LindeX buy fee increase?

http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/07/13/currency-fees-will-probably-rise-thinks-zee-linden/
Was anyone present at that office hour and has the actual transcript or confirm that's really the gist of it?

My first thought was "Uh Oh" but theres other places.

I really dislike Zee Linden, didnt he crash some other company he was apart of

Just one more great reason to NEVER buy lindens on the LindeX
Linden Lab is getting greedy

There's a strong argument to be made for not ever buying L$ anywhere, actually, and I know many people in-world who never need to do so.

But what would be your preference for those who do need to buy linden dollars? Where do you get yours?



It didn't sound to me like greed was the reason, though I too would love to see a transcript or statement from the actual source.

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Hmm... Hadn't heard that. You mean he was directly and solely responsible for a different (as yet unnamed) company failing? Anyone actually got a linky or data to corroborate?

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lol Robby... you do see the problem in this logic when applied on the large scale, right?

For all those talented designers who sell lindens for US$ to cover tier and even make profit, someone somewhere has to BUY them!

Yes, I do

But I also don't expect that it will ever be applied on the large scale, it just isn't reasonable to think that everyone will suddenly start making sufficient in-world income that they never need to purchase L$.

Doesn't change the fact that there are good arguments to be made for doing so, though

Its not Greed!

I will ONLY buy my lindens on Lindex, im not taking any 3rd party risks (IMHO)

With all the trouble about billing and related issues, like having to re-enter my billing info, I was beginning to think it was software or billing provider problem.
I have to say it was starting to worry me; after all, Billing is important to the success of any business.

It’s almost a relief to find out all the ruckus was because of fraudulent charges and the fallout that results. As an internet merchant myself, I can attest to the complete mess it makes and huge fees that result, in addition to losing your “product” that was sold.
I would much rather have my banks call me on every charge, than to miss the fraudulent charge.

If only we knew it was related to bad charges, instead of letting our imagination run wild and thinking it might have been a data breach. An announcement on the blog, to that effect would have settled some of our worry.

As for fees to purchase Lindens, I didn’t think that there were any imposed by LL, just the 3.5% fee on cash outs, and I do not tolerate fees for transactions by my banks, unless I know and approve in advance. So far that has only been an issue the first time (and it was reversed).

So what’s to be done to protect us, to protect linden labs, and not punish the older accounts that are in good standing or disenfranchise new players looking to get started by purchasing linden in the first few weeks of play?

What to do, what to do?

It's not like it hasn't happened before. Unless he's talking about a significant increase, I wouldn't worry too much. When I first started Linden was barely three bucks, it's risen to four and some change now.

I don't buy Linden anymore, and have very little desire to spend any money on Second Life as it is, anyway, lol. But if I did, there are a lot of other, cheaper, options to buy L.

Though, they may too increase as Lindex does.

Huh?

I can't even remember how many credit-card related "OMG LL wont takez meh moneez!" threads we've had in the past few months, all saying "but my card has always worked fine before!"

To which I have been constantly replying "There is a lot of credit card fraud associated with SL, so many credit card companies have started rejecting charges from them... so call your credit card company to get it straightened out." (To which most have replied "Oh no I much prefer to bitch about LL and spend weeks trying to get a hold of them, rather than make a five-minute phone call to the credit card company that will almost surely fix the problem."

And when we got asked to re-enter our payment information, I explained right here on the forums that LL was now requiring the 3-digit security code, which helps them fight credit card fraud. I found that comforting rather than freakifying, but it seems many people preferred to see something sinister about the whole thing.

Sorry for the rant, but this is becoming a massive pet peeve. I think I'm just gonna stop trying to help people with credit card payment issues, as it seems 90% are more interested in complaining about LL than actually getting the problem solved.

I think I'll just go huddle in the corner now.

Credit card are an interesting animal Ava.
I doubt very much that Linden with all that is at stake for them would ever play games with peoples cards, just not worth it, short term gain for long term loss.

It's always easier to blame someone else than find the problem.

just wondering, will an increase in currency fees really be able to cut down frauds?

I never said LL is commiting credit card fraud. Criminals use stolen credit cards to buy L$, and then sell them to get real money. It seems that credit card companies have received enough complaints about this to label SL/LL as a high risk for fraudulent credit card transactions.

And now people are complaining about LL and the credit card companies taking measures to fight this fraud.



Investigating fraud costs money. That money has to be recouped in some way. But until LL actually announces or enacts some change in the Lindex fee structure, there is no point in worrying about this.

I can`t quite remember what it was. But he was hired, then decided to raise the cost for a PI and the PI`s tier charges.... his RL name was released, of course, as the new LL CEO. Some SLers did research on him and posted links about him being in a company that I think scammed people. Tons of bad reports on the BBB about them. I cant say much more because I dont really remember and dont want to misreport something.

Yeah housevalues.com makes an interesting google search tho i have noticed now since he joined LL and has had so much press online people are forgetting his role in the above company which had some very dubious business practices, many people say it was a scam and a lot of people lost a lot of money His real name John Zdanowski is in his profile tho u have to dig with all the LL info on google, at the time he joined LL there was several threads running tho i havent seached for them HTH

Details on Housevalues.com:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?q1=ALL&q4=&q6=&q3=&q2=&q7=&searchtype=0&submit2=Search!&q5=HouseValues

PS: Just tried to search for the threads on the forums at the time and they seem to have disappeared tho maybe i am looking wrongly

Actually, I still think that a lot of the fraud is also dated back from the hacking last year, where a lot of us CC users reported the problem with the companies and had new cards issued. It does gripe me that it took them six months to TELL people that their information might have been compromised, but a lot of us had already done what was needed to take care of the issue anyways.

