I have been renting the sim called Never Never from Hivaoa Holdings for quite sometime now. These last two months I have hardly been in-world and paying for two thirs or even one third was getting too heavy on my purse, so as the rental period came to an end (five days to let go the sim at this point) I started looking for a new place to settle in.
Since I was happy with my current landlord – Hivaoa Holdings – I thought I could rent a new plot with them and therefore went to their main office. There I found a link to their website, where I found this ad:
I headed to the land in-world to confirm the sales conditions… and found a huge board stating the exact same price.
I contacted one of their staff who was in-world, Ms. anastasia Adder who was most kind. I proceed with paying the set-up fee and then headed back again to their headoffice where I paid what I thought was tiers for 100 days. I send the management (Ms. HIVAOAHOLDINGS Pearl) and one of their… officers (?) Mr. Siddhart Sohmers, the following notecard informing that I was their new tenant:
“Dear friends,
I have been a rentor of Hivaoa holdings for over one year now, renting the HS called Never Never. You may check from my records that I have been a trustful rentor.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to renew Never Never leasing for another month and today I was looking for a smaller place to settle in. I found in your site an advertising for Crashing Waves, came to the land and found a board confirming the information.
I contacted one of your staff, Ms.anastasia Adder and presented her with the images here below and in attach to this notecard.
Subsequently, I bought the land for 100 L$ and then went to Hivaoa Central Office, where I paid 3750 L$ for a rental period of 100 days, as per the information on your server here below:
Hi summer wardhani your rental ► Name: [ Crashing Waves 1/2 ] Region: [ Crashing Waves ]◄ expire in: 0 Days, -1 Hours, -6 Min – Fees amount [3750 L$ for 100 days] ➜ For renew please right clic and choose to pay
[16:00] ATM Stx Central Tier Office 2.5 BTD: Hi summer wardhani thank for renew [Region: Crashing Waves – Land Name: Crashing Waves 1/2] – Your lease will expire in: 99 Days 22 H:53 M
Thank you for your kind attention,
Summer Wardhani”
Now, imagine my surprise when I received today this following notecard from the said officer (?):
“18 November 2010
Greetings
Thank you for being one of our precious client and staying with us for so long.
Thank you as well for pointing out the mistake of setting the rental server for 100 days instead of 7days for the land L$3750weekly 1875prims 1/2 homestead.
Sorry for the human error. I hope you will be able to forgive us for it. The error has been rectified and you have now 7 days in your rental.
Sorry again.
Regards
Siddhart Sohmers
(HIVAOA Holdings)”
No doubt I would be more than happy to be their double rentor for a whole week, right ? Even because I do need lots of lands and lots of prims in order to loggin twice a day to check on notecards and prevent messages from being capped… right ? *sighs – oh boy, these sort of things really make me ANGRY!
So I asked for a refund – and the very rude and impolite reply I got (which unfortunately was kept in my laptop at the office) was something like : “that has to be asked to the administration”.
I really didn’t understood, if this guy was assuming he had made a mistake why had I to bother speaking with the administration because of 3.750 L$? So I replied to him that in my country people who keep other people’s money are called thieves. As you can imagine, the conversation afterwards was not exactly very pleasant, LOL
In the end, as I understood I risked not to see my money again, I took the troube to write a new notecard to the management asking for my money back :
“To the managers of Hivaoa Holdings,
Dear Sirs,
In attach I am resending the notecard I sent yesterday to Mr. Siddhart Sohmers and Ms. HIVAOAHOLDINGS Pearl. I am also sending the note I received today from Mr. Sohmers. As he tells me that refunds are dealt by the management, I am hereby requesting that you reimburse me the amount of L$ 3215 (that is, I deducted from 3750 L$ I paid last evening the due amount for one day rental – I would have never rented the place if I new it would cost me not 3750L$/100 days as advertised on your site and on the board place on the sim itself but 3750L$/7 days – it happens that I am already a rentor of yours and the sim Never Never is due only in 5 other days. Since I am not a business owner or have no use for a second place – was even searching for another smaller plot – why would I need half a sim for a week?).
Please be informed that I have set half Crashing Waves to sale to HIVAOAHOLDINGS Pearl – since I am also due a set-up fee I should have never paid.
I am also returning the sim Never Never today and will abandon land asap. Hope this puts an end t this unfortunate incident which I want to believe is not your organisation’s fault but rather only inefficiency and bad manners from a membrr of your staff (Ms. anastasia Adder with whom I dealt yesterday, on the other hand, was quitehelpful and always kind).
I would also like to inform that I have filed an abuse report n the name of Mr, Sohmers, who was kind enough to reply me that if you/he was/were thieves, he/you would have ejected me and banned me from Never Never right after my first tier payment. I have to admit that having owned 5 full sims myself and being a resident for 4 years now, i was never so badly treated by some minor staff. Even in First life, where I own my apartment and have bought and sold a couple more of them had never had such a treatment from a salesperson.
