Buy Fee Change Discussion

[Seicher Rae]

43 minutes ago, Asadora Summers said:

 

For the SLB18 as a present that we are going to be paying for ie; the increase of the buy fee, can we new group chats please?
It's one of the consistent problems and has been for years...it would be the best birthday present EVER!

 

 

Or how about for SL18 those of us who were using my.secondlife.com "profile" feeds get our data back? There are quite a few of us who lost everything: photos, old messages (I was keeping some for sentimental reasons from people who died in real life), friends/follow list... EVERYTHING.

I was told many, many months ago "We're working on it." Which of course meant "You're SOL". Some people had their stuff returned/found/whatever the correct word is.

I haven't. My last post there is a charming expletive to the powers that be.

[Seicher Rae]

18 hours ago, sweetlucielle said:

Now that I've talked to some friends the 7.5% buy fee seems to affect renters the most. Peeps start thinking about abandoning their land or spend less on other things. It's basically a tax on rent fort me. I live in Second Norway and I think land sales might drop significantly ... we'll see 🙄

This. My biggest chunk of change is about $L10,000 per month for rent on a place that I love, but the landlords have trouble keeping sims rented out and had to close SEVERAL places a few months ago (dirty.pretty group, fwiw). So, yup that 7.5% is a helluva tax on that, which also includes tier...

Rent will be affected much more than random spending, although that too will be affected since that is smaller amounts and now it is getting too expensive to make small $L purchases.

The more I think about this news the grumpier I'm getting.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

Can we get money back for less than 10?

I like that idea. 

I'm pretty sure I have less than 10 if I don't count my alts, but the alts might get their feelings hurt if I defriended them.  

[Kyrie Deka]

Having just read the new Microsoft Services agreement, and reading well past what they likely thought most would read, deep in the bowels of it I read about they could raise fees to anything at any time and give 15 days prior notice to users.  And I thought of this thread.  Somewhere way way <<<<< back there where it was mentioned there should have been more notice.  

As for me, I think of my last medical bill, and I think of the price difference forthcoming, and I suppose I am a lay-down sale in this particular thing.  

And as there is nothing for almost 10 pages since @Reed Linden left for the weekend, I suspect we tuckered him out. It's a tough job to stand up and attempt to answer for a broad bunch of stuff. I feel for anyone trying that.  I do wish my page 10 comment, now buried of course with many others, would have received a comment giving hope that any additional funding invested would help "support" response.  

[LittleMe Jewell]

33 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

 I wonder how many others will feel and do the same. Probably not many. Most people don't pay that close attention... or do they?
 

I think that most people in SL do not read the blogs or these forums and, per LL, the majority of the Buy transactions will not even have a fee change. Thus, I figure the majority of SL may never know about this change.

The ones that will really be surprised will be the ones that buy in larger quantities and therefore will get hit with the new fee, but do not normally  read the blogs or the forums.  We'll likely get some new 'complaining' threads from some of those folks.

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

30 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

Rent will be affected much more than random spending, although that too will be affected since that is smaller amounts and now it is getting too expensive to make small $L purchases.

Actually, it is the smaller amounts that won't get new fees, at least for those folks that typically buy a bit less than $20.00 worth at a time -- currently $19.87 will buy roughly 4750 L$.

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

20 minutes ago, Kyrie Deka said:

And as there is nothing for almost 10 pages since @Reed Linden left for the weekend, I suspect we tuckered him out.

From the wording of his last post, I actually didn't expect him to return to this thread.

[Alwin Alcott]

20 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

From the wording of his last post, I actually didn't expect him to return to this thread.

as financial guy he shouldn't have come at all, it's his job to execute it, not explain it to customers because he never ever would be allowed to tell what the real reasons are.

It's the common Linden way, nothing changed. Drop the bomb, pretend to listen and do what was planned.

[JanuarySwan]

40 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

From the wording of his last post, I actually didn't expect him to return to this thread.

I thought he said he was going out for the weekend and to contact LL for further questions.

