Buy Fee Change Discussion

[Reed Linden]

Alright, I'm closing up for the day and the weekend.

Thank you all for the discussion, the questions, and the suggestions. Most of all, I appreciate the civility of the discussion so far. You're the reason why we do what we do, and why we're passionate about making Second Life bigger, better, and more awesome.  

There's been some good suggestions in this thread. I encourage you to submit your feature requests through JIRA - our team reviews every request.

If you still have questions about the fee update that are not answered here or in the blog post, please utilize your contact support options! They'll be happy to assist in any way they can.

[Chic Aeon]

While I have said for a long while that Belliseria has been the best move The Lab has made on ANY platform in almost a decade (mesh being the last great thing I can think of) --- I do believe the reduced fee on buys for Premium would be a "smart" thing and likely get yet more premium folks, balance out and make the Premium folks feel better. 

 

And to whoever didn't know how to call someone -- you just type in an "@" sign and then SLOWLY start typing their name    and then CLICK on the person you want from the choices.   As in:

@Chic Aeon   

Oftentimes they will have a profile  photo  when the names surrounding them don't.  This will get their attention most times.

 

Even if I actually bought Linden dollars (I have always played the "spend as your earn" version of "the game"  but it was easier a decade ago -- granted) I wouldn't be yelling so much over this.  We ALL MAKE  CHOICES. Some are difficult. 

 

Mine was to go back to basic and stop cashing out because I didn't want to sign an agreement that I didn't actually agree with.  YOURS can be to spend less, buy in really BIG hunks of money at one time to save on the fee --- or of course go away and pout :D.   

 

It is what it is and it is THEIR platform.   

And most of you know by now that I say what I think whether PRO or CON so far as LL (and life) is concerned.  

 

I had a very good friend in Opensim who had been in SL. He told me (and I believe him) that he left in part because he had spent so much money in SL  that he could have purchased a REAL LIFE HOUSE for the same amount.   

 

Personally I think that is very sad and perhaps some time for reflection is worth considering.   

 

[Kyrie Deka]

On 4/15/2021 at 3:23 PM, Reed Linden said:

(more money = more employees(?) = more ability to do a meaningful overhaul of the viewer(?))

...and more resources to fix support tickets not responded to, specifically my broken invoice search feature on Marketplace?  Not talking about regular search; specifically referring to my (and others') support tickets of my "buyer" invoice purchases searching by store name or seller name?  April, 2020.  Breaks the heart really.

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, JanuarySwan said:

  There are Premium members who say they can get into sales right away while us free accounts are praying for days.

There is no guarantee on this.   I've waited days just like non premium members.  The only thing I truly use or care about with premium is the land allowance.  The stipend is nice but not, personally, enough to matter although I know it is to some.

Perhaps doubling again the amount of land allowed would be more of a bonus to attract more premium members.  There IS an abundance of available land just sitting there.

[Tinsley Starlight]

On 4/15/2021 at 8:08 PM, Reed Linden said:

Hi, Bitterthorn! 

I can't give an exact dollar value breakdown, but what I can say is that we are committed to reinvesting all of that revenue back into Second Life. The revenue generated from this modest fee increase will unlock and facilitate nearly all of our redoubled efforts to make Second Life an amazing experience for all of you going forward. 

  

Please make homesteads buyable by  Premium users - I'd own 2 tomorrow.  Its gotten to point of ridiculous that you guys haven't done in this in the last 14 years.

[Tinsley Starlight]

On 4/16/2021 at 1:15 AM, Scott1 Yedmore said:

I'm curious Reed... If LL was operating out of your own datacenter(s) then a move to AWS resulted in lower costs to you, already. (I work in this field.) But the blog announcement made this sound like a hardship to LL and, hence, the "reasoning" for fee increases. Help me understand this please.

Ok so instead of monthly, Ill now buy every three months, thereby eliminating any fee I pay for 2 months, and then I pay the same amount I would of paid.  I just buy an even larger amount that I normally use to.  Dead easy way around this mess.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Syane Jewell

[Mari Moonbeam]

This wasn't much warning time since it takes so long to close an Exchange ticket. The time estimates given are rarely  close to reality.