In conclusion, I expect this matter may draw your best attention and thank you for your refund at your earliest convenience. Me, who only yesterday evening was saying all my friends you had had a brlliant marketing idea and were doing this great promotion, have to admit that am very disappointed at all this.
Kindest regards,
Summer Wardhani”
(the misspellings and typos are all mine, lol)
… next thing I know I was receiving this other notecard:
“Hello
The entire issue has been brought to the notice of the management of HIVAOA Holdings.
Siddhart has told us about entire conversation he and you had. There was still a scopre for some compensation in terms of 2-3days extra given to you to make up for the error on Siddhart’s side for wrongly putting 100 days in web configuration instead of 7days.
But we have 0 tolerance towards the race attack. You apparently called his country a bad name and he responded to you only with a question to put you in his shoes. This is unforgiveable. He was polite to you and requested you to forgive him to which you responded badly. We can not ingore this fact either.
We do not do refunds. Sorry.
You lands Never Never and Crashing Waves will be reclaimed only when your tier is due in 5 and 6days respectively.
Sorry that you have to file abuse report and had to go through this unfortunate incident. But from our side we can not help you anymore after you calling him bad names.
We hope you had a pleasant stay with HIVAOA Holdings so far until this incident happened.
Kindest Regards
HIVAOA Holdings Management”
To cut a long story short (that is, to go ahead of the racist talk because all who know me and know I was born in Africa and long to go back there are aware of my racist and angry speech LOL and also to go ahead on the fact that they still acknowledge they made a mistake but still refuse to refund me) – I leave you with the final words of Hivaoa Holdings Management representative, after she sent me some printscreen concerning another totally different sim (which is not published because it came to me with no copy permissions)“[13:00] HIVAOAHOLDINGS Pearl: The print shot which was sent was to show you that it was typing error and since entire rental sytem is web based, uploaded from the configuration we set manually on the website to upload on the rental land sign. We can not help you more. Sorry. the print screen was last proof or human error we could give. its upto you to believe it or not. sorry for refunds u can contact HIVAOA Outlander, he has final say.”
Right again. So next, Mr. Outlander will receive a link to this very post blog – my fingers are tired and I am not willing to tell the story over and over again. Will there be any other chapters of this bad film ? It’s all up to Hivaoa Holdings – the corporate that holds your money back *grins
My dear, everyone knows that you always contact someone before paying any sort of box, good things never come cheap, right?… You didn’t tell us about what you told to that first staff member, but c’mon, what place in SL rents you a place …for 100 days for that amount of money?… One only needs a year or so of SL to know that. I don’t know the covenant they usually put up, so if they don’t do refunds then they are not obligated to return a single dime, even if an avatar does a mistake, because in the end it’s up to us to check everything is right before paying.
Now I do think they should open an exception, would only look good and would be good publicity for their company, but then again people usually say that bad publicity is also good publicity huh…
Too bad you didn’t share the whole conversation, to better understand everything, with the Siddhart dude I mean, you just said “the conversation afterwards was not exactly very pleasant”
In the end I just got wondering, they don’t offer refunds because of supposed racist comments?… that’s new to me…
PS – If you need a spot to land just let me know, my sim is always open to you dear. 🙂
thanks Ewo for your wise comments. I thought it was a promotion or something… pay less during the first three months and then pay full for the rest of the time – and I was willing to do that, of course. That is why i also contacted Ms. …Adder from their staff, and she literally told me she wasn’t aware of any promotion but confirmed that was the amount marked. Now, I know this only means I am 16 US$ short this month – but also have a hard time dealing with the mistake being done thrice – on their website (someone wrote it there, right?) on the board that I found placed on the land (it was a texture, someone designed it, someone placed it over the prim) and on the payment server/equipement (someone configured it that way)… so what you mean is someone or several people made the same mistake in three different places and no one noticed it ? And now, even after having recognised they made a msitake they’re not willing to refund a customer that was wrongly informed ? Come on… I may be naive once, but not twice 😉
As for the offer, I thank you deeply – but my First Life is currently taking over and with these things happening I really don’t think I’ll be hanging around in SL much 🙂
I said it earlier and I am saying it now as well.
It was human error and I requested you to forgive me and i also said that I will ask for forgiveness in any medium of communication you want.
I am sorry.
But it seems, you do not want to accept apology and want to go on with it.
I am sorry for this unfortunate incident.
Sorry again.
All the best for your SL and RL.
hi
hivaoa,outlander here , the owner of HIVAOAHOLDINGS
i dont usually answer to this kind of comment but i think in this case its necessary .
