The Adventure Stumbles
Posted 10-26-2008 at 05:25 PM by Rema Quandry
This week I had a really bad situation the really soured me on SL. Let me describe what happened in hopes that no one else has this happen to them.
My present mainland landholding is about 29K sq m. I decided that a 1536 sq. m. didn't fit into the overall vision of what I was building toward. So I decided to break up this land into thre 512 m parcels and sell them.
I started by splitting the land. I had no problem setting up my first and second 512 plots for sale. However, within milliseconds of setting up the third one, something weird happened. It suddenly changed ownership.
In a panic, newbee that I am, I filed a support ticket, thinking something was wrong with LL's land server.
Then I moved back into the 4096 sq m portion of land that these 3 parcels were taken from. My MystiTool HUD informed me that the parcel was now damage enabled. Again, I panicked. None of my land is damage enabled.
So I brought up the land information and, much to my dismay, discovered that I was no longer the owner of the larger parcel either. I really panicked at this point. My property had been stolen right from under me, and they now were asking for L$95,000+ for the 4605 sq. m. they'd grabbed. At that price, I thought, at least they wouldn't be selling it soon.
Immediately, I submitted a second support ticket, then--bothered as I was--I hit live chat support.
When support investigated the situation, the system seemed to suggest that I'd not separated the smaller portion from the larger portion (I remember it saying otherwise) . . . and that the land was actually purchased at the price I really wanted on just the 512 parcel.
LL support suggested I contact the land property group that had snatched it up and try to negotiate the situation.
I did . . . and was ignored.
Within hours of dropping them a notecard, a second land property group somehow had possession of the property and was asking L$11,520 for it . . . a significant reduction in asking price from the original L$95,000+ the other group had been asking.
I smelled a rat but could do nothing about it. I suspect that the first firm offloaded the property to some member of their group who set up the second group to cover situations like this. Now the first group could claim "we're sorry, but the matter is out of our hands" and not have to deal with me or LL.
I immmediately snatched back the parcel at the reduced price to save my overall concept (which required the 4096 sq.m. parcel to be part of a larger contiguous area making up the overall set of builds). 24 hours later or so, the first group's payment finally showed up into my account, so the cost of my apparent mistake at land splitting was as minimal as it was going to get.
After thinking about this for a while, I've come to realize that I may have been victimized by a landbot. I never saw anyone and I was never contacted by anyone for the "purchase". The land transfer happened in mere seconds. If I'd had a few more minutes, I would certainly have discovered the mistake I'd made (I monitor my land rather regularly, since I'm building all the time and keeping track of objects). I never had that chance.
I talked this over with LL support; but, and I can see why, they couldn't give me much in the way of satisfaction. At least they know who the groups were and what happened.
So I decided to go further. I contacted Jack Linden. I've sent him a notecard with proposal for instituting a procedure to prevent this sort of thing from happening to anyone else. My suggestions were:
--If the avatar has never made a land sale before, that no purchase of the land put up for sale would be allowed to occur for 48 hours. This gives the newbee time to talk to LL tech support and get a response.
--If the avatar has made land sales before, that no purchase of the land be allowed to occur for 1 hour. That gives the experience SL'er time to detect any error in setting up the sale.
No more swooping land bots if such a set of restrictions were instuted.
I've not received a reply back yet.
What do others think? Is this something I ought to go to JIRA with?
On other fronts, I've completed my seventh building so far . . . and am I learning. I went back and significantly improved my first build based on all the experience I'd been getting.
I am enjoying the creative aspects of SL. But, geez, it's hard not to be sour about SL given that my avatar's been attacked so many times and my land's been stolen out from under me. Where are the good people? Just on the forums?
--- Rema
My present mainland landholding is about 29K sq m. I decided that a 1536 sq. m. didn't fit into the overall vision of what I was building toward. So I decided to break up this land into thre 512 m parcels and sell them.
I started by splitting the land. I had no problem setting up my first and second 512 plots for sale. However, within milliseconds of setting up the third one, something weird happened. It suddenly changed ownership.
In a panic, newbee that I am, I filed a support ticket, thinking something was wrong with LL's land server.
Then I moved back into the 4096 sq m portion of land that these 3 parcels were taken from. My MystiTool HUD informed me that the parcel was now damage enabled. Again, I panicked. None of my land is damage enabled.
So I brought up the land information and, much to my dismay, discovered that I was no longer the owner of the larger parcel either. I really panicked at this point. My property had been stolen right from under me, and they now were asking for L$95,000+ for the 4605 sq. m. they'd grabbed. At that price, I thought, at least they wouldn't be selling it soon.
Immediately, I submitted a second support ticket, then--bothered as I was--I hit live chat support.
When support investigated the situation, the system seemed to suggest that I'd not separated the smaller portion from the larger portion (I remember it saying otherwise) . . . and that the land was actually purchased at the price I really wanted on just the 512 parcel.
LL support suggested I contact the land property group that had snatched it up and try to negotiate the situation.
I did . . . and was ignored.
Within hours of dropping them a notecard, a second land property group somehow had possession of the property and was asking L$11,520 for it . . . a significant reduction in asking price from the original L$95,000+ the other group had been asking.
I smelled a rat but could do nothing about it. I suspect that the first firm offloaded the property to some member of their group who set up the second group to cover situations like this. Now the first group could claim "we're sorry, but the matter is out of our hands" and not have to deal with me or LL.
I immmediately snatched back the parcel at the reduced price to save my overall concept (which required the 4096 sq.m. parcel to be part of a larger contiguous area making up the overall set of builds). 24 hours later or so, the first group's payment finally showed up into my account, so the cost of my apparent mistake at land splitting was as minimal as it was going to get.
After thinking about this for a while, I've come to realize that I may have been victimized by a landbot. I never saw anyone and I was never contacted by anyone for the "purchase". The land transfer happened in mere seconds. If I'd had a few more minutes, I would certainly have discovered the mistake I'd made (I monitor my land rather regularly, since I'm building all the time and keeping track of objects). I never had that chance.
I talked this over with LL support; but, and I can see why, they couldn't give me much in the way of satisfaction. At least they know who the groups were and what happened.
So I decided to go further. I contacted Jack Linden. I've sent him a notecard with proposal for instituting a procedure to prevent this sort of thing from happening to anyone else. My suggestions were:
--If the avatar has never made a land sale before, that no purchase of the land put up for sale would be allowed to occur for 48 hours. This gives the newbee time to talk to LL tech support and get a response.
--If the avatar has made land sales before, that no purchase of the land be allowed to occur for 1 hour. That gives the experience SL'er time to detect any error in setting up the sale.
No more swooping land bots if such a set of restrictions were instuted.
I've not received a reply back yet.
What do others think? Is this something I ought to go to JIRA with?
On other fronts, I've completed my seventh building so far . . . and am I learning. I went back and significantly improved my first build based on all the experience I'd been getting.
I am enjoying the creative aspects of SL. But, geez, it's hard not to be sour about SL given that my avatar's been attacked so many times and my land's been stolen out from under me. Where are the good people? Just on the forums?
--- Rema
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