Shaun Altman's Blog!

Beware of Ravenglass Rentals

Posted by Shaun Altman Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:22:00 GMT

I've just had the absolute worst home rental experience of my Second Life, thanks to Ravenglass Rentals and its operator, Prokofy Neva. What happened was so nasty that I felt a need to write up a quick blog post on the topic, so that hopefully my readers will not fall victim as I did. I hope this saves some people from being taken to the cleaners by Ravenglass Rentals.

I decided yesterday to rent an e-home in Second Life, so I could make use of many domestic objects which had been sitting idle in my inventory for some time. Since Ravenglass Rentals was known to me in the past for having nice lands and controlled views, I thought I would check out a few homes in the Ravenglass region. Once there, I found the home pictured above, and immediately fell in love with it. The price was very excessive, but since I liked it so much, I paid the rental box one week's rent.

In exchange for my one week's rent, I received roughly one minute of property usage. While I was in my inventory window looking for my living room set, the owner of Ravenglass Rentals, Prokofy Neva, teleported to my rented home, banned me from the land I had just rented from her and reset the rental box for a new "tenant" (read: sucker) to come along and give her ANOTHER week's rent. My instant messages requesting an explanation and/or refund were subsequently ignored.

This is a very popular land scam, but it is usually practiced on private islands rather than the mainland. What the scammers generally do is sell off a whole island, then boot all of the buyers and sell it off again (and again and again). Its a disgusting practice, and I was very sad to see that it had seemingly become so mainstream that even an old hat such as Prokofy Neva might feel comfortable ripping off unsuspecting Second Life residents in this manner. Indeed, I could hardly believe my eyes.

Now it is true that I am an occasional critic of Prokofy Neva. With this in mind, I thought there may be some chance that she was stealing from me more out of a misplaced sense of spite and revenge than general business practice. Wanting to confirm which was the case, and noting that the e-home was once again available for rent within one minute of the time I had rented it, I asked someone that I know and trust to rent the same e-home from Prokofy Neva.

Again, the rental box was paid one week's worth of what seems like very excessive rent for this property. A sofa was rezed and 20 or 30 minutes passed. Then once again, Prokofy Neva teleported out of the ether, banned the tenant from the property and reset the rental box so it would potentially be able to capture a THIRD week's rent from a THIRD unsuspecting victim.

As with before, there was no refund and no response to IMs requesting an explanation and/or refund. It seems that indeed, this scheme must be a general business practice for Prokofy Neva and Ravenglass Rentals. It is a shame to see a once prominent land lord apparently having to resort to scamming and slum lording tactics to keep her business vibrant and her bills paid during Second Life's great depression. We can only hope that Prokofy Neva's Ravenglass Rentals will return to more ethical business practices as the depression ends.

Either way, after this experience, I'd advise anyone and everyone against renting property from Prokofy Neva, under the Ravenglass Rentals name or any other name. We were victims twice in under an hour, paying two weeks rent and receiving under one hour of property usage in return. It is my sincere hope, as I write this post, that YOU will not be the next victim of land seizure by Prokofy Neva at Ravenglass Rentals.