Who else remembers this?

All right, y'all, I KNOW there was a $10 fee for downgrading from a premium to a basic account.

I know it because there was this other person irate over it, and so when I downgraded mine, I was prepared to be charged, and sure enough, it said, "There will be a one-time fee for downgrading your account," as I recall.

In Linden Answers, it's like they have no memory of this and it never occured.

Who else remembers this, or had it happen to them?

coco

It's right there on https://secondlife.com/account/membership.php

"* Downgrading from Premium Trial to Basic or reactivation of a closed account will incur a one-time $9.95 fee. "

Lewis

testing

testing

How many sound engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

one... two.... one two...

Lewis

testing again

I dropped the premium on my alt last night and other than a "We're sorry to see you go, please tell us why" survey nothing about any fee. It's listed as "Downgrading to Basic" right now. Thinking good thoughts .

Well, I guess they changed it then. They should change it on the website, too.

coco

That refers to the "Premium Trial" account, that (I believe) was dropped around the middle of 2005. If you signed up for a "premium trial" you didn't pay anything for 7 days, and if by that time you hadn't upgraded to premium, closed the account, or downgraded to a "paid basic" you'd be automatically upgraded to premium.

It should be removed from the website unless the "premium trial" has been reinstated... and if so they need to explain things a bit better.

Lewis said: As Argent said, the "Premium Trial" was "you signed up for / upgraded to a shiny new Premium account, and we won't bill you for 7 days.". If you downgraded in that 7 day period, they charged you $9.95 USD for a Basic account instead. They also did that downgrade fee if someone started with a Basic account, Upgraded to Premium, and then downgraded back to Basic, in 7 days or less. I believe they now bill for either Basic or Premium as soon as you sign up. No trial period.

In both cases, I believe the fee was to prevent "farming" for the upgrade sign-up bonus and initial stipend payment. They probably still do charge the fee if someone signs up for Premium and then cancels it again within 7 days. Otherwise, you could milk the system for sign-up bonuses and first stipend payments.

If you have a Premium account for more than 7 days, there is no fee to downgrade. But the land tier that you owed from the previous month will still be billed to you, after you downgrade, if you had owned land. Membership is paid in advance, while land tier is paid in arrears.

(I think I figured out what I was doing wrong earlier, in posting here. I was trying to do a quote and maybe it had some kind of wrong formatting or something.)

But no, I'm sorry, this was charged to anyone downgrading from their account from premium to basic.

It happened to me and it happened to a friend of mine, and neither one of us was on any kind of a trial, and we had our premium account for a lot longer than seven days, and in my friend's case, a whole LOT longer than seven days, as he preceeded me here in SL on his account.

And it happened to others on here - I remember someone was quite irate about it.

I had gotten a couple of quotes - just off the first page that came up in "Search" - of people saying the same thing, that if you downgrade, you pay a fee.

Now this is the way it was, and if it is no longer that way, that is one thing, and that is good for Kitty. But I am telling you that it was charged to us, and we weren't the only ones.

coco

Ah so it's just a bit of out of date information on the website then... that kinda makes sense... I guess it's "hope a Linden sees it and does something about it".

Lewis

I did find someone asking the same thing I did on July 3rd 2006 (/139/84/118053/1.html) so it's not that recent I guess.

Also came across a post from Philip in early May that said there was no reason or future plan to cut stipends, quite a funny thing to read now .

You know, thinking this over, it is, I suppose, vaguely conceivable that this is what happened to me. I will ask my friend his situation, next time I see him. Cause I know he was a premium for a very long time, then was mad about being charged the $10 to downgrade.

coco

Just checking, but assuming i want to downgrade, I can convert some of my lindens to usd to cover that downgrade fee, right?

I "swapped" alts once by downgrading my premium account, then upgrading this one to premium. I only got charged 9.99 for the upgrade, nothing for the downgrade. Was earlier this year, I'm assuming the website stuff is just out of date. I think you get charged a 9.99 fee if you want to re-premium a basic you downgraded, though.