Watch your virtual ass-ets
Published Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Imagine for a moment that you operated a store in a mall. You sell handmade crafts. You make these crafts in a workshop in the back of the store. You sell barely enough to pay your rent but you enjoy it and you have plans to sell more items in the future. You’ve been operating for nearly two years in this mall without incident. Now imagine that you go into your store one morning and it’s padlocked shut. It must be a terrible mistake you think. You call the mall’s rental office to learn that for some reason last month’s rent check had bounced. You complain that you never received a notice. They claim that a notice was left with one of your employees, but apparently you didn’t get it. They agree, as a courtesy, to allow you to open your store once again. But here is the catch: they have already disposed of all property in the store and workshop. Not only are all your crafts gone, but also all of the equipment you have acquired, at great expense, to make your crafts. Everything that you acquired over the last two years of operation is gone, never to return. The value of this equipment far exceeds the amount of rent on which you were late.
Now let’s take this to a next level. Imagine that the mall management also manages the credit union in which you deposit your income. Furthermore, other banks are forbidden from operating in the mall, so you are forced to use mall management’s credit union. Now, imagine that when they shut down your store and seized your equipment they also took all the money in your account. They took a year’s worth of income — twenty times the amount you owed in rent. It’s all gone, and they refuse to return your money.
Can you imagine this scenario? It’s absurd, right? Well it happened to me!
Mid January I discovered that my SecondLife (SL) account was disabled. For those that don’t know: second Life an Internet-based virtual world well known for it’s legal trading of the in-world currency. I instantly called SL support to discover that sometime around Christmas 2007 my SecondLife account was disabled after becoming delinquent by $5.26 on a $9.95 monthly charge. I didn’t realize this because, like many others, I was busy with Christmas, New Years, and such. SecondLife claims I was sent a billing notice, but no such notice can be found in my e-mail even though I keep all of my e-mails, including spam going back 60 days. Ok, fine — just re-establish your account and move on, right?
They re-established my account and removed the $5.26 debt “as a courtesy.” I soon found that all of my assets were gone. Everything that I had purchased in SL was gone. Everything that I had built in SL was gone. Yes, these were virtual assets, but they were purchased with virtual money that is supposedly backed by the US dollar. My SecondLife is over! My virtual life was snuffed out over a $5.26 debt. Even worse my SecondLife business was destroyed.
Some background: Over a year ago I had developed a script in SecondLife that allowed others to add access control to objects in SL (imagine a door sentry for SecondLife objects). It was actually a very complex piece of code that I spent many hours on. I started selling this code in SecondLife and made enough money to offset the cost of my SL subscription ($9.95 per month). And, for those that don’t know, this is not only legal in SL but encouraged as a reason to join. They even claim that users retain copyright of all content they create in SL. I was operating a legitimate business in SL. In 2006 I earned enough money to prepay my SL account for almost all of 2007. This is what allowed my account to be delinquent by $5.26. I didn’t notice that the money had run out, nor did I notice that my credit card on file had expired. I also never received an overdue notice; perhaps due to an error on the part of SecondLife billing system, or due to an e-mail server error.
I soon realized that in addition to missing my assets, all of my virtual money was gone also. I had 46,493 virtual dollars in my account when it was shut down (this value was given to me by the SL billing department). This was all of my 2007 income, equivalent to approximately $180 real world dollars. This money was intended to offset the $9.95 SL subscription fees. SL has refused to return my money. They have seized $180 in cash and an unknown value in personal property over a $5.26 overdue bill. Virtual or not, this is highway robbery. I think I could have gotten a better deal with the mafia.
It’s been two weeks since my account was “restored”. I was able to recover a copy of my locking script from a vendor in world but everything I was working on or purchased is gone. SecondLife has refused to return any portion of the virtual money that was lost. After repeated request for an explanation this is the best I get from support:
When an account is purged most, if not all of the inventory and lindens in it are lost. Unfortunately there is nothign [sic] we cna [sic] do to recover the lost inventory.
I have lost all confidence in SL. I encourage others to tread cautiously when it comes to virtual assets.
February 13th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Hi Quibius
Thank you very much for sharing this incredulous event with us although I’m amazed you can sound so calm and rational about it.
There is clearly something fundamentally wrong with the management of SL when they can allow this to happen. All they need is a backup system for the inventory and some cooling off period to allow something like this to be rectified. As for L$ vanishing, they have no excuse for this and sound like callous money grabbers.
On their website main page they show a happy couple and imply that they really care about people but deleting a person’s inventory doesn’t match up to this. The management of SL may well be very nice people but actions count and injustices should be addressed.
