I'm struggling and need a little help

[Phil Deakins]

I'm in the process of reducing my land from 16k to 8k. All of it is group-owned and the 8k that I'm keeping must remain group-owned thoughout the process.

I have abandoned enough land so that I am left with 9568 sqm:-

8192 (the 8k)

+  512 (the premium tier-free allowance)

* by 1.1 to arrive at the total including the 10% group bonus

= 9568. That figure has been confirmed by Guy Linden.

So the land itself is sorted out. What I'm struggling to do is change the data in my account's Land Use Fees page.

The 1st field (Square meters owned) is 0 because all the land is donated and I don't actually own any.

If I change the 2nd field (Square meters donated) to 9568 and click the 'calculate' button, it tells me that the monthly cost will be $75 - the 16k level. If I change it to 8704 instead and calculate, it tells me that the monthly cost will be $40, which is exactly what I'm after. 8704 is the amount of land without the 10% group bonus, and $40 is the 8k level.

So I click the Save Changes button and I get the message that it has been saved to my account. Unfortunately, 8704 hasn't been saved to my account. When I refresh the page, the previous value is in the box.

At no time did the list of options below the Save Changes button allow me to select the 8k ($40) one. At all times, it only allowed me to select upwards up but not downwards.

As far as I know, the selected option in that list is irrelevant to how much I will be charged, because I will only be charged for the land I've actually used during the previous month, irrespective of what option is selected in that list. Nevertheless, I'd still like to feel really safe by changing that selection to the $40 option in advance of my billing date on the 24th.

I have changed my group donation to 9568, so that isn't getting in the way.

So, is there a way to change to the $40 option in the list and keep the remaining land group-owned during the process? Or will I have cross my fingers that my understanding is correct about not being billed according to that selection?

 

ETA: On reading the text at the top of the page, it does appear that my understanding is correct, so this request for help may not have been necessary. Even so, if anyone has any insight, I'd appreciate it.

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

As far as I know, the selected option in that list is irrelevant to how much I will be charged, because I will only be charged for the land I've actually used during the previous month, irrespective of what option is selected in that list. Nevertheless, I'd still like to feel really safe by changing that selection to the $40 option in advance of my billing date on the 24th.

I have changed my group donation to 9568, so that isn't getting in the way.

So, is there a way to change to the $40 option in the list and keep the remaining land group-owned during the process? Or will I have cross my fingers that my understanding is correct about not being billed according to that selection?

 

ETA: On reading the text at the top of the page, it does appear that my understanding is correct, so this request for help may not have been necessary. Even so, if anyone has any insight, I'd appreciate it.

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Phil, I had the same problem when downgrading. I didn't change the 40 USD option because it wouldn't let me, figuring it was clear, I don't own land, why would I be charged that land use fee (I'm talking about the second chart, below the one detailing what you actually own). I was charged anyway, even though the first chart clearly showed I didn't own any land. From what LL told me, the program reads that as permission to go ahead and charge you. Oh, so you want to pay 40 bucks a month? OK, if you insist, but you don't owe any land, thanks for the donation. It was group owned land I had given up, check to make sure the land you gave up isn't included in the group assets, that may be what's preventing it from letting you choose 40 USD. This went on for months and caused me to cancel my premium account. Don't take it for granted, if something on one of those charts isn't changing, please check with billing about it and clarify this to save yourself a potential headache later.

[Knutz Scorpio]

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I have changed my group donation to 9568, so that isn't getting in the way.

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Might try changing your group donation to 8704, can't log in to verify but it seems the way the group bonus was figured was counterintuitive.

 

[Phil Deakins]

Hmm... Thank you both for your input.

Lucretia. That was a bad experience you had. Are you certain that you didn't have any group donations active at the time they charged you? I.e. did you overlook changing the group donations to zero?

Knutz. I'll test that idea out.

 

This is the 3rd time I'm halving my land in recent times, and I don't remember having this problem previously. Maybe I just took it for granted that the selected level is ignored, as I'd been told by a Linden. At the top of the Land Use Fees page, it states:-  (You may remain at the higher tier level without penalty; tier fees are only charged for the total amount of land actually held within your billing cycle.) The "higher tier level" refers to the list of radio button options. It should say "land/tier" because tier can be donated to a group without the need of land to go with it.

[Phil Deakins]

Doing that did allow me to change down to the $40 level option. Thank you, Knutz!

And I'm pretty sure that not doing it would have caused me to pay $75 for next month. I'd donated all of the 9568 to the group when the 8704 was sufficient. I think that's due to the fact that I don't get the 10% extra - the group does - so I couldn't donate it. If I'd left it as it was, with 9568 donated by me, I would have been donating some land/tier that would have been in the $75 range.

