3rd party exchange closure - Limit to slow Lindex service

[thedissappointedmerchant]

Hello everyone,
 As we know due to the recent TOS changes 
 3rd party exchanges are no longer permitted to exhchange L$ to real currencies.
 In result we all are limited to the Linden Lab's Lindex service witch leaves best wishes...

  It will take You a week or more to exchange you're L$ to real currencies and get it to Your bank:
  -Unlike the 3rd party exchanges we had Lindex is dead slow and doesnt actually support wire-transfers
   it will take up to 5 working days to get Your money to paypal sometimes up to 6-7 working days

   (LL checks the transfer to paypal manually and it takes them 0-5 or even 6-7 days).

  -Depended on you're location it can take 1-2 working days for paypal to transfer the funds to Your bank.
  -We even pay interest to LL for such a slow service and we are forced to pay interest to paypal.

  (1USD to LL, ~2USD to paypal depended on your location)

 In result it will take You a week or more to get you're "pocket" money and Youl even give a couple of $ for such excelent service.

 

 If this will go on i personally dont see a point of in-world commerce despite our hardwork, all the challenges, and charges we face  on each step to bring a worthy product to the user we no longer can freely exchange our earned money with ease.

 I advise you the same this is just unworthy and even ridiculous.
 I hope LL will reconsider and for once support the contend creators and the in-world business.

 

  

 

[Teagan Tobias]

I see so many complaints about the time it takes LL to do bank transfers. But the fact is its not LL but the banking system they use. I live in the US and do my banking with some of the largest banks in the country and until recently also used a Credit Union. A week is how long it takes for a lot of banks in the US to transfer funds, even now if I deposit a check in my account I am told, the funds will not be available for five working days. When I use PayPal, its five days. So you can complain about LL but I don't think they are the reason, its the banks, they make a lot of money off interest letting the funds sit for a week before moving them to there final destination and there is most likely nothing LL can do about it.

[Theresa Tennyson]

In RL I don't see the money I earned for anything from 5 to 18 days after I do the actual work because I get a bi-weekly paycheck that's issued on Fridays after I turn my timecard in on Monday morning. I'm just sayin'....

[thedissappointedmerchant]

However 3rd party exchange services managed to reliably do it with ease in 1-2 max 3 days, and

without limiting us to paypal.

 

They really should improve their service... even while it would be a investment...

[Czari Zenovka]

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thedissappointedmerchant wrote:

However 3rd party exchange services managed to reliably do it with ease in 1-2 max 3 days, and

without limiting us to paypal.

 

---

Yes, the third party exchange services did provide a faster service, at least in the one whole time in five years when I earned enough to cash out.  But for now at least, they can no longer do that, so we work with what we have.

For me, it's a fairly moot issue as my earnings in SL basically pay my tier, if that some months, and provides my SL "spending money."

Edit: Clarification

[thedissappointedmerchant]

"But for now at least, they can no longer do so we work with what we have."  Thus near nothing..  :b

For You i guess but many people have more earnings in SL.

If not 3rd party they could have atleast improved teir Lindex service. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

thedissappointedmerchant wrote:

However 3rd party exchange services managed to reliably do it with ease in 1-2 max 3 days,

and

without limiting us to paypal.

 

They really should improve their service... even while it would be a investment...

---

This is because the 3rd party exchanges are in the business of giving out money - that's what they do. Linden Lab isn't - the give out money only because they feel doing it would assist their core business.

For example - take where I work in RL. It takes me a while to get paid. BUT - where I work doesn't exist strictly to pay me; they are in business to do something else and they pay me so I will do work for them in order to help them with their core business. They want me to stick around and keep working for them but it doesn't help them to pay me instantly.

If I needed instant money I could go to one of the "payday-loan" establishments that are only in business to give out money. However, in order to do this they charge fees and have other conditions that mean it's not in my best interest to rely on them for day-to-day living, so I just wait for my regular paycheck.

Your Lindens have real-world value ONLY BECAUSE LINDEN LAB CURRENTLY WANTS THEM TO, and they want them to only because is an incentive for some people they think are useful to their work . They definately DON'T want Lindens to be considered a currency for a lot of reasons.

[Perrie Juran]

Linden Lab said that they were going to work on improving the service.

