Did a Particular Thread Poof for Anyone Else?

Some places that issue monthly bills, in addition to online reminders and written notices in physical mail, call before terminating the service, and can accept payment in a variety of ways.

Which reminds me, there's a bill I ought to pay.

Phil, here are arguments for not deleting Premium accounts that are not paid up to date.

A premium account member who discovers, when they try to log back in, that their assets have been deleted and cannot be recovered, will most likely never be a customer again. Every time that happens, LL has alienated a real SL aficionado, since those are the only people who become premium in the first place.

This single policy has stopped me from ever becoming premium, as I don't need a monthly, or still less a yearly, bill that has to be watched like a hawk, just in case my bank decides they don't like LL. Half of the emails from LL end up in my spam folder automatically; I'm sure there's a pattern but I have no idea what it is.

When you run a company, there are times when you should let your marketing folks win over the bean counters. This, for LL, is one of those opportunities. LL should avoid policies that make them appear even more like heartless capitalists than they already do.

I'm happy for you that you live in the US, and thus most likely have a bank that will never take a dim view of LL. I'm happy for you that your life is so well-regulated that you KNOW you can watch your gaming accounts at least every two months. These things ain't true for everyone, and ultimately LL loses supporters and income with this policy.

Addressing the last thing.. The reason I say 3 is because that's the first rung after monthly on their payment cycle chart.

The rest.. well, that was a bit poorly thought out. It was supposed to point that people coming into SL come from games or social settings that are different from SL, so that LL's practices seem really bizarre to them.

The bit about the hacking was that LL has done some pretty 0 tolerance stuff in situations where users had issues that were caused by something beyond the user's control.. like when LL's payment info database was hacked, so they sent out an email to many of the effected residents to get their cards/payment types changed due to it. Unfortunately, this had the affect of causing many banks to list LL as an unreliable source and would refuse attempted payment drafts from LL. People couldn't even log in to change their payment types to pay LL without calling billing first.

Since when is hosting inventory and maintaining a L$ balance part of the service premiums or sim owners pay for? Last time I checked the service premiums get is: weekly stipends, access to support, 512m² free tier and the ability to get more mainland tier. Suspending the account pending payment without clearing inventory or L$ (and selling any owned land at auction) certainly denies that service.

Your personality is also showing through in the last part of the last sentence. You'd rather go out of your way to spite the person who didn't pay you on time but a company generally would just rather collect the money that's owed and - unless fraud is involved which isn't the case here - keep that person on as a customer once they're paid up.

Clearing the inventory and L$ balance makes it less likely that someone is going to care enough to settle the balance and pay the extra $9.95 and they'll just get a NPIOF alt if they return; and if they paid without knowing then they're not going to be particularly pleased or still willing to spend much on your platform; and it sets bad blood with some other residents as yet another way LL shows that it really doesn't care about its paying customers all that much.

I have paid LL my premium membership dues, first monthly, then quarterly, and finally annual, for over 2 years now. Say I get in an accident and end up in the hospital and physical rehab for a while (happened to a close friend very recently) and that keeps me away from the computer for a few months. During that time, my membership comes due again and LL automatically sends a charge to my credit card....... but, unfortunately, the card has expired and LL needs new info.

While I might not be extremely happy about things, I could see paying a "late fee" for the dues/tier and a fee to get myself re-activated, but I should not lose my entire inventory for that. The only way I should lose my L$ balance is if they convert it to US$ and use that towards whatever I owe them.

I have had customers who regularly would go 90 days without paying, but make good after I sent them the third invoice. I don't know what their logic was, but so long as they kept coming back and paying me I would much rather keep these "bad customers" as customers than fire them. It's not like I could recoup any of the work I'd done for them.

Certainly a paying customer who occasionally pays late is a better customer than one who never pays at all.

I can see them applying whatever was left after selling the land and converting the L$ to USD to apply to the negative. If it pays off the debt, bust the account back to basic and maybe unlock it. If it's still in the negatives, keep it locked, and make them pay a fee as well as the past due to unlock it. But to encourage people to pay off the balance, why not delete the account after a year of being in the negative and notices have been sent? Not just the inventory.. the whole account. There is NO point in keeping the account if you're gonna delete the inventory.

A year is more than enough time for a loved one or trusted friend to be notified, so that they can handle the account for you to get back. And I hate to sound callous, but if after a year, you're still not able to get online.. then chances are, you aren't coming back anyways.

There'd have to be clear guidelines and LL would have to follow them to the T. Also, LL might consider a backup of deleted accounts, just in cases.

But given how LL acts and how "clear" it's ToS is and how spotty it's enforcement.. *shrugs*

I can't see any reasonable objection to anything you've proposed here.

I also can't see how any objections that might be made, could be considered anything other than vindictive.

So they have plenty of cash to hire qualified personnel, but simply choose not to do so?

Awesome.

An interesting testimonial.

I can understand LL being careful about fraud. The fact that they are running a money supply certainly complicates matters.

But other virtual worlds run money supplies and yet manage to let people spend money by having rules that protect the company and yet are not as senselessly restrictive as LL'
s.

