Mainland Tier Question

This will be my last question tonight...I promise. However, it does follow one of today's themes of land selling, prices, etc.

OK, here was my understanding of mainland tier payments: a certain date is set as my billing date for the tier payments. (Not sure how LL determines the date as I looked at the last several parcels I purchased and the billing date was never that date. But I'm sidetracking myself....)

My billing date was the 15th of each month. Everything I read by LL re: tier billing is that one is billed for the total land held for the last 30 days, regardless if it was only one day. (ie. if I purchased a new parcel on the 14th is how I understood that)

I wanted to tier down and sell a parcel PRIOR to November 15, my understanding being that I had already paid tier for the land up to the 15th.

So, I sold the extra parcel a few hours ago. That's another story entirely; I must be having a really off day because I began at 2.0 sqm and gradually worked down...1.9, 1.8...I was doing this with a calculator to get the sale price of the land. My next entry was 1.7 which is what I THOUGHT I entered. The ching-ching sound chimed AND about 5 people descended on the property and began muttering about land bots. The sale price didn't look quite right to me, so I recalculated it and had *somehow* - I have no clue how as I was trying to be very careful - sold it for 1.07 sqm.

As I was recovering from this shock, I comforted myself with the thought that at least I won't be shelling out more tier atm, my 512 parcel is rent free so I can begin saving lindens.

I checked my Account Summary page expecting to see zero lindens for Nov. 15, or no billing charge at all, but the tier for both plots was still there. After refreshing my browser a few times I decided to contact Live Support (again) to see when that area updated.

MAIN QUESTION: I was told that tier is charged "in arrears", ie. I didn't start paying tier on the land until the following month, so I will still pay tier for this billing period then it will stop after that.

OK, maybe my brain has stopped working, but I thought one of the specific reasons people sold land right before the next tier billing date was to not pay the next month's tier. I kept saying I had already paid the last 30 days on the October billing (Oct. 15-Nov. 15) and this seemed like getting billed twice for land I no longer owned.

The very patient support person said that I had held the property from Oct. 16 til today so the Nov. 15 billing date reflects the "past 30 days" I kept repeating.

So, with this being the case, when *is* the best time to sell property to avoid the following month's tier, or, as in my case, will there always be that next month to pay that reflects the last 30 days (that I thought I'd already paid)?

I think I need a loooong nap.

Yes, on the 15th they will take the payment for the previous 30 days. So the latest you could have held the land would be that day. But you still want to sell it on or before the 15th otherwise you will get billed NEXT month on December 15th as well, even if you sell it on November 16th. It was still the best time to sell, give or take a day to avoid them charging you again on December 15th.

Also, now that the land has sold, make sure you go to the website>Land Manager>Land Use Fees and click the circle next to USD 0.00/ month 0 0/128 Region

Since you already said it perfectly here yourself, I am a bit confused by ... well, your confusion. Tier is always paid for the last 30 days that happened. How could LL know at the beginning of the month how much land you'll hold during it?

Mainland tier is paid behind, estate tier is paid ahead. Think about how buying mainland works, when you buy the land, you don't pay tier until tier day.

The best time to sell if you want to unload is pretty much when you did, you got to use the land for pretty much the whole month, if you'd sold it the day after tier payment day you wouldn't have had use of the land for so long and you'd have still had to pay tier on it come tier day.

The best time to buy if you want to tier up is just after you've paid tier too, for the same reasons, you get to use the land for longer.

Put this another way, if you could sell land prior to tier day and not pay tier on it, you could buy a shed load of land the day after tier day, sell it all again the day before tier day and you'd be paying tier at the same level you were on the previous tier day, despite in between having used lots of land.

Did any of that make sense?

Thank you all for not laughing at me. (Like i said, considering I sold the land for 1.07 sqm instead of setting it for 1.7, I wasn't operating on all cylinders. )

@Ray - What was confusing me is that I'd always heard "Tier down before the next tier payment so you don't have to pay that. In my mind it translated to "Tier down before Nov. 15 so you don't have to pay that payment. You can see why I was an English major instead of doing the math thing. I wasn't thinking I'd have to pay Nov. AND Dec. if I sold after Nov. 15.

@Norvis - Confusion was my "word of the day" yesterday. After reading Ray's post I likened it in my mind to how my particular phone company works - I basically pay for the previous month because, as you said, the phone company doesn't know how many long distance calls I'll make that month.

@Ciaran - Thanks so much - that helped a lot, both with selling and buying land. That's interesting that estate land and mainland are billed differently. I guess that analogy is paying my RL rent on the first of each month for that month since they're pretty sure I won't be adding another apartment to that month's rent.

I have to thank the particular live support guy who remained patient and pleasant with me during our conversation. I was probably his "funny story" of the day...lol.

Just an aside... I've never had anything but very pleasant and useful help from the support people. I think nothing of LL, but I think very highly of the support people.