The Second Real Estate Crisis
♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥
This isn’t such a romantic posting, but since it affects a lot of us in Second Life, I thought to po
st it here anyway. Anshe Chung’s virtual Real Estate Imperium Dreamland seems to be dwindling.
No wonder – when Linden Labs lowered it’s prices (not the tier) for land, everyone owning land found himself in a situation where the value of his land had diminshed dramatically over night. The more one had, the more one lost. And I guess, Anshe Chung and her company Dreamland had a lot of parcels that were not worth the money anymore, she herself had paid for.
I own 8’096 sqm on one of her residental sims, but since I didn’t plan to sell my parcel, I just didnt care at that time until …
… until I got the following notecard on July, 25th:
Hello,
As part of our commitment to continuously improve Dreamland, we have decided to begin converting some full prim sims to low prim sims. Your land in:
Pirassa
Kokomo Island
Opium Island
Bloodstone Islandis on one of the sims that is going to be converted.
Conversion will happen between August 8th and August 15th (depending on Lindens).
All land owners have the choice to move/trade to any other available sim in Dreamland. Please contact Talon DeCuir, Carcinia Polano, Lexi Lock or TC Hastings – and we will assist you in the move. If you decide to stay and wait for the conversion you should know that during the conversion any objects in the sim will be lost, so you should make sure to have them in your inventory.
Everyone who moves before August 8th will be credited half a month worth of free tier as bonus.
We look forward to assisting you in the very near future.
Talon DeCuir
So, I cleaned up my parcel, lost some stuff, ruined a few things, wasted a lot of time in SL, not on having fun but on packing – almost like a relocation in RL. Now I am waiting for an adaequate new parcel and have to go on paying tier for a parcel, I can’t use for a week now.
SELL YOUR LAND FAST
We buy any land anywhere anytime!
I tried to sell my parcel to Dreamland after reading the claim on their website ” SELL YOUR LAND FAST – We buy any land anywhere anytime!” so I could take all the necessary time to check for a new home myself without paying tier for a parcel I can’t use.
Here is the answer I got from Dreamland:
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 04:28:41 +0800
From: support.anshechung@gmail.com
To: villain.baroque@hotmail.de
Subject: Re: LAND SALES REQUEST: Villain BaroqueHello
Thank you for your message. We are sorry to inform you that we are not buying lands on Dreamland now. We have to reduce our selling prices and to discontinue buying more lands after Linden Lab has lowered land prices and flooded the market. We only buy lands on Mainland and a whole Sim somewhere else. Sorry for the inconvenience. For further information please feel free to contact our dreamland angels: Carcinia Polano, Lexi Lock, Talon DeCuir, TC Hastings.
Best regards.
Tracy
Support ACS
I asked them to change the misleading information on their homepage (to tell the truth, I called it “a barefaced lie”), but until now August, 11th 2008, it hasn’t changed as you can see on the following screenshot:
They still use the misleading information and I still don’t know, how to avoid paying tier for a parcel I can’t use at the moment. I even consider just giving up the parcel since paying tier for two more months seems to be almost the same amount as anything I may get for my parcel, if I get a parcel again and if I can sell that one to anyone.
As I see it, Linden labs ruined half of my investment and Dreamland the other half with their ” …. commitment to continuously improve Dreamland.”. LOL – Much improvement for me.
Meanwhile Dreamland seems to be in a true crisis. They lost a lot of money and right now they are loosing the trust of a lot of their customers, too. That seems to be a dangerous path they are going, but I guess they are trying everything to reduce the monthly tier they have to pay to Linden Labs. Maybe we just see the beginning of a former success story comming to a sorry end.
What are your experience with that (Un-)Real estate crisis? Comments please. Unlike Jack Linden on the “Official Second Life Blog”, I appreciate comments.
