Question: Group bonus and land donation

[Monica Balut]

I'm having some trouble understanding how the 10% group bonus applies to donated tier for mainland land.  My aim is to personally stay at the $40 tier for my avatar.

Here's how I thought it worked.  Both my alt and I have premium accounts, so we each get 512 m2 for "free" to donate to the group.  In addition, I bought then donated to the group an additional 8192 m2.  All of this kept me in the $40 tier and my alt in the $0 tier which is what I want.

 

Then I looked at the 10% group bonus thing.  I assumed that the group would be able to own (8192 + 512 + 512) * 1.1 = 10137 m2 and still be ok.  So I bought an additional 896 m2 and donated it to the group which brought it to 10112 m2, well below the 10137 I had calculated.  This immediately threw me into the $75 tier.

 

I contacted chat support for guidance.  The tech pointed me to http://secondlife.com/land/pricing.php which seems to say that I can donate only 8192 + 512 to the group in order to stay in the $40 tier.  (At lest that's how the tech interpreted it for me.)

 

If that is correct, I don't understand the point of the 10% bonus for group land donations.  How can a group own 10% more land than the original owners can donate if doing so bumps them up to a higher tier?

[Knowl Paine]

Try this again.

With Premium you get a bonus use of 512 sqm.

Let's assume you change your Tier to 8,192 sqm

8,192 + 512 =  8,704 sqm total.

10% of 8,704 + 870

8,704 + 870  =  9,574 sqm total. This number is the Total amount of Tier you can Donate to a group and stay at $40 per month.

8,704 sqm is the Total amount of Land you can own, if the Land is Not deeded to a Group.

 

 

If another Resident here understands it better, please do share your thoughts.

[Cinnamon Lohner]

Hi Monica,

You calculations are correct.  But I suspect you did things out of sequence and probably took a double tier charge.  Its an easy mistake to make.  When you buy land that's going to be deeded to a group, the best way is to use the Buy for Group button in the About Land window.  Most people just click on the land and choose buy.  What that does is make it a personal purchase.  You have all your tier donated to your group but you bought for yourself and you went over the $40 tier.  Then when you deed the land to the group, you would drop your personal ownership and the group tier contribution covers the land.  Unfortunately for you, you have to pay the higher tier for one month because of the sequence that you used to purchase the extra land.

As far as the 10%, it is automatically added to the group contribution.  So the best way to take advantage of it and stay below your target monthly tier is to donate all your tier to the group first and then buy the land using the Buy for Group button.

Hope that helps.

--Cinn

[Monica Balut]

I just went to my account's Land Use Fees page.  There it show that I have donated 8835 m2 to the group.  I have no idea how that number was arrived at, since by my calculation I've donated 9600 m2.  So Knowl, even the 8835 number is well below the 9574 you calculate, yet my tier is still calculated at $75 and the button below to select $40 is grey out.

 

If I use the calculator on the above page and enter 8704 donated land and 0 owned land, my calculated tier drops to $40 as expected.  If I raise donated land to 8705 my calculated tier goes up to $75.  So Knowl, although your calculation make perfect sense to me, it doesn't correpond to what the calculator gives.  It appears that tier is calculated as the tech described to me: I can donate up to 8192 + 512 = 8704 and still remain at $40 tier. Anything above that pushes me to $75.

 

[Monica Balut]

I think I may have figured out the problem.  In the group profile, Land & $ tab, it had me showing as donating 8835 m2.  When I dropped that to 8704, my tier on my Land Use Fees page could be set at $40 again.  So it turns out that my original calculation was correct.  The tier is set based on what I donate to the group as set in the group profile and not on what I actually own.

 

This was a rather frustrating process.  There's no one resource that clearly explains all the steps you have to take to do this right.

[Qie Niangao]

My suggestion would be to carefully read Cinnamon's explanation of what you did wrong until you're sure you understand it fully, and then call Billing support and explain what happened to you.  They may be willing to save your US$35 by forgiving your mistake.

The reason they may decide not to do so is that, when you purchased the additional land, you were inevitably warned that your tier level would increase with the purchase. (Well... except if you buy at auction, where it doesn't check that you're bidding on more land than your current tier level can support.)

If you want to stay at or under the US$40 level, you really want to adjust back down your tier setting on the Land Use Fees page, so you'll get that warning if you're ever about to purchase more than the limit again. 

[KillianMacrieve]

Very interesting discussion and very illustrative. But.... A question, I guess all this apply only to Mainland, because, in my case, I bought with my alt in Private Estates the amount of 8912 sqm and donated to the group. I abandoned mayority of my lands at Mainland and kept only 1024 to stay within the new limit of bouns and stay at US$ 0 level since I have premium meanwhile my avi is basic (basics can't buy in Mainland, as you know very well), that 1024 are already donated to the group land. The trouble is that the total amount of group land is not shown as you can see in the next pics, neither in mine or my alt:

https://gyazo.com/da49930ea7f1556417c165fc39ed76ab

https://gyazo.com/ad9030e1b66df492956d013885f835cf

As you can see, in the list of land owned by the group, it appears, from Private Estates the register 0/2496, 0/6146, but Mainland 1024. I tried to change the numbers in my alt few times to reflect the total amount donated by him 8912, but nothing change and still show that the group owes 1126 sqm, use 1024, and available 102 ??? !!!

Does I need to resell my self (alt avi) again at L$ 0 and redonate?

[Chic Aeon]

Unless you have a few alts (some people have a big handful for land tier reasons) the bonus will not do you much good. If you have four people in the group, that gives you 400 extra square meters (we had that in our group and someone took advantage of it by purchasing a 512 and then giving some back to keep the "free" 400 (there was a one month's fee charge of course)  . You need five donating in one group I think to have a bonus of a 512. 

There aren't all that many tiny lots out there and they aren't all that useful. So the bonus REALLY comes in as the group gets larger. There are certainly exceptions -- but just as a general look at the process. 

 

 

[Callum Meriman]

4 hours ago, KillianMacrieve said:

I bought with my alt in Private Estates the amount of 8912 sqm and donated to the group

Donation to group means nothing for a private estate. You may as well leave it as 0.

Private estates will have a rent box somewhere to pay. Someone in the group needs to pay this manually.

[LittleMe Jewell]

As Callum said - that 8192 donation to a private estate group is wasted money that you are just throwing away.  Donating to that group does nothing for you, you will cause you to pay tier to LL.  Take the tier donation back so that your payments to LL go away.