LL stole $8.00 off me, anything I can do?

On top of the heap of crap from all the greifers lately, the horrible performance, the constant crashes etc... I just tried to log-on and it said my account was disabled for non-payment!

I had downgraded to a FREE account in early October due to a rather unfortunate incident where I was abused in a sandbox that was brushed off as "youthful hi-jinks" and that the perpetrators would just get a warning. I figured I had enough of the "Linden community" after that.

I then got an email 7 days ago saying that I owed $8.00 USD for November even though I was already tiered down for half of October and that I had to pay in seven days or be booted off. So I sent an email back querying this to the link provided in the message, asking politely why I should pay for November. I instantly got back that "we have received your email..." junk, but nothing more.

I guess I was expecting that as a customer if I have a valid complaint about a procedure that seems beyond the pale that things would be suspended while they looked into it, but no...I was booted on exactly 7 days and not allowed in until I forked over Novembers rent.

Is there any way around this extortion? Can I get my eight bucks back?

I mean when I joined in the middle days of a previous month they did not hesitate to charge me for the full month. Now that I have tiered down they don't hesitate to charge me for a piece of the month I quit as well as the following month. So if the time I was tiered up is "X" LL has gotten pretty much "X + 1.75 months" out of me money-wise overall. Yet griefers and college idiots can still make free accounts galore because of course LL doesn't really even need the money. Yeah right.

if i remember when you tier down the change is only effective the next month

Nope. Tiering down is not pro-rated by how many days are left that month. If you reduce to a Basic account and sell all your land, you still pay for that month - even if you do it on the 1st day of the month.

Same goes for reducing your land holdings while remaining Premium. The maximum amount of land you owned during that month is what you get billed for that month. If you had a new Premium account, and bought a whole sim worth of land, and sold it 5 seconds later, you still get charged that month for a full sim's worth of land tier.

Well I understand that part, and I expected to pay for all of October just like I payed for the entirety of the part-month I joined. But if I down-tiered in October, why do I have to pay November?

It's not like they are trying to recoup any losses based on materials or server time I am using or there wouldn't be such a thing as free accounts that have all the privileges as non-free accounts. This monthly fee is totally made-up on their part, it doesn't reflect anything but a number they wish to charge.

Kyrah is right.

This causes a lot of confusion, but it's the way the system is implemented. At the end of the billing month, you get charged for the maximum amount of land that you've held at any one moment in time during the previous month.

So, if your bill date is Oct 5th and you sell your land on October 12th, then you will be billed for it on Nov 5th because you did own land during that billing cycle. The first tier-free bill would be Dec 5th.

This makes sense in a logical sort of way and in fact the odds of this being a "mistake" always were pretty small. It certainly isn't fair though, especially given the artificial nature of the fee itself. If the fee charged was actually tied to resources used and benefits given, then it would be easier to swallow.

The fact is I am still paying for about one and a half months longer than the actual tier I "used" or experienced.

I guess it just kind of bugs me that it seems I joined this stupid game at the wrong time. The original community idea is now a long dead and nothing is replacing it but an ice-cold capitalist "product." At some point in the future SL will be open sourced or at least available so one can then create one's own community, but for now, we are stuck in that hellish middle-ground.

I joined for the on-line community, I'd just like to know where I can find it!

One and a half months? That's not right.

1) What date exactly did you tier down?
2) What day of each month exactly were you regularly billed for tier?

I agree with Walker, it hasn't even been 6 weeks since the middle of October, so as others have stated, it sounds like you tiered down in the middle of October, and your billing date was around the 1-5th of November. If that is the case, then you will be charged for the previous month's usage.

Specifics are always good when answering or asking questions of others.

You will get billed for a full month even if you tiered down only one day into the billing cyle. For example, if your billing date was the 15th October, and you tier down on the 16th Oct, you still have to pay a full month's tier on 15th Nov.

Okay I can't access the specifics on the account site for some reason, but I did some calculating and I was wrong about paying the one month plus extra.

It *is* however about 0.85 of a month extra.

Consider this:

- I joined in the early days (lets say the 5th) of month A, and quit in the early days of another later month, but past my original early month billing date (lets say the 8th).

- When I joined I immediately paid for a full month even though it was early in the month, so this can only be interpreted as paying for the month I am in (and I lose the opportunity of the first four days) or paying for the previous month (which I didn't use at all). Any normal person paying on the 5th would think they are paying for "month A" or the month they were currently in.

- As the months go by I am paying on the 5th, thinking I am paying for the month the 5th falls in. Why wouldn't I?

