I wish I could say it wasn’t, but getting ripped off is a real danger in Second Life. One minute you pay your rent and the next minute your landlord and your land disappears in the dark of night. And nobody cares! LL won’t help you. And it’s not like your next landlord will give you a freebie when he hears your sad sad story.
Lizard and I have heard plenty of these stories. And we would love to give freebies to the people telling them. But we have to pay tier too. If we gave a free pass on tier for every story of ripped off customer we had heard over the years, we would be out of business.
Just how common is it for landlords to abandon you and disappear along with your land and any Linden Dollars you have paid ahead?
It is so common that we have our word for it. We call it “pulling a runner”. It is so common that we have an article on our Segarra Estates website that recommends you never pay for land more than a week at a time to anyone, including us!
But pulling a runner is one thing we promise our customers will never happen in Segarra Estates.
How can we make that promise?
I could tell you that we are honorable people and that our motto is “we take care of our people” but anyone could tell you that. I could tell you that we have been in the Second Life Land business since 2007. That is a little more convincing right?
The truth is plenty of long time land owners have pulled runners. They put in long hours for many years, giving everything they have to their customers, whom they treat like best friends. And they run their business poorly. Then things start to get shaky, they lose customers to the competition a few too many times. They start to see their skinny profits (or big losses) as “not worth it” and they start to feel like somebody “owes them something” — they start to feel entitled. Once that happens, even the most honorable person can convince themselves they have a right to your hard earned Linden dollars. You end up paying the price for their poor business skills.
So how can you ever trust a landlord?
In Segarra Estates, we have one solid guiding principle–it even comes before our motto of “taking care of our people”–taking care of our business. We treat our customers like customers, even if they are our friends. And by doing so we are putting our customers first.
Wait! What? By putting our business before our customers, we are putting our customers first? How is that possible?
We collect our tier ON TIME, all the time. We kick out a tenant who has gone past due and–gasp–do not give him a three day grace (though he is welcome to get the land again once he gets his act together and logs in with a tier payment in hand). We never have the lowest price in SL. We never price our land so low that we don’t make a profit.
And I am telling you this is something you want in a landlord! Trust me!
You may think you want the lowest price. But do you really want what comes with it?
Break-even, or super-skinny profit, pricing is bad news for customers. What incentive does your landlord have to keep you in that land? Zero! If you rent land priced at a loss you are just asking for your money to be stolen. It is a guarantee that your landlord, on some level, feels someone “owes” him something. And you don’t want to be the one who buys a 1/4 sim and pays for a month in advance when he finally realizes it!
A three day grace is nice. No hassle, no rush. Pay when you can manage it. But what happens when you and *everyone* else take advantage of the three day grace? And what happens when half of those people don’t actually renew or pay for those three days?
Land sits unrentable and useless for three days, not making money but costing money. Does LL say “Hey, don’t worry about it, we will knock three days off your tier?” Nope.
What happens when you lose three days of tier on land? You lose money. What happens when you consistently lose money and have your prices set so low that you were barely making any to begin with? You go out of business, and you just might feel like taking your customers down with your sinking ship.
So, YES, when we collect your tier on time, make a profit, and maintain a professional business2customer relationship with you, we are putting you first! We are making sure we can stay in business for years and years to come, providing you with land you can count on!
There are never any guarantees but if you want land in SL, and you don’t want to deal directly with LL, you have to put your trust in someone. Trust the business who knows how to take care of themselves, as well as their customers.
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