Did a Particular Thread Poof for Anyone Else?

Kick 'em while they're down! Yeeehaw!

I don't have any problems paying with my CC because I don't do it. I exchange L$ for US$ in my account so my card is never used. But it was used when I started without any problems.

They could certainly lock the account for a couple of months and delete it if the person hasn't payed by then. I'm not saying that LL does it the best way possible. I'm saying that, when an account goes into arrears, and gives the impression of having no intention of paying, then there is no reason why the system owner should keep the account, even locked, for any more time. It's just a case of when is a good time to put an end to it because it has to be done sometime.

The person whose account was removed hadn't logged into SL in over a year, and had sufficient L$ to cover the debt but did nothing about it, and only tried to do something after the period of grace had ended. I can't fault LL for ending it. If someone can't find a few minutes in over 2 months to deal with it... well I don't accept that a person can't find those few minutes. The one we're talking about spends plenty of time in the forum, so not being able to find a few minutes in 2 months doesn't come into it.

ETA:
There is no need at all to delete idle basic accounts because they don't owe LL any money, so there's no reason to stop them using the system if they choose to return years later. People who owe money to LL should not be treated in the same way - they should not be allowed to use the system while not paying what they owe.

Noone's expecting the account not to get suspended; or not expecting any land holdings to be seized and sold off to try and cover the debt; nor minding that LL would suspend any alts using the same payment info as well.

The point is whether or not the inventory and L$ balance should be forfeit too, particularly in light of the fact that LL won't clear anything from a basic account that's been inactive for the past 5 years.

Keep the (negative) US$ balance, the L$ balance and inventory and just suspend the account. If they don't come back: no more harm than the millions of inactive basics who'll never log on again. If they do come back they have to settle the debt and there's a $9.95 fee to get your account reinstated as well.

Imo, there is no reason to make premium accounts equal with basic accounts in this respect. If they are going to be equal, then it should be the other way round. It's not that premium accounts get a bad deal, it's that basic ones get a particularly good deal. I don't see any reason for a system provider to keep an account intact, just in case the user decides to return sometime in the future.

There's a non-zero cost associated with keeping the data of those 10 million basics who aren't ever going to log back on again.

And if those accounts aren't going to log back on again they're also not going to be able to do anything to offset that cost so it's certainly in LL's best interest to purge it all in your view.

You already said it yourself: if someone isn't coming back then they don't need their inventory and L$ balance anymore so there's no reason to keep it around. Whether they were premium or basic really doesn't make a difference there.

Exactly. As I said, it's not that premium accounts get a bad deal - it's that basic accounts get a particularly good deal.

ETA:
I can imagine LL deciding that keeping all the idle basic accounts is in their best interests - so that they can truthfully say n million members instead of n thousand members. For that reason they may have decided to pay the cost of keeping them open. On the other hand, dealing fairly and correctly with people who owe money won't put a noticeable dent in the membership number.

I very much doubt that the cost of keeping data online even enters into the calculation. If LL could retain or recover more Premium members by not deleting their inventory when membership lapses, they'd come out ahead adding however much storage it takes to do it. A petabyte of middling slow nearline RAID 0 is awfully cheap these days, and doesn't use much power to keep spinning, either.

I suspect it's a much simpler calculation: if LL threatens Premiums with losing all they've acquired, there's a pretty good chance they'll keep paying. In contrast, a Basic account isn't paying anything, so there's nothing to be gained by threatening to poof their stuff.

Toldja! Once again, Jumpy has the "in info."

From the impression I got of the unnamed person from the forums (never had the pleasure of meeting HER in-world) she was very conscientious and would be the last person to create drama.

Thread winner!!!

Thanks, Nika - heading there now.

ETA: I already voted on this. Good for having voted, bad for the memory loss

Now THIS makes sense and the way, imo, it should be handled. I agree if notices are sent out (and I'd advocate at least 2 as I've had my email eat messages before), then do the above.

That is good business, doesn't penalize people for having Premium accounts and most of all, creates good will for LL/SL.

According to Phat - LL did send a few emails, but he had abandoned the original email account he used to register and never updated his profile. When he talked to them on the phone, they mentioned that they'd sent several emails and he hadn't responded (which he acknowledge to be true.)

As for the credit card thing, I've used at least 3 different ones from *major* banks and never once had a bank hold or question a LL charge.

(not that I have lots and lots of cards, I used to shift my business around following 0% balance transfer solicitations...good luck finding one of those now in the "New Depression."

Agree with your post in full. On this particular point it could (and from what I've read in the forums over time does) backfire. If a Premium member is paying monthly, it only takes one billing cycle to decide to downgrade to Basic. Quarterly and Premium payments take longer to renewal date, but *can* be dropped to basic at any time. The remaining money prepaid is not refunded (and I'm not saying it should be) so those people will stay Premium until then to get what they paid for.

If people get concerned they may lose their stuff, or just get irked over the issue (think Xstreet), they may be more likely to quit paying for Premium.

Except when she was trolling, which wasn't a rare thing from her

It may make good sense, but it's not the only way that makes good sense, so why do it at all? Why should LL bend over backwards to accomodate the possibility of a debtor coming back sometime and paying up?

