30 Percent increase on process fees.

[Crumbled]

Starting June 16, 2017 LL will increase their processing fees by 30 percent.

I find that a remarkably high increase.

"Last year alone, users processed credits amounting to $60 million (USD) from the Second Life economy. "

 

• The fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase from $0.40 (USD) to $0.60 (USD) per transaction

So according to Linden Labs, they make millions of dollars by increasing the fees by 30 percent. Thanks a lot Linden!  This is an Outrage! They say this is to prevent fraud and money laundering?!? What about price gouging their consumers?

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, Crumbled said:

They say this is to prevent fraud and money laundering?!? What about price gouging their consumers?

It's a 50% increase, not 30%.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Phil Deakins
To remove most of the post

[Klytyna]

What they probably mean is...

 

"To help prevent fraud and money laundering, we now check credit process by hand with an actual employee who demands wages, and rather than pay these ourselves we decided to gouge the 'Second-Wave Lastnamer Expectation Syndrome' sufferers who suck $60 million a year out of the grid, as they caused all this so they can pay the damn wage bill, seems fair to us eh!"

 

[HaileeTempesta]

It always baffles me that people seem to think that a company shouldn't make money.  LL is a company, if they can't make funds to offset the cost of the things they do for our world (Second Life) then they will go under and you all will really be b*tching then.  For the sheer amount of work involved they really don't take much from us, yes it's a fairly large hike all at once but overall they honestly could take money in many other ways as well if they wanted to.

I don't like having to give anyone money, but, I do understand how a business works.  If they don't make money, eventually we won't have a Second Life or any income that we used to make in Second Life either.  So to me it's worth it.

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, HaileeTempesta said:

LL is a company, if they can't make funds to offset the cost of the things they do for our world (Second Life) then they will go under and you all will really be b*tching then

Not me

Edited June 14, 2017 by Phil Deakins
Large chunk removed

[Klytyna]

27 minutes ago, HaileeTempesta said:

It always baffles me that people seem to think that a company shouldn't make money.  LL is a company, if they can't make funds to offset the cost of the things they do for our world (Second Life) then they will go under and you all will really be b*tching then.  For the sheer amount of work involved they really don't take much from us, yes it's a fairly large hike all at once but overall they honestly could take money in many other ways as well if they wanted to.

I don't like having to give anyone money, but, I do understand how a business works.  If they don't make money, eventually we won't have a Second Life or any income that we used to make in Second Life either.  So to me it's worth it.

You get this sort of thing a lot in SL, it's called "Secondwave Lastnamer Expectation Syndrome", as it's mostly seen in the people who joined between 2006 and 2009.

Many of them joined because they saw adverts telling them you could 'make real money' in SL, and new articles about virtual property developers becoming real life millionaires etc.

It manifests in many ways...

LL should spend $40-60 paying an employee to chase a missing gacha box worth $0.50 because it's loss hurts the earnings of the reseller who overestimated its value at $10. (This came up in a thread a couple of months back).

LL should spend hundreds of $ paying employees to beautify abandoned and worthless areas of Madlands waste, because living next to it lowers property values for the Madlander Slumlords, and the cost should be passed to non premium 'digital barbies' living in the islands, because asking Madlanders to pay more tier would hurt their earnings. (This was proposed in a thread here on the forum a few months ago).

LL should spend hundreds of $ to do something about the fact that my plans to become a Madlands Property Tycoon have failed because I payed 10 times what the wasteland was worth and now I can't sell without massive negative equity, and keeping the land is costing me a fortune in tier I wont ever get back, so they really need to fix the property market so i can make a profit. (There have been a couple of 'do something about Madlands land pricesand negative equity' threads)

LL should do something about the fact that my 2006 idea for an Adult Club, simply doesn't work now in 2017 and I'm not making any money, LL should spend thousands of $ making sure more people visit my out of date and unpopular venue (This was a thread a couple of months back)

...And so on and so on ad infinitum... Every month theres some new 'threat' to the businesses of SL, that LL 'urgently' need to fix, usually at great expense, and always with the suggestion that IF LL dont want to pay for this themselves, they should find some way to gouge the people who WONT profit from the proposed change.

