Can someone explain how L works?

[Pomkeki]

The concept of buying L from other players is... Intimidating, to say the least. I'm used to MMOs where you buy some in game coins, get everything instantly, and the prices never change unless they're having a sale.

So, from what I understand, I need to "order" L to buy anything from the marketplace or from in world shops, and I can't buy items directly from the marketplace without L. I can also become a premium member which will grant me L every now and then - which sounds nice - but after seeing the prices on most items and comparing it to the default exchange rate, 300L a week isn't much. If I only paid for one month, that's about 900L but I could order around 2000L for the same price. With that said, do people even sell L for the default exchange rate? It sounds like ordering is the best route to go, it's just a little... Weird? I don't know, maybe I'm being paranoid.

It also sounds like you can't use debit cards. Is that right? What's the reason for that? I haven't bothered to put any payment information in yet, I want to fully understand what I'm getting in to. I've done a lot of exploring, demoing, and reading, but haven't bought anything just because of how weird L exchange is. I'm only here for the dress up part of the game! I wasn't prepared for how serious business seems to be in SL.

[Alwin Alcott]

14 minutes ago, Pomkeki said:

The concept of buying L from other players is... Intimidating, to say the least. I'm used to MMOs where you buy some in game coins, get everything instantly, and the prices never change unless they're having a sale.

So, from what I understand, I need to "order" L to buy anything from the marketplace or from in world shops, and I can't buy items directly from the marketplace without L. I can also become a premium member which will grant me L every now and then - which sounds nice - but after seeing the prices on most items and comparing it to the default exchange rate, 300L a week isn't much. If I only paid for one month, that's about 900L but I could order around 2000L for the same price. With that said, do people even sell L for the default exchange rate? It sounds like ordering is the best route to go, it's just a little... Weird? I don't know, maybe I'm being paranoid.

It also sounds like you can't use debit cards. Is that right? What's the reason for that? I haven't bothered to put any payment information in yet, I want to fully understand what I'm getting in to. I've done a lot of exploring, demoing, and reading, but haven't bought anything just because of how weird L exchange is. I'm only here for the dress up part of the game! I wasn't prepared for how serious business seems to be in SL.

all what you ask is to find in the knowledgebase ( the people that answer also get it there)

 

Edited August 13, 2017 by Alwin Alcott

[Rolig Loon]

Take Alwin's advice and read the Knowledge Base articles.  They will tell you most of what you need to know.  If you have other questions, come back and ask. Also, read the TOS that you agreed to as you joined. It explains quite clearly that it is a serious violation to buy or sell L$ anywhere except through the Linden Exchange (LindeX), including buying/selling with individual residents in SL.  You can be suspended or banned for not trading L$ in the LindeX. 

You asked about debit cards.  It is true: You may use any authorized credit card or a verified PayPal or Skrill account, but you may not use a debit card or any kind or prepaid card, even if the card has a Visa or Mastercard logo on it.  Why?  Because you are dealing with a private company and that's their rule.  They can't afford banks of lawyers and CPAs to chase down people with no verifiable contact information and credit worthiness, so they take fewer risks than Amazon.com or Wal-Mart. 

[Rolig Loon]

57 minutes ago, Pomkeki said:

do people even sell L for the default exchange rate? It sounds like ordering is the best route to go, it's just a little... Weird?

I forgot to address that part of your question.  The answer is YES.  In fact, buying or selling  at the Market rate is probably the easiest and smartest way to go, especially if you are unfamiliar with the way that currency exchanges or stock markets work in RL.  The Limit Buy option is not really "weird".  It just takes a little more thought.  It's exactly the way that a RL currency exchange works. If you use the Limit Buy option, you can get a better rate but then you need to be patient.  Your offer to buy or sell is competing with all of the others that were placed at the same price, and with offers at more attractive prices.  If you set your offer too far from the current "best" rate, you could wait forever until someone desperate or dumb enough to accept your offer comes along. I would guess that most SL residents use the Market Buy option simply because it is fast and easier to understand. 

[ChinRey]

The articles Alwin referred to shuold give you all the information you need but if you want just the highlights:

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

The concept of buying L from other players is... Intimidating, to say the least.