Its clear that SL has some problems as I’ve transferred objects to friends before and seen them vanish into the ether but never imagined that a whole inventory could be so easily wiped out.
Its scary for everyone, not just businesses.
Mal
February 13th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Thank you for the comments Mal. I was very upset at first. I am calm at this point because it has been a couple of weeks. I’ve been trying this whole time to get this issue escalated in the support system but it appears that they are now simply ignoring me. I now have no intentions of ever being active in SL again. At this point I just want to raise the issue and hopefully SL will improve their system.
Like you said they should have a better backup systems. A couple years ago I played EVE online breifly. I still get e-mails form them saying that if I reactivate my account all my assets will be returned. I can’t believe SL purges all inventory after only 1 month?
February 15th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
That’s another reason many people cancel their premium account, use a basic account, and avoid the mainland entirely. The only off-set is a tad touchier customer service issues, but it’s not like they’ve been very good about it with paid customers anyway.
Get a basic account, get your Lindens from SLex (or even on the exchange, I’m on basic, and I still use the regular exchange), and then base all your land/dealings on private sims.
It may cost SLIGHTLY more (often times, not even), but the performance is better, the zoning is better, and if you get to know the person you’re renting/buying from, you have very very few hassles. I LOVE my land on the estates. I rarely step foot on the mainland anymore, even to stop.
And I won’t lose my inventory due to a missed “premium account” payment.
February 16th, 2008 at 8:46 am
I know the feeling had the same thing happen to me lost it all and in trying to get it back I got threatened with a ban. I wont ever put and cash into Sl ever again for any reason and I’m taking my company out of Sl an moving to OpenLife.com its one of the opengrids.
I really dont think the Sl top brass really care about its customers.. they just want them to shut up and pay ;-(
February 16th, 2008 at 9:04 am
OpenLife.com doesn’t appear to be a real site.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I wonder if the Linden support staff is just so overwhelmed with support issues that they can’t cope, and so beaten and battered by customer complaints that they really couldn’t care a rat’s ass about customer service anymore.
I get the occasional good customer service, but for the most part, most of them seem like they’re at the end of the rope and really should be in other jobs, cause their heart just ain’t in this one anymore.
Catch is, wouldn’t a fresh crew just get the same way in a few months?
April 5th, 2008 at 11:41 am
What would happen if? well in my state if you sued them, they would be penalized for what is called a lockout. Then they would have to reimburse 2x the cost of the missing assets because they are responsible for storing your goods until disposal at a time set by law. They would have to give me back my same location and any action they took against me, if found to be retaliatory, would accrue fines. They would also have to pay court costs and a prevailing party penalty.
soooo, no Linden does not give a shit about you because they dont have to. Thats how America works. Until you sue them they wont do shit. And yes until there is competition, they will persist in their bloodsucking behavior and shoddy workmanship, because it maximizes profit with the least effort.
By the way this mentality is why our economy is going down the toilet.
April 5th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Chaz,
Every time I spoke with the Linden staff I had extreme difficulty with their accent. They must outsource their support. I don’t think outsourcing is always bad but it is usually a sign of declining customer support.
Sepharad,
I agree that suing may be the only way for them to take notice. If I had more time on my hands I would do that just to get then to change their practices. The situation is completely uncalled for. I get e-mails very often from EVE online asking me to reactivate my 2 year old account and reclaim all my asset.. why can’t SL keep my assets for more than 30 days?
April 7th, 2008 at 10:26 am
OMG I just read your post on the forums and came over here. The same thing happened to me, roughly about the same time as you (early February) — except that I’m not a paying member. I had a basic account and one day I couldn’t log in, when I went to secondlife.com it said “Account pending cancellation.” I filed a support ticket and they restored my account, but my entire inventory, friends list & groups list was gone. I filed another support ticket, because my av was still wearing clothes & skin (textures, not prims) that were not in the inventory. Because she was wearing stuff that supposedly didn’t exist, they decided to investigate even though I had only a basic account. But they couldn’t restore the inventory, and when I asked them why my account had suddenly gone poof they said the cancellation hadn’t been initiated on their end. Well, if it was not initiated by them, and not by me, then by who??? The ghost in the machine??
I’m still in SL — I created a new account and started over — but I live every day knowing that things could go poof just like that, and I don’t trust it at all (especially since the past few weeks have been horrid — lots of failed transactions, non-delivery of purchased goods, unable to TP, etc.). I go there for fun and because I have friends there, but I don’t put my whole heart in it.