[Tinsley Starlight]

34 minutes ago, Mari Moonbeam said:

This wasn't much warning time since it takes so long to close an Exchange ticket. The time estimates given are rarely  close to reality.

You should be able to get that amount up in 10 mins to 2 hours..

Edited April 17, 2021 by Syane Jewell

[Mari Moonbeam]

Just now, Syane Jewell said:

Well I bought 45000 linden tonight, I'll buy another 45000 before the 22nd - You should be able to get that amount up in 10 mins to 2 hours..

At what rate? I never use the cash bar, I use the exchange to get a better rate.

[AnthonyJoanne]

Hmmm ...

I'm surprised we're at 10 pages and nobody has run this up the flag pole. At least nobody I've read has mentioned it.

As I've read this thread I've found myself wondering ... have the new owners split Tilia off and are now charging LL for access?

If so, have they just increased the charge to LL and are they (LL) now passing on that cost increase to the customers?

Just a thought.

[Tinsley Starlight]

8 minutes ago, Mari Moonbeam said:

At what rate? I never use the cash bar, I use the exchange to get a better rate.

Think I bought at 248 tonight took 2 hours.. - 247 was 10 mins depends. I dont bother fiddling around with anything that takes longer to save 2 bucks not worth it.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Syane Jewell

[JamesBoogieman]

2 hours ago, Syane Jewell said:

Think I bought at 248 tonight took 2 hours.. - 247 was 10 mins depends. I dont bother fiddling around with anything that takes longer to save 2 bucks not worth it.

Here's the problem though it's gonna be way more than two bucks for some transactions under the new buyer fee structure of 7.5% which is egregiously high for any business transaction.

[Alwin Alcott]

7 hours ago, Reed Linden said:

Good question! The answer is that this fee change was a lot harder to implement than we expected (so true of pretty much everything we do here) because the lindex is so intrinsically connected to so many pieces of the overall Second Life product. Pretty much every system needed to be touched in some way or another, including (to our surprise), the Viewer itself. Wrangling the expertise and manpower to get all of those pieces in motion and in the correct state without also breaking things over in, say, Profiles or Groups at the same time was a rather more monumental effort than we anticipated. We didn't want to make the announcement until we had a solid date we could pin to for go-live (none of us like missing announced dates, either), and by the time we had that, we had less flexibility with the rollout timing than we'd have liked. 

that is for me still no answer why it has to be on such short time. If your team now knows hów to do it, it also could be implemented in about a month and give the people some time to get used to it. If you can do it in a week, you also can do it in a month.

I'm very sorry to say, but in a lot of answers we see the same old Linden customer approach. Lot of "soons" and not hard promesses or solutions. It's the first time something about the future comes out since the overtake... and "you'r gonna pay more" isn't the best start for a new route.

[Anna Nova]

Well, I didn't read all the complaints, but I have to say that I like the fact that the very day I hear about a rise in the price of Linden Dollars the map tiles started to get fixed.

Fix the issues LL, and I don't mind paying more for my SL.   I'm paying more for my misgovernment in RL, anyway, why should you be any different?

[Alwin Alcott]

5 minutes ago, Anna Nova said:

I don't mind paying more for my SL. 

i dont mind either .. but i keep wondering how they managed to invest so much time, money and people on Sansar, while we paid as now... but after ditching that we need to pay more for fixing SL only.... thats just strange for me.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

 

11 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

 

There are 3 levels of SL creators:
  - Those that make enough to not only sustain all of the L$ needs, but are able to take money out of SL on a regular basis.
  - Those that most of the time make enough to not need to buy L$, even if they cannot consistently take money out of SL.
  - Those that don't make enough to sustain their L$ needs and thus buy L$, at least somewhat regularly.

It is likely only that last category of creators that **might** pass the fee increase on to customers.  Even then, for US $19.87, you can currently get just shy of 5000 L$ for no increased fee -- and 5000 L$ would cover quite a bit of content uploads.  Thus, I'm not sure anyone will truly see a price increase for goods due to this fee increase.

That 5k might cover upload fees, textures, meshes, and the like, But it wont cover land rental for your shop as well. 

We pay to upload textures, mesh, animations, sounds and whatever else directly to LL. We then sell those creations on the MP where we pay a further fee to sell the items. We also pay for land to have shops on. And now they want to charge more for the ability for us to do so. 