There's no need to worry about that. The buyer will never know who they bought from, the seller will never know who they sold to and Linden Lab takes full responsibility for Lindex transactions so if anything goes wrong, it's their problem, not the buyer's or the seller's. Exchange rate will change over time but not very much and you will always know in advance how much you will have to pay. That is, there is a minor margin of error with instant transaction but it's minimal - more about it further down in this post.

 

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

get everything instantly

If you choose "instant buy", you get the Lindens instantly.

 

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

So, from what I understand, I need to "order" L to buy anything from the marketplace or from in world shops, and I can't buy items directly from the marketplace without L.

You can use any accepted payment mehod directly on the marketplace. That's really just a shortcut to Lindex instant buy: you buy exactly the amount of L$ you need for the pruchase and you pay for the purchase - all in one operation.

In-world you can only pay with L$ these days.

 

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

I can also become a premium member which will grant me L every now and then - which sounds nice - but after seeing the prices on most items and comparing it to the default exchange rate, 300L a week isn't much. If I only paid for one month, that's about 900L but I could order around 2000L for the same price.

I wouldn't recommend premium membership only for the L$ stipend but the membership package comes with a few other benefits well worth considering too. Take a good look at it and decide for yourself.

 

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

With that said, do people even sell L for the default exchange rate? It sounds like ordering is the best route to go, it's just a little... Weird?

I suppose by "default exchange rate" you mean the instant buy/market sell rates and yes, people do buy or sell at these rates. In fact all Lindex transactions are either instant buy or market sell. Wheter you choose instant or limited buy, depends on how much time you have. With instant buy you get the Lindens right away since you are buying Lindens that are already offered for sale and the price is whatever the seller has specified. You will always get the best offer that is avaiable on the market and. There is a chance that during the few seconds it takes you to place the order and you end up having to pay a little bit more than the estimate you get from the order form. But you haev to be really unlucky for that to happen and even if it does, the difference will be marginal.

With Limit Buy, you as the buyer decide the price. Then you'll have to wait for somebody who is willing to sell at that price. That can take minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years or an eternity, depedning on how realistic you offer is.

The difference between Instant Buy and a reasonbably realistic Limit Buy will always be about 4% and it's up to you to decide whether that is worth the wait.

 

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

It also sounds like you can't use debit cards. Is that right? What's the reason for that?

It's not about debit cards as such, it's a question of whether the person who pays can be identified well enough. Linden Lab needs payment from an identifiable person, that is either they need verifiable identification themselves or the transaction has to be through a service that can be relied on to keep track of it. That's partly to minimize the risk of fraud, partly to keep Second Life from being used for money laundering.

 

56 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

You can be suspended or banned for not trading L$ in the LindeX.

Umm Rolig, that sentence can have two meanings.

I suppose it's clear from context what Rolig meant but since we love tease her and hardly ever get the chance:

You can not be suspended or banned for not trading L$ at all but you not only can but will be if you try to do it outside the Lindex system and they find out.

Edited August 13, 2017 by ChinRey

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

The concept of buying L from other players is... Intimidating, to say the least. I'm used to MMOs where you buy some in game coins, get everything instantly, and the prices never change unless they're having a sale.

You buy L$ from other players because the L$ exhange works much like the US stock market.  It is perfectly safe though.  Even though you are buying from others, it is all going through LL, so there is no possibility of lost $.  The actual L$ exchange rate flucuates very, very little -- seldom more than a few L$ -- so if you buy today and again in a month (at market rate) you'll likely be dealing with the exact same rate, or maybe L$1-2 diffference.

1 hour ago, Pomkeki said:

 I can also become a premium member which will grant me L every now and then - which sounds nice - but after seeing the prices on most items and comparing it to the default exchange rate, 300L a week isn't much. If I only paid for one month, that's about 900L but I could order around 2000L for the same price.

I don't think anybody becomes Premium just for the weekly L$300 they get.  You have to be Premium to buy mainland, so some do it for that.  Or they want to get one of the Linden homes that Premiums can have.  Or just feeling that the combination of Premium benefits make it worth the money.

[Rolig Loon]

3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Umm Rolig, that sentence can have two meanings.

I suppose it's clear from context what Rolig meant but since we love tease her and hardly ever get the chance:

You can not be suspended or banned for not trading L$ at all but you not only can but will be if you try to do it outside the Lindex system and they find out.

