Just a warning/rant

[Alliedubstephipstercat]

I really hope as few people as possible ever have to deal with LL customer support. 

I had the first problem with billing since I've been in SL the other day. I hadn't bought any lindens in a few months, figured why not buy some? I felt like shopping. Well, my payments got declined. And the charges listed as pending withdrawals on my bank account. So I make a support ticket about it. What was LL's reaction? I got a generic response from someone that did not help me at all, followed by my ticket being closed and the case type being changed to "Invalid", then my account was put on hold with no explanation why. I can understand the account being put on hold for safety I guess (even if it was a bit on the side of being overly safe for my small issue), but a little communication about that would have been nice.

Then, after a decent wait, they asked me to provide pictures of picture ID and my debit card. So I did. They finally reopened my account, but told me I'm no longer allowed to purchase linden in SL with that debit card due to "security precautions" that they failed to specify. I would ask about that action with yet another ticket, but after the first two I'm scared to. They may put my account on hold again, and they closed my ticket without confirmation from me that my problems had been resolved.

I proved my identity with their...odd way of asking to do that....what more can they ask for to prove I'm the owner of my card and account? If that doesn't prove it, nothing will. I made a purchase on an online store that got declined too a few days ago, but that store's customer service told me exactly why and what to do about it. I had that cleared up in a day with no damage to my account. What gives LL?

Hopefully my experience is a fluke and isn't the norm, but it's no wonder why SL's economy struggles so much if these are the business practices LL uses. But if anyone reads this, keep it in mind when you make purchases and hope you never have to run the risk of having to rely on LL customer support. It could end badly. And sorry SL economy, I used to spend quite a bit of money on SL, but no more :c

[Alwin Alcott]

when i want to add payment options i don't get the choice to put on a debitcard, but only paypal or credit card.... i know in the past debitcard were not accepted, and that might still be the case.

 

that you aren't able to add payment info also can be caused by your browser, try one or a few different ones, and that might help. I'm using IE and for some reason i can't change payment options on it, also some forum features as quick reply and a few things more i have to use Chrome or Firefox, can't get it working at IE

[Alliedubstephipstercat]

Nah, my debit card worked fine previously. I've been using it since starting SL with no problems until this time. There isn't a specific option for debit card, but it works under the credit card option. I think only pre-paid debit cards are unaccepted, mine isn't prepaid. Unless they changed it of course.

 

And now suddenly I can mess with billing information again. But yeah, LL still told me no more buying lindens with my card. Very unprofessional reaction, and it didn't solve anything or help me in any way. I would have been better off not contacting customer support.

[Perrie Juran]

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Alliedubstephipstercat wrote:

I really hope as few people as possible ever have to deal with LL customer support. 

I had the first problem with billing since I've been in SL the other day. I hadn't bought any lindens in a few months, figured why not buy some? I felt like shopping. Well, my payments got declined. And the charges listed as pending withdrawals on my bank account. So I make a support ticket about it. What was LL's reaction? I got a generic response from someone that did not help me at all, followed by my ticket being closed and the case type being changed to "Invalid", then my account was put on hold with no explanation why. I can understand the account being put on hold for safety I guess (even if it was a bit on the side of being overly safe for my small issue), but a little communication about that would have been nice.

Then, after a decent wait, they asked me to provide pictures of picture ID and my debit card. So I did. They finally reopened my account, but told me I'm no longer allowed to purchase linden in SL with that debit card due to "security precautions" that they failed to specify. I would ask about that action with yet another ticket, but after the first two I'm scared to. They may put my account on hold again, and they closed my ticket without confirmation from me that my problems had been resolved.

I proved my identity with their...odd way of asking to do that....what more can they ask for to prove I'm the owner of my card and account? If that doesn't prove it, nothing will. I made a purchase on an online store that got declined too a few days ago,

but that store's customer service told me exactly why and what to do about it

. I had that cleared up in a day with no damage to my account. What gives LL?

Hopefully my experience is a fluke and isn't the norm, but it's no wonder why SL's economy struggles so much if these are the business practices LL uses. But if anyone reads this, keep it in mind when you make purchases and hope you never have to run the risk of having to rely on LL customer support. It could end badly. And sorry SL economy, I used to spend quite a bit of money on SL, but no more :c

---

I'm really puzzled about this statement,

"But that store's customer service told me exactly why and what to do about it.."

I worked retail for many years and have seen many cards declined and we never knew 'why.'  The only information you get back is that the card is "declined."  You get no explanation why.

The one caveat is that we knew that most banks in the U.S. impose a daily spending limit on Debit Cards, usually $500.00 unless you request a higher limit from your bank.  Many people are unaware of this.

So when someones debit card would be declined we'd simply ask the customer, "Is it possible you have exceeded your daily limit? A call to your bank will get the amount pushed through."

