Withdrawal denied

I've tried twice now the last week to withdraw 1200 USD to my paypal account. Both times denied without a reason given. I'm nowhere near the withdrawal limit either.

Has anyone else had problems with this recently? Never happened before, and I've made monthly withdrawals during two years.

I have bills to pay and am basically screwed now...

Call them. Use Skype if you're overseas.

I'm sorry that this has happened to you---but you're right, it would be useful information to learn if this is occurring widely.

"Interesting" as in.....yikes.

I wonder if you've exceeded your limit in the "pay cycle", Snowflake. You might just need to raise your Pay Limit. I recently had a similar problem and raising my Pay Limit fixed the issue.

Maybe LL is hurting for cash and can't spare the money?

Seriously though... call them. They really ought to provide reasons - it is your money, not theirs.

-Atashi

when you're not having a premium account at paypal/or non business account, your limited in receiving money, check your settings at paypal too, perhaps that's causing problems.

Did you deposit any US$ onto your US$ balance from a payment source that could be part of the amount?

I'm not sure how well they keep track of that, but in theory you can't cash out anything that didn't come from the LindeX.

Either way, as Cristalle suggested, call billing to figure out what's going on .

1200 USD??? I would have called before I posted here that's for sure. /me Holds up her prim 45.. Gimmie my money!!

I've never heard that theory. Is there a source for that?

From the "Increase Your Credit" page.

Interesting. I suppose this sort of rule is to defeat use of the site for money laundering?
.

Ooooh, good find!!

I'm guessing that has a lot to do with money laundering prevention, or tax sheltering. What a delightful little gem! Makes total sense, too.

Maybe, but it seems a bit silly when you can US$ -> L$ -> US$ with no loss and then you'd be able to cash that out anyway.

It might be that though, coupled with the fact that the first sentence reads to me that when you increase your credit you're actually prepaying for the expense of future services which feels like some obscure legal requirement to distinguish it from a monetary deposit.

You always lose something. 30 cents at the US$ -> L$ stage then 3.5% from the L$ -> US$ stage. Nonetheless, 3.5% plus 30 cents is a low low price to pay to launder funds.

Cheers!

-Atashi

Not if you limit buy and limit sell though.

If you want it "near-instant" (an hour to a few hours depending on the amount) then you'd limit buy at L$273/$1 and limit sell at L$264/$1.

If you can wait you'd limit buy at L$274/$1 and limit sell at L$263/$1.

Practically: in the first case you'd loose 25 cents on $100, in the second case you'd gain 50 cents.

Aside from the possibility that the OP may have run into personal limits, don't forget that there are system limits on the movement of Lindens (to and from other currencies), too.

So the OP may just have had bad timing.

What with all that's been going on in the world, it's very possible that more people than usual have been trying to convert Lindens into 'real' currencies.


(And I'm not trying to promote a panic, by any means. My personal experience in the past couple of weeks is that I've sold MORE land than usual. And some biggish-parcels, too. So I don't think people are cashing out of SL...probably just trying to pay some real-world bills, much as the OP mentioned doing.)((ps---I've bought more land in the last couple of weeks, myself. I'm bullish on Second Life!))

Two more substantial parcels sold, just this minute. (No, I'm not starting a new habit of clogging up the Forums with my personal business results---I'm just saying that in this current financial climate, it's interesting to see what seems to be an increase in people making substantial investments of cash into SL. )

Update...I remain bullish on the product. Because of a personal experience I just had, I would wonder if the OP's experience is more general than we've thought. Like a lot of companies world-wide at the moment, this one could well be having cash-flow problems.

Please note that I have no proof that this is general. Just one experience, that may or may not indicate something more general. I say this only because I've recently talked up the good health of SL.

I do still think it's healthy; I genuinely have had far more land sales this week than in any other week. (I checked.)

But I wouldn't like to have it on my conscience that I'd talked anyone into putting more money in than they are prepared to lose.

It's important to realize that this isn't a 'guaranteed by the FDIC'-style account. It's an on-line experience (I won't say game) that some people put money into. Historically some people have gotten money out, too. But that's not guaranteed.

