Free Account ?? yeah i see that

Hello Here is my problem :

I signed up for an anniversary free account the 10 of July.
Then i go in my inbox mail i have this mail :

[...]To upgrade your trial to a full Second Life membership, or to cancel if
you decide you don't want to join, change your account status at
http://secondlife.com/account . At the end of this trial period, if you
choose not to cancel, you will be charged $9.95 for the Basic Plan you
signed up for at registration. If you cancel before your trial expires,
you will not be billed.[...]

At the end of this trial period, if you
choose not to cancel, you will be charged $9.95 for the Basic Plan you
signed up for at registration.

I don't understand that that is a free account no ?? supposed to be free ....
Thanks you and sorry for my poor english

basic accounts are well you pay once and no monthly fee....since its free acount week or what ever you like to call it...from what I think they pay it and you no pay the first fee i think

The registration process is automatically trying to enforce the following rule: If you've ever used Second Life, you're not eligible for a free account. Remember, we don't know who's at the keyboard, so you can be ineligible if a family member, friend, or (depending on your network setup) neighbor has already used Second Life.

The first page of registration warns you if it's detected that you've already used Second Life, and says that you may not be eligible for this promotion. If you ARE eligible, your account becomes a full Basic member of Second Life immediately, skipping the trial.

By that logic, if you are on trial instead, you were probably not eligible for the promotion.

I know this is probably a pain; we had to take care to be able to extend this offer to every person who hasn't tried Second Life that we could, without running a major risk of exploitation by a few goofballs out there.

lee, Would a husband and wife, on the same broadband connection, but with different computers and separate credit cards, be excluded from each getting a free basic account?

FWIW - I was helping Energy out with some newbie questions and pointers and such for quite some time this weekend, and I know who (probably) referred him as a new user. I trust her to be honest and she asked for my help in showing him around. (If he was logged in from her place, would that affect how his account was created?) He's real gung-ho about building and setting up a shop, too. I don't know if that helps LL try to "fix" his circumstances, but I hope so.

Hope you get it worked out, Energy.

Don't quote me on this, but I believe they're limiting the offer on an IP-by-IP basis. Assuming that's the case, it'll work if you sign up on different IPs. You might have to do one of at work (assuming it's okay) or a friend's house, or a cybercafe.

Thanks Catherine! I will let my friends know - hopefully, the husband has not attempted to sign up, since he works out of the home. As much he and I e-mail back and forth on a daily basis, I cannot see him having a problem using the University's IP to create an account <g>

Just a caveat: this may be going against the intent of the Lindens' giveaway offer and might not be something they want you to do at all. I don't know, unfortunately.

My wife and I use the same computer on the same cable modem connection. She was able to sign up with the free Basic account with no problems that we know of. Here's what her welcome e-mail said:

So it looks to me like everything was fine, even though we used my credit card for her signup in addition to sharing the computer. YMMV, but it worked for us.

I think the problem is there was no exact description of the limitions of the offer. This realy makes me upset I have my roomate convinced to play, and a friend of mine has the same. The whole reason we where able to get them to join was the fact that they where going to be able to join for free. It was my understanding that CC # where used to keep track of related accounts not IP address.

It is posible that becuse of this you will end up loseing two already paid members and two new members who where looking at the posibly of one of us upgradeing our account inorder to get land to start building on. I realy dought that the money brought in by the other accounts will make up for the primium membership that I am shure you are going to lose.

Well excuse me now while I have to go tell my friends that everything is messed up, have everyone send there money to me so I can go sell it all to try and get a bit of our $20 back.

AcidRaven, you seem to have PMs and e-mails turned off (and you are not in-world now), but I did want to call your attention to my post. I have had a Basic account for several months. A couple of hours ago my wife signed up with the same computer, same IP address, and same credit card that I used when I signed up and when I connect. The only thing different was her name and e-mail address were used instead of mine. Don't be so quick to give up on SL.

I am new two 2nd life, this is like my 3rd week. My roomate got the whole free trial you are going to have to pay $9.95, and to the best of my knowlage my friend had the same issue with her roomate, and I whent out of my way thinking that it was an error on the website and that they shoudn't charge them.

If it is not an issue with IP-address then it is cookies, becuse we signed up using my laptop even tho my roomate uses a diffrent computer. If that is the issue then they did a poor job and just made thing a problem of ligiment users.

I hope I get a offical responce soon So I can ethire start people jumping threw the hoops to make shure they don't get charged, or cancel there accounts before they get charged. I realy don't what to see a major issue over this, I have had a good time so far and realy like 2nd life. But I realy hate it when anyone makes a system, says one thing and then dose an other. This is the felling that I am getting at the moment, and am likely to continue unless a answer is found in a resonable time period. (I don't think 24hr during the week is unresonable)

I don't think it's cookies either - I didn't even close my browser window between being logged in as myself and my wife creating her account. I'm not sure what the problem would have been for you, then - good luck getting it straightened out!