On our part it was a knowledgable guess.  But that is all it was.  The card companies do not tell the retailers why a card is declined.

 

[Alliedubstephipstercat]

Sorry, I suppose I should explain further what I meant by that and about the situation. The other store informed me that my bank had declined the payment. LL said nothing. They didn't tell me if the problem was on their end, on my end, or on the bank's end. Since the store told me it was on the bank's end, it made it much easier to fix the problem. One call to my bank got it resolved quickly and the store's customer support responded to me quickly and immediately told me where the problem was was originating (the bank).

LL just left me guessing. They didn't tell me if it was a glitch on their end, if it was a payment my bank declined out of precaution, they didn't tell me anything other than "suspicious billing activity" was going on, which was completely wrong. All they did was close my ticket about the billing issue without even letting me respond and then put my account on hold. The store did only tell me that it was declined by my bank, sorry if it I made it sound like they gave a more specific reason.

The reason my purchase at the other store failed was because my bank flagged the purchase at the store as suspicious (learned this after calling my bank after the store payment's failure), so it's very possible my payments for lindens failed for the same reason. The purchase from that store never showed on my bank account until after I called and had it cleared, the linden purchases showed as pending withdrawals and then disappeared.

So, by the time I made the purchase from the other store and was told it had been flagged, the linden transactions had already disappeared. They weren't even showing up on the bank's end, so we were confused. If LL had helped me figure out the billing problem sooner while the transactions were listed on my account rather than locking me out of my account as the first response to my ticket, maybe I could have cleared those payments like I did the one from the store.

I also made small purchases from other stores and from Anshex shortly after the transactions from LL failed to see if they would work, and they did. Only the payments to LL and the other store I mentioned failed, so that's another reason I initially figured it was probably a glitch in the payment system of SL.

If only LL had the support the store's support gave me, and instead of shutting my account down and forbidding me from buying anything in the future, they could have done as that store's support did and actually helped the customer, and themselves by default since they'd be getting my money.

[Tari Landar]

It could be that they cannot give you this information because of something your bank told them, and they simply don't know anything more than that. I have seen it before. When a friends payments had the same thing happen, her account placed on hold, ID had to be proven, and she couldn't buy linden a week or two later when she tried. She didn't get the same message you did right away after being reinstated about not being able to use that card any longer. It wasn't until later when she tried to buy linden. After a long, at least imo long, runaround and LL continually telling her it was a "security precaution" she decided to go via her bank and figure out what went wrong. It turned out that the initial purchase never went through because of her BANK flagging the purchase-for unknown reasons(at least ones they didn't reveal to her-which is actually their legal right, they can deny payments) so continuing to try and purchase lindens with a flagged account(even though she didn't know it was, at the time) just added more flags. After everything was cleared on LL's end, her bank was continuing to flag her account as being unable to make purchases on SL, she could only assume because of those same "security precautions". The bank never did tell her anything other than the charges "seemed" suspicious, so they made it so she could no longer make purchases of linden. Much in the same that if you have a charge reversed from a company, your bank has every right to deny any further payments being made to that company, although they are supposed to tell you(as far as I know). I'm far from an expert but I know from personal experience with a company that made multiple charges to an account I once had that after I cleared it up-swiftly because my bank didn't suck at the time-I could no longer do business with that company again. Not quite the same situation, but the end result is.

That may not be what happened in your case at all. It may be that LL dropped the ball entirely. But it could also be your bank, or the combination of both. You might want to call them and see what they say, both about the original payments not having gone through-since banks can deny payments for a myriad of reasons and won't tell the charging company why they are denied-and also why LL would flag your account-since it's your actual card they are flagging for security reasons. They may be able to give you info LL isn't. It's at least worth a shot. I wouldn't rule out either being responsible, personally. Banks are as bad at handling things as LL can be, at times, lol.

[Alliedubstephipstercat]

I'm not so much blaming LL for the payments being declined as much as I'm blaming them for the abysmal customer service. I received pretty much no communication from them besides seeing I couldn't log in one day.

 

And like I said in my edited post above yours (we posted about the same time I think), my bank didn't even see the charges from LL. It's like they just vanished. They vanished from my account, the payment to the store never showed up at all while it was being declined, but the bank did see that payment on their end.The bank couldn't even clear the payments to LL since they just poofed. Not really sure whose fault that is though. Since failed payments from LL and failed payments to that store processed differently though, I'd bet on that being LL's fault.

 

The contrasting end results of the two companies delivering their customer support are what caught my attention, and primarily what I'm trying to address. The store's reaction to my payment failing turned out much better results for me in the end than LL's reaction, and that's the purpose of customer support. To help the customer. I was not helped at all by LL, got almost no communication from them on the billing ticket, just a generic "We're sorry for the inconvenience. We're escalating it to a specialist", then the specialist never responded, the ticket was just closed.