I believe he also said there may be the possibility of reduced fees for those with Premium but nothing for that is currently happening.  He did hint it was possible is all.  

I personally think that sounds fair and perhaps one could choose either a home or reduced fees.  That sounds fair.  If it happens at all, however.  People can contact LL with their opinion on the matter about seeking a happy median somewhere different than where it stands now.  

[LordDragon Nightfire]

From 2006 to 2020 I was an unpaid member not buying lindens. It can be done. In 2020 I became a paid member and have enjoyed the convenience of doing that. I have to say the huge increase will, I expect, lose SL revenue and growth. It will for me be a big disincentive after the change over, to buy any more .Now i buy when i need to for any in world purchases.   This may make me think twice each time I want to buy something, affecting every transaction and business in world.  You should have phased it in over 36 months if it was really needed. That said given economic realities and inflation this seems out of line. Reduced fees for premium members would create another incentive to be a premium member 

Edited April 20, 2021 by LordDragon Nightfire

[Sassy Kenin]

To me it's a Best Buy After Effect( CEO lays off thousands then give himself millions in bonuses)

Sell Sansar =Big Bonus 

Sell Linden Research  =HUGE Bonus

New Owners: We want more money!           CEO : No worries it's a reliable cash machine, plant a little hope of better things to come and jack up the taxes. 🤤

Edited April 20, 2021 by Sassy Kenin

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

19 hours ago, Sassy Kenin said:

To me it's a Best Buy After Effect( CEO lays off thousands then give himself millions in bonuses)

Sell Sansar =Big Bonus 

Sell Linden Research  =HUGE Bonus

New Owners: We want more money!           CEO : No worries it's a reliable cash machine, plant a little hope of better things to come and jack up the taxes. 🤤

When in involves an investment company taking over and running things --- the bean counters go into overdrive to bring maximum revenue into whatever they took over.

I do expect more stuff and fees to come.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Kimmi Zehetbauer
Oldvid.

[Asadora Summers]

4 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

Or how about for SL18 those of us who were using my.secondlife.com "profile" feeds get our data back? There are quite a few of us who lost everything: photos, old messages (I was keeping some for sentimental reasons from people who died in real life), friends/follow list... EVERYTHING.

I was told many, many months ago "We're working on it." Which of course meant "You're SOL". Some people had their stuff returned/found/whatever the correct word is.

I haven't. My last post there is a charming expletive to the powers that be.

Thank you for using Asadora's complaint form! Have a nice day! 😋

[LittleMe Jewell]

Well, after not getting any response on my ticket, opened Sat morning, about getting the wrong amount refunded from cancelling a Buy L$ order, I finally called Billing today. Though the person did say it was a known issue, they did not confirm whether or not it was fallout of the changes made to the various back-end systems for this upcoming fee change.  However, I can't think of any other system change that would suddenly have the system only refund $1.00 of the $1.49 Buy Fee when you cancel the Buy order.

The person also did not say that the issue was fixed yet. So, if you don't normally scrutinize all parts of your Buy/Sell transactions, I'd definitely advise doing so in the future.

[ShibariKate]

Ever since the move to the cloud, things inworld have gotten worse. I've experienced loading issues constantly and consistently. so has just about everyone I know. Group chat still doesn't work. Profile issues, constant MP issues, grid status seems to have more and more issues compared to say, a year ago or even two years ago.

And yet... this somehow justifies an increase in fees for buying lindens ?

 

Here is a suggestion.. try fixing things first, give everyone a bit of stability, where things are actually working again, and THEN you can talk about justifying increases in fees, like this one...😡

 

[Chic Aeon]

5 minutes ago, ShibariKate said:

Ever since the move to the cloud, things inworld have gotten worse. I've experienced loading issues constantly and consistently. so has just about everyone I know. Group chat still doesn't work. Profile issues, constant MP issues, grid status seems to have more and more issues compared to say, a year ago or even two years ago.

And yet... this somehow justifies an increase in fees for buying lindens ?

 

Here is a suