[Redacted] Landlords shut down access

[DaniRost]

[A landlord has] just shut down access to a bunch of users who had rental property with them. 

I don't why they did this, they are not answering the group chat and the one person I had known to talk to has not answered back. I put a ticket in with Lindens and they acknowledged that public access has been shut off but that is entirely up to their (the owners) discretion. 

I paid my rent up a year in advance. This really sucks. And this all started yesterday, December 25th. Merry Christmas. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Quartz Mole

[Sid Nagy]

I can feel your frustration Dani, but naming and shaming is not allowed by LL on their forums, so you better remove the name of the rental service.

There is a fair chance, that you will have to chalk this bad experience up as learning money.
LL will not step in to help and neither can we as forum members.

A tip for the future: Don't pay for weeks in advance, unless you are totally sure your hiring from a long term trustworthy rental or lease service.

[Polenth Yue]

57 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

A tip for the future: Don't pay for weeks in advance, unless you are totally sure your hiring from a long term trustworthy rental or lease service.

I wouldn't pay any rental company a whole year in advance though. Even otherwise good companies can have issues, as they're often run by one person and something bad could happen to them.

[DaniRost]

13 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

I wouldn't pay any rental company a whole year in advance though. Even otherwise good companies can have issues, as they're often run by one person and something bad could happen to them.

Well I had been with them over a year. Never any problems other than rolling reboots. And they always responded to questions, requests, comments...

I do agree with you, it just was something I didn't want to have to worry about. Stupid I guess...

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, DaniRost said:

I paid my rent up a year in advance.

Eeek - I'm sorry you did this.  That is a high price to pay for learning this SL lesson.   Unless you are paying LL directly, you have no way of knowing if someone is suddenly going to go belly up on you.

[animats]

So sue the landlord in California small claims court. There are ways to do this, which involve getting a court order forcing Linden Lab to disclose the user's identity. If the amount of money is large enough to bother with, talk to a lawyer from one of those "first phone consultation is free" services.

The usual experience is that the parties become very cooperative after they start receiving legal paperwork. I once sued someone in small claims court in Australia, remotely, and received their funds by wire transfer within hours.

[Claireschen Hesten]

2 hours ago, DaniRost said:

I paid my rent up a year in advance. This really sucks.

Ouch! Even though I've rented the same place almost all my SL I wouldn't pay a year in advance if it were possible. The rule I live by for renting anywhere in SL never have more paid up in advanced than you can afford to lose if things go títs up

[Jaylinbridges]

I have rented from various landlords for 11 years.  Never paid more than 1 week at a time.  Exception was LL mainland, where I trusted LL would not vanish in one month.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 hours ago, DaniRost said:

[A landlord has] just shut down access to a bunch of users who had rental property with them. 

I don't why they did this, they are not answering the group chat and the one person I had known to talk to has not answered back. I put a ticket in with Lindens and they acknowledged that public access has been shut off but that is entirely up to their (the owners) discretion. 

I paid my rent up a year in advance. This really sucks. And this all started yesterday, December 25th. Merry Christmas. 

I think we've established -- and I'm sure you didn't need us to tell you -- that it's unwise to pay rent too far in advance. I pay a month in advance for my apartment, which I rent from a very well-established and reputable sim builder / renter, but of course stuff can happen in RL, and I'm sure I'd be kicking myself if I lost most or all of that for unforeseen reasons. Because there are almost zero protections for consumers or renters in SL, we do have to take special care. Fortunately, the stakes aren't usually too high.

I do want to emphasize something that a number of people here have hinted at: that while you may have been "unwise" or even "foolish" to have paid so much in advance, this is still not your fault, anymore than someone who forgets to lock a window is "responsible" for having their house broken into. You made yourself more vulnerable to such an occurrence, but you are not, as they say, "the baddie" here, nor are you to "blame" for what happened. It's possible that your landlord may themselves be the victim of something that has caused this -- an illness, a death, or whatever. But in any case, what happened is not your fault, even if the magnitude of the consequences are the result of being too trusting. But then, I don't see being trusting as a "fault."

And for that reason, I'm very sorry: you have my sympathies.

 

[cunomar]

Must not name and shame so they can do it to someone else tomorrow , its not your place to spoil someone else's fun . Rolls eyes .

[Orwar]

   You can always try to file an AR concerning L$ fraud, but ultimately you are responsible for your money in SL, just like in RL. If you willingly hand over money to someone in good faith that they will provide you with virtual land for a given amount of time, that's your decision. In RL, you'll generally sign a legally binding contract if you rent a place - in SL we don't have contracts (no official forms, anyway). I think it's totally understandable that LL has such a laissez-faire attitude to resident-to-resident disputes, because, on average, the time and effort to it would cost them to investigate cases like these would probably cost them more than the amount of money people lost to begin with (perhaps not in this specific case, but, yeah, there'd be folks turning up demanding LL arbitration on how they accidentally tipped a stripper L$100 instead of L$10).

   If you did manage to drop a large enough wad of cash for it to be worthwhile, go with @animats' suggestion and get actual legal consultation - but don't be surprised if it turns out iffy to press charges against some guy in Belgium swiping a few hundred dollars off your gullibility. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, cunomar said:

Must not name and shame so they can do it to someone else tomorrow , its not your place to spoil someone else's fun . Rolls eyes .

Because whenever someone tells us "So and so did X, that big meanie!" we know they're always telling the truth*. Rolls eyes.

 

_________

*This is not intended to suggest that the OP in this particular thread isn't telling the truth.

[Fortyniner Beck]

As a small ex-landlord I would have been very uncomfortable taking a years rent.  My rental boxes would only allow people to rent for a maximum of 8 weeks at any one time and when I finally stopped renting out I made sure that tenants knew 4 weeks in advance and got a refund of any unused rental ( plus, as I’m not a good business man and it felt the right thing to do as some had been tenants for 2 or 3 years I paid them a bit extra for the inconvenience).

I sympathise with the OP though, they didn’t think that anything would go wrong, but without knowing the landlords side of things ( rl might have bitten them in the bum with illness, a death, or a sudden need to cut back on expenses or some other reason) it’s hard to “blame” them.

[ChinRey]

11 hours ago, DaniRost said:

I paid my rent up a year in advance. This really sucks. And this all started yesterday, December 25th. Merry Christmas. 

I wouldn't worry too much yet if I was you. It's sad you won't be able to enjoy you SL home during the holiday of course but it's not unusual that it takes a few days for a landowner to respond. SL is a hobby for most of them too, remember. Only a few of them have a significant income from it, and even fewer make enough they can hire staff to cover vacations and such.

There is no rational reason why a landlord would block access for paying customers of course, so I can only think of five explanations, listed in order of probability:

1. Somebody with more power in the group than they can safely handle has messed up the land settings.
2. The landowner blocked renters who hadn't paid and accidentally did so with some that had paid too.
3. The landowner hasn't paid the tier so LL blocked access to the land for everybody.
4. It's a technical glitch.
5. The landowner has finally cracked under the strain of maintaining an estate and gone slightly mad.

 

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Because whenever someone tells us "So and so did X, that big meanie!" we know they're always telling the truth*. Rolls eyes.

 

_________

*This is not intended to suggest that the OP in this particular thread isn't telling the truth.

Then the landlord should answer to it. The moment the Mods do this

The Lab has become involved in a resident to resident dispute by hiding the name of a potential bad faith actor that the rest of the community should be aware of. It is no different from leaving a review on an item in the MarketPlace. Why should Landlords be given this protection of anonymity?

[brodiac90]

I've had this happen too, also lost loads of no copy furniture and gachas etc so I feel for you. 

It's a hard lesson to learn, but never, never pay so far in advance. I only rent / pay tier directly to LL now. 

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

24 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Then the landlord should answer to it.

The landlord could be lying as well.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

The landlord could be lying as well.

So you're saying Landlords should be given this cover of anonymity by the Lab so they don't have to lie?

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

So you're saying Landlords should be given this cover of anonymity by the Lab so they don't have to lie?

I'm saying that we can't know what the truth is under the circumstances.

Admittedly, this doesn't bother everyone...

[Orwar]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

So you're saying Landlords should be given this cover of anonymity by the Lab so they don't have to lie?

   Of course they should. The 'cover of anonymity' you're referring to has nothing at all, whatsoever, to do with 'LL getting involved in a resident-to-resident dispute'; it's the forum moderators enforcing the community participation guidelines - the landlords are residents just like the rest of us. This isn't the marketplace, we don't leave bad reviews here.

[Arielle Popstar]

9 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Of course they should. The 'cover of anonymity' you're referring to has nothing at all, whatsoever, to do with 'LL getting involved in a resident-to-resident dispute'; it's the forum moderators enforcing the community participation guidelines - the landlords are residents just like the rest of us. This isn't the marketplace, we don't leave bad reviews here.

There is no place in the MarketPlace to leave reviews about Landlords. There is the land forum where the same no shaming policies apply but the net effect is it leaves the land rental businesses open to a lot of bad faith actors who can and do abuse and steal from their tenants, aided and abetted by LL policies. Maybe they need to be looked at and either amended or a institute some sort of place where reviews of the Landlords can be left like other products. 

[Arielle Popstar]

18 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

I'm saying that we can't know what the truth is under the circumstances.

Admittedly, this doesn't bother everyone...

That is no different from any other product where reviews can be left about the individual items being sold. Again, why should Landlords have this special consideration?

[Blaise Glendevon]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Then the landlord should answer to it. The moment the Mods do this

The Lab has become involved in a resident to resident dispute by hiding the name of a potential bad faith actor that the rest of the community should be aware of. It is no different from leaving a review on an item in the MarketPlace. Why should Landlords be given this protection of anonymity?

The forum is not a place for leaving reviews of goods or services. If it was an item on MP, that would be the proper place for leaving a review.

[Rowan Amore]

Not all merchants sell on the MP either.  You can't name those here either if you've been wronged so it's not just landlords.  

[Theresa Tennyson]

36 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

There is no place in the MarketPlace to leave reviews about Landlords.

Yes there is:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/products/search?search[category_id]=852

Edited December 27, 2022 by Theresa Tennyson