I definitely do blame my bank for seeing a purchase from SL has suspicious though -.-. The last purchase I made from SL was 11/25/2013, so not that long ago. And I've made so many purchases from SL in the past. But still, LL's response to a simple payment decline should not be with brute force leaving lasting damage to my ability to use SL as I enjoy it. Shopping and a few friends are why I'm still here after all, and now I can't do the former since LL pretty much said my card is banned from being used in SL.

[Tari Landar]

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Alliedubstephipstercat wrote:

 

I definitely do blame my bank for seeing a purchase from SL has suspicious though -.-. The last purchase I made from SL was 11/25/2013, so not that long ago. And I've made so many purchases from SL in the past. But still, LL's response to a simple payment decline should not be with brute force leaving lasting damage to my ability to use SL as I enjoy it. Shopping and a few friends are why I'm still here after all, and now I can't do the former since LL pretty much said my card is banned from being used in SL.

---

That was part of my point though, it may not be LL's fault you can no longer make purchases with that card, so that lasting damage may not be their fault either. They may not be the ones that cut you off. It may be that your bank told them to deny it, and disallow any and all charges or even inquiries on that card/account. Not even allowing inquiries will make that information not show up, or at least, they'll tell you it didn't show up. You won't see failed or even pending charges, in those cases. That's exactly what happened with the store I used to frequent that caused multiple charges to my one account. I could no longer-even after trying to clear it up-make purchases using that account with that store. It sucked, but it wasn't the store that did it, it was my bank. I know LL's communication is terrible, but they're always reactive, never proactive. If a bank says "deny the charges, don't even put inquiries through" they have to comply, and they do. The one store may have been able to tell you "it's not us, it's your bank" but that doesn't mean all companies will, or even can. I wish it were more simple than that, but it's really not. The bank may not have even given them any information. That's how I found out I could no longer purchase things from that store. They didn't get any information from the bank other than to deny all charges. The bank never let any charges go through-so they never really "showed up" as it were, either. All inquiries were blocked. It took a heck of a lot of runaround with my bank to figure out exactly why the company was denying payment-or so I thought. It wasn't the company, it was the bank, and the company had no more information than I did. I too thought their response was a bit rash, as I thought the company was doing it. At the time it was a company I absolutely needed to be able to make purchases through for equipment and supplies(for a store). So it was quite critical, and a royal pain in my butt. Sometimes the lack of communication really does stem from the source, in my case, the bank. It may not be in your case, it may be that LL is sticking to their usual sucky communication, too. I'd still be calling the bank to see if they put the "deny all inquiries and charges" instructions in place, though.

As annoying as it was, I'd rather have it been the company, the store, denying payments and making that rash decision to basically cut me off. When a bank does it, they have a lot more wiggle room, as they don't necessarily have to say anything other than "it's suspicious" and you have to go along with it. Banks are notorious for not being informative, lol. That' why I said they can be as bad as LL is at times. The store has to actually investigate if it's on their end, and provide you with those details. A bank, not always so. They should have to, but, they definitely do not, and they're much better at giving the runaround than anyone I've ever seen.

Not sticking up for LL by any means, but combine two companies who are notoriously bad at communication, and you'll have a royal mess. It can be hard to figure out which one started the problem in the first place. It's annoying as all get out, and in some cases, can be very costly. They don't even communicate with each other well, much less their customers.

[Alliedubstephipstercat]

It could very well be my bank, not denying that. It's odd they did not say that to the other store though, assuming they did to LL. LL is headquarted in San Francisco, my bank is as well. The store I bought from is based in Switzerland. You'd think, if anything, they'd pick the company that's not even in the US to forbid future dealings with, not pick the one that's in the same city.

Allowing one payment to go through and not even considering allowing the other, especially when the one they possibly banned is the one I've had far more dealings with and is a domestic company, makes no sense. My bank being unwilling to accept payments from them in the future when they so easily and willingly cleared everything from the store also makes no sense. But still, what you said is possible.

I may call my bank about this issue, but I doubt it. LL's customer support failure itself regardless of this issue has made me lose a lot of faith I had in them. I'm the type of person who values customer support so much that if it's a failure, I don't want to continue to fund the business making it be that way, and I've read enough about LL's customer support in past instances to know that it's not uncommon for this lack of communication from them to happen. 

I would have been a lot less displeased with the outcome of this situation if they had at least talked to me, and allowed me to talk. 

Oh and another thing, I got this as part of my first message about my account being on hold: "Please note that this type of billing issue may result in permanent closure of the account." That is a VERY severe action for something that is not my fault at all, and if the situation happened as you said it possibly happened, it's very uncalled for. Putting my account on hold is one thing for either that situation or as the result of ineptness, but making it a possibility of causing permanent loss of everything I've done in SL is completely unnecessary.

