Can't add to group land - help!

I posted a related question in the "stickied" thread on land sales, but my questions are complex enough that I should've posted separately. Anyway, I apologize for the redundancy, but I have added a fair bit of detail here. If anyone here has the patience to help me, I'd appreciate it; if not, I'll submit a ticket to LL. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something obvious first.

My central question is: why can't I contribute more land to my group? Here's some background.

1. I own about 16,500m2 of land in three separate sims, two on mainland and one on Zindra. I pay tier to LL. My holdings put me slightly above my target tier (below 16,384), and as I understand it, the group bonus could bring me under that target. So I'd like to donate some/all of it to a group. My goal is to get from the $125 tier to the $75 tier.

2. Right now my land use fees look like this:

Square meters owned: 12800
Square meters donated: 4112
Premium Bonus in Square Meters: 512
Paid Tier Level: 8192
Available Square Meters: 4592
Monthly Cost:* USD 40.00

3. The site says I'm in the $40 tier, but in my most recent statement, I was charged $125. I think this may stem from the Zindra swap: I acquired a big chunk of Zindra land (more than 8000m2) and didn't tier up during the grace period. Well, now I do want to tier up, but by one tier, not two! The site also says: "You can acquire up to -8208 square meters without additional land use fees." Erm, I can add up to negative 8208? SL seems to think I'm still at the $40 tier, maybe?

4. I already have a group consisting of me (the owner) and two alts. About a year ago, I donated one of my mainland parcels (4112m2) to this group. But I can't seem to increase the size of the land-donation I wish to make. That is, when I open up the group's info screen and go to land/$ tab, I can't change "your contribution" to the amount I wish to contribute. It lists as my max contribution: -4096. My max contribution is a negative number?

5. When I try to increase my contribution, the 'your contribution' field reverts to the existing number (4112) after I click apply. Why is this? Do the other two plots have to be adjacent to the one that's already been donated to the group? Is the Zindra plot ineligible? Should I just create a second group? That seems wasteful, especially as I'd like to make yet another group to support my shop's sales.

6. To add to my confusion, the land-fees page indicates I'm at the $40 tier, when in fact I'm being charged $125. I see no way to manually increase my tier to my target level, $75. The page also says: "You can acquire up to -8208 square meters without additional land use fees." Erm, I can add up to negative 8208?

7. Would the 'owner makes contribution with deed' button help me? I'm scared to try it, because when I see my max contribution is a negative number, I worry my land might be sucked into a black hole -- e.g., that the group wouldn't be able to hold it and that I'd lose it.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Yeah, I'd say things are pretty confused, and no doubt stemmed from the Zindra buy and the weird way they didn't charge tier on it for a while.

Can you check and see if you don't have radio buttons for the tier levels? Can you choose $125? (If you're already paying $125, I assume that would do no harm.) If that works, you may be able to contribute a bunch of tier to the group, deed all or most of the land to group, and then go back to that page and force your tier level back down to $75.

If you can't choose that $125 tier level from that page, I think you'll need to get on live chat and/or file a support ticket to get the account straightened out.

Yes, this is exactly what you need. You cannot just donate Tier cuz you are using all of your tier for your own land. So what you need to do is get the Land "deeded" to the group and you donate tier to the group. To avoid excess tier fees, do it all in one step. Go to the Land that you want to be group owned. Make sure the group you want to own the land is the one you currently have Active. Use the button you mentioned so that the land and required tier all go at once. You can do this will all of your parcels and then your total tier requirements will actually end up being a bit less that the total land owned because of the 10% bonus.

Thanks for your quick replies!


Ah, I *can* choose $125. I hadn't noticed that; I guess that's an encouraging sign. So if I select that radio button now, will that enable me to donate land to the group?


Hmm, so should I choose the $125 radio button before I do this? I guess I'm already stuck at the $125 tier for this month, so it wouldn't hurt? Suppose I choose the $125 radio button and then it becomes possible to donate more land to my group; would you still recommend "owner makes contribution with deed" over adjusting the amount of tier I allocate to the group under the Land/L$ tab of the group's info screen?

Thanks again to both of you for taking the time to reply. I'm not going to do anything until I'm absolutely sure I know what I doing, so there's plenty of time for you (and others) to weigh in if you have any further thoughts. Thanks!

Actually, all that radio button on your account page does is set the limit at which you will or will not be notified inworld that your tier level is being bumped up. In other words, if you were being billed at $75 per month and did not click a higher radio button, then if you did anything that bumps your tier above the $75 level, you get a popup in world telling you that your tier is going up. If you are paying $75 and you select $125, then you would not get an inworld popup until your tier tries to go above the $125.

"owner makes contribution with deed" is used to add tier to the group at the same time that you deed the land. Since groups can be negative on tier for short periods, there is really not difference between that or if you deed the land to the group without contribution and then go to the Land/L$ tab and add enough tier to cover it.