We are a rl company , and try to be serious in all our work here with our around 1000 residents who seem to appreciate our way of work.
my assisitnat siddahrt does wonderful work maybe too helpful at any time , thats why he did , i think , a mistake .
it seems obvious for all there is a mistake , except for summer whardani lol , who paid us a tier since months and seems unable to appreciate a price in the market …
who can believe we rent for such an amount for 100 days ?maybe summer after a drunk ..
the best thing , my love to do in this case is to try to speak politely with the team which rent your .
i try to be a correct people here and in rl .
then begin by do here , in this forum , public apologizes for the terms you used about us , and i ll think or your refund .
sincerely .
hivaoa outlander .
Dear Friends at the Hivaoa Holdings – I really appreciate your public apologies, even though I feel I should inform you that i only drink a glass of wine at social occasions when I have to. You see, my religion prevents me from having alcoohol 🙂
LOOOOOOL
I stated already i thought you were doing a promotion… ever heard of it ? You know, you can even take the idea and I will not charge you any copyrights – now, could you please give my money back ? I know it’s peanuts for you, but for me it’s still some cash i would like to see again so i can move forwards.
Ok, I think I stopped laughing now about the childish remarks by the staff of the company and can reply properly.
After reading the comments here I have to say that the behavior of the people responsible by that company is far from being mature, or a behavior from a serious company that cares for their customers.
Now if this person called Outlander is the owner of this company, well, he should uphold the good name of it and not insult customers, saying they are, and i quote, “drunk” or called them “my love”, I think he forgets that it’s common sense that the customer is always right!
I know Summer for a while now and she is one of the most honest people in SL and RL, I think everyone agrees that there was an error in setting the price, the only logical and correct policy here is to refund the customer, since it was not him or her that committed the error but the company, or the person that set the price.
In a business the only sorry that exists is the one where you make the customer happy, where you discuss in a polite way the problem and solve it. I could create a poll to find out how many think a refund should be issued and I believe 99% or 100% of people would be for a refund and an apology for the mistake and for the childish insults.
In the meantime I do hope Summer gets her refund as soon as possible, myself, I already made my whole contact list aware of this and asked them not to rent with this company, found out some already rent but they told me they are shocked and will leave their land also.
[…] I have been renting the sim called Never Never from Hivaoa Holdings for quite sometime now. These last two months I have hardly been in-world and paying for two thirs or even one third was getting too heavy on my purse, so as the rental period came to an end (five days to let go the sim at this point) I started looking for a new place to settle in. Since I was happy with my current landlord – Hivaoa Holdings – I thought I could rent a new plot wi … Read More […]
Hello Summer,
im surprised that you take what this firm wrote as an excuse. Why do you not put the whole stuff on http://ruthed.com/ ?
I think this case should become more public.
If they do not even pay you back the tier after they made an mistake they are simply not a trustable firm.
If you need anymore help i could contact some bloggers i know.
Love Dagmar
Maybe my english is not enough clear and a litlle bit childish
i forgot we were all childs here lol
i wait your public apologizes and we can think about your refunds
no matter we are not trustable for such an idiot behaviour to belive we can rent a sim for such a price .
maybe you could be honest and write all your ims and the few words to an indian people of my team ….
for me i stop here theses primary school comments to return to my 1000 others clients …
Yes, please be so kind as to publish in FULL those IMs were I allegedly insulted your team for being indian – Yes I called him a “thief”. Yes, I call YOU a “thief”… is there any other appropriate name for those who keep other people’s money ?
Dear Dagmar, I thank you deeply for your care and valuable suggestion. I already contacted the administrator of ruthed.com and asked them to publish this sad story on their blog as well.
I look forward that the other 1000 clients of Mr. Outlander soon learn what kind of person they are dealing with.
HIVAOA is the worst company i have ever rented from. I have 9 days left to rent and they didn’t pay their rent to dream lands. I guess they sub rent O.o I’m sorry if my grammar sucks I’m in a bit of a rush the taxi is here. But it took a long time for someone to respond to us. They had no idea what to do or what was going on. They didn’t care until we pestered them trying to get some information. All my stuff was cleared and the land reclaimed to dream lands obviously. That is not a reliable Place to rent from. I had been there for a little while but they screwed me over and that is not appropriate for a proper business. I’m very sorry for random comment. HIAOA is untrustworthy
Beware, Hivaoa Holdings/Outlander is back again scamming people under the avatar name of ALEXANDRE Firecaster. Do not EVER rent from this guy, he is simply a scammar who subrents and then vanishes without paying their rent to landlords. As a result, he takes your rightfully paid money and you are later evicted without getting the time you paid for your land.
All of those who have been scammed, please fill a report against ALEXANDRE Firecaster to get this scum out of second life!