Basically it always boils down to

"I joined in 2006 to make money, and despite having NO clue how a business actually works, I have a constitutional right to promote the Free Market Fallacy (for everyone else not for me) and LL should spend whatever it takes to make my business work even though I planned badly, and I should never have to face obligations or responsibilities, thats what I pay Premium for!"
 

[Alwin Alcott]

this is the post by LL ...

Second Life’s virtual economy and the ability to process Linden dollar credits for real money on the LindeX exchange has long been a powerful and important aspect of the virtual world, and last year alone, users processed credits amounting to $60 million (USD) from the Second Life economy. The opportunity to turn virtual creativity into real profits creates a virtuous circle - it provides a financial incentive for creators to provide high quality goods and services, which add incredible richness to the virtual world for all to enjoy.
 
Underlying SL’s successful user-to-user L$ economy and the ability to buy and sell L$’s for real currency is a significant amount of ongoing work to ensure that everything remains compliant with applicable laws and regulations, while also preventing fraud and money laundering. 
 
Investing in improvements to these processes and the ongoing compliance work required comes at a cost to Linden Lab, and we will be making some LindeX fee adjustments in order to share a portion of those costs with Residents active in the SL economy.

The changes are as follows:

• The fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase from $0.40 (USD) to $0.60 (USD) per transaction
• The fee structure for process credit transactions (i.e. paying real money into PayPal or Skrill accounts) will remain as a 1.5% fee with a $3 (USD) minimum, but the maximum fee per transaction will increase from $15 (USD) to $25 (USD).

These fee adjustments will be effective as of June 19, 2017.

[Crumbled]

I completely agree with companies making profit Hailee.

That 60 million profit I spoke of is solely from the buying fees at 40 cents per transaction before the 20 cent increase.

This doesn't include the 1.5 percent fee for every linden dollar sold, the five percent fee for every item sold on market place, the 10 Linden fee for every item upload into Second Life, the premium subscriptions or the land tier fees.

If you're fine with paying a fee to buy lindens, paying another fee to upload items to the grid,  paying another fee for selling those items on market and yet an additional fee to trade your Lindens in for dollars. by all means be happy about it. 

I for one consider that price gouging.

 

 

[Klytyna]

1 hour ago, Klytyna said:

"To help prevent fraud and money laundering, we now check credit process by hand with an actual employee who demands wages, and rather than pay these ourselves we decided to gouge the 'Second-Wave Lastnamer Expectation Syndrome' sufferers who suck $60 million a year out of the grid, as they caused all this so they can pay the damn wage bill, seems fair to us eh!"
 

 

7 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

Investing in improvements to these processes and the ongoing compliance work required comes at a cost to Linden Lab, and we will be making some LindeX fee adjustments in order to share a portion of those costs with Residents active in the SL economy.

Alwin's quoted the LL anouncement it's self, and as I suggested it's a hike to pay the increased costs, and a hike that's aimed at the parties responsible for those costs existing, the people who pay for increased security on cashing out are the people who cash out. I imagine the casher-outers would be the FIRST to whine if some phisher or hacker transfered their L4 to an alt and cashed out instantly with no checks at all "Waahhhh they stole my Lindens" and all that.

7 minutes ago, Crumbled said:

If you're fine with paying a fee to buy lindens, paying another fee to upload items to the grid,  paying another fee for selling those items on market and yet an additional fee to trade your Lindens in for dollars. by all means be happy about it.

You don't have to be happy about it, but you DO have to accept that if you do business, you face obligations regarding costs, the only way to sell anything with no costs is called "Nomadic Street Preacher", all other businesses have costs, costs for advertising costs for production costs for bussiness liability insurance, costs for govt. licencing, costs for property rental, costs for currency conversion, always costs.

Only in SL do people have this insane idea that you can run a business with no costs or obligations...


 

[Theresa Tennyson]

10 minutes ago, Crumbled said:

I completely agree with companies making profit Hailee.

That 60 million profit I spoke of is solely from the buying fees at 40 cents per transaction before the 20 cent increase.

This doesn't include the 1.5 percent fee for every linden dollar sold, the five percent fee for every item sold on market place, the 10 Linden fee for every item upload into Second Life, the premium subscriptions or the land tier fees.

If you're fine with paying a fee to buy lindens, paying another fee to upload items to the grid,  paying another fee for selling those items on market and yet an additional fee to trade your Lindens in for dollars. by all means be happy about it. 

I for one consider that price gouging.

 

 

The 60 million figure is the amount of cash taken out by users, not Linden Lab profits.

 

[Phil Deakins]

@Crumbled Alwin posted what LL actually said and I was misled by your OP, particularly when you posted that they said it was to prevent fraud and money laundering, which turned out to be only a bit of their whole post, and they didn't claim it as the reason for the increase. I'll edit my posts accordingly.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Rhonda Huntress]

7 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

The 60 million figure is the amount of cash taken out by users, not Linden Lab profits.

 

Yep.  Total transactions.  If it was done in a single transaction then LL made 40 cents.

This increase will cost me 20 cents a month.

[greek Wingtips]

I do agree that companies should make profits, but I think the quality of service has declined,   we now have ghosting\complecity issues with avatars, massive lag issues, the idiotic to allow makes of mesh bodies to impose their own appliers without a general LL universal mesh body to allow designers to work with.

 

Quality has dropped and to make a profit is not right.

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

If you BUY lindens you will pay an additional $0.20 per transaction.  If you think this is a big issue, buy bigger quanties at a time so you have fewer transactions.

There is no increase to any fees for SELLING lindens.

If you Process Credit, the percentage stays the same, but the Max Fee increases.  This will impact anyone that Processes Credit of more than $1000 USD -- you will pay UP TO another $10 in fees.

[Chic Aeon]

51 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

The changes are as follows:

• The fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase from $0.40 (USD) to $0.60 (USD) per transaction
• The fee structure for process credit transactions (i.e. paying real money into PayPal or Skrill accounts) will remain as a 1.5% fee with a $3 (USD) minimum, but the maximum fee per transaction will increase from $15 (USD) to $25 (USD).

These fee adjustments will be effective as of June 19, 2017.

MY bold and red on Alwin's posting of the actual Linden  post (TY Alwin).

Actually, if we look back a few weeks ago at threads by creators that cash out regularly and their "outrage" at the limiting of cash out levels so that folks cannot collect linden dollars and then cash out to save fees ----- THIS evens the playing field and is FAIRER to the creators that make money in SL -- since fewer folks will get a deal from the cash out fees (the $25 cap). For anyone making $1000 US or less, there will be no change at all.   It would be even more fair if there was no maximum and it was simply a 1.5% fee across the board, but this is an improvement from my point of view.

I have never purchased Lindens; I have always earned my way from the beginning as part of my "personal game". So for those that are very set against buying or selling linden dollars, there is always the option to simply living within their means as well as not cashing out -- living WHOLLY inside the "game".  

 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Crumbled said:

I completely agree with companies making profit Hailee.

That 60 million profit I spoke of is solely from the buying fees at 40 cents per transaction before the 20 cent increase.

This doesn't include the 1.5 percent fee for every linden dollar sold, the five percent fee for every item sold on market place, the 10 Linden fee for every item upload into Second Life, the premium subscriptions or the land tier fees.

If you're fine with paying a fee to buy lindens, paying another fee to upload items to the grid,  paying another fee for selling those items on market and yet an additional fee to trade your Lindens in for dollars. by all means be happy about it. 

I for one consider that price gouging.

 

 

I suggest -- and not in jest, that you look at and perhaps move to Opensim where you can "live in complete freedom without any costs" (an often touted adage).    

Oh wait, there is a 20% fee to sell on Kitely market and a 45 day wait to get your money to Paypal. Then if you sell something for virtual dollars on the grid you reside on and want to cash out, there is a fee from Podex or Globit or whoever.  There is also a fee to buy money.  There is however no upload cost and you can get free housing and shop space on many grids.  Of course there are many less BUYERS on Opensim so your chances of selling are possibly less :D.

