International Surcharge

Does anyone know why any payments to LL end up getting an international surcharge on my credit card? This seems to be only a recent thing.

I live in Connecticut and LL is in California. Last time I looked, they were both in the same nation. So, I'm a little confused why I'm getting this charge.

*sigh* Because Linden Lab's bank is in the UK. They changed banks late last year/early this year and failed to tell anyone until people started complaining about the surcharge.

Here's the blog post about the fees you mention, http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/06/01/foreign-transaction-fees/

My general suggestion is to save up purchases and make them in a lump sum so you're not nickle and dimed to death over it. My husband asked that I not make any purchases for SL under 20$ since I wracked up about 6$ in fees on 6$ of lindens picked up while I was out shopping without cash handy because there were many small charges but got the standard fee attached.

Every L$ purchase comes with a 30 cent fee for a LindeX buy order already so buying small amounts of L$ each time already wasn't the best way to go.

Just got my latest CC bill. No surcharges were added to the two charges I made to Second Life last month after the banking switch. I live on the west coast of the USA.

I have heard that this is the case. Some companies do, and some do not hit you with the surcharge, but I don't recall why this occurs. Just glad I fall into the no surcharge camp.

You can always try purchasing from SLExchange if you make larger purchases. There is a charge to pay into your SLExchange account but on larger purchases you actually come out ahead a tiny bit on the L$ per US$. It's not a lot really but the point is you avoid the effect of the surcharge.

Well yes, but it was a quiet extravagance >.> As long as I stay in my budget and don't spam the cc bill too badly all's fair. I wasn't expecting international charges though, and overspent + spammed the bill =(