Rick Logan’s profile simply reads “Gone and closed”. However vendors at Dusty’s rock and country lounge see it more as “Gone and ran off with the money”.
When my items were returned to me today I merely assumed I’d missed a notice about rental, however not so it turns out. You can’t TP to Dusty’s anymore, the location is not available. I’m one of the lucky ones. Bells Beck of BB designed for you used to run her own mall, but all that came to an end when the land owner asked her to remove the mall as they were considering selling the land. Bells refunded everyone, apologised profusely and told me she’ll only open a mall of her own if she owns the land herself.
So how does someone like Bells react when she appears to have lost around six weeks worth of rental money? Well she wasn’t holding back on her opinion of Rick Logan:
“The b*stards f***ing left with everyones money. The man…. Rick Logan has gone, look at his profile. No notice…..no warning…..no refund…… f***er, so out of order and it wasnt cheap to rent there either!”
I so love Bells!
One of the most unfortunate people caught up in this is Sally Soleil, the former owner of the UK themed Little Britain night club, she’d recently branched out into making female clothes and skins. “erm well I rented with them last night.. paid 1600…. got group add to set up my shop today.. and all was gone, I had not placed my items yet” complained the unfortunate Sally.
Kirsten Corleone of Sexy in pink was both surprised and annoyed “I had a store there for months, at least 4 months, and that is a TERRIBLE way to do business, he owes me two weeks of a refund, 800 Lindens” she told me.
Moonlightcsp Klata, owner of Moonlight animations was more philosophical about the whole situation. Moonlightcsp has over 150 stores in Second Life and with more experience wasn’t as annoyed or surprised as others.
“Those are only small shops all my bigger stores are with respectable people, thank godness” (*cough* *shameless plug* rents land from me* *end of shameless plug*) “so he just disapeared I get those often enough”. observed Moonlightcsp. “I have over 150 stores this happens to me at least a few times a month thats why I never pay more than 2 weeks, malls are geting bad in sl too many scams” continued Moonlightcsp.
However Moonlightcsp’s philosophical attitude also highlights a growing concern that scams are getting so common in SL that people just sigh and shrug their shoulders. The helplessness of it all washes over residents, having this happen so often is not a good advert for SL.
Group owner Chloe Carlos wasn’t replying to IM’s, quite possibly as much a victim as the rest of the people she was almost certainly inundated with queries and questions. However right now she’s not offering any hope for the disaffected vendors and probably isn’t in a position to do so.
The problem when those who can answer questions, won’t answer questions is that speculation mounts. Rick Logan’s profile message certainly suggests he won’t be back anytime soon, but why do business owners not act business like when times are hard. Why don’t they seek investment, backing and new direction?
The person who needs to answer questions is Rick Logan, but he’s gone and closed. When Sally Soleil rented last night, someone knew that her rental wasn’t going to be honoured. In cirumstances like that, whereas it’s fair to say that the sum of money isn’t huge, it’s also fair to say that if this was a final calculated ploy to squeeze resources from an innocent resident, then the resident responsible should never be allowed to trade in SL again.
People run out of money, people run into hard times but there’s a blaise attitude here to it all that says, it’s ok, so you lost a few quid, never mind. However that attitude just breeds the contempt that some people have for others. Of course RL business will also quite happily trade until the last minute when they know they’re going to go under, but RL business will also seek alternatives before throwing in the towel, and that’s a step that seems to be missing in SL.
Of course this may all be a big misunderstanding and Rick’s profile message is a different kind of message, maybe he ran into billing trouble and is trying to resolve it and has temporarily had to close down, anyone think that’s likely?