WTF Paying for premium is a liability

[Anya Ristow]

It's been years since I signed into SL. I was pretty sure I've lost my mainland plot due to non-payment. But I had enough SL bucks to convert to cash (is that still a thing?) and pay the $97 I owe, so I signed in and found...

1. Yeah, my mainland parcel is gone
2. I'm locked out of the forum
3. I have zero L$

I'm going to guess I also wouldn't be able to sign in.

I guess I'm truly done with SL.

Don't pay for premium.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

oh wow.... maybe you can try to contest the debt of 97 dollars... or at least negotiate it down.

 

[Noodles]

> I didn't pay

> I lost my things

I am not real sure what the issue is here.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

> I didn't pay

> I lost my things

I am not real sure what the issue is here.

USUALLY subscriptions just auto cancel instead of letting you accumulate debt in such a fashion.

 

[Anya Ristow]

> I didn't pay

> I lost my things

I am not real sure what the issue is here.

If you don't pay for premium your use of their services is truly free and they won't seize your stuff and lock you out.

Give them money for years on end and then stop doing so and they seize from you all the stuff that they give everyone else for free. It's a disincentive to giving them money.

 

[Anya Ristow]

oh wow.... maybe you can try to contest the debt of 97 dollars... or at least negotiate it down.

Had they not seized my L$ I would simply pay it.

EDIT OTOH since I haven't signed in, and they've taken the parcel, and all the L$, then they have rendered no service and I should owe them nothing.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Have you asked billing support about this? Presumably you'll have run up a debt over your mainland tier after your premium subscription lapsed and before they repossessed the land -- I wonder if that might be where the L$ went?

 

[Anya Ristow]

Have you asked billing support about this? Presumably you'll have run up a debt over your mainland tier after your premium subscription lapsed and before they repossessed the land -- I wonder if that might be where the L$ went?

You can't have a mainland parcel without premium, can you? I'm assuming they took the parcel as soon as they gave up trying to charge the CC.

Now, if they were automatically converting L$ to pay tier, that'd have held the parcel for about 2 years.

It would have been early '22 when they were unable to run the credit card. I remember cashing out some L$ to pay premium fees in '21 and knew I had to do that in '22 but I was in no state to worry about SL in '22. I knew I'd lose the parcel. I didn't know I'd be locked out and lose the L$.

 

[Anya Ristow]

LOL, here's how the forum ban works.

The browser I used to sign in to pay my debt? Banned. The one I signed in with, to make sure it wasn't an ad block thing? Banned.

A browser I've never used to sign in? I can use that one to read the forums.

So, in addition to not giving them money, I should not tell them who I am.

Brilliant.

 

[Anya Ristow]

RIP all the Vengeance Studio IP. The website went offline a year or so ago, and now the in-world content is gone.

I had some pretty cool scripts. I had one item that sold enough copies that I paid tier on a full mainland sim for a couple years. That was the Infoplasma Avatar. One of the Lindens had an Infoplasma Panel in his in-world office.

 

[Anya Ristow]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

RIP all the Vengeance Studio IP. The website went offline a year or so ago, and now the in-world content is gone.

I had some pretty cool scripts. I had one item that sold enough copies that I paid tier on a full mainland sim for a couple years. That was the Infoplasma Avatar.

Are you sure they didn't return your stuff to you as a coalesced object?

 

[Anya Ristow]

Are you sure they didn't return your stuff to you as a coalesced object?

No clue. There was nothing on my parcel that wasn't in my inventory. That's not the issue.

I'm locked out of the forum, I'm guessing I'm locked out of signing in-world, but I'm not going to test it. The SL viewer puts my machine in a state where I have to re-install video drivers, and it's just not worth installing SL and going through the driver reinstall on the off chance it lets me sign in, when it probably won't.

 

[Anya Ristow]

I knew I'd lose the parcel.

I paid something like US$400 for that parcel, like L$100,000. It was right next to the Lumiere Noir memorial in ZOE. I paid that with YEARS of unused stipend when I got back into SL after an absence. I'd been paying for premium for 12-ish years at that point, and paid for about three more years after that.

You pay them for fifteen years, and then stop doing so, and they treat you worse than they do someone who's never given them a dime.

 

[Noodles]

What does the L$ transaction history look like, I am curious if the balance drain was all at once or what.

 

[Anya Ristow]

What does the L$ transaction history look like, I am curious if the balance drain was all at once or what.

There is none. There is no information available on my account at all. And a zero L$ balance.

 

[Caliandris]

It's been years since I signed into SL. I was pretty sure I've lost my mainland plot due to non-payment. But I had enough SL bucks to convert to cash (is that still a thing?) and pay the $97 I owe, so I signed in and found...

1. Yeah, my mainland parcel is gone
2. I'm locked out of the forum
3. I have zero L$

I'm going to guess I also wouldn't be able to sign in.

I guess I'm truly done with SL.

Don't pay for premium.

The problem isn't paying for premium. It's not tiering down to a free account before stopping paying.

This happened to my son when he had an extended stay in hospital. I used to pay for his account while maintaining a free account for myself. Something went wrong while we were away from home, and when we got back his account was gone, his inventory was gone, everything was gone. Mine was just fine. We got his name back and account, but the inventory and everything he'd made was toast.

I think it would be a kind thing if they would downgrade an account to a free account if there is trouble over payment, for the reasons stated, if you've paid premium and land fees for a long time you should be treated better than someone who's never spent any money in SL. But then we must both have received warnings that bad things were going to happen, and ignored them. In my case because I had no internet access in hospital with my son at that time, until I got home weeks later.

 

[sldenizen]

You pay them for fifteen years, and then stop doing so, and they treat you worse than they do someone who's never given them a dime.

Sorry to hear about what happened to you, and thank you for reinforcing my intention of never giving them a dime.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

The problem isn't paying for premium. It's not tiering down to a free account before stopping paying.

Yep, you're supposed to tier down to a free account first, then you can turn off payment. This has been a known thing for since 2006.

I think it would be a kind thing if they would downgrade an account to a free account if there is trouble over payment,

Agreed.

 

[Nexii]

LL unfortunately doesn't convert the L$ balance or subtract from it the equivalent for any $ debt. There may be some legal reasons they have to do this approach but since they are in control of the platform and everything it wouldn't be strange much like any MMO to take from virtual tokens to pay towards the subscriptions.

But yeah they should definitely treat previously paying residents much better. That's really awful, had a similar experience with my original account from 2005-2006 which had its' inventory wiped -- which is surprising and total nonsense.