We cant afford to pass on the fee to our customers. The little shops are struggling enough against the stores with a staff of mesh creators working for them. 

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

 We cant afford to pass on the fee to our customers. The little shops are struggling enough against the stores with a staff of mesh creators working for them. 

bit the same as RL .. only the big boys can keep playing the general field, and the little ones need to perform triple for quality.. and still not ask to many L$ to survive .. it will break somewhere in time and they'll walk out. ( and we'll loose again inspirational and original things.. big boys mostly go for mass )
 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Well, the news had a rather short time in the spotlight.

As written in another thread:

Quote

 

Kinda funny, though, that the blog post rather quickly replaced by a new "Highlights from the Destination Guide" post. How much time did it have in the "spotlight"? Even a whole day, like in the middle of the week?

Personally, I'd find the financial change a tad more important and I get some kind of "perhaps let's hide this announcement, they'll figure out soon enough" vibe from it. Plus the rather short time for a heads up... meh.

 

 

[Axel Naxos]

I'm used to ... pay, pay, pay ... One day it ends ...
Good times when there were camps, where the poor and beginner got some change dancing, sitting, cleaning the floor ... and shopkeepers or not, were happy to distribute money ... Today is pure usury in SL, in all ways and from everywhere ... Our world was happier ...

[Gabriele Graves]

The cynic in me thinks that the short notice period of the increase was to encourage panic buying of L$ before the change.  A proverbial mini gold rush if you will.

[Monger Lionheart]

Ok, I'm a bit surprised by this modest (haha!) increase. Besides LL taking from all transactions, they are now increasing their cut from upfront as well???. I typically purchase 30k Lindens per week; so thats an increase from $1.49 to $9.42 per week or $7.92/wk or $412.08/year! That is  insane for a service that has become more unreliable. I will not take this increase and will throttle back my SL experience. Im a premium member and when I need assistance it takes DAYS to react. I tried to gift a friend a premium membership and that took over 2 weeks! Sorry but I dont expect the experience will improve, just a lighter wallet will result. At the volume I purchase, that is over a 630% increase to transaction fees! When will greed end?

Edited April 17, 2021 by Monger Lionheart
modify reply

[Phil Deakins]

14 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well being I have not seen one idea forthcoming from you in the time I have been here and you scorn the ones anyone else here has had, it does not leave much room for other options, does it? 

Don't argue about it. What you suggested can certainly be done. Anyone who says differently, is wrong, that's all.

[Phil Deakins]

23 minutes ago, Monger Lionheart said:

Besides LL taking from all transactions...

LL doesn't take from all transactions. They only get a cut if you choose to give them one by shopping in the marketplace.

[Saraesa Kalinakov]

At the end of the day, LL is a business, and I'm sure everyone who uses SL realizes that. I'm also sure there are massive expenses involved to keep SL up and running, however, as a large percentage of users are not in the USA and we have to factor in exchange rates, this is going to hurt us considerably.

At present, if I purchase L$25,000 this equates to US$104.17 plus the fee of US$1.49 giving a total of US$105.66...yet because I'm in Australia, my purchase price is AUD$151.99...which is approximately AUD$20 MORE than current exchange rates. If I am to purchase the same amount of Lindens after April 22, it's going to be closer to AUD$200.

As I stated at the start, I understand LL is a business and I am sure they have massive overheads to cover, but I wonder if they have factored in their worldwide market and how it's going to impact them.

[Monger Lionheart]

If you sell Lindens LL takes a cut as well? Has that been impacted as well I wonder? Will private land tiers increase as a result? Merchants must pay tier so their costs will increase as they use Lindens for their stores (land/tier) so to assume LL doesnt get a piece of ALL transactions is a bit misguided. If the cost of a Linden has increased therefore the cost of SL has increased. So you focus on that portion of my comment? What about the focus of my comment which is the radical jump in exchange fees? Even their example in the blog is a 51% increase in the exchange rate! Yes, i purchase in larger amounts so I am impacted less, but that has ended and unsure adding another $400/yr in costs is worth it....Nope it isnt, I am releasing a full homestead now; thank you LL