Questions about premium membership

[xRomanticThug]

Hello there. I'm interesed to upgrade for premium for 1 year, but i'm not sure with some things...if anyone can help me :

1. If I upgrade for 1 year for premium membership, can I buy land? Or do I have to pay more to buy?

2. What happens if I want to give up and I don’t pay after the year is over? Will I become again a normal member?

3. Is there any risk?

[Jadeclaw Denfu]

1: Yes. You get a allowance of 512m² for free. Or a Linden home. If you buy more than that, you have to pay tier fees,
which are listed here: https://secondlife.com/my/account/landfees.php?lang=en-US

2: Yes, but you have to explicitly downgrade your account, simply stopping paying kills it - including your name,
your inventory, etc.
To become a basic member, you have to explicitly abandon/sell all land you have. The free part must be abandoned.

3: Yes. If you can't pay your premium fee on time, you can lose your account with all the inventory, free basic accounts live forever.

You may compare the whole premium thing with renting land.  But don't forget to count in
the premium sign up bonus(L$1000,--) and the weekly stipend(L$300,--).

For me and my 2048m²-parcel, basic + rent comes out cheaper. but depending on what you want to achieve,
premium might be the better choice. So do the math and decide then.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

You need premium membership to buy mainland, but not land on private islands.    If you take out premium membership, you still need to buy the mainland land (unless we're talking about the Linden Homes, which are a special case), though generally land prices on most mainland are very low.

Once you've bought your land, you still need to pay "tier" fees every month (like property taxes), though your premium membership includes the tier on the first 512 square metres of mainland you own.   

So, with premium membership you can have a Linden Home with nothing more to pay, or 512 sq matres of mainland for which you pay the purchase price but no more.    If you're buying on a private sim, premium membership is irrelevant.

If you want to give up your premium membership, you have to remember to cancel it.   Otherwise it will renew automatically, and your card is charged.    I am not quite sure what you do about your land during the period between your cancelling your membership and your current membership expiring -- presumably you have to remember to sell or surrender it before your current membership expires, but someone else can maybe confirm the details.

The only risk, really, to premium membership is that it automatically renews, so if decide to take a break from SL and forget to cancel your membership, at best it will still be charged to your card and, at worst, if you've cancelled the payment on your card (or changed it) and later decide to return to SL, you almost certainly find your account has been suspended for late payment and, should you reactivate it, that most of your inventory has gone missing.

So if you decide to take a break from SL, make sure you've either got the payments covered or that you've fully reverted to normal membership.   Otherwise I can't think of any particular risks.

[Fabiano Dover]

i'll try 

1. when you are premium you can buy land, but will have to pay to get ownership,ánd you will have to pay tier to LL.

2. when you let your membership expire you will get in debt with LL, it's better to change membership to basic before that, if you don't get back to basic, your account will go on hold and you won't be able to log in anymore.

3. see last part of answer 2 .. or perhaps explain closer what risk you mean

 

in general, if you aren't sure you stay or keep land for long time, why not think about a shorter subscription to premium, it's slightly more expensive, but also easier to grade down.

[Jennifer Boyle]

One thing the others didn't mention is that you get access to chat support, which can be valuable.  For example, you can get a region restarted when it needs it.

If you pay by the year, net of the stipend premium membership is essentially free.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

One thing the others didn't mention is that you get access to chat support, which can be valuable.  For example, you can get a region restarted when it needs it.

 

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Isn't the region restart only for people who own an estate sim? 

[Innula Zenovka]

No.  I regularly got the sim on Zindra where we owned a largish parcel restarted by asking Live Chat nicely.   I think it helped that I was able to give them sound technical reasons why I thought a restart was needed.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

No.  I regularly got the sim on Zindra where we owned a largish parcel restarted by asking Live Chat nicely.   I think it helped that I was able to give them sound technical reasons why I thought a restart was needed.

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Interesting.  I had an issue on my mainland sim when I owned around 5600sqm and contacted Live Chat.  I was also very polite and provided my reasons and was told that they do not do rollbacks on mainland sims because it could negatively affect other residents' parcels on the same sim.

ETA: Now I'm wondering if a rollback, which is what I was requesting, is the same as a restart...probably not.

[Innula Zenovka]

No, Rollbacks are completely different from restarts, and can only be done by LL (and only then if they approve). A roll-back means restoring the sim -- contents and everything -- to how it was at a previous state, which reverts builds and can cause no-copy content to be lost forever. I have never asked LL for a roll-back, and would only so do in a real emergency. A Restart is simply like restarting your computer, to reboot it, and you would do it for the same reasons -- some sort of performance problems.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

No, Rollbacks are completely different from restarts, and can only be done by LL (and only then if they approve). A roll-back means restoring the sim -- contents and everything -- to how it was at a previous state, which reverts builds and can cause no-copy content to be lost forever. I have never asked LL for a roll-back, and would only so do in a real emergency. A Restart is simply like restarting your computer, to reboot it, and you would do it for the same reasons -- some sort of performance problems.

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Ah ok...was thinking of something different.

[Phil Deakins]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

One thing the others didn't mention is that you get access to chat support, which can be valuable.  For example, you can get a region restarted when it needs it.

 

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Isn't the region restart only for people who own an estate sim? 

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I know this has been answered but I just want to confirm that, as a landowner in the sim, you can get sim restarts. I've never owned a full sim but I've had it done many times over the years. The only time when the person wouldn't do it was when it was for minor reason (ghosted prim) and the sim had plenty of avatars in it at the time. All but one or two were my bots, so I logged them all out and the reset went ahead.

If the reason is compelling, I'd expect to get a rollback too, but I don't know if I could get one. I don't know if the support staff are even capable of doing a rollback, or if it requires LL staff to do it.

ETA: I've just read further in the thread, and I see that a rollback from support isn't possible.

[Finity Westland]

One other thing which used to be true, and I think still is.

 

The 512m allowance that can be used either for a Lindenhome or a plot of mainland can also instead be deducted from a larger plot of land you may purchase.  Thus, if you were to purchase a 2048m plot of land, you would pay Tier as thought it were a (2048m-512m) 1536m plot, or a 1024m plot as thought it were a 512m plot.

Note this only subtracts from the area of the plot, not the Tier level, so you will have to see if it would actually drop your Tier payments by using the adjusted plot size against the Tier level, but it is still a nice option if a 512m plot is too small for you.

 

The other risk that hasn't been mentioned is that you might come to really like the weekly stipend, the Premium sandboxes, content, and occasional benefits so much that you can't face SL without them

[Dillon Levenque]

 

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Finity Westland wrote:

One other thing which used to be true, and I think still is.

 

The 512m allowance that can be used either for a Lindenhome or a plot of mainland can also instead be deducted from a larger plot of land you may purchase.  Thus, if you were to purchase a 2048m plot of land, you would pay Tier as thought it were a (2048m-512m) 1536m plot, or a 1024m plot as thought it were a 512m plot.

Note this only subtracts from the area of the plot, not the Tier level, so you will have to see if it would actually drop your Tier payments by using the adjusted plot size against the Tier level, but it is still a nice option if a 512m plot is too small for you.

 

The other risk that hasn't been mentioned is that you might come to really like the weekly stipend, the Premium sandboxes, content, and occasional benefits so much that you can't face SL without them

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Yes, the free 512 IS deducted from your total land to compute your tier; when I first bought land my 1024 had a tier of $5.00 (the rate for a 512).  Even more interesting is the ability to donate your 512 to a group for group-owned land. Qie Niangao had a very interesting post that discussed ways to use premium alts with donated tier that could mean some serious cost reductions if done correctly, and it made a lot of sense to me. I'm still working on doing that.

[jwenting]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

One thing the others didn't mention is that you get access to chat support, which can be valuable.  For example, you can get a region restarted when it needs it.

 

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Isn't the region restart only for people who own an estate sim? 

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Yes and no. Estate owners get access to the estate tools so they can restart themselves, mainland owners can go to life support chat and ask a customer support person to come and do it for them.

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Finity Westland wrote:

One other thing which used to be true, and I think still is.

 

The 512m allowance that can be used either for a Lindenhome or a plot of mainland can also instead be deducted from a larger plot of land you may purchase.  Thus, if you were to purchase a 2048m plot of land, you would pay Tier as thought it were a (2048m-512m) 1536m plot, or a 1024m plot as thought it were a 512m plot.

Note this only subtracts from the area of the plot, not the Tier level, so you will have to see if it would actually drop your Tier payments by using the adjusted plot size against the Tier level, but it is still a nice option if a 512m plot is too small for you.

 

The other risk that hasn't been mentioned is that you might come to really like the weekly stipend, the Premium sandboxes, content, and occasional benefits so much that you can't face SL without them

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You are correct but I believe that one of your examples can be misleading. I haven't checked recently but I don't think there is a 1536m tier level. The levels go from 512 to 1024 to 2048 to 4096 and so on. That's how it used to be and I don't hink it's changed. So a 2048m parcel would be charged at the 2048m tier rate regardless of whether or not there's a tier-free 512 included in it. A 1024 would be charged at the 512 rate because of the tier-free 512m, but a 2048 would be charged at the 2048 rate, in spite of the tier-free 512, because there isn't a 1536 rate.

[Dillon Levenque]

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:

You are correct but I believe that one of your examples can be misleading. I haven't checked recently but I don't think there is a 1536m tier level. The levels go from 512 to 1024 to 2048 to 4096 and so on. That's how it used to be and I don't hink it's changed. So a 2048m parcel would be charged at the 2048m tier rate regardless of whether or not there's a tier-free 512 included in it. A 1024 would be charged at the 512 rate because of the tier-free 512m, but a 2048 would be charged at the 2048 rate, in spite of the tier-free 512, because there isn't a 1536 rate.

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You're right: it goes from 1024 straight to 2048 and from there straight to 4096 then 8192. Even just putting halves in—1536, 3072, 6144—with appropriate tier, would be a big plus for me and for a lot of people, but I suspect the income LL currently gets from people for whom 2048 or 4096 is not quite enough outstrips the income they'd get if they added the midpoint tiers given that they'd be losing income in many cases.

I currently am paying a 4096 tier even though I only hold a bit over 3500. If they added a midpoint of 3072 I could meet it with my 512 premium freebie, so they'd lose money on me. I doubt my situation is unique.