Do Linden Lab has the right to charge me?

I sold my mainland on the 7th of June (before my billing date 11th of June)
And LL charged me for tiers on 11 July again (11th of June - 11th of July)
Is this correct?

Do I pay for every month or do I pay from billing date to billing date?

I already opened a support ticket with this question
but Linden keep saying it was correct to charge me.

That doesn't sound right to me but Linden Lab have all the facts. When you go to your My Account page how much land does it say you hold?

Have you got any tier donated to groups?

Are you talking about tier or membership fees?

Hi Morris

yes this is right, you get charged for the highest amount of land you held in each billing period. so although you sold your land on 7th, you owned during the billing period and will therefore have been charged for it. If you now own no land at all you will not get charged any tier fees on your next bill date....unless you were to buy land again before the bill next bill date. The only thing you should now be charged on future bill dates is your premium membership if you have stayed a premium member.


Edit: oops, forgot to say, billing is in arrears for tiers, so you get billed for the month running up to your bill date
only other thing that may effect it....did you tier down on your profile ?, not sure if you have to do it or if it automatically happens when you lower land ownership, someone else may know better

What would keep someone from speculating on land if he paid the tier for 512 meters and then could buy 64,000 meters and sold it before tier was due?

you would still be billed Liralyn, you are billed for the highest amount of land you own in that month, even if you only owned it for a day I'm afraid

Um, yeah, I know. The question was rhetorical, for the OP to ponder why tier is assessed after the fact.

Yes but the OP is saying his billing date was June 11th and he paid tier June 11th, he's asking why he still got charged tier July 11th when as far as he was concerned he owned no land between June 11th and July 11th.

Ah, you're right. I remember now that there's something you have to do to down-grade your account, it doesn't happen automatically.

That's bogus, and if that's what happened, I don't blame the OP for being upset.

Yes Ciaran...that is why I was wondering if you have to tier down yourself, anyone know ?

I'm fairly sure that you have to actually tier down yourself... on the Land Use Fees page, you need to select the radio button that matches your new land requirements. It doesn't automatically tier down for you.

https://secure-web2.secondlife.com/account/landfees.php?lang=en

No you shouldn't have to. If you don't manually tier down, when you go to buy land it will say your tier fees are at the old rate and you can buy x amount of land but you won't actually be charged.

I think I basically confused myself there!

Anyway, no you don't need to manually tier down.

However I'm wondering if the OP is talking about tier or membership, membership fees won't stop automatically.

Membership?

If you mean the basic premium account fee, unless the rules have changed, you can't downgrade from premium to free account status.

Edited note: This is clearly more confusing than it needs to be

Erm, yes you can. If you have land, you'll lose it, but you can change your membership plan whenever you like.

It's truly sad that people who've been here for years are still debating as to whether or not we have to manually tier down. Just sayin'...

You're not supposed to have to tier down manually but, like many SL things, it sounds like it doesn't always work that way.

Yup. I had to tier down manually. That was several months ago though. Maybe LL has changed something there.

You had 36,352m² up for sale at one point, which is about close to the maximum for 1/2 sim tier with the 10% group bonus..

If you sold the land but never zero'ed out your tier contribution to the group then it will count as "used tier" indefinitely until you actually go and remove the tier donation: open the group window and under the "Land & L$" tab put 0 for amount of tier donated. Wait a bit and check https://secondlife.com/account/ to make sure that "Current Holdings" says 0m² and "Available for purchase" matches "Allowed Holdings".

If that's the case, you'll be paying tier again next month though since the tier was in use from July 11th - August 2nd so ask if they can't check their records for land use and reset them since neither you or the group owned anything this month. They won't do it as a rule though, some Lindens are symphathetic enough to realize it's a mistake, others will note that you didn't own land but tell you there's nothing they can do.

---

In case it wasn't group-owned land:

https://secondlife.com/account/

1) If "Allowed holdings" is 0m² but "Peak square meter usage" is non-zero there's a problem on their end, good luck
2) "Current holdings" should be 0m², if it's not then you can find the land you own under https://secondlife.com/account/land.php
3) If "Available for purchase" doesn't equal "Allowed" - "Current" you have tier donated to a group, use https://secondlife.com/account/groupland.php to see which group(s) you have tier donated to and zero it out (see above)

Last: go to https://secondlife.com/account/landfees.php and put yourself at US$0/month

Same as above, it's possible you will pay tier again next month depending on what actually went wrong.

I just checked the LAND & L$ tab of my group and it did tell me my contribution was still over 33000 meters... I just changed it manually to 0... Could this cause the problem? If it does I wonder why LL didn't tell me (I think I already know the answer).

Yes that would explain it.

I didn't have to tier down manually, but I couldn't tier down to the level I wanted to manually anyway because for some reason the radio button wasn't there, so I raised a support ticket.

I was billed before they answered the ticket but I was billed at the lower rate. However inworld when I went to buy land I was being told my fees would remain at the higher rate, even though this wasn't the case.

After they answered my ticket I checked again and the radio button I wanted was available.

From the info you have provided, sounds like you got wrongly charged twice after you sold the land.

Thanks... Me banging my head against the wall for the rest of the day!

*points to her post 2 posts up*

You'll be billed again on August 11th in that case, you can open a ticket and explain the situation (refer to your other ticket, and/or this thread if you think it'll help). They can check the group didn't own any land since June 11th but it depends on which Linden handles your ticket on whether they'll be nice enough to reset your peak usage or not and save you from paying for tier you never used.

Even if you only owned it for a second.

They did reset my peak usage for this month.
So don't have to pay tiers again in august.
(The $148,75 I payed for june-july i don't get back,
what a waste. I'm feeling stupid, but hey... I don't do this every day).
Everybody thanks a lot, especially Kitty...