Charged double for transferring land

Ok. I am currently in a group with two other people, and we all pay tier on our land, which is held by a group. One of the people is having difficulty paying, and so the other person in the group offered to pay her tier for a couple of months. Because today is the last day of the financial month, the first person lowered her tier and the second person took over all the tier payments on the land and raised her tier level.

But then we realised that rent is charged in arrears, and it appears that both partners will be charged for the same bit of land.

We contacted the Lindens, and were told that this was the case. So we then asked the following (I have changed the names):-

Partner: so it imposssible to bot own land and change to onnot with out both being cahged
Partner: nd lindens getting money for both
Linden: https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417
Partner: as in her teir will be charged 45 thi mo
Linden: Please have a look at this website for more information.
Partner: and she will be charged nxt
Linden: Yes.
Partner: i have readthat over and over
Partner: and why i contaced u
Partner: we are trying to find how we make it
Partner: u are sayin it imposssible?
Linden: Yes.

So the Lindens are admitting that it is impossible to transfer land in a group without incurring a double payment for the same bit of land . That seems incredible to me.

In this case it may well mean that we have to lose our land. I have been in sl for five years, and have owned or partly owned this land for three. To say I am pissed off is the understatement of the year.

I would ask some questions.

Is this true?

If it is true, is it legal?

If it is legal, then why have the Lindens not set up a system to prevent this from happening? Second Life has surely been in existence for long enough for things like this to be sorted out.

i have heard of ll 'fixing up' these kinds of errors. i guess it depends upon the linden you are dealing with.
next time just pull all tier donations from the group.
the land will float like that for quite a while (many weeks if not more), and before it is reclaimed ll will send a warning email to the group founder.

Why would it be illegal?

You just made an unfortunate mistake by not checking up on the details of how tier is calculated and charged until *after* one of you already increased his/her tier.

You could have paid the one with trouble making rent in L$ which he/she cashed out to US$ to pay her tier (if you limit buy and limit sell you don't loose any money doing that).

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BTW-do make sure the partner who can't keep tier up has withdrawn the tier from the group or it will keep on counting as "used" for next month as well.

So you know this from experience, eh?

i only need enough tier to cover the largest parcel. everything else can be juggled

Well, I would have thought that charging two different people for essentially the same item would be regarded in some areas as fraudulent. Particularly when you are told that there is no way of doing a transfer of this kind without that happening. I don't know what you mean by 'limit buy' and 'limit sell'.

You are paying for tier donated to a group, it has nothing to do with what the group is using that tier for. i.e. it isn't paying for a piece of land twice. The way to not lose out totally is to make sure there's a week of overlap and then donate one half of the tier to someone like Ninjaland who will pay for donated tier.

Or why not just give the other party the payment in RL to cover it?

Or what Nina said, but I must admit I'd be very nervous about doing that with too much land!

If that works, it would only need the person having difficulties to withdraw the tier, and the other person to add tier after his/her billing date.

It would be interesting to know how much time there is before land is reclaimed.

First of all since you didn't specifically mention it: the one withdrawing her tier has actually taken her tier out of the group? If she still has tier donated she'll be charged for that next month as well.

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Simply giving the other person money to pay for their tier is the easiest solution (as long as you trust them to use it to pay their tier anyway).

You can do that through RL means, or simply giving them a certain amount of L$.

In the case of L$, if you'd be buying them and she'd be selling them then depending on how you go about it you could end up loosing 7.5% along the way.

Specific example: transferring $100 US from A to B
market buy + market sell: $7.3 lost in exchange fees
market buy + limit sell: $3.8 lost in exchange fees
limit buy + limit sell: $0.14 lost in exchange fees

Anyway, since you made the transfer now already it's not terribly relevant.

Mainland land tier is a really funny thing.

Essentially you pay X amount for the possibility to control Y square meters of land. How much mainland less than that you actually have is irrelevant.

So maybe you don't own any land, maybe there are some ridiculously arcane transfer methods.

So you could be paying a full region tier without actually having a region. That's perfectly possible and within bounds of what they describe as offered.

* * * * *

I'm no mainland expert, but I think there is a grace period for a group not having enough donated tier to cover its land responsibilities. It's not very long, whatever it is - but it's not like the land instantly abandons. Or wasn't, last I heard of such issues.

In such case, the way to transfer might be for the troubled party to simply pull all tier from the group near their bill date, and have someone else pick it up very quickly thereafter.

Can this be done effectively? I don't know, the timing of billing dates, arcane group control procedures and unstated group grace periods for the mainland make my head swim. Private estates are far easier: renters pay exactly for the time they get, there are no artificial tier levels and I know my bill dates.


Selador I wish you the very best on this; I would say: contact the Company and see if you can get it straightened out.

If there is any shred of patience left in you after said process, forward this thread to the Knowledgebase guys. This group tier land transfer stuff *really* ought to be a step by step procedure or something.

I came up against that very recently, and it's different to what you described.

I found that my alt had an amount of tier checked that was one or two levels up from the maximum amount that it had held through the whole of the current billing period. And yet, the amount due to pay was correct for the maximum amount of land it had held in the period. I phoned LL to query it, and this is how it works...

