Anyone that's been to Solhaven since 2001 or so has most likely been inside of my 2 story, 6 room house at some point, and played around with all the crazy fun stuff it has...the race track, the interactable goodies in the laboratory and the custom stun drink you can make for yourself in it, the free food and drinks, the popcorn you could throw at people, secret trapdoor exit, etc., all of which I designed from the ground up (except the popcorn, that was added later) when I first acquired the house. There's a thread somewhere on here that shows just about everything the house had in it.
All of that is gone now.
I went to pay the house rent the other day on July 30, and my door was locked and my key wouldn't work. I called an assist and the host got ahold of Kynlee, who has been the properties guru since last September.
She tells me that my house has been repo'd due to lack of rent payment, said that she repo'd the house on July 24 for being 3 months behind on rent, and that the last time I paid rent was on April 25.
Here's where it gets stupid...not once in the time I've owned this house for 13 years (11 or so to be more precise, since the house didn't have a rent box on it for the first couple years) have I ever been able to make another rent payment within 30 days of the last time I paid rent. I would instead get the message "Your rent is currently paid up."
There's no way to pay rent ahead of time, so every rent payment that's done is done in arrears. There is also no way to stack coins inside already for the system to take out when rent is due like there is in a player shop. In a player shop, you can stack any amount of money you want in the shop, and the system will automatically withdraw coins (30k I think) from it each month for the rent. This isn't the case with my house. Everything has to be done manually, with no way to tell when rent becomes due again aside from trial and error.
When the rent box was first put on the house, I was told nothing more than that rent had to be paid 75k a month and could get up to 3 months behind before it became eligible for repossession, which means it would become eligible for a repo once the rent due reached 4 months (300k).
Based on that, along with my experiences over the past decade+ with paying rent, this is how it had always worked for me, which would invalidate Kynlee taking the house on the 90th day (and she took it on the 90th day pretty much right down to the second):
April 25: Rent is paid
April 26 - May 2 - Week 1 Paid Up Your rent is currently paid up.
May 3 - May 9 - Week 2 Paid Up Your rent is currently paid up.
May 10 - May 16 - Week 3 Paid Up Your rent is currently paid up.
May 17 - May 23 - Week 4 Paid Up Your rent is currently paid up.
May 24 - May 30 - Week 5 1 Month Behind Eligible to pay 75k rent overdue.
May 31 - June 6 - Week 6 1 Month Behind Eligible to pay 75k rent overdue.
June 7 - June 13 - Week 7 1 Month Behind Eligible to pay 75k rent overdue.
June 14 - June 20 - Week 8 1 Month Behind Overdue rent increased to 150k.
June 21 - June 27 - Week 9 2 Months Behind Overdue rent increased to 150k.
June 28 - July 4 - Week 10 2 Months Behind Eligible to pay 150k rent overdue.
July 5 - July 11 - Week 11 2 Months Behind Eligible to pay 150k rent overdue.
July 12 - July 18 - Week 12 2 Months Behind Eligible to pay 150k rent overdue.
July 19 - July 25 - Week 13 3 Months Behind Overdue rent increased to 225k.
July 26 - August 1 - Week 14 3 Months Behind Eligible to pay 225k rent overdue.
August 2 - August 8 - Week 15 3 Months Behind Eligible to pay 225k rent overdue.
August 9 - August 15 - Week 16 3 Months Behind Eligible to pay 225k rent overdue.
August 16 - Week 17 4 Months Behind Repo (wo)man commeth.
According to Kynlee though, that's not the case. The way it works in her words, is this:
When the script runs to collect your rent, it ups the amount owed on the box for the month. The last time you physically paid rent on the box was April 20th at 9:48 PM EST. That set your rent owed to 0 on the box itself. On April 25th at 4:49 AM EST, the collection script ran and collected that payment and officially notated it on your account, and the rent due on the box was changed back to 75k. 30 days later on May 25th, when the collection script should have run again, it went to 150k since nothing had been paid. 30 days after that on June 24th, 225k. At 4:49 AM ET on July 24th, the script ran again and when no rent had been paid, the amount owed rolled up to 300k.
It would be one thing if that's how it were explained to me when the rent box was first added to the house several years ago, but all I was told was "Pay 75k a month." and had no reason to believe that rent wasn't considered as paid immediately after putting money in the rent box, since the message "Your rent is currently paid up." would come up if I tried to put anymore money in the box, and not this dumb shit about it not actually being considered paid until the rent collection script that is on its own separate timer runs.
In another email yesterday, Kynlee said I was 91 days past due when she took the house, when in reality, she took it on the 90th day, as July 25 would have been the 91st day, and she took it on the 24th. It wouldn't have really mattered since I didn't go to pay the rent until the 30th, but whatever.
The part that pisses me off is that I was never told shit at any point in time about rent collection being separate from rent payment. So I paid rent on 4/20, and on 4/25, the rent collection script ran and then rent was due again, according to her and the way the script works that I was never told anything about.
There is nothing with the rent box that gives any sort of information on when rent is due again, other than just trial and error of trying to pay rent each day and either getting "Your rent is currently paid up." or "You open the rent box and put X coins inside."
There is no way to stack coins inside for the system to take out when rent is due like there is in a player shop. There is nothing on the rent box that gives any indication of when rent will be due again. Nothing at all, and I had no reason to believe that the house would be hitting the red zone in July as opposed to late August.
In addition to this shit, I was also told during an exchange by feedback about the house (99.999% sure it was Solomon) 5-6 years ago that if the rent was nearing the red zone, I would receive an email notification ahead of time, as a reminder in order to avoid a repo happening, in case something stupid like this happened.
Naturally, I never received any email about it, so I figured everything was fine with the house, and Kynlee basically called me a liar when I brought it up to her:
As for the email you forwarded regarding feedback telling you you would be notified prior to a repossession, I honestly have no idea why they would say that. There is nothing in policy stating there will be notifications, and feedback would not have any knowledge of any notifications, since they don't handle the day to day functions and duties of the properties
~Kynlee~
I'm appealing the issue with feedback and requested for them to go through old emails with me to dig up the one where I was told I'd get notified via email before a house repo, but I don't have much hope of getting anywhere with that.
So yeah...thanks to Kynlee's repo of the house the second that the timer hit 3 months, when as far as I was aware from how the rent system was originally explained to me, the house wouldn't have hit the red zone until late August, the Solhaven house that I've kept open to the public the entire time I've had it, and all of the awesome stuff inside for people to play around with is now gone....over a 5 day rent lapse due to being in the dark about the rent collection script being separate from actually paying rent into the box, combined with never receiving an email notification ahead of time as I was told I would.
This isn't just a blow to me, it's a blow to the community as a whole, as the house was always open to the public.
Make sure you thank her if you see her.
This might be a wrap for me and this game.