Need to Leave for at least Some Time, Solutions?

In October my ADSL connection will go down and consequently I need to do something about my second life, like say, terminating it.

I just wonder if there are any smooth transitions you can do other than right off the bat cancelling. If you downgrade an account from Premium to no monthly pay, would that be a way of sleeping your account so you can come back and use the same avatar?

Are these downgrades possible?

Are there other ways to cryogenically freeze yourself so you can return sometime in the future?

Grateful for replies & hints,
Moni

I downgraded one of my alts to a basic no pay account when I started this one. They just asked me why and allowed me to own land to the end of that billing period. I was double billed that last period for my new av as well.

If you have land you don't want to sell or something, I'd email support and explain the situation to them. The might be able to stop charging you until you come back, I'm not sure though.

What a kind offer, nimrod! To tell the truth, I've had a Premium account since last year (when I was a noob), but I never bought any land due to the outlandish fees demanded just for holding a piece of real estate. I really loath this feature of LL and frankly can't see the reason for paying rent for something you already bought.
So why didn't I downgrade long ago, you might ask, or at least bought first land and sold it? Well, I guess I'm lazy. In other words, the only thing I'm really worried about other than keeping my avatar is the huge inventory which I don't want to lose.

Downgrading seems to be the preferred solution. By the way, can downgraded accounts in turn be upgraded?

I will probably be away for some 6 months plus. Anyone knows how often LL culls the list of unused avatars?

You can downgrade and upgrade your account at will... should you not have any land I would downgrade to a free basic account. As far as that account being deleted its not happened to me yet and I have one of my builder accounts that i have not used in a few months. I would not cancel your account then take the chance of loosing your AV in 90 days permanently when you can keep the AV indefinatly at the basic account rate... however if your a bit greedy like most of us are for linden then downgrade to the basic premium account @ $9.95 a month and when you get back you will have quite a few in stipends waiting on you and your return.

Thanks, then I think I know what to do. Downgrading to Basic Premium is not an option however, since the currency rate of Lindens would make 9.95$ a month in exchange for 2000 Lindens clearly a losing proposition.

Better to have an account that doesn't cost you anything. Also makes you freer about when or if to return.

Another thought: I haven't tried logging in from a modem, but even if it's terribly slow and unusable, it would be enough to keep your basic account live. The only problem with that is that you'd still have to download the new, multi-megabyte client every once in a while.

If you know someone with broadband, or if you trust someone else in SL, you could get them to log you in once a month or so, just to keep your account active. I seem to remember the cutoff being 90 days... after which, you lose your account, including all its inventory.

Personally, I really wish we could back up and store our account information offline, if no other reason than to ensure we don't lose our accounts if it's necessary to break for a while.

If you pay for the premium account a year in advance for $72, that works out to $6/month, which is closer to the going exchange rate. You could also loan your 512m tier to some project you considered worthy (or willing to pay for it).

There's one significant reason to keep your premium status if you plan on returning: new premium accounts -- which I believe included people going through the premium-downgrade-upgrade cycle like you're considering -- will receive only L$400 per week, instead of the old L$500 rate. So locking in the current rate may be worth the extra trouble.

Hope this helps.

One more thing is you have to logg in everyweek to get the weekly stipens. So unless you can manage a way of logging in once a week long enough to recieve the stipen, the only reason to keep a premium account is because of the lesser amount of lindens you get with a new premium account.

You do not have to log in every week to receive a stipend on a premium account. I'm unaware if this has changed for new premiums but if you have a premium account already, you will receive a nice sum when you do return.

Paying for your account for a year is a good suggestion IMO.

~B