Why should unauthorized billing activity EVER result in permanent loss of an account in any situation? Assuming the worst case scenario happened (account stolen, card stolen), I'm sure most legitimate account owners would not want their account closed forever, and I'm sure recovery of the account at least would always be a possibility. If LL had an account on hold, it's not like a hacker could do any more damage to it either.

Having a readily available account closure button on my ticket wasn't very faith inspiring either.

[Perrie Juran]

Thanks for replying.

You'll get no argument from me that LL could do a better job.  But sometimes peoples expectations are out of place, hence my post.  Defining what ever happenned with your card as a "security risk" may very well have been way overboard.

[Lewis Luminos]

I have used a debit card successfuly on SL since 2006.  Debit cards themselves aren't disallowed; whats disallowed is pre-paid "gift cards" that operate without a bank account.  

At one point I did have some issues; the bank decided that Linden Lab were themselves fraudulent and kept blocking my attempts to purchase L$.  I had to keep calling the bank and telling them, "yes, I did request this", "yes I know who they are", "no, my card details have not been compromised".  At one point my avatar (and all my alts) got suspended, but I spoke to Billing on the phone and I had to email them my ID and a bank statement. The Linden Lab representative who dealt with my case was absolutely exemplary and it was resolved in about two days.

The bank weren't so swift; it took them at least three months to finally get the message, but in the meantime I'd had to let my Premium membership go back to Basic, and I never bothered taking it up again. Once bitten, twice shy.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

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Alliedubstephipstercat wrote:

I really hope as few people as possible ever have to deal with LL customer support. 

I had the first problem with billing since I've been in SL the other day. I hadn't bought any lindens in a few months, figured why not buy some? I felt like shopping. Well, my payments got declined. And the charges listed as pending withdrawals on my bank account. So I make a support ticket about it. What was LL's reaction? I got a generic response from someone that did not help me at all, followed by my ticket being closed and the case type being changed to "Invalid", then my account was put on hold with no explanation why. I can understand the account being put on hold for safety I guess (even if it was a bit on the side of being overly safe for my small issue), but a little communication about that would have been nice.

Then, after a decent wait, they asked me to provide pictures of picture ID and my debit card. So I did. They finally reopened my account, but told me I'm no longer allowed to purchase linden in SL with that debit card due to "security precautions" that they failed to specify. I would ask about that action with yet another ticket, but after the first two I'm scared to. They may put my account on hold again, and they closed my ticket without confirmation from me that my problems had been resolved.

I proved my identity with their...odd way of asking to do that....what more can they ask for to prove I'm the owner of my card and account? If that doesn't prove it, nothing will. I made a purchase on an online store that got declined too a few days ago, but that store's customer service told me exactly why and what to do about it. I had that cleared up in a day with no damage to my account. What gives LL?

Hopefully my experience is a fluke and isn't the norm, but it's no wonder why SL's economy struggles so much if these are the business practices LL uses. But if anyone reads this, keep it in mind when you make purchases and hope you never have to run the risk of having to rely on LL customer support. It could end badly. And sorry SL economy, I used to spend quite a bit of money on SL, but no more :c

---

 I have no ide about this, however it has been my experinece that calling LL on the phone gets better results to just about any issue.

 

 It is possible your spending limits were reached.

[Alliedubstephipstercat]

I checked into that specifically and it wasn't the case. And like I said, a few stores did have successful transactions.

@Lewis

I wish I could say the same, but it was the opposite for me really. My bank's customer service representative was very helpful, LL's were not. Glad to see you were lucky with your service from LL though, hopefully my experience with it all was a rarity. 

[Kenbro Utu]

I was using a debit card for payment method for a few years, and it just stopped working one day...  I just switched to Paypal and all has been good since then.  

[Medhue Simoni]

It really depends on the security efforts people want to put forth. On my own website, I use a service. In that service, I could decline a charge for many reasons, even the credit card's country not matching the user's country. Personally, I don't understand why LL doesn't accept many more options, but then again, I've never actually bought lindens. On my own website tho, using the service, I can accept almost any kind of payment possible, even bitcoins.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

This happened to me with my visa debit card because the processor LL had changed a while ago was 'red flagged' by the credit union. My bank got nervous because it was a company in England processing the charges and I hadn't told them I was visiting, and they had no idea who LL an internet company so they declined the charge as a security risk.   A lot of fraudulent charges had been submitted through the processor, not that the processor  was at fault, and the charges were not from LL.

After speaking to a lot of people at my credit union finally a manager told me what the problem was and I was able to clear it up by authorizing the bank to accept the charges from from LL.