Getting money out of SL

Hi,

I run a rental business and I recently decided to cash in some of my Lindens on the Lindex. After placing the sell order I eventually was told that my Lindens had been sold, and the equivalent in US$ was now on my account.

On checking My Account, sure enough, there was the US$. But how do I get at it??

The next few invoices I received from LL for my sim tiers were taken from this US$ balance, and after it had gone down to US$0 they started taking from my CC again.

This made me think. If I cashed Lindens, got US$ on my account, then sold my sims, so I had no more tier payments to make, how could I extract the US$ held on my account by LL??

Anyone tried to get their US$ out before?

Rock

On your main account page, next to the USD balance, there will be a link which says 'Process Credit.' Click that and follow along to cash out to check or PayPal...they won't reimburse your credit card.

But they charge you a hefty fee to cash out.

It might be cheaper to transfer the $L to SLExchange and cash out from there. I'm not sure though...all of my cash flow has been in the other direction.

Hefty fee? It's $1 USD to cash out to Pay Pal.

It's $10 USD to process a bank check, but they won't do that for amounts less than $100 USD.

SLX is faster, from what I hear. But I believe the process is similar for getting your US$ back out of your SLX Balance. I've only used my SLX balance to make purchases on SLX, so I am not sure there.

A friend suggested just offering your L$ through an eBay auction then when the winning bidder pays you cash/PayPal whatever, then you transfer the L$ to them in SL.

A quick check on eBay revealed to me dozens of auctions asking cash for L$ so that might be a good option as well...

From what I hear, a lot of those auctions are fraudulent...either they are complete scams and you'll never see your Lindens, or the Lindens themselves are purchased with a stolen credit card.

If LL catches you using this "hot" money, they take it away and fine you an additional 50%.

Amazing...

If they are so concerned with that, then maybe they should make it easier and cheaper to convert your hard-earned L$ into cash. But that is purely subjective by me as I've not encountered issues like this yet.

Although, if it's acceptable practice to "sell" property and possessions on eBay that you've acquired or built in SL, then L$ is no more or less than another piece of "property" that should likewise have the same freedom of purchase and sales using the same medium as the others.

One could just as easily use a fraudulent credit card to buy a bunch of property in SL and sell that too. One is no different than the other.

And fraud protection in this regard is handled through whatever means of payment one chooses to use as well as the amount of positive feedback the seller has accrued over time and the mediation practices employed by eBay. Not really something SL or LL should have any governance over anyway.

Though that is a personal opinion purely...

What is so hard about paying $1 for paypal? The only problem was with them being so slow... which they seem to be remedying.

A buck's OK, Cristalle. I was thinking of that ten dollar check-writing fee. Ugh.

As far as eBay, there's nothing that says you can't sell your SL content or Lindens there. I only pointed out that there are a lot of bad actors using eBay in this way, which could cause someone (i.e., LL) to look very closely at your SL-related eBay activity.

I wouldn't touch eBay with a football goal post. Way too much potential for fraud - lose your lindens, AND get the charge revoked fraudulently? No thanks!

I make a living on eBay so I'm no-doubt biased. However, at the same time I get burned by dodgy transactions on there weekly so I can both sympathize and empathize...

I think it bears down on experience and ambition. For example, I sold a laptop on eBay last week. I finally had to set a whole long list of restrictions because the first three times it sold it was to unscrupulous Nigerians who had stolen other people's eBay and PayPal accounts.

Fraud can and will never be eliminated, but there are an endless stream of means you can employ to tremendously reduce your risk of getting burned. Now I rarely offer items more than $100 without first requiring the potential bidder to call me before they are allowed to bid. At least that way I can insure I'm not getting international phone calls from some Nigerian A-hole trying to scam me.

Now my thieves are reserved to only those calling me from within the United states. LOL!

Does anyone know a different way, besides PayPal, to cash out?

