Time to shape up lindens...

(I'm posting here because this forum is what I could find the closest thing to resemble a feedback/support forum)

Ok I was playing around in SL rather happily, doing some scripting and earning some money until SL decided to flag me in Risk API.

I heard with my friends and they told me that it would help to have payment info on file so for 4 days I tried to register my payment info. Which failed blatantly on 4 different CC's from 2 different banks. There is money on each of the accounts concerned. And I entered everything correctly. I also tried putting in my paypal info, this is the hilarious part. The option to put in your paypal information is only there on some days during some hours. Other times when I look it's simply gone from the update my payment info page. Vanished, gone *poff*. Now that's flakey behaviour if I've ever seen any.

And what the **** is up with the idea to not offer billing support for basic/free accounts? How am I supposed to be able to setup my billing info when I can't reach the support to fix the error that causes me to be unable to insert my billing information to be able to reach the support to fix the error that causes me to be unable to insert my billinginformation to be able to reach the support to fix the error that causes me to be unable to insert my billing information to be able to reach the support to .... I think you get the idea.

I even filed an ticket under one of the other limited cathegories availiable to basic/free accounts, still no reply after 4 days. Are you supposed to be running a serious business here?

And whats with not beeing able to edit your personal information without updating your CC numbers?

They say to turn the other cheek to but I'm running out of cheeks at the rate SL.com is throwing out punches at me for trying to paythem.

I believe that it's time for LL to shape up and start treating their customers with some respect with all the horror stories I've heard, and to restructure their messy webpage into a user friendly manner. Not only would this make it easier for your customers (you know, the people that pay you, that keep you in business?) you would probably also save on support costs if the site was a bit more selfsustaining.

And for those of you wondering, yes I'm pissed off.

The failure of your credit cards to verify isn't too surprising.

LL makes a small transaction ($1, I believe) and then cancels it, to verify the validity of the account you want to use.

LL's accounting department and banking is done from the UK.

Many CCs flag overseas transactions as suspicious, until you call them and tell them that it's legitimate.

So, you can have a Catch-22 situation. You give CC info to LL, they attempt to verify, the CC denies the transaction, LL bounces your application.

Call LL's 800 support number, and also call at least one of your CC companies, to try and determine if this is what's going on.

I don't see any Catch-22 here - just call your bank and tell them that LL is ok..

I had a similar issue with my initial attemps to go premium. The issue was that my CC declined the LL charge because it was an overseas account (I'm in the US, LL billing is in the UK). I called my CC and had them approve it. Then I re-submitted my payment info. That fixed it.

BTW: I called LL Billing CS and was helped very quickly. No non-premium issue there.

I'm EU so an UK charge should not be any problems. And there was never any probs with my CC when I ordered stuff from USA with it, nor was there any problem when I was in Japan with it. Also charges from Paypal go through fine so I'd be surprised if there is problems now, but I'll call and ask them tomorrow.

But what about the paypal option having PMS?

edit: Just checked the paypal option is back again, But when I enter my paypal information it says that the account is not verified. But it is, I just verified it a few days ago. It even says Status - Verified when I log into paypal.

Seriously what's up with that?

Payment failure isn't typically due to LL, its due to banks being attacked by botnets left & right. I had to stop using a regular credit or debit card because the banks are at a panic-mode right now. They cant use their systems to block attacks so they just freeze everything instead. Any transaction that shows up automated, overseas, when the weather was too warm, etc will raise a flag and the bank will simply get lazy and block the transaction and maybe send you a letter that shows up 4 days later. Its so bad and disorganized that citibank once froze my account due to a red flag: which happened to be the only transaction i did that actually called for a signature!

Honestly, i stopped using online billing for anything. It was getting too frustrating. Im back to Thee Olde-Fashioned Chequebook for most of my bills.

Paypal's been working well--im surporised that its only there at certain times. that's odd.

The other option, and its the way im headed, is to use a small bank, like a credit union. They'll actually call you if they get a flag, and will clear it.

From the paypal FAQ, I think this is whats happening:

Q: I receive the final post from PayPal with a 'VERIFIED' response, but my script still isn't performing correctly. Why?
A: This generally means that the communication between PayPal and your IPN script is working correctly, but the customized portion of your script is not performing the final step(s) to complete your process. To fix this, debug the custom portion of your script and double-check your database connection, file paths, syntax, etc.