Indeed, but I hope that my intended meaning was clear from context even if my sentence wasn't.  For the record, I have very rarely bought L$ in well over 10 years as a SL resident.  You don't need to buy anything at all to have a good time in SL.  You can live without a home, and you can make much of what you need or you can find an incredible array of freebies for things that you can't make.  When you decide that you really do need L$, as I did after a year or so, you can start earning it.  There are not many opportunities for earning much more than pocket change unless you have some marketable skill as a creator or a performer, but you don't need much more than pocket change anyway.  If you do have a marketable skill, you can start earning a decent income -- decent by SL standards although not by RL standards -- and won't have to think about buying L$ on the LindeX unless you develop expensive tastes.

[ChinRey]

1 minute ago, Rolig Loon said:

Indeed, but I hope that my intended meaning was clear from context even if my sentence wasn't.

It was of course. But a line as straight as that was irresistible.

[Love Zhaoying]

L$ works very poorly, unless you just go buy some using the "BUY $" button.  I only say that because of all the people who try to buy using the "market" and end up posting here because they don't understand how it works, never get their L$, etc.

[Rolig Loon]

23 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I only say that because of all the people who try to buy using the "market" and end up posting here because they don't understand how it works, never get their L$, etc.

Surely you know enough about statistics to know a biased sample when you see one.    How many people are likely to post here when they have no trouble at all using the Limit Buy option? 

If there's a gigantic flaw in LL's system, it's in naming that option "Best Buy".  It's only "best" in the sense that you can get a good price if you understand how currency markets work or have taken the time to read and understand the Knowledge Base information, if you are patient, if you are buying/selling enough L$ to have it make any difference, if you can read a table and handle basic mathematics, and if you speak English.  Otherwise, your "best" choice is to use the Market Buy option.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Surely you know enough about statistics to know a biased sample when you see one.    How many people are likely to post here when they have no trouble at all using the Limit Buy option? 

If there's a gigantic flaw in LL's system, it's in naming that option "Best Buy".  It's only "best" in the sense that you can get a good price if you understand how currency markets work or have taken the time to read and understand the Knowledge Base information, if you are patient, if you are buying/selling enough L$ to have it make any difference, if you can read a table and handle basic mathematics, and if you speak English.  Otherwise, your "best" choice is to use the Market Buy option.

I don't disagree.  I think the thing most people miss if they are not experienced is that the "buy now" feature is the only way to get your L$ NOW. 

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I don't disagree.  I think the thing most people miss if they are not experienced is that the "buy now" feature is the only way to get your L$ NOW. 

Yes and also the estimated time can be very misleading. Here's a screenshot I made just now:

 

Estimated time to fill a 400 L$/dollar order is seven days at the moment. The actual time it would take to fill that order is measured in aeons, not days.

Edited August 14, 2017 by ChinRey

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

 

Estimated time to fill a 400 L$/dollar order is seven days at the moment. The actual time it would take to fill that order is measured in aeons, not days.

That's horrible! I wonder if only "LindeX market players" use that.  Whenever I want to buy L$200,000 I want it now! Nao, plez!

[Alwin Alcott]

13 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

 I want it now! Nao, plez!

No!

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

If there's a gigantic flaw in LL's system, it's in naming that option "Best Buy". 

^^ This -- It cannot be said enough - LL really should change that because it will truly confuse anyone that does not understand how it works.

[Lindal Kidd]

Have we confused you yet, Pomkeki?

While there are are some complications associated with the $L exchange system, the basics are really very simple.

1. Establish a payment method, using either a major credit card, or a verified PayPal or Skrill account.  ("Verified" means that you have backed up your PayPal or Skrill account with a  Real Life bank account or credit card.  The procedure for that is on those services' web sites.)
2. Buy some $L, using the "Instant Buy" (Market Rate) option to purchase.  Because LL charges a $.60 transaction fee, I recommend buying a fair sized chunk at one go, instead of lots of little $L purchases.  Go ahead, buy $20 USD worth.

And that's about all there is to it!

While you can go to the Marketplace, select an item, and pay for it with $USD, I do NOT recommend this at all.  What happens is, LL buys the amount of $L you need to buy the item for you, and tacks on that $.60 transaction fee.  So, if you bought a dress for $L250 (about one dollar US), it would end up costing you about $1.60 US.