However, if you add the tier to the group BEFORE you give the land to the group, you can potentially increase your costs because all of your existing tier is supposedly already being used by land that you own, rather than the group so a group donation would be tier in addition to any that you are already using for personal land. Hopefully that makes sense.

So, if you are simply taking land you already own as an individual and want to make it group land, then either do the "owner makes contribution" at the time you deed the land or add tier to the group after deeding the land.

*mumbles about accidentally hitting Ctrl-W after typing everything out*

I wouldn't personally check it since that's definitely going to put you at $125 so I'd leave things the way they are.

Don't worry about having to donate tier to the group, that's what the "Owner makes contribution with deed" checkbox will do once you actually deed the land. It'll also keep your peak usage what it currently is which might help you with the following point.

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Once you sort out the group land I'd also have a chat with support since as far as I can tell you're only 16m² above the $75 tier limit and it would be terribly silly to have to pay an extra $50 for it if you can at all avoid it.

Unless your peak usage was higher than what you currently own they might just bump you to $75 if you happen to talk to a sympathetic enough Linden .

This is where people get confused. All that radio button does is determine the level at which you will get the alert inworld if you attempt to do something that goes over the amount you selected. You still are only billed based upon the true highest amount of tier used in the previous month.

I could select the $195 radio button and that simply means I get no notification unless I try to take my tier above that amount. If I really have not exceeded tier usage at the $40 level, then that is all I really will be billed.

You will know what your highest usage was because you will not be able to select a radio button lower than that until it no longer applies.

You know, Lil's suggestion might work without having to click that $125 button, and maybe that will be all you have to do. Before, I thought the group was starting out with a negative tier balance, but the group is fine, it's just your individual account that has a negative tier balance--which is weird enough, but I doubt it will interfere with doing as Lil recommends and deeding with Owner Makes Contribution. I think it's pretty safe to go ahead with that suggestion, without clicking the $125 button. (I don't think it will steal the land; worst case, I think, would be just not letting you do it, in which case you're back to either clicking the $125 button or starting a live chat session for advice from Support.)

I did a little arithmetic on the numbers in your first post, and understand some of them now. The good news is that you have more land than you think you do, but not by so much that it won't fit in the $75/mo tier bracket once it's all deeded to group.

At the $40 tier level, you're paying for 8192sqm plus the premium bonus of 512 for a total of 8704 that you can rightly own or contribute at that level.

Right now you own 12800sqm individually and have contributed 4112 to that group, for a total of 16,912. We determined that your tier level plus bonus entitles you to 8704, and 16,912 - 8704 is the 8208sqm that it thinks you "owe". So yeah, it seems to think you're at that $40 level.

Another number that makes sense now is that -4096. Right now you're contributing 4112 to the group; if somehow you could contribute -4096 to that group, that would be 4112+4096=8202 less than you're contributing now, and 8202 is the amount it thinks you "owe" to get back down to the $40 authorized tier level.

(Just in passing: I think back when you first deeded the land to group, you contributed more tier than you needed to. It seems that 4112 is the actual size of the parcel; you could have contributed only 3739 to cover that parcel, with the 10% bonus making up the difference. As-is, I'd expect the group info Land & L$ tab to show the group able to acquire an additional 411sq.m. with that 10% bonus, but maybe it knows that the contributed tier doesn't really exist.)

Thanks for the further replies! OK, so it sounds like I should try "owner makes contribution with deed."



Yes, I might have a chat with Linden support -- an extra $50 for being 16m2 over the limit seems a bit tough!

Qie, thanks for doing the math. It does seem to explain the rather odd numbers I'm seeing. Also, thanks for this:


Yep, I definitely did contribute more tier than I needed to. I was dimly aware of the 10% bonus, but I didn't know whether I could account for it when setting my land contribution. Oh well. I suppose that's another argument for using "owner makes contribution with deed." SL figures in the 10% when it calculates my contribution.

Well, I tried using the "Owner Makes Contribution to Group" button, then clicked deed, but the transfer failed. I got an error message saying the group didn't have sufficient land credit to accept the deed. But I can't manually change the "Your Contribution" field in the land tab of the group.

Time to contact Linden support? Er, I've never actually used Live support, not sure how it works. Guess I'll file a ticket?

I just checked and apparently Live Chat is a Concierge thing--so it would be interesting to see if you get that option when you go to the Support Portal, inasmuch as you're currently paying the half-sim of tier that qualifies for that. So... maybe try going to https://secure-web5.secondlife.com/my/support/?lang=en# to see if there's a "Live Chat" option near the top. If so, it probably also shows you a toll-free phone number to call, too, if that's more convenient.

If not, yeah, I guess file a ticket... but I agree with Kitty: there should be some way to get them to roll you back to the US$75/mo, retroactively. (Just thinking that may be easier by phone or Live Chat, if they work for you.)

Well how about that, because I shelled out $125 in tier last month, I do qualify for Live Chat support. Trying it now. Thanks for the suggestion.

I did also file a ticket this morning; no reply yet.