Is there anything one can do against "abusive" renting company?

[sandra0jessy]

Hello everyone,

I'll try to explain and be brief... I'd like to know if there is anything one can do, like a complaint, or if there is any other way to solve this issue, or LL simply does not care at all about such things.

Here's the issue: A friend of mine has a homestead since years. Recently the one who used to rent it to him has gave it up, or just dissappeared, and now it's owned  and rented directly by a company. This all happened without any notice. Problem is, not only he was not notified about this change, he stopped receiving notices about rent that was about to expire all together, until one day the land was for sale, with NO NOTICE AT ALL. He wasn't online but thankfully it got "saved" by a commune friend who visited and saw what's going on, 

The company got in touch with them both and apologized. Said they didnt even know that land was occupied, he was not listed as a customer. They said it will get fixed. But it's not. The land is still on another name (on the one's who saved it), he is not able to pay the rent that is due tomorrow and no one answers as no one from the company seems to be online. Also, no notice had been sent to anyone, yet again, about the rent being about to expire.

Any advice? Other then move.... That place has history being there since years... Plus, moving would be extremly difficult and time consuming since it's full. Is there anything that can be done?

Edited October 29, 2017 by sandra0jessy

[Claireschen Hesten]

LL does not get involved with resident to resident disputes. I do think it's bad that the old/new owners of the land didn't notify the tenant of what's going on with the land. unless the new land owner communicates with the current tenant all that can be done is to find another homestead to rent 

[Lisa006 Baxton]

It's not that Linden Lab doesn't care but this is a resident to resident situation and should be handled as such. If you want to be able to contact Linden Lab about your land situations I would recommend purchasing mainland where you pay Linden Lab directly and there is no middle man. Here's some more info regarding renting from another resident and the Lindens advice on it. So in short,  no there is nothing else you can do except move. 

 

[Chic Aeon]

While I have rented for almost a decade with very good results, renters have NO RIGHTS. 

So the simple answer is "NO"> 

Yes, it would have been good to be notified and yes it would be good if the new owners actually went and LOOKED at the land in question (hard really to understand whey they would not do this) but -- no rights.

THIS is why smart (and often old) folks pay their rent weekly (I pay on Thursdays LOL) and ALWAYS keep fairly current backups of their rezzed items (more important if you have a large parcel and a large store assuredly). 

Best to pick up and move on.

 

To move a whole sim (and I have done this a few times).

1. Pick up all no copy items and put them in a designated folder.
2. "Lasso" groups of objects that go together and take a copy of them as a coalesced object.
3. After getting the copy, delete the inworld item.
4. Continue until the sim seems to be empty.
5. Use area search to find small things you missed.
6. When you can't find ANYTHING else (for me usually three tiny things left) send that back to yourself. This isn't really helpful but I do it anyway LOL because usually the things you can't find with area search are extremely tiny and not worth anything.
7. Put all your coalesced items in a folder marked something like "Pickup *** sim for moving - coalesced files". 
8. Be sure not to pick up any Linden plants from the Library (not all that commonly used these days).
9. After you have a folder of all your back up items, make a copy of that folder so you have a backup of the backups.

 

You can of course do this a bit at a time if you HAVE TIME and a place to move things to. 

 

And that was fun. had never made a list here before LOL.

 

Edited October 29, 2017 by Chic Aeon

[sandra0jessy]

Thank you all very much for the time and advice! I'll check that article and I'll save those tips for moving a sim, just in case... In the meantime the situation finally looks better! Someone from the company responded and got in touch before the rent on the land was due... Pretty last minute, but all that matters is it got saved and the owner has his rights back

It's a shame nothing really can be done in such case... Means unless you buy directly from LL you can lose EVERYTHING you worked on for years pretty much anytime. This is not a shop or a business, it's a beautiful public sim, but what if it was and one used it to earn money? 

IMHO LL should have something to say about such things... For now this all looks like as long as they get their money on the land, the rest is unimportant, even if it goes down in their "backyard". I do realize that once you sell a property you can't be held responsible for what the next owner decides to do with it, but in this case don't think that should apply. The "property" does exist on their servers and is under their maintenance, just like anything else in our SL, so.... But that might be just me being too attached to this

 

 

Edited October 29, 2017 by sandra0jessy

[Lisa006 Baxton]

@sandra0jessy STORY TIME: I was running my rental company on a region that was owned by another resident. The resident actually passed away in RL and one day I logged in and could not get into the region and had a lot of messages from upset tenants. I lost out on over $L25K of prepaid rent. I purchased my own region from Linden Lab right away and never have had any problems since then. I did not seek out Linden Lab for an answer to my problem or get upset, I knew exactly what I had to do. I trusted an individual with my at the time only source of income and that was my mistake. Its a good feeling knowing I will not log in and all my prims have been returned or I have been locked out of a region, which LL was so kindly to unlock so I could retrieve my prims. I recommend to look into investing into your own region, especially since this region means that much to you and you do not want to go thru this kind of situation again. Just remember the residents you are paying rent to also have RL and could one day never log in again or could sell your region and the new owner decides they don't want your business anymore and return all your prims. 

Also, Logging into Second Life you agreed to Terms of Service. In section 1.4, LL does state that they will not interfere with any disputes between residents when its regarding content or services provided. I would recommend looking over that as well. https://www.lindenlab.com/tos 

Oh one last thing, there are some whole region rezzers on the marketplace. If most of the prims on the region are owned by the same resident I would suggest them do a back up of the current region, so if a relocation is needed it will be easy to rez a copy of the setup on a new region. 

Good Luck! 

Edited October 29, 2017 by Lisa006 Baxton

[Hintswen Guardian]

Doesn't sound like this company is abusive at all. Just seems like they didn't realize the land was rented and haven't fixed the problem yet. If it doesn't look like they are going to fix it in a timely fashion then move if that is an option.