Right now all we can do is keep our fingers crossed that they do.

I doubt very much that we will ever see 'instant' cash out.

But I do believe they can and will streamline and speed up the service so results are consistent and people can plan their finances accordingly.

[Jennifer Boyle]

You should change banks.  When I deposit money, it is available at the beginning of the following business day, and it's always been that way.  I routinely transfer money electronically between financial institutions; it takes two business days, never more.  I could pay extra for a bank wire transfer, and it would be completed the same day.

I don't understand what LL makes it as hard as they do.  What are they checking manually?  It seems to me that everything relevant that could be checked manually can be checked by an algorithm instantly.  Why don't they makes it quick, easy, and simple and just credit whatever payment source the account it using, be it a debit card, a credit card, or PayPal?

[Madeliefste Oh]

---

thedissappointedmerchant wrote:

 If this will go on i personally dont see a point of in-world commerce despite our hardwork, all the challenges, and charges we face  on each step to bring a worthy product to the user we no longer can freely exchange our earned money with ease. 

 

---

The other side of the medal is that copybotters, password fishers and other scammers with anonymous accounts can no longer freely exchange their stolen money with ease.

LL has never wanted to close the front door for multiple anonymous account, but FinCEN now forces them to close the backdoor.

 

[Rya Nitely]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

I don't understand what LL makes it as hard as they do.  What are they checking manually?  It seems to me that everything relevant that could be checked manually can be checked by an algorithm instantly.  Why don't they makes it quick, easy, and simple and just credit whatever payment source the account it using, be it a debit card, a credit card, or PayPal?

__________________________________________________________________________

Perhaps it has to do with fraud. The security is not as good as online banking where you often need an access code, security number and a password. If someone accessed my account and tried to transfer money from it then the 5 day delay would be a good thing. What if I didn't check my email for some reason and that fraudulent payment went through in a day or two?

Personally, I can wait for my money. I don't depend on it to pay bills. I depend on my RL job for this, and as someone pointed out, RL work usually doesn't pay you instantly, so you have to be financially organised. People just need to plan for it to take 5 days. If they improve it then good, but if not get used to it.

[Jennifer Boyle]

---

Rya Nitely wrote:

---

Jennifer Boyle wrote:

I don't understand what LL makes it as hard as they do.  What are they checking manually?  It seems to me that everything relevant that could be checked manually can be checked by an algorithm instantly.  Why don't they makes it quick, easy, and simple and just credit whatever payment source the account it using, be it a debit card, a credit card, or PayPal?

__________________________________________________________________________

If someone accessed my account and tried to transfer money from it then the 5 day delay would be a good thing. What if I didn't check my email for some reason and that fraudulent payment went through in a day or two?

---

If LL did what I suggested, then it would be necessary for the crook to change your payment source to transfer money to himself.  They could easily prevent the kind of misuse you describe by placing a moratorium on transfers out for a week after a change in the payment source, but they could make them instantly after that.

Also my financial institution accounts require routinely require only a password and username to access, unless their computer notices that I am using a device that is unknown to it.  In that case, I have to answer one or two security questions.  LL could do the same thing without substantial cost, and my SL account would be just as secure as my bank account.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

thedissappointedmerchant wrote:

However 3rd party exchange services managed to reliably do it with ease in 1-2 max 3 days,

and

without limiting us to paypal.

 

They really should improve their service... even while it would be a investment...

---

This is because the 3rd party exchanges are in the business of giving out money - that's what they do. Linden Lab isn't - the give out money only because they feel doing it would assist their core business.

For example - take where I work in RL. It takes me a while to get paid. BUT - where I work doesn't exist strictly to pay me; they are in business to do something else and they pay me so I will do work for them in order to help them with their core business. They want me to stick around and keep working for them but it doesn't help them to pay me instantly.

If I needed instant money I could go to one of the "payday-loan" establishments that are only in business to give out money. However, in order to do this they charge fees and have other conditions that mean it's not in my best interest to rely on them for day-to-day living, so I just wait for my regular paycheck.

Your Lindens have real-world value ONLY BECAUSE LINDEN LAB CURRENTLY WANTS THEM TO, and they want them to only because is an incentive for some people they think are useful to their work . They definately DON'T want Lindens to be considered a currency for a lot of reasons.