The options:

I lost 500 US dollars that way, LL docked me several months after I purchased purloined lindens :/ I won't buy anything else at all from Ebay, ever. The whole process to try and recoup funds from Ebay and Paypal is so convoluted and tedious that you just give up (which is what they want you to do) I almost quit the game over it.

How did LL know you did this? A friend of mine has two Avatars and he routinely transfers thousands of L$ between them without any rhyme or reason. He basically keeps one Avatar to store excess L$ kind of like having a savings account to help keep his money a little safer.

If I send someone L$ in-game there is absolutely no way LL is going to have any clue what I did to get them. Maybe I helped someone in-game and they decided to pay me for my trouble. I'd like to know what police-state practice the Lindens are employing to spy on your non-descript L$ transfers between Avatars...

Since LL would not share any details at all with me (one of the victims of the fraud) I can't tell you how they knew anything... I can only assume stuff which has no value. They would not even tell me the name of an investigating agent in the case and since I had bought lindens from several sources that put me in a difficult spot (read I got screwed out of my money). It was handled very unprofessionaly by LL, I was surprised at their lack of courtesy and expertise.

As far as I know you CAN NOT sell or buy anything virtual on eBay, they banned these activities about 5 months ago.

Yesterday I transfered money to my US$ account for the second time. The SL web page says:
"Fees for Selling L$
Sellers of Linden Dollars pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance"

I'm still puzzled how this actually works out because I can not see any fee stated anywhere on my accounts but I lose US$6.50 compared to the "buy" price for the same amount of lindens. I think LL are kind of sneaky here, are these 3.5% build in the "sell" price they give you - I don't even see the exchange rate for this transaction. What am I missing?

https://secure-web7.secondlife.com/currency/describe-transaction-fees.php

Estimated proceeds reflect the amount received after the fee. If you are selling 10k L at 267L/USD, you should theoretically receive 37.45 USD for it, but instead you would receive 36.13 USD after the fee. I kind of prefer that they do it this way rather than charge me in USD.

There is a whole page of linden dollar sellers on there right now... including one of them I suspect was the thief, but since LL was so secretive about the perp, I don't know anything for sure.... man that sucks. Just be aware and careful out there kids.

WHAT!, pay a fee on money earned, it's like a tx, especially if it was hard earned by landbots or campbots.

I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you on that one. A swift eBay scan for virtual items including virtual money on eBay just for World of Warcraft right now comes up with 2,884 auctions for me.

And a quick scan for Second Life L$ auctions and virtual property hits around 150 current auctions.

Now, I'm not saying these are all legal. I'm just saying they are definitely allowed by eBay. I've sold on eBay since 1997 - ten years - and for the last several years I've made 100% of my living by selling on eBay so I consider myself pretty up to par when it comes to eBay's rules and regulations. I'm also the first to say they SUCK BUTT when it comes to handling complaints and fraud allegations.

However, selling virtual items including money is totally legal on eBay so if LL nailed anyone for buying L$ on eBay then they acted illegally unless they clearly state in their terms of service that you cannot use eBay to buy merchandise and L$.

Which would put them at odds with sites like SL Exchange which also caters to buying and selling a whole range of virtual products and services outside of Second Life and permits payment using services such as PayPal which makes them identical to eBay in every regard, just more specialized as they are geared toward Second Life products and services.

From the TOS:



If someone obtained Lindens with a stolen credit card and then sold them on eBay, that counts as a fraudulent Lindex transaction and LL will reverse it for every avatar to which they can trace the funds. Transaction histories make such traces fairly easy.

And SLX uses LL's Risk API, so they're a safe outside source, unlike eBay.

Thanks for the information. However, that does mean that buying and selling SL products and services on eBay isn't illegal. It just means that if LL can trace that it originated from fraudulent activity, then they will intervene.

They keep watch on the larger transactions, like in the hundreds of thousands or millions of lindens.

You can sell your stuff and lindens on ebay.

Its just that a fair percentage of them are scams or cc fraud.

So if the deal seems too good to be true, it probably is