Because right after the hacking, most residents had problems getting their banks and CC companies to accept legit payment requests from LL. Had nothing to do with resident errors or unwillingness to pay, because it was LL that was hacked. And it took a couple of months (for some, even longer) to get it sorted out.

I'd like to take the time to point out that most MMORPGs don't delete accounts, inventories or currency balances. This is because they know people will take breaks, get bored and might eventually come back. I recently took a 4 month break from City of Heroes, but came back to find everything as I left it. I could just pick up and go again, no problem. I'd have left if my stuff was simply *gone* and I had to start again.

Now, on free things, like Muds, Mushes, Mu* of all sorts, it's a different story. Unless notice of likely return was given, the "account" was deleted anywhere from 6 months to a year of inactivity, depending on god/goddess preference. Of course, it's a rare Mu* that actually charged players to be there, so it is usually the god/goddess paying for the site.

Honestly, it makes more sense from both a financial stand point and to encourage people to at least go Payment Info On File, if NPIOF's were deleted after a year of inactivity and emails regarding it as 3 month intervals.

For Premium or other accounts that are delinquent in payment, suspend the account after failure of payment and if after three months, the account is not caught up LL can sell off both land and L$ balance, because honestly, if the error isn't corrected by three months, then damn it, the person doesn't WANT to correct it. If a person wants the account back after that, then they have to pay the negative off AND the fee of $9.95 USD to get the account back. If that's not paid within a year, then by all means, delete the account.

They're already bending over backwards now since either:
- someone is manually going through the process of deleting accounts who have been suspended for X days
- someone wrote - and maintains - a process that automatically purges accounts who have been suspended for X days

Keeping the account suspended indefinitely really requires no effort of any kind (and doesn't waste any resources that aren't already being wasted by inactive-but-not- cancelled basics) and would actually simplify things since it's one less manual or automated process to maintain.

In addition most people's inventory is worth more (in the sense of "cost to replace it all" than what they're going to owe LL so there's an incentive to settle the debt and pay the extra reinstatement fee if they do return which isn't that uncommon.

They don't loose anything by not purging the account and clearing the L$ balance, but by purging the account they're virtually ensuring that if that person comes back they're not going to be very tempted to spend all that much US$ again and there's certainly no incentive to bother settling the balance on their account because all they'll get is a name with no inventory and a L$0 in the top right corner so they might as well save the money and get a new "no payment info" alt.

Raudf:

I don't know anything about "the hacking", but it still doesn't prevent people from paying and it certainly doesn't prevent people from checking that each month's payment has gone through. It's no reason at all to build up a debt of more than one month's payment.

I don't consider other companys' practises to be relevant. Each company decides for itself. I don't imagine that you would have been able to go back to that one after 4 months of building debt, and continue as though you hadn't been away. Also, you would have been able to do the same thing with SL as long as you hadn't been building up a debt to LL.

You last paragraph agrees with my view. The only difference is that I said 2 months and you said 3 months, but I'd be happy with 3 months

As long as you're not banned they'll already grab the land and sell it on auction, deduct what you owe, deduct an extra administrative fee and whatever is left (if anything) is credited to your account in US$.

Selling off the L$ balance doesn't make sense though since they're not worth anything at all at that point and might actually end up costing them money: if they were to sell it off then it's less L$ that Supply Linden can sell so there's no net gain of any kind; additionally if the avie happened to have L$100k and it gets sold for US$384 and they only owed $50 then LL is forced to credit the avie what's left after settling the debt.

You bet a credit card company will silently stop payments to LL. That's what my bank did when I tried to buy some L$ to get payment information on file (get this: putting payment information on file is apparently not good enough to have payment information on file, what a laugh). They were happy to let LL do a reserve or whatever you call it, but they wouldn't let an actual transfer go through.

(as an aside: I couldn't get age verified either, on either of the addresses I have lived in this town, and I'm not going to lie about being Elvis Presley just to get into Zindra)

I have never found a company that was this hard to do business with. Near as I can tell, they don't actually want your money.

Kitty:

You're not understanding. If I provide a service to you for $nn/month, and you go into arrears, I'm going to deny the service to you. There is no good reason for me to maintain your account the way things were, and I can think of one very good reason not to - you're a bad customer who I'd rather not have again.

I haven't seen any reasonable argument in this thread as to why LL should do things any differently to the way they do things now. The only argument is that it doesn't happen to basic accounts, but that's not an argument at all. It just means that accounts that don't go into debt with LL can stay, whether they are used or not. I can't fault that. It's nobody's business, except LL's, whether it costs them money, or time, or whatever else. They are not doing anything wrong to anybody, they do give people time, they send email reminders (which shouldn't even be necessary), and they can't be faulted.

The person who caused this discussion only has herself to blame. She had enough L$ in her account but she didn't bother making sure that she converted it to US$ in her account until after she'd got into debt and after the period that LL allows had expired. It's her own fault.

Note:

It's not a difference between Premium and Basic accounts - it's a difference between people who owe money to LL and people who don't. The idea of it being a difference between account types is a red herring.

It is a difference between people who pay LL and people who don't. Which makes an unpaid Premium account identical to a Basic account, and therefore they should be treated the same.