---

Actually they do want it to be a "currency" without the legal liability of real currency. You're right in that L$ have value because LL wants them to, although anything thet costs real money has real value in the real world according to most real governments.

Even if LL didn't allow cashing out, there's still a case to be made that whether it's land or $L or a hosting service, there's still a certain level of accountability to provide the service or product that people pay RL money for.

In RL, there is ALWAYS value when you pay for something, whatever that something is.

However, L$ is designed to be a product unto itself. It makes profit on your money with every transaction, every sink, etc. To LL, their "currency" is just as much a product as land.

In fact, as Phil Rosedale, Linden Lab and a handful of others invest in the next generation Second Life, High Fidelity, the goal becomes even clearer that they want to up the stakes with their currency.. This snippet from the High Fidelity website proclaims:

"We're building a new virtual world enabling rich avatar interactions driven by sensor-equipped hardware, simulated and served by devices (phones, tablets and laptops/desktops) contributed by end-users.

...

If we can successfully build this collective cloud, we think we can enable audience sizes for shared experiences that are orders of magnitude larger than what is possible today. Imagine contributing your computer to a project like SETI, but instead having it simulate part of the virtual world, and earning virtual world currency in exchange for helping to power the grid." -- http://highfidelity.io

The goal here is to re-invent SL and in the process loosely copy Bitcoin, which bases "value" on computer processing power and to expand the reach of the L$.

It's not a favor or convenience, virtual currency is monetized real money. It's a product that makes LL much more money than using real currency because they can chip away at it with a thousand sinks, charge when you buy it, sell it or just sit there and look at it when it remains uncirculated. And for all that, it still costs real money fees for those transaction bits that exist outside of the "virtual" bits.

Again, L$ is profitable product.

 

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

---

Jennifer Boyle wrote:

I don't understand what LL makes it as hard as they do.  What are they checking manually?  It seems to me that everything relevant that could be checked manually can be checked by an algorithm instantly.  Why don't they makes it quick, easy, and simple and just credit whatever payment source the account it using, be it a debit card, a credit card, or PayPal?

__________________________________________________________________________

Perhaps it has to do with fraud. The security is not as good as online banking where you often need an access code, security number and a password. If someone accessed my account and tried to transfer money from it then the 5 day delay would be a good thing. What if I didn't check my email for some reason and that fraudulent payment went through in a day or two?

---

Fraud might be a factor. But profit might be a factor as well. I think it is very well possible that LL gets a much lower transaction fee at Paypal when they do a massivily pay out once a week, in stead of sending money all week long during every hour a day.

[Tari Landar]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

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Personally, I can wait for my money. I don't depend on it to pay bills. I depend on my RL job for this, and as someone pointed out, RL work usually doesn't pay you instantly, so you have to be financially organised. People just need to plan for it to take 5 days. If they improve it then good, but if not get used to it.

---

^ This

Even when Sl paid my rl bills, and it did for some time, I was still well prepared to have to wait days, a week, whatever. Even if I didn't have to(and usually didn't). The only rl work I have ever done that paid me "instantly" would be doing things like babysitting, lawn care, washing cars, whatever. All stuff I wouldn't receive a "steady" income from. The jobs that really pay my bills come with weekly, or bi-weekly paychecks. Which means, those days I don't get a check in hand, if I need money for something it's gotta be in the bank or my wallet. So, I treat sl the same. If I want it to pay my rl bills, I need to treat it like my weekly, or bi-weekly paycheck, and plan accordingly. That includes planning for as many what ifs as I can. This what if-extended payment time, seems like a no brainer to me, and always has.

But then I strongly believe that anyone who uses sl for rl income ought to prepare for times when things aren't going to go according to plan. What if one week, month, quarter, business isn't as booming? It happens, even to the best of business folk, it just happens. Anything could affect your income. We can only compensate so much. We can also only plan so much. But most of the people I have seen complain about needing the money to reach them faster because it pays their rl bills, did(and still do) absolutely NO planning. What if this change never happened, but something else went wrong(even something minor) that affected their income. I mean, seriously. Maybe I'm being mean, don't really know. I guess I just expect that people who use this sort of currency and method of creating income for themselves, would take things a bit more seriously BEFORE the crap hits the fan.