The other part does come from LL having a new (overseas) bank too for why other banks refuse to accept charges. I am, however, very glad to hear that they are now requiring the three digit code, because my bank won't accept the charge either without it, as it's an online company with an overseas bank (screams fraud right there.)

Another 'safe' place to buy L is the SLExchange, which has far better customer support than LL does.

As for Zee, economics are not my thing. I don't pretend to understand it.. but I do understand when someone decides to raise rates of things without giving a very good reason to do it. In the private islands, I could see that because of the hardware costs, but the LindeX fees? I don't think so. Only good reason is so that they can hire a better economist...

From my broken math, SLExchange is far cheaper to do business with, having a lower point spread in one area and a fixed percentage for the other. There was another thread were I tried to make sense of it.. so I won't bother now. It makes my head hurt this early of a morning.

There's currently a 30 cents fee for every L$ buy order, which doesn't necessarily translate to a payment method charge.

If you increase your US$ credit with $50 US there is no charge. If you buy $50 US worth of L$ after that, you pay 30 cents. If you buy $5 US worth 10 times, you end up paying $3 in fees.

Whew!!! That's an INSANE number of complaints about that company...

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Yeah it is and it makes interesting reading to understand how a company hires its staff lol thats just one place to look i did do better reasearch before but havent the time today to look and dig as the stuff before was near the top of google then but since he joined LL there has been lots of postings so the housevalues.com has slipped down the list now in favour of LL postings on google also i think another quote of his as well could be interesting as quoted at this URL

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/14306294/second_life_the_nets_virtual_paradise_heats_up/6

Where he says and i quote "The Linden Dollar is not currency," says the Lab's chief financial officer, John Zdanowski, "You're not guaranteed to get your money out."

Its statements like these from from a man with power within the company that makes me wonder what will be happening next Is he foretelling his next move? Ah well we will have to wait and see but the article althiugh posted in april this year is quite interesting anyways to read in case u missed it first time round

Peace

That's been the story all along, residents give value to L$, not LL.

L$ only have value when they're exchanged for actual money, once you own them they don't have any inherent value assigned to them. L$1 million is only $3750ish US as long as there is at least one person willing to pay that amount for them.

It becomes interesting if Supply Linden's decreasing sales continue into the future. At some point LL would have to buy L$ back to keep the exchange rate stable, which they'd never do.

Maybe at some point in the future the L$ will have no value and cease to be then it will be replaced by RL payment methods in game like CC, paypal etc. who really knows and who will ever say until it happens, well its just a thourght

Thank you Raudf. It was late and I had gone grumpabout, so failed to give a complete explanation. I woke up this morning thinking about how I forgot to mention the UK bank and the hacking and the otherwise hijacked accounts. I would guess the people who buy the stolen lindens on eBay and then have them confiscated are also contacting their CC companies to complain of the fraudulent transaction.

There are just so many reasons the CC companies are labeling LL as high risk! Unfortunately their only recourse is to reject questionable charges related to SL, but as we've seen this often means legitimate charges are rejected as well.

I realize the various anti-fraud measures mean some customers are inconvenienced, and I certainly acknowledge that LL has failed to announce or explain them adequately (boy, do they SUCK at communication!), but the fact is they MUST fight this fraud. If they don't, NO ONE will be able to pay by credit card. And since PayPal payments are also borked for various reasons, that pretty much screws everybody.

I think that might actually make the mess even worse .

If you buy land on a private estate right now and the owner kicks you out, you don't have option to dispute. But if there's an actual RL currency transaction between the renter and the sim owner, you can just dispute the CC charge and get your money back. The same for non-delivery of purchases or store owners who won't give refunds.

In general: a credit card thief buys $500 US worth of L$, and uses some in-world laundering tricks to get the L$ to another avie so that it can't (easily) be traced back to the origin. The card owner disputes the charge and LL is out $500 US (someone was credited $500 for selling the L$) plus a charge-back penalty fee imposed by the credit card processor.

It doesn't even really matter if LL can trace the final destination of the L$ again since - ironically - they're worthless to LL. The best they can do is put them up for sale again, but that directly competes with Supply Linden so still ends up costing them money.

A better solution might be to simply reverse the original sale. Take the US$ money back from the seller's account and relist the original order again. Sellers take the hassle of fraud in that case, but LL doesn't really loose any money over it.

PS: I just realized they can't buy $500 worth of L$ since they'd have to wait a month first. How are we getting large scale fraud when it takes at least a month before anyone can buy any significant amount? .

Fresh currency sales by Supply Linden on the LindeX have been dropping around (vaguely remember) 20-percent a month for over three months now. Some days I think this means demand fell off sharply (err... duh... sec) and some days I think it's because by injecting a steady stream of new Linden dollars on demand that the amount of currency sloshing around has hit equilibrium. [One side effect is the L$:US$ exchange rate has remained rather insanely stable for months and months now.]

It might simply be a psycholigical change to the pricing; a higher fee for smaller quanties of L$ in an effort to push the buy decision to a higher quantity but with a smaller transactions charge. Or it might be using the same 3.5-percent transaction fee on both the Sell side and Buy side of the LindeX.

Fresh currency sales on the LindeX are Linden Lab's third-largest revenue stream, the first two being tier/island fees and Premium accounts. Island purchase costs and island fee costs both rose and the Earth didn't crash into the Sun. The cost of things like fraud and shoplifting have always been passed along to the customer.

The most positive thing I got out the article that Kitty posted the link to is that Zee has nominated himself the Go To Guy for unmangling Billing issues. Out of all the Lindens Zee knows the customers are the ones hoarking over the cash.

Yes! That was it - Housevalues. What an ironic name Thanks for posting that.




Haha ty for the laugh.