I tried to buy some lindens using my card. SL put $1. on hold with my financial institution.

[DrDale Graymark]

I tried to buy some lindens using my card.   It registered 1 US dollar with my financial institution, but SL won't clear the 1 dollar transaction that IT incurred so I can buy anything else, particularly the lindens that I was tring to buy to begin with.  The purchase wasn't that much, about $16. worth, US.   At least 12 hours has gone by.

SL recognizes my payment info, SL put 1 US dollar on hold, but won't go ahead and take it so that I may proceed to buy the lindens that I was trying to buy in the first place.

They indicate that they will take up to 3 days to decide whether to make my $1. or not.  Surely this is not what everyone else has had to go through just to be able to make purchases of lindens on SL.  What gives?   Very Frustrated.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

It sounds like this is the first time you've attempted to use your payment method (the CC you provided at your payment method).  LL sends your provider a $1 charge to verify if the payment method is valid.  That charge is rescended once the account if verified, then your purchase is charged (such as purchasing $L).  It looks like LL is waiting for your bank or CC provider to respond.  If that does happen then your purchase will not go through.

Contact your provider.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Yes, this is what the lucky people had to go through.

The rest of us can't even get that far for one reason or another.  LL are incredibly fussy about whose money they'll take.  It's all part of their anti-corporate strategy: they make it really hard to pay them and really hard to use their services, which don't work most of the time.  Some think it's the business model of the future.

[Irene Muni]

In addition to previous great answers, remeber you can make a free call to Billing Support: https://support.secondlife.com/billing-support/