Beware of Ravenglass Rentals

Shaun Altman — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:22:00 -0700

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.

Good Lord!

Shaun Altman — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:38:00 -0700

Let me warn you up front: this is a bit of a rant. It isn't even a Second Life related rant. I hope that it is okay with all of you if I digress a little from time to time. :)

I snapped this picture in a grocery store parking lot a couple of hours ago. This is an all-too-common sight in parking lots across the country. There are cart return queues not even a TEN SECOND WALK from the parking spots in this photo, but these five people are apparently too important to bother using them.

I bet you're asking by now, "Is this seriously a blog post about SHOPPING CARTS?". Well, yes and no. :) More importantly, I'd like to drill down into the underlying social issue that is represented by the cart-litter in this photo: an attitude of entitlement.

What causes this attitude of entitlement amongst people? I would have liked to park in the spaces at the foreground of this photo. My inability to do so caused me to have to waste at least one minute of my life today; a minute that I can NEVER reclaim!

I'd be willing to wager that at least twenty other people who would have liked to park in one of these spaces wasted a minute right along with me before these carts were picked up. And how about the poor soul who's job it is to pick these carts up? I wonder how much productivity that person loses when he has to spend an extra 30 seconds per cart running around the parking lot picking these up. There's two minutes and thirty seconds of that poor person's day wasted JUST from the small amount of cart-litter in this lot that I could fit into a single picture frame.

So here are my questions: What makes these people so special? Why do they feel that they are entitled to waste 23.5 minutes of other peoples' lives, simply so they can leave a parking lot 20 seconds sooner? What gives them a right to make 22 peoples' day a little worse, just so they can shave 20 seconds off of their own? I'll bet that there are 1001 other examples of such a pervasive attitude of entitlement out there every day. This is just the one I happened to spot and photograph this afternoon. What examples can you think of?

In conclusion, I'd like to extend two great big middle fingers to the people who left these carts here, and to everyone else who does rude and inconsiderate things like this on a daily basis. NEWSFLASH! You are NOT entitled to waste the time and energy of countless others, simply to get your groceries home 20 seconds sooner. This is one, of no doubt a great many small examples, of how the world could be a slightly better place, if we were to all dedicate ONLY TWENTY SECONDS each day to considering the needs and desires of our fellow citizens.

Shaun Altman's Blog!: Category People

Beware of Ravenglass Rentals

Good Lord!