Thursday, January 28, 2010

An Unpleasant Experience at Sherry Yates Rental

Ordinarily when I have a difference of opinion with another avatar, I don't mention them by name in this blog.

I'm making an exception in this case because the avatar in question is offering a service (rentals) and buyers might want to know who to beware.



Sherry Yates Rental Houses

Written 28 January, 2009

An Unpleasant Experience at Sherry Yates Rental

As if to remind me Authoritarian Annie isn't the only out-of-whack avatar on the grid...

Last night my friend Dalton was searching for a house to rent. He found several he liked and asked if he could teleport me to look at them.

I said sure.

The first place he teleported me was to a sim called Fleabug, where a cluster of six small 50-prim homes sat on the northeast one-eighth or so of the sim.

I liked the houses, which were made by Ace Albion of Ace's Spaces. They had large rooms on two floors and extensive decks, all but one, which for some reason (prim count?) was deckless.

I told Dalton I liked the houses but would have reservations about living in that particular cluster of homes.

"Why?" he asked.

I told him the houses were crammed so close together that chat from at least two of the neighbors would be a problem. "You don't want to hear your neighbors, and you don't want them hearing you," I told him. "I like the houses, but they should be spaced further apart."

About that time a blonde walked down the sand-textured prim that substituted for actual land. She was, according to my Mystitool, 23 meters away. "I think that's the owner," he said.

A couple of minutes later, as we were standing on the patio of my friend's potential rental, I got an IM from none other than Sherry Yates. She demanded to know what I was doing on her property.

I said a friend was thinking of renting one of her houses and had asked me to come and take a look at it and give him my opinion.

"If my being here is a problem, I'll be more than happy to leave," I said.

"Leave," she said, and I immediately teleported home.

Dalton was mystified. "I told her I was thinking of renting and she banned me," he said.

I sent Sherry an IM from Whimsy: It's always nice to meet a polite person, I said. She said it wasn't nice for me to be at her place when I was a renter, too. Then she clarified. I was in rentals too, she said.

She must have read my profile, seen my Chey's Paradise Rentals Group (which is for the very few people, almost family, who live on Whimsy and environs), and made the huge and inaccurate deductive leap that I was big into rentals and was there to spy on her and learn her many secrets. Or perhaps to poach Dalton, but if that were the case, why did she ban him? I told her I wasn't in commercial real estate and suggested that if she were to ever visit Whimsy she would understand that. I ended by wishing her a nice day and suggesting she not forget to take her meds.

Today, as I was driving, I thoughtabout last night's experience. Ms. Yates' behavior seems more than a bit irrational to me. I mean, there are fifty thousand or so little clusters of rental houses; hers was pretty much the norm, a nice house but too close to its neighbors to make for a pleasant place to live. I mean, I should want to emulate that? And even if I did, what secrets did she have for me or anyone else to steal?

It occurred to me that perhaps she was upset that I told Dalton living there would be difficult because of the chat spam from close neighbors. If she heard that, though, she would have to have chat-relaying spy prims on the land, though, because she never came into chat range. Chat relaying, for the record, is a clear violation of the Terms of Service. Considering Ms. Yates' level of paranoia, it's not outside the realm of possibility that she is spying on her renters.

My first thought was to be angry, but the more I thought about it, the sadder I became for her-- and especially for her renters.

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