not acquired that in a decent way in the first place. Now you have even paid her additional $$$.

The devil always shits on the largest heap...

No, he/she or the bot clicked Buy 76 times for 57 parcels. 19 times too much. I'll clean up the OP.

If someone is buying and selling land, the money from the sales could have easily been spent on more land.


Regarding the OP, nice to see you are honest with morals, I just hope it wasn't the bot that has been stealing land from under people and refusing to return it. If it was, I would have been tempted to donated the extra to those that have lost their land to it.

You didn't take a small fee for the trouble they caused? Hah, kidding, I'm a good person, really....