Direct Transfers between Accounts in USD, too?

After reading the long threads about Anshe's account being suspended for a short time it occured to me that one of the problems behind that might be the inability to transfer USD between accounts. Its hard to decipher it all in that cascade of "he said, she said" but it looks like one her accounts went into the red and a Linden billing did not succeed - even though she still had another account with of positive balance of more than 13,000 USD.

If there were a way to transfer USD amounts between accounts (like you can pay L$ to another account) this would not have happened. This does not only make sense for alt accounts in my opinion. Why not offer a way to pay larger amounts directly in USD between accounts as long it is funded with positive balances in your accounts USD balance?

BTW: Something similar happened to me a while ago. A failed billing attempt leads to warnings of suspension very fast.

This cant be a secret IF SO please take it away:

****

Dear PetGirl Bergman,

This email is notification that we were unable to bill your Second Life account on March 11, 2006. Please review your Second Life membership and billing information, and make sure everything is up-to-date. Some of the more common mistakes are:

* Your credit card may have been declined for insufficient funds.
* Your credit card may be expired.
* You may have entered an incorrect expiration date for your credit card.
* Your billing address may not match the address on your credit card.

If you are using Paypal, check your Paypal account's verification and backing. Your Paypal account must be verified and backed by a funding source other than a credit card. (We are unable to accept Paypal accounts backed by credit cards.) Make sure the Merchant Agreement with Linden Lab is current, and make sure you haven't exceeded your Paypal transfer limits.

If everything looks correct, you may want to contact your credit card issuer (or Paypal as appropriate) to identify the problem.

Don't worry; this billing failure will not prevent you from logging on with your Second Life account. We will simply try to bill your overdue balance again the next day. If we are unable to collect the amount due within seven (7) days, your account will be suspended pending payment for an additional thirty (30) days. During that time, you will not be able to log in to Second Life. Failure to resolve this billing issue by the end of the probation period may result in the cancellation of your account. If you have verified the accuracy of your billing information, and are not aware of other outstanding issues that would prevent billing, please contact customer service via email at [email]billing@secondlife.com[/email] as soon as possible.

To review or modify your account details, or to change or cancel your Second Life membership, visit ....

Best Wishes,

Linden Lab and the Second Life Team
http://www.secondlife.com

****

Technical problem I was told later.... Fathers company card was full of money - the problem maybe was that it was not my name on it. PetGirl Bergman)

/Tina

There is another possible reason for billings to fail. LL recently changed over to a billing company that is not on US soil. Apparently this company assured LL that there would be no problems with ALL forms of payment. This supposedly included using gift cards such as the ones I use. Well... guess what... when it came time to change the billing info on my account over to the new gift card it wasn't allowed!! After several phone calls to LL and the gift card company to try to solve the problem (you don't want to know how badly I was treated by a certain LL employee) the problem was finally resolved.

The point is, regardless of where the fault lies, be it on LL's part or the part of thier billing company, the fact that the billing company was not on US soil and the charges for SL were being shown as being made to a company on foriegn soil and was not listed with the gift card company caused my payment to be rejected by the gift card company. Was this my fault? No. Should I initially have been told by LL that I would just have to wait until the issue was solved on thier side, thus risking losing my account because it could have taken more than a month to solve the problem? I don't think so. Fortunately, I finally mananged to contact the right person at LL and steps were taken to preserve my account until such time as the problem was resolved.

In conclusion, there are a number of reasons for billing errors, but, the failure to plan ahead and make sure there is enough funds to cover your expenses if not the fault of LL. It is the individual who failed to see to it, far enough in advance, that thier account would be covered. Depending on the Lindex or the ability to move funds from one account to another, to covers those expenses is just not a good idea and you certainly don't wait until the last minute or until you get a notice to do something about it when you knew ahead of time you would have to cover those expenses. Especially when you can sit down and figure out how much those expenses are within a reasonable estimate.