Negative dollar balance

This is strange. I pay my account and tier fees on the second of each month. I checked my account info and it shows a negative balance. I am ALWAYS in the black and I have plenty of money in my debit card account to pay the fees. Does anyone have an idea about why THIS is happening?

Thanks.

LL doesn't really have a good track record of billing and having the charge actually go through.

From the day you went into the red you have 7 days to make things right (after that you're suspended, and it's another 23 days before anything really bad happens), but as far as I know, it never does attempt to rebill on its own.

You can use the "Increase Your Credit" on (https://secondlife.com/account) to settle an outstanding balance ($25 minimum) and that'll get you in the clear again.

You can also just wait and see if LL rebills you (or file a billing support ticket), but considering that you only have 7 days to work with, if there's a problem with your payment method you'd want to know about that sooner rather than later.

Try buying 1000L inworld, that will make your payment go through. Or buy some lindens to pay for the bill (it costs to buy and sell but I have been doing it this way to get my payments through)

Isnt it funny that we have works around even to pay our bills???

Hope this works for you

It's not funny. At least anymore. No it's kinda sad that they can't even get this right.

Personally, I think LL made a bad outsourcing choice for billing.

Maybe they are using the lowest Bidder method favored by Government.

Probably one that accepts alcohol instead of actual cash, too... which would explain everything.

I'm at the office, not at home, so I can't go in world to do any transactions. I called the 800 number for billing support, was left on hold for almost half an hour and then was told no one was available to help. I am not surprised at this. I filled out a support ticket and will see what happens there.

What I will do is keep all of you readers informed of what happens and how LL deals with my inquiry. I am certainly not a FAN of LL, but my criticism of them in the past has been civil and rational. I am not one of thelunatic fringe who HOWLS over every little thing.

If the handle this appropriately, I will say so in this thread. If I am displeased, I will say so and include my reasons.

I'm a licensed and practicing California attorney, so fortunately I know which buttons to push if I am displeased.

Its a small amount of money, but I certainly am capable of taking them to small claims court in SF if I have to. I honestly don't believe that will be necessary though.

As suggested previously, you can use the 'Increase Your Credit' link on the site (not in-world) to add USD to your account, which should immediately offset the negative balance. The minimum allowed in this case is $25, but if that happens to be too much, you can either cash out the remainder or use it to purchase Lindens.

They haven't even my charged tier against my account yet, which I find a little odd...

I would do that, but my negative balance is $75. which is my one month tier payment due on July 2, yesterday.

Theres PLENTY of money in the bank to pay this charge...but LL hasnt not billed the bank yet, or at least the bank hasnt paid it.

Still no sign ANYONE has even LOOKED at the support ticket.

I will make TIRELESS efforts to communicate with ....those people over this, including sending a letter on my RL legal stationery. If they do NOT fix this they will be dealing with one real pissed off CA attorney....silly when all they have to do is take the $75.

Oh well....

I once noticed a sort of lag time on what it said on my accounts page.

It was during a time when I had had to cancel the card I was using, I think, and get a new one. So I had to put the new one into SL. (This was some months ago.)

Well, it was a couple of days before it seemed to go through on their end, and then it stopped showing that I owed them anything. I would have expected this to go a bit faster, but it did go within the 7-day frame, so it was okay.

I agree with the above poster, though, that LL made a poor choice about who to outsource their transactions to.

coco

You can increase your credit by $75, it just can't be less than $25.

You would do a lot of us a big favor if you would put on your Power Suit and walk into LL offices during business hours and ask to speak to the highest placed officer available about these issues.

LL has off-loaded its payment center to a bank in London and this is causing all sorts of troubles. Paypal no longer works. U.S. users are charged "foreign transaction fees." Teen agers can't sign on unless they have a cell phone or a credit card. The list goes on.

This happened on my wife's account, only it was -9.95 for her monthly premium. Her account was connected to her Paypal. We did get phone help (surprise!! but it was also a month ago or more) and what she had to do was go to Paypal and send money to her SL account purposely, minimum of $25. It had been automatically withdrawing from Paypal for prior 9-10 months, but they have changed something in billing and it just quit working. We dumped our last little 512 of mainland and she went basic. Solved that problem. We have a our land in Dreamland now, and Anshe is not shy to take our money :^).

Dropping by to complain to the highest executive available generally doesn't work. One is usually told that no one is "available". Translation = no one wants to talk to you. IF I lived in the SF Bay area, I might give it a try anyway. I'm not going to drive 400 miles to sit in thier lobby all day.

If this doesn't get resolved soon, I will send a cahiers check for $75 to them via Registered mail. Then if they suspend me I will sue.

Generally, an irate letter from an attorney concerning a personal issue gets immediate attention. The recipient usually knows that if the atty is irritated enough to write a letter, that means that the atty can and will do his her or her utmost to get the problem solved...meaning this isn't a client spending $250 an hour to resolve a $75 issue but that this the attys OWN issue.

I suspect this may be realted to the outsourcing of the billing office problem. this was certainly a typical stroke of LL genius. One marvels at how they can create something as great as SL yet screw up themost basic business functions that even the corner convenience store can get right. Its TRULY amazing...really.

I could kind of understand if I was using PayPal. I'm using a regular US Bank debit card though...which works JUST fine for Amazon, Net flix, AOL and others. Why LL should have aproblem with it is one of the unexplained mysteries of the universe.

Any Lindens out there who care to comment?

Just increase your credit by $75, no check needed.

OK, I'll stop beating that particular horse now. lol

Ann....I should have listened to you earlier. honestly, I just didn't expect it to be that easy. I am sooo used to EVERYTHING related to SL and/or LL to be incredably counter intuitive and complicated, I was hesitant to try your suggestion.

I suppose now they will eventually get around to billing me bank and HOPEFULLY the positive balnce can be applied to next moth's tier.

thank you again for your good advice!!!

Sooz

Yay!

Of course, unless they've already billed and the transaction is in process somewhere between LL and the bank, you may have to do it again next month. Even if you wind up with a credit, any additional charges you make in the next month (buying Lindens, for example) will come off the account credit first instead of being charged to your debit card, so the amount will likely be reduced below the $75 needed for tier. Just something to keep in mind...

I like that. I like that idea very much.

coco