Should There Be Disincentives for Free Accounts?

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

5 hours ago, Chromal Brodsky said:

Just be careful that you don't violate the TOS by quoting someone's inworld speech to you without their consent.

That's why that''s on flickr and not here. That screenshot is my first, last, and only ever contact with that person. But even that really wouldn't matter - there is no context that makes that statement acceptable. Which was why my action was to block and ban them.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Pussycat Catnap

[Chroma Starlight]

18 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

 there is no context that makes that statement acceptable

Can't really argue with your conclusion.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Chromal Brodsky

[Crim Mip]

I haven't paid for a premium account because of the risk of getting it locked if you mess up with land tier or fail to keep premium while still owning land. They pretty much hold your accound hostage at that point. If they ever come up with a sane policy for that, I'll look at getting a premium account.  Otherwise, I contribrute content and earn and spend my share of L$ of which some goes back to LL in the form of rent. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

11 minutes ago, Crim Mip said:

I haven't paid for a premium account because of the risk of getting it locked if you mess up with land tier or fail to keep premium while still owning land. They pretty much hold your accound hostage at that point.

Treat it like a RL bill and make sure you pay it when you are supposed to.  If you fail to pay for other bills in RL, there are consequences for that.  Holding your account hostage is the only leverage LL has to get its money.

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, Crim Mip said:

I haven't paid for a premium account because of the risk of getting it locked if you mess up with land tier or fail to keep premium while still owning land. They pretty much hold your accound hostage at that point. If they ever come up with a sane policy for that, I'll look at getting a premium account.

What Lil said.

What sort of "sane policy" would you like? Cancel the debt? Allow the debt to be paid off a little bit at a time while still having full use of the premium benefits? Or what?

[Qie Niangao]

I imagine the practice of locking Premium accounts seems draconian because it doesn't suspend just the Premium benefits but rather the whole account, Inventory, L$ balance, login, and all. It's as if a landlord could not only evict a tenant for nonpayment, but also take all his belongings, bank accounts, pets, friends, and family members.

Perhaps the practice is this way because tier is billed in arrears, in stark contrast to starting a RL lease with advance payment of a security deposit and last month's rent.

[Phil Deakins]

I think what some people would like is to be able to come back as a Basic account with everything intact except the land. That's the same as cancelling the debt that the user has run up by using the Premium benefits for at least a month, and usually more than that because LL doesn't lock users out immediately. From what I've gathered, they allow 2 or 3 months for the user to get up to date. I don't see anything "draconian" about it.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Qie Niangao]

Yeah, personally I don't think it would be "draconian" if they could recover the Basic account, even if they had to pay a couple month's debt to get it back. I gather, though, that the meter just keeps running for as long as you're away. So if god forbid one should have an extended time away without setting up a reliable payment source in advance, having a Premium account could make it prohibitively expensive to get back in, whereas there's no barrier at all for a Basic account to return at any time.

Indeed, I've heard that (at one time? perhaps it's changed?) eventually the whole Premium account gets deleted, inventory and all, a fate which never befalls Basic accounts. That would be draconian, if it (still?) happens.

[Callum Meriman]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

I imagine the practice of locking Premium accounts seems draconian because it doesn't suspend just the Premium benefits but rather the whole account, Inventory, L$ balance, login, and all. It's as if a landlord could not only evict a tenant for nonpayment, but also take all his belongings, bank accounts, pets, friends, and family members.

Perhaps the practice is this way because tier is billed in arrears, in stark contrast to starting a RL lease with advance payment of a security deposit and last month's rent.

I'd consider it more like not paying your power, than renting your home.

The electric company will leave you in the dark with zero compunction, until you pay up what you owe.

[Qie Niangao]

21 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

The electric company will leave you in the dark with zero compunction, until you pay up what you owe.

Yeah, but still they won't rip out the internet connection and hold hostage the cat and the flatware.

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I gather, though, that the meter just keeps running for as long as you're away.

If that happens, then it's wrong, imo. I don't mean what you said, Qie. I mean it's wrong of LL to keep the meter running. Once an account has reached the point that its arrears cause it to be put on hold - 2 or 3 months, maybe - then that's when the meter should stop. Using the electric company analogy, the user gets cut off, so that no additional debt can be incured. That's how it should be with SL. Stop the user from getting in until the debt is paid, but don't add more and more to the debt. I'd imagine that, in a court of law, LL wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they kept the meter running while the user is denied access.

[LittleMe Jewell]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yeah, personally I don't think it would be "draconian" if they could recover the Basic account, even if they had to pay a couple month's debt to get it back. I gather, though, that the meter just keeps running for as long as you're away. So if god forbid one should have an extended time away without setting up a reliable payment source in advance, having a Premium account could make it prohibitively expensive to get back in, whereas there's no barrier at all for a Basic account to return at any time.

Indeed, I've heard that (at one time? perhaps it's changed?) eventually the whole Premium account gets deleted, inventory and all, a fate which never befalls Basic accounts. That would be draconian, if it (still?) happens.

A good friend that was donating tier to my group but didn't log in very often ended up forgetting to update their credit card info when the card expired.  Thus when their Premium membership tried to renew, the billing failed.  If memory serves correctly, it was some few months after that when their tier donation disappeared from my group.  Due to a variety of RL issues, the person still didn't try to log in for a while.  When they finally contacted LL, I believe they needed to give LL good billing info to pay for the Premium that had failed billing.  I think they were given the option of only paying the monthly (or maybe quarterly) rate to cover those first few months when the tier was still in my group.  This was all quite a few years back, so I'm a bit foggy on some of the specifics, but I think that was how it all went down.  

In this person's case, they were only using the 512 that came with their membership, so there wasn't any monthly tier that was also in arrears.  If there had been land involved, my guess is that LL might have reclaimed it within a few months of the billing not working (similar to the time frame when they took my friend's tier out of my group), so there would only be those few months of tier to be paid, in addition to the monthly/quarterly premium fee to cover the same time period.  Maybe similar if a person is donating more than their 512 tier to a group rather than owning the land right out.

There could also be a secondary time frame though.  If a group's tier falls under what is needed to cover the land, the group gets some amount of time to get it fixed.  Supposedly, at some point, the group owner would then get billed for any negative tier that the group needed.  If the group owner couldn't be billed due to lack of current valid billing info, then the land would get reclaimed.  If the group owner was the same person that had the billing issue to begin with, there could be a few more months of tier due if LL allowed the group to be negative in tier for a few months before reclaiming the land.

Edited March 22, 2018 by LittleMe Jewell

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

A good friend that was donating tier to my group but didn't log in very often ended up forgetting to update their credit card info when the card expired.  Thus when their Premium membership tried to renew, the billing failed.

When this happens, does total group tier go down (because the non-paying member was suspended etc.), or everyone in the group is billed more, or ? Specifically, I’m asking about the group liability in situations like this.

[LittleMe Jewell]

27 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

When this happens, does total group tier go down (because the non-paying member was suspended etc.), or everyone in the group is billed more, or ? Specifically, I’m asking about the group liability in situations like this.

In my case, I already had extra tier in the group, so when the 512 was pulled out, it simply reduced the extra tier that the group had.  

In any case, supposedly, if the group tier ever goes negative, at some point after that LL charges the 'group owner' for the extra tier.  As far as I know, it never gets charged to Liabilities.