I convinced my roommates to join SL through the free trial, and I know one of them (if not both) has gotten the e-mail that's pertinent to the 7-day trial, not the anniversary give-away. We used different computers, different CCs, and different names, but do have the same IP since we live together. Is there any way I can guarantee she won't be charged? I'll pay her back the money that I kinda "forced" her to pay if she *is* charged, but I'd really rather not have to. I read the entire thread and there didn't seem to be any solutions offered for what to actually do in this situation.

Registrations that weren't eligible for the Free promotion were warned on the Join page: " You already have an active Second Life account. You may not be eligible for current Second Life promotions." If you're getting trial notices, you're probably not a Free account (since they skip the trial, and go directly to Basic Membership).

ShadowBane: I see you had an incomplete previous registration from June. I'm not sure if that would have affected things, but I'll ask when the guy who wrote the verification comes in.

If you think you didn't get the free promotion, be sure to contact us (phone is best to be sure we handle it right away)! We're doing what we can to extend the promotion to people who should be eligible; i.e. we're not going to charge you just because our server thinks you MIGHT have an account. If we're pretty sure you're not an existing SL user, we'll fix your account.

Customer Support Center
Toll Free: (800) 860-6990
Hours: Monday - Friday - 8am-6pm PT.
Closed weekends and US holidays.

well i hope you see that ive never played before but i did download the game before without an account...but this is my first real account.

I would like to thank your Wonderfull suport staff, you where grate and make takeing care of things easy. I am going to call my firend and let them know that was all that it took.
Thank you very much. I hope things work as well when I start looking at working on getting land. Who knows if things go realy well might look at the posiblity of buying an island. but that is a ways in the future.

Continue the good work.

I am a little dissapointed by this. I signed up for the trial 2 days before the free give away. I had no idea, a friend just posted the link for me to sign up at. Now I am inelligible for the free account.

Yes I know if I enjoy it 10 bucks doesnt seem like much but it is to me, I am going to have to let my account lapse for 3 or 4 days now till I get paid.

Rhiannon: Like I said later, feel free to call us, it's pretty likely we'll waive the $9.95 fee while this promotion's going on.

Lee,

While there is a Linden around who is apparently listening to problems, could I please raise the issue of many people who are trying to create new or alt accounts and are being told that their account is being flagged and to contact support. When they contact support all they receive is a deafening silence, as did I when I started a thread about it.

I know of someone who is (or at least, was) really keen to start a new account, having heard me talking about second life, and now is telling me they are not 'terribly impressed' with the Lindens. I have to say, nor am I at the moment. I understand when problems mean that issues are not addressed but a letter was sent to support about three weeks ago in this particular instance. The silence is beginning to sound more and more like contempt.

Judging by the number of responses on the thread in the technical section, this is happening to a fairly large number of people.

I must say I'm a little surprised at this. I certainly did not expect this response. I joined SL a couple of months ago, can I have my $10 basic fee waived too? I just don't see how "oh, you just missed it, here sneak in under the rope" could be a reasonable policy. I'm not upset about this, just surprised and a little confused. I also don't feel this is a personal issue about Rhiannon...it's just a general thing.

There's a pretty strict limit on alternate accounts (or accounts with matching billing information) during this promotion; however, our billing folks can make some accomodations regardless.

The support queue is a bit overloaded (it's a key priority to change how we handle support@ emails and soon). If it's about your account, don't hesitate to call us, or email [email]billing@secondlife.com[/email]

The billing address will get you resolved much faster than Support, as you won't be placed in the greater Support queue with all the incompatible graphics cards, lost passwords, and everything else that's directed to contact Support.

Lee,

Ok - I will tell her to try the billing address; hopefully she will get a reply from them.

Incidentally this is a completely new account from a UK address which has never had an account before.

I've had to try the billing@ address as well since support@ hasn't replied in the last four days !!

Same thing. My wife signed up for a free trial a few days after I did.

NO WARNING MESSAGES WERE DISPLAYED ABOUT BEING CHARGED OR NOT ELIGIBLE OR AN ACCOUNT ALREADY EXISTS

Now I have to try and get my money back and if I don't hear from billing, phone America (from Australia) and pay the high phone charges to get back my US$9.95 which should not have been charged.

I signed up to SL one week before the free account giveaway was put into place. I'm not complaining that I had paid US$9.95 for MY account, but I do take offence that my wife got charged when it said even in the email she received that she had a FREE TRIAL ACCOUNT for 7 days.

lee can you write a confirmation reply here if you are to waive the payment or not because my trial ends tomorrow....x.X

edit its tuesday and i think ill start the cancellation and i cant contact your number....it keeps going call cannot be connected please try again bla bla bla