LL doesn't buy L$, other resident do, so other than LL simply withholding funds they're not going to *not* have the funds to pay out a LindeX sell order.

Yes, but the experience I had, just now, is nothing to do with buying or selling Lindens--it's about withdrawing US Dollars from my US Dollar balance.

So I'm wondering if this is just 'the usual problems'---and it could be. I know I've read enough here, and elsewhere, about difficulties in getting dollars cashed out. (Every business, not just LL, has a strong financial incentive to make it easy for people to give them money and hard for people to get money out. Such is human nature.)

I'd feel better if someone came along and said 'I cashed out X-hundred dollars just yesterday and it appeared in my PayPal account immediately' or such.

If there were such problems, I'd expect to see a run on the LindeX like we have never seen before. And I don't see that.

I'd expect the Company would run into trouble *after* our personal credit cards did, too. Remember, they are billing people's credit cards for land every day. As long as the credit card companies function, they will have serious cash coming in.

Also - let's say they did get into cashflow trouble. Two ways to handle it: 1) destroy our economy and shatter confidence within half an hour (doh! Homer Simpson move) or, 2) call up a major creditor and privately restructure debt - like say, offer the colocation facilities 2% more for a 30 day billing extension.

We are talking a few phone calls and some boilerplate followup contract stuff. The sort of thing you pay your counsel and your exec team to handle all in a day's work.

There are just waaay too many people interested in keeping Second Life running - no creditor is going to be so stupid as to cut them off and kill them for X dollars when keeping the grid up and running will ensure massive service contracts for years to come.

That all makes sense (although I will say that in the past couple of weeks, that proverbial Phone Call to secure additional credit is, no doubt, vastly less routine than has been true in recent years).

And, one condition the Phone Call recipient might make: after looking over the numbers on how many US dollars LL sends, each week, to residents who've filed requests (whether via PayPal or check), the PC entity might say 'you have to cut this number in half for the next six months'. Or something along those lines.

I say this mainly because of the very long list of Odd occurences I encountered this week. Sure, they could all have innocent explanations. Very possibly they do.

Or, alternatively, if faced with an ultimatum to slow the leakage of real currency (in relation to what is coming in), a list of 'things to delay anyone realizing we're delaying' might have been deployed.

Petty little things that would buy them some time before bad publicity started appearing. You know, like 'accidentally' transposing numbers in addresses or account numbers so that the money would lie unclaimed for longer; waiting 6 1/3 days before informing a check requestor that her address must be verified by a phone call in which security questions are answered, even though the dollars were debited from the balance instantly when the request was filed; taking that address over the phone without reading it back, and sure enough, when the resident presses to hear it read back, the LL phone agent has taken it down wrong!; telling the resident the 'check will now be processed', yet hours later, the History still shows the check is 'denied'---and it's the weekend, so who knows how many days it will be until anything moves?....

A list like that.

Now, this may be 100% business as usual---I've read enough posts on this forum to realize that may be the case. And as depressing as that would be, it's better than the alternative. I guess.

But, what with things being as they are....a person can't help wondering.

(I notice we haven't had anyone post 'I received my funds with no problem'....not that THAT proves anything, either way.)

It could well be that everything is exactly as normal.

I logged on this afternoon to find even more sales had gone through. More people buying land. (I could easily get spoiled by this high a level of income.)

And I bought another large parcel myself, today.

So I'm still highly optimistic about SL.

I just wish I knew whether the long list of delaying occurrences in the payout process is a list of coincidences or a list of deliberate acts. If the latter, and proof of such got out, it wouldn't be good for the company's reputation. (A name for not acting in good faith is not a good name to have when you are soliciting business from large corporate entities.) One hopes that's been taken into consideration.

... or if it is just a deliberate attempt by an unscrupulous individual to drive panic into the users of Second Life.

It's an interesting idea, but what payoff could there be?

Edit: the only thing that occurs to me is that you could sell short on LL stock----except that there IS no LL stock to sell short.