I've long considered upgrading my Basic membership to Premium

[Avion Luminos]

I've long considered upgrading my Basic membership to Premium, but haven't been able to find an answer to this question .... if I upgraded and missed a renewal payment (unable to access my PC due to an extended hospital stay, for example), would I be dropped back automatically to Basic or would my account be cancelled? I have so much time and money invested in SL that the however faint prospect of this happening has so far prevented me from upgrading.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Avion,

Generally, as a Premium Account Member you are expected to keep a valid Payment Method on file. New to SL Premium Account holders usually establish this PM at the time they register and authorize their 1st Monthly/Quarterly/Annual PM payment. Most of the time this is done with a valid bank credit card.

As an existing long time Free Account holder you have other options available to you. If you have a "Verified" PayPal account then you can upgrade to a Premium Member status by allowing the 1st payment to be drawn from your PayPal account. Further, you can sell any earned Lindens off to up your USD account Balance to more than the needed Monthly/Quarterly/Annual payment amount and pay your Premium Membership fee from in-world made income.

I pay the Annual PM option which allows me to pay the least amount of $$ per year.

OK, if you choose a [Let's Say the] monthly PM payment option and for some reason you don't have the needed USD Balance on hand and/or the Credit Card or PayPal payment request is denied, your Premium Account goes into default.

You wil start getting notices to your email account on file in the 1st 24 hours of this status change.

Sometime later [the actual number of days is unknown to me] your account will end up in a suspended state and access to SL will no longer be possible until you catch up the debt.

 

[Avion Luminos]

Thanks KarenMichelle, that's a relief - "suspended" sounds a whole lot better than "cancelled", should my worst case scenario actually happen.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Oh Yeah, LL does want you to continue to experience [and pay] for your Premium SL. Eventually that "Suspended" status will end up in a worse state if you don't get things caught up in a timely manner. Now if you own land in-world managed/owned by Linden Lab [Mainland] you can lose that for lack of payment pretty fast. If you lease land from an Estate Owner or a Mainland Owner who leases out their mainland parcels, they too will have different policies about non-payment and how quickly they evict you and reclaim their property. If you are or become a Market Place Merchant your store remains in operation although with no access to your account those Lindens just accumulate and remain inaccessible to you until you make your account current by external financial means.

[Lindal Kidd]

You have to have a valid payment method on file in order to go Premium.

When your Premium membership is about to expire, LL automatically does the following:

1. Looks to see if you have money in your $USD balance.  If so, your dues are taken from there.  If there isn't enough money to cover the payment, then
2. They automatically bill your payment method for the balance.

If your payment method is no good...not enough money in the PayPal account, or your credit card is expired, or the payment is otherwise declined, LL will, after a short grace period, take back your land (if any) and delete your account.

Keep your payment method current, and you'll never have problems.

[arvino11]

I change my basic membership in premium membership but I dont get a nota to pay so cant enter the house you give anymore so how do I pay my membership?