Premium vs Basic, help me decide

So in the next 7 days I need to decide if I want to pay for another year of premium membership or downgrade to basic. I'm on the fence but leaning toward the basic side I guess, mostly because of a general distrust in LL as a company and my dismay at the way they treat their customers. In the past year I have enjoyed buying and selling mainland and making a small profit, but with the prices in the toilet now it's really going to be hard to do that, unless the market recovers tremendously. I suppose the ability to utilize live chat support is a consideration, but the only time I have ever used the premium support is when the mainland region I lived in was lagging, and if I just rent from a private estate I would hopefully have the same or better support from the estate manager. I like the diversity of the mainland, but I also enjoy the beauty of some of the private regions. Mainland tier is cheaper than renting from an estate. Renting is more flexible... a lot of places will let you pay weekly and you can pick up and move anytime without having to worry about recovering an up-front buy price.
Part of me says now is the time to invest in mainland... pick up a bargain now while prices are low and hang onto it and stay in one place fo awhile. I dunno.... any thought would be appreciated.

Downgrade to basic, start a group with an alt and rent some tier. It's cheaper and more flexible than paying tier directly to LL and you can still own mainland.

Yeah I have thougth about that too. Thanks for your input.

What's your stipend? If it's over L$300, LL is paying you to remain premium for the year. Let them.

Yes that is another thing I am wrestling with. My stipend is $400 and it says on the web site "If you choose to downgrade from Premium to a Basic membership, all Premium benefits will be lost, and re-upgrading to Premium at a later date will gain whatever premium account benefits are in effect at the time the account is upgraded. Original Premium benefits will not be restored."Does anyone know if that applies to stipend?

Why not pay monthly? You can get your land, and if LL pisses you off, you can downgrade without worrying about losing a whole year's payment.

Well it's $119.40 per year if you pay monthly as opposed to $72.

That's the tradeoff. Life is full of tradeoffs. When I was premium, it was worth the ability to walk away. But I generally won't sign up for anything for a whole year in advance. I still buy magazines and newspapers on an per issue basis.

Absolutely. Once you downgrade you'll be stuck with a L$300 stipend if you re-upgrade.

This applied even if you started the downgrade process, and they announced they were reducing the stipend while you were still premium, and you wanted to cancel the downgrade. Contact support, and they pretended not to understand the difference between cancelling the downgrade and re-upgrading next month.

I supposed even if I decided to walk away mid year I could always come back at the end of the year and cash out all the stipen money I had accumulated. That is of course assuming they don't f*(k up the Lindex like they did the land market.

That would be the sensible option if you are locked into a full year.

Hi spinster,

I've recently arrived and was wondering about the best way to get some land.

I have my own group and was wondering what you meant by "rent some tier".

I think I know the fundamental stuff.. how to rent, how to buy mainland, the difference between LL mainland and estate land.

Just wanted to know what this new phrase means. Sorry if this is really basic stuff.

Thanks in advance

Have you considered quitting altogether, Eli?

Pep (Go camping with 3Ring for a decade or so.)

ETA Why don't you ask Lindal for advice? Ah, no, forget I suggested that.

Go for the middle then - pay quarterly

There are groups that pay people to use their extra tier and then they rent that tier out to other people that need it.

Say you own 6144 sqm of land. Since that is higher than the 4096 level, you will pay tier for 8192. You could donate the extra 2048 that you are paying LL for to a tier rental group and they would pay you some L$ for it. Then they would rent that tier out to someone that needs more tier. For the previous example, you could pay LL for the 4096 tier level and then rent the other 2048.

If you're L$400 or L$500 stipend, you pay US$72 once and you're premium for life... just let the stipend build up and sell it on Lindex once it gets to US$72 equivalent.

Well I decided to just go ahead and buy another year. I had enough L$ from selling land to cover the $72US so they are on the market now at $259 waiting for someone to buy. With the $400/wk stipend it makes sense to go ahead and do it. It kind of made me nervous having all those L$ in my account anyway.

Fanboi

Haha.