 

There are always costs. If you want free and fast delivery from Amazon, you get a Prime membership which COSTS.  Hate commercials, you get Netflix which COSTS.  Companies need to make money in order to stay in business. The number of BIG brick and mortar stores closing down next month in the US is HUGE (someone sent me a email on that the other day). 

 

The only rights we have as users and consumers is to CHOOSE how we want to spend our money.  If we make those choices wisely and in our own interests whatever they may be, then we have no reason to complain IMHO. 

[Blush Topaz]

And they just increased again!  This time from .60 to .99 per transaction.

Edited November 3, 2017 by Blush Topaz

[BilliJo Aldrin]

On 6/14/2017 at 12:23 PM, Crumbled said:

I completely agree with companies making profit Hailee.

That 60 million profit I spoke of is solely from the buying fees at 40 cents per transaction before the 20 cent increase.

This doesn't include the 1.5 percent fee for every linden dollar sold, the five percent fee for every item sold on market place, the 10 Linden fee for every item upload into Second Life, the premium subscriptions or the land tier fees.

If you're fine with paying a fee to buy lindens, paying another fee to upload items to the grid,  paying another fee for selling those items on market and yet an additional fee to trade your Lindens in for dollars. by all means be happy about it. 

I for one consider that price gouging.

 

 

If you think LL's fees are too high and totally unfair, then refrain from doing any of the above activities.

*shrugs*

[xiouxx]

Is this the new .99 cent transaction fee I'm seeing? Because I was just aware of this today and I've bought linden last week (it wasn't there last week). I feel like that's kinda ridiculous, honestly. I know that they take about a dollar out of your account when putting up new billing information, but they put the money back into your account. Is this transaction fee going to be returned, or not? Does anyone know? 

[Alwin Alcott]

28 minutes ago, xiouxx said:

 I know that they take about a dollar out of your account when putting up new billing information, but they put the money back into your account. Is this transaction fee going to be returned, or not? Does anyone know? 

no this isn't a test, it's a fee, so no returnings

[LittleMe Jewell]

46 minutes ago, xiouxx said:

Is this the new .99 cent transaction fee I'm seeing? Because I was just aware of this today and I've bought linden last week (it wasn't there last week). 

The fee was there last week, even if you didn't notice - but the fee last week was only $0.60 rather than the $0.99 that it is now.

[Cindy Evanier]

1 hour ago, xiouxx said:

Is this the new .99 cent transaction fee I'm seeing? Because I was just aware of this today and I've bought linden last week (it wasn't there last week). I feel like that's kinda ridiculous, honestly. I know that they take about a dollar out of your account when putting up new billing information, but they put the money back into your account. Is this transaction fee going to be returned, or not? Does anyone know? 

Maybe read the official news posts

 

 

[Callum Meriman]

On 15/06/2017 at 1:04 AM, Klytyna said:

What they probably mean is...

 

"To help prevent fraud and money laundering, we now check credit process by hand with an actual employee who demands wages, and rather than pay these ourselves we decided to gouge the 'Second-Wave Lastnamer Expectation Syndrome' sufferers who suck $60 million a year out of the grid, as they caused all this so they can pay the damn wage bill, seems fair to us eh!"

 

The lab used this excuse just a few months ago, now they trot it out a second time.

We are propping up Ebbe's useless vomitworld.

Result - I will buy less linden, and I will up my rents.

[DarkRavenWolfie]

Good thing i wasnt planning to invest too much money into my SL account anyway

[Alwin Alcott]

29 minutes ago, DarkRavenWolfie said:

Good thing i wasnt planning to invest too much money into my SL account anyway

when you just buy your L$ in a bit higher amount you will not, or hardly feel the raise, buy more but less times.

Investing in  your account is and will be a free choice, will never have any other profit in that investment than a better look.

The main pain will be for the ones that transfer their money to RL.