(By 'senselessly restrictive' I'm thinking about things such as the rule I ran into when I first went Premium: I knew I wanted to be in SL and so paid for a full year in advance, but that US$ amount put me over the amount I could spend in the first few days, so I couldn't buy land for [I think] three days. And there I was, having gone Premium for the express purpose of buying my first land.

( I couldn't buy Lindens for any purpose.

(Now, how much sense did it make for LL to keep me from following my enthusiasm and buying Lindens and spending them? They'd already accepted my US$72 and knew my cc was good.

(All I wanted to buy was about US$10 worth of Lindens so I could buy a 512 and get started. What possible fraud was prevented by making me wait several days to pay them that additional US$10 on top of the US$72 they'd already accepted from me?


Point is: many of their rules are counterproductive and harm their bottom line more than they could ever possibly protect their bottom line.

Managing cash flow.

Well, there might be a point if that account has an early-in-SL-history incept date. (For bragging rights and such.)

Another reason to keep an acount name would be if you have used that name at dozens of other places. Not that I know anyone who has done that, of course.

http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne

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They also have a really bad prior history that red flags them with a lot of credit card companies now. The monetary system you mentioned. Payment problems and double charges that their customers are always calling their card companies about. Previously used for internet gambling (still if you count zyngo). An internet gaming company that bills from another country. On and on ....

Is it any wonder credit card companies are jumpy about LL? I had to verify that it was a legit charge when I went premium and bought some lindens.

To respond to both yours and Ponsonby, then you'd be likely to pay up in that year's time, and put the account back down to basic, now wouldn't you? I'll even say, leave basics alone, but there has got to be SOME stick to get premiums to pay up if they go into the negatives. And a year is far more responsible than LL's usual reactionary behavior.

Like, blocking access to their account until they pay?

OK, let's say I leave my car in a parking garage. And I don't pay for the parking. They lock my car up, until I pay, that will give me an incentive to pay. Putting the car into a car crusher after a month, no... once the car is crushed, what incentive do I have to pay up?

That gives people an incentive not to leave their car in the garage in the first place, though.

Actually, the parking lot calls to have it towed and the impound lot takes over from there. If after a number of days of holding and attempts at contacting you, the car can and will be sold at auction. Maybe not crushed, but YOU are no longer in control of the car either way at that point.

And in this case, deletion would come only if selling the land and converting your L$ fails to cover the negative. And it would require a LL to make actual attempts at contacting you.

They *are treated the same. If you owe and show no signs of paying, you're removed. If you don't owe, your account won't be affected. It has nothing to do with the type of account. The fact that only premium accounts rack up real money debt doesn't change that.

I don't live in the U.S. I'm in the UK.

Allbut one of the reasons you gave are for LL, but they've chosen their system, no doubt with such things in mind. I meant that I see no reason from a user's point of view. The one reason that is from a user's point of view is that people can't always check at least every 2 months that the bill has been paid. I'm sorry, but I don't accept that.

Holding data for a person is a service, and one that is usually paid for.

My personality doesn't come into it. It's entirely to do with LL's decisions, and I find them to be perfectly fair.

Again, that's LL's decision, which I find perfectly fair.

Nobody has yet put across any reason why it's unfair to users. It was perfectly fair with the person who started this, as she had the L$ to pay, used the forum often enough, but didn't get round to dealing with until it was too late.

I don't really think fairness is all that relevant to the issue. Rather, I see it as a question of LL's bottom line, and it's for that reason that I think the current policy is a mistake.

It costs vanishingly close to nothing to keep any member's unchanging data online in perpetuity. Expense really isn't a factor--it's all about revenue.

So it's really a decision between two hypothetical revenue streams:

1. The amount of Premium membership and other payments (e.g., tier) that are generated by people who would otherwise let payment lapse but who know that will cause loss of account and content.

2. The amount of Premium membership and other payments to be gained if people weren't avoiding that risk by not becoming Premium or by preemptively downgrading to Basic, plus payments from those whose Premium accounts lapsed and would come back were it not for the lost content.

It seems to me that the second must be very much larger than the first.

They are running their business on your money. Cost effective for them, not for you. I don't like it either, but that is how a lot of big businesses run.

But this parking lot doesn't do that. They don't tow the car, they don't auction the car, they destroy it, in place, getting no benefit out of it and giving up any chance of getting any money from you. Oh, maybe a few percent of the users actually care about the name, but most have no incentive whatsoever to pay up instead of getting another anonymous alt and never becoming premium again.

Oh and this parking lot provides an identical parking lot across the street they don't charge anything for, so there's no reason to actually USE the parking lot they charge you for and risk getting your car crushed.

Regardless, if I treated them the way Phil thinks I should treat them I'd go broke.

Phil: quit babbling about fairness and start thinking about what actually makes sense for LL's bottom line.

I understand perfectly. They are good customers of sorts. If they go over three months though, I would cut them off. I hope you charge them interest. Sometimes that brings them current. Or you could do a 2/20 and maybe they would pay ahead.