A person can have any tier level checked, but they are only charged for the maximum amount of that they have actually held in the billing period. What checking a higher tier level does is, when you buy land that will take you up a level, you are not informed that it will take you up. So the bill is on the max land held in the period, and not on the checked tier level.

Ah! I'm wrong then, and happily so. Is this what's tripping up Selador, in a 'maximum owned land' sort of way for each individual?

If you donate tier to the group then this tier is still used to calculate your monthly payment regardless of whether the group is using it, so you could have donated a sims worth of tier to a group that does not own any land and still pay a sims worth of tier.

But if you'd donated half a sim but had a full sim ticked would only be charged for the half.

You pay for both the land you hold and the tier you have in groups. As in, say you have 512 in your own name. No payment needed to LL, as that is within the "free" 512 land. At the same time, one of your groups has 512 tier donated by you to it. That group owns zero meters. You are charged for that 512 as if it was being used to hold land.

I can tell as I write this that I'm not being very clear.

1) You pay for whatever you hold in your own name.
2) You pay for whatever tier you have donated to a group. Even if that group does not own land.

#2 is where people get into trouble. Say they want to move land from one group to another. The group needs to have tier to hold the land. If they mess up and put in the correct amount into group two, without first taking it out of group one - they are charged for all that tier. Similarly if you "switch" owners of the land in one group, switch who is paying, you need to have the tier removed by one, and then added by the other, or both will be charged.

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Important note: Pay close attention to bill date. Not everyone is charged at the same time.

for example

Person 1 has a bill date of October 16
Person 2 has a bill date of October 17
Person 3 has a bill date of October 14

Person 1 wishes to avoid paying tier for another month, they will need to unload the tier (as in remove it from group, or sell land) before October 16, or before the next billing cycle starts. They will still be charged for land held up to that date.

Person 2 would not be a good choice to "take on" the tier. They will be charged for the month before October 17, and the month after October 17.

Person 3's billing cycle just started again. They will only be billed for one month of tier, unless they do not unload the land/tier before November 14.

Desmond and yourself are both right, you're on slightly different pages. If you tick that you own half a sim but you only actually own a quarter of a sim you'll be charged tier for a quarter of a sim.

However if you own over half a sim, you get charged the same as someone who owns a full sim. If you donate over half a sim's worth of tier to a group and that group sells the land, unless you withdraw your tier donation, you will still be charged for owning land, even if your group doesn't own any land.

Well I am the person who is taking over my friend's tier for land we share in a Group. I live in UK and she lives in USA and we both have billing date of 16th October. Now we didn't know whether my tier would be taken in UK time so we transferred today. I fail to understand how they can take money from both of us as my tier due tomorrow. My friend is also having to pay which really defeats the object as she cannot pay.

To answer the question why cant we send money, I would have rather done that but no time for it to arrive in time for payment. Anyway if we knew this would have happened I would have sent Lindens for her to pay it that way. I feel there is not enough advice or notes on how to do this. In effect if you want to sell land to someone else you both have to pay a month's tier, even if its the last day before tier due. I feel it is wrong taking both our monies when there are only a few hours to go before tier payment. What do they expect us to do, sit up all night until midnight in both countires and do the changeover then? With such a large organisation like this why is there not something put in place to combat this.

What I found shocking was that the Linden our partner spoke to said that whenever you do a transfer like this within a group, both people will automatically be charged for the full month.

Because they charge you for the maximum amount you owned or donated in the prior month, whether you held it for 30 days or .30 seconds. It says so right on the Land Use Fees page.


http://www.secondlife.com/account/landfees.php?lang=en

You both had tier donated to the group for this land at some point in the 30 days prior to your billing date, so you both owe.

What I do in cases like this is transfer ownership over in salami slices, readjusting group and personal tier after each slice, until everything's settled.

I think what's going on here is that if you hold land for even part of a tier period, you're still charged for it, so if you transfer the land over in the middle of your payment period you'll both have to pay tier for whatever part of your payment periods overlap.

Yes, I forgot to mention donated tier. That's also included in the max land during the period. It's just that the checked tier level doesn't make any difference to the bill. The only difference it makes is that, when buying more land and your checked tier level is higher than the max land and donated tier in the period, you won't be warned that you're going up a tier level.

The other side of it is that you don't need to check a lower tier level when you reduce your holdings.

It's because the month's bill is for the maximum amount of land/donated tier that you had in the month - in arrears. Even if you only had some for a second, it still increases the maximum amount for the month.

If it helps in the future, you have to wait until LL time has passed midnight on your billing day. Right now that's 8 a.m. the next for the UK. They wait the *full* time before billing you.

Hi, Sel.

I think it's not necessarily true that the person she spoke with has the correct information, or indeed even understood what she was asking. Support has been notoriously uninformed in a few encounters I've read about here, so it would be worth following this up a bit.

it does work, and i have gone as long as a month with my landholding group in negative tier. they used to react much faster, i dont know why the long grace period. in any case, they will send an email to the group founder (not owner, but founder) before they reclaim the land.

as to the OP, there is a thread stickied in the top of this forum, 'how to transfer land' which is a good read on the subject of tier and land dealings.