I'm still sure that checking the $40 option in the list wouldn't make any difference, and I'd only pay for what I actually used, but donating the + 10% part would have made all the difference, and I'd still have been at the $75 level.

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

I'm sure, I went over it again and again, Phil. That's what was so frustrating about it. Just a head's up, I don't  know if something glitched or that's how that program thinks, but better safe than sorry.

[Phil Deakins]

Then what they did to you was ridiculous, Lucretia. But it's LL, and ridiculous is the norm for them. In fact, what they've done to their paying customers through the years is one of the 2 reasons why I've been reducing my land, and abandoning it instead of trying to sell it.- so they'll lose some tier, at least for a while.

[jwenting]

if you donate 9k of tier to a group, you're charged as if there were 9k of land connected to your account. This makes perfect sense as you don't control how that 9k gets used, the group does.

Of course you might be the only one in the group who can control land for the group, but I doubt the system is smart enough to know that at that level (or to keep track of it over the entire billing period, rather than doing a spot check when someone tries to buy or sell land for a group).

As to being billed to a set tier level without actually owning land higher than a lower tier level, I'm not sure if that actually happens or is just an ambiguous statement on the website, the situation arose for me only once and then not long enough for actual billing to take place. Could well be they simply keep the message the same based on the tier amount set in that window without consulting the database of owned land to see how much you're actually going to be billed for (which would likely be a slower query and might have other technical implications).

[Qie Niangao]

This tier setting thing has been confusing for a long time. What I think is supposed to happen is that the tier settings control the level at which you'll get a warning if you try to buy land that exceeds that set amount; otherwise it assumes you mean to use the tier you've set. And what you're supposed to get billed for is the largest amount of land you've owned + group-contributed at any point in the past 30 days.

I suspect that some of the confusion comes from that "past 30 days" thing. People may reduce their landholdings without lowering the tier setting, get billed for the past 30 days -- during which time they actually held enough land to be billed at the set tier -- and conclude that they had to reduce the tier setting to avoid being charged. Then they lower the tier setting and the next billing date are charged less, "confirming" that reducing the tier setting was what reduced the bill, when in fact the bill was lower because of the reduced landholding from more than a month ago.

tl;dr: People may get confused because Mainland is billed in arrears.

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

How I wish that had been the case, they were billing me for over 6 months and I kept trying to work it outt, thinking oh, they'd give me a refund but nope.

[Qie Niangao]

I may have misread your earlier post. I took it to mean that you'd given up group land without removing your tier donation from the group, in which case you would have been billed for that contribution whether or not the group actually owned any land. But if you did remove the group tier contribution too, then you shouldn't have been charged (starting with the bill after a full month of reduced contribution), and if that's what happened, then it's definitely wrong... and Billing Support should have been willing to correct it (but maybe not refund for past charges; not sure about that).

[Phil Deakins]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

This tier setting thing has been confusing for a long time. What I think is

supposed

to happen is that the tier settings control the level at which you'll get a warning if you try to buy land that exceeds that set amount; otherwise it assumes you mean to use the tier you've set. And what you're supposed to get billed for is the largest amount of land you've owned + group-contributed at any point in the past 30 days.

I

suspect

that some of the confusion comes from that "

past

30 days" thing. People may reduce their landholdings without lowering the tier setting, get billed for the past 30 days -- during which time they actually held enough land to be billed at the set tier -- and conclude that they had to reduce the tier setting to avoid being charged. Then they lower the tier setting and the next billing date are charged less, "confirming" that reducing the tier setting was what reduced the bill, when in fact the bill was lower because of the reduced landholding from more than a month ago.

tl;dr: People may get confused because Mainland is billed in arrears.

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Yes, I'm sure that paying for mainland in arrears can and does confuse some people. I'm not one of them though I've halved my land, knowing that the half cost won't happen until the 24th of next month. The amount I am charged for this month, on the 24th, won't change. It'll be the same as last month's cost.

I think that the selected tier level really does do what it's supposed to do - warn if you are about to exceed the selected level. I'd known that from way back but, since I was having the problem of not being able to select the next level down, I didn't feel secure. And it turned out that I wasn't secure for the reason I wrote in a previous post - that I don't own the extra 10% of land that the group is allowed. The group owns it - not me. So I can't donate it. But my new donation figure included that extra 10%, so that 10% was in the next tier level up from what I intended.

If I hadn't started this thread, I would have been comfortable knowing that the selected tier level isn't what's charged for, and I wouldn't have received the suggestion from Knutz. Without that suggestion, I would have got it wrong and I wouldn't have cut my tier cost for next month. I would have been paying an extra month at the higher level rate. Maybe I'd better shut up or Knutz will be wanting some commission lol.