- Then because of the abuse incident and disatisfaction with the "community" I quit on the 8th of a month that I just paid for on the 5th. Why would I not assume that I have "paid up?"

it seems to me that there are only two possible scenarios:

1) - If LL argues that my billing date is the 5th of the following month, (they are), then the payments must in fact be for the previous billing period. i.e - when I pay on the 5th of each month I am paying for everything "up to" the 5th, not the month the 5th is in. If thats the case however, then when I signed up on the original 5th and paid for "the month," I was actually paying for the month previous to when I joined and thus got a whole month "stolen" from me at the very beginning (minus the four days).

2) - If when I pay on the 5th, its payment for the month I am "in" then I should not have to pay for that last month as I tiered down early in the previous month. (this is my argument)

Just to connect this to reality... In my scenario (#2), I am paying for all the months I had tier, plus I am losing the four days in the beginning. So naturally I fel like I "paid up."

In scenario #1 (LL's), I am paying for all the time I could possibly have had tier, plus about 86% or so of a month that I was never playing and never could have had tier.

Here's the confusion I think: the Premium subscription is paid in advance, but tier fees are paid in arrears!

When you first started, the money you paid was the Premium subscription fee for your first month. When you bought land, however, each month on the 5th you were paying the Premium for the following month, plus the tier for the previous month.

Thus, when you quit Premium on the 8th, you had already paid Premium for that month, so you lost out on some Premium time you had paid for. However. you had not yet paid tier for that month, and since owning land for any amount of time during a month counts it towards your tier, at the end of the month you were charged for the tier.

This makes sense given that the charge was $8, which is the tier fee for an extra 1024sqm - I can't think of anything else that would generate that exact fee (other than a L$ purchase)

The answer is simple but I too got hung up on it.
Say your billing date is on the 15th.
on the 16th you went from basic to premium, and added land. LL did not charge you right away. they waited until the next 15th. So your useage of land is payed for at the end of your Month billing cycle not at the begining. (much like a small town diner would have you pay after you finished eating)

So on November 15th you are being charged for Octobers useage, even if you did not use the services for the full month.

If you kept going you would pay in December for November's useage.

I was upset about this myself until LL slaped me around, threw a dunce cap on me, and used big letters on small words. ( It takes a bit to get through my thick skull. hehe )

I'm almost certain that you aren't billed for tier straight away, and that your first billing is actually billed a month after you first tier up (assuming it's from no tier at all).

If you upgrade tier rather than tier up from nothing, then you will be billed on the same date as the lower tier, but it will be at the higher rate. For example, if you are on a tier of 1024m2 with billing date 15th Oct, and you upgrade to 2048m2 on the 14th Oct, you will pay the higher amount on the 15th Oct. If you tier up on the 16th Oct, you will pay the higher amount on the 15th Nov.

Exactly what I'm thinking! Those of us who have owned parcels larger than 512m sq. are well aware of tier being paid in arrears due to the payment/date notification at the website, but if you've only ever owned a 512 maybe it's not so obvious. There is technically no tier on a 512m sq. parcel after all (it's a privelidge of having a premium account) so why should there be any kind of arrears due if a user's premium account and 512m sq. parcel were abandoned on the same day?

Now that premium accounts are worthless for anything but land ownership perhaps it's time to charge for them in arrears or abolish them altogether in favour of a less confusing tier system.

Hmm. I read the subject line again and it seems to me that the OP must have owned 1536m sq. of land? In that case, I don't really see how LL have done anything wrong. Monthly contracts are the norm and it seems generous of LL to let us pay in arrears because we can earn our tier fees in $Ls and transfer them to USD account balance before the first month is even charged. If people are getting the wrong idea though and assuming they'll get pro-rata refunds for unused tier, maybe it's time LL followed the lead of people like Anshe Chung by charging for tier in advance?

Premium starts up right away, because you are also getting stipends right away and it sets your allowance to own land.

The tier is set up to charge at the END of the month because in that month, you may go over your tier, and even if you go down, they still charge you at max land holdings. It's actually easier for LL to do it this way, because instead of charging you for something after you had it and let it go, they charge you in real time for that specific month.


Torley Linden:
Thanks for helping, guys.

I've closed this thread because Resident Answers isn't for ranting like the guidelines say:

/327/8d/138314/1.html

Also, unfortunately, it's not something other Residents can ultimately help him with, since it's a personal matter which concerns private details of his account.

If you'd prefer to call than email, Jeremy, we have phone numbers here: http://secondlife.com/community/support.php