I worked for 3 years wirh Anshe Cung Studios. When I started Dreamland had 30 sims. Anshe and 3 other angels worked hard to grow the business to over 600 sims. I was hired as consultanr to ACS and managed Dreamland until in May 2007 after my staff and I had Dreamland at 90% occupancy Anshe’s husband Guni took ove the business as Anshe has no interest in SL and migrated to IMVU to sell cheap knock-offs of other peoples’ creations. From the first day Guni instituted a series of policy changes and processes that ultimately destroyed Dreamland. Residents have been leaving in droves. I was very vocal in my opposition to this mad rush to kill the business. Guni doesn’t have an ounce of business sense. He never communicated with the staff. He simply issued “orders” after the fact. He never communicated with residents and clients and kept himself a recluse in a Skype room where he would pontificate to the 2 or 3 employees who had to be there in order to be paid. On one occasion when I was absolutely livid at his intention to further screw clients and made my wishes known before leaving the recluse I was removed from the Estate Manager role and all passwords were changed to prevent me from accessing critical avatars and groups in order to do my work. exactly one year from the time Guni took over the ownership and decision making at Dreamland, occupancy rate had dropped to 62%. If one does the math it’s evident that the business was losing money. ACS chose to blame linden lab. However, those of us who worked with and communicated with clients everyday knew better. Our clients were leaving because they were not communicated to when changes were made to covenants that impacted them negatively. They received threats if they didn’t pay into a tier system that was a technical abomination. No matter that clients had no idea what to do . their land was taken and their belongings returned and often lost. ACS and I parted ways when they could no longer afford my consulting fees. Eventually the head of marketing for the organization had to leave for the same reason and now there is no technical director either. I would say sheer stupidity, ignorance, arrogance and misplaced ego has driven Dreamland to its present sorry state.
I now have my own land business and doing very well. So well that Guni found it necessary to ban my staff (ex Dreamland best Angels) and i from all of dreamland. The 800 sim guerilla afraid of a little guy with 30 sims. Anshe was a visionary a true entrepreneur . Unfortunately as is often the case with these instant successes, ego and arrogance became her trademark. At least we can pertly excuse her for having the foresight to make Dreamland the most successful virtual land project ever. But her husband has no excuse and as much as he deflects blame for his mad decisions, lack of strategy and planning and no communication skills are the root cause of Dreamland’s failure. Those of us that worked so hard and spent so much time making this project successful are saddened now by its failure.
Master Quatro
Uh, it’s a *game*. You know? When LL pulls the plug, that’s it folks.
The updated website for Dreamland
http://www.anshex.com/index.php?cmd=FAQ
lists 11 FAQ s Here is #11
Q11: Can I sell my land back to you?
A11: Generally speaking, we will suggest our customers to sell their land to other residents because they can only get half of the current market value of the land if they insist on selling it back to us. Contact an Angel if you really want to sell it back to us.
They are defrauding the public by publishing lies in order to get clients to buy then they find out that there is no buy-back and are told theay are screwed. What kind of company is this ?
Having worked for Dreamland/ACS for over 2 and a half years along side Master Quatro, I can concur on everything he has stated in his postings. The Angels put their hearts and souls into working for Dreamland. Having worked in many retail/customer service industries IRL, I went into the job with the motto a happy client is a repeat client, so I would go out of my way to make each & every person I came into contact with as happy as I possibly could. That motto worked extremely well until Guni came storming in implementing one bad & unplanned decision after another.
It angered the clients and drove them away faster than one could blink. The blame fell everywhere EXCEPT where it belonged. Master Quatro & the Angels were then forced to take the brunt of the clients anger while the owners hid. When we adopted the motto of please don’t shoot the messengers we were scolded for not being team players & accused of wanting Dreamland to fail. This couldn’t have been further from the truth as we had worked our tails off to build that company up to the heights it had reached. We were very proud to have been involved with Dreamland & the ACS name until Guni Greenstein’s tyrannical micromanaging reign began driving the company into cataclysmic disrepair.
We pretty much stuck around simply to try to give the clients a voice, because we knew if we left they certainly would not have one. When Master Quatro was relieved of his duties they called a staff meeting following the announcement. That meeting revealed that they wanted to not only continue with their unscrupulous ways, charging outrageous amounts to cover paypal fees that are very clearly stated in the paypal TOS are NOT to be recouped, but find new ones to implement such as charging for region restarts I had had enough. I made the decision to resign. I could not stand by doing as I was told when I knew what was going was morally reprehensible.
Since I left the company, I remained mum on my reasonings following the professional route of not bad mouthing the company & cutting ties with all things ACS. This is the first time I have said anything negative in a public forum and it is only because of the absolutely childish decision to ban the Ex-Angels who have chosen to continue working with Master Quatro from all of Dreamland. Guni is once again trying to place blame for his failures everywhere other than where it truly belongs, with himself. It has truly been heartbreaking for me to watch Dreamland go up in flames, because I believed in it so much that I put 2 plus years of my blood sweat & tears into that company, but I am very glad that I got out when I did & I am not going down with the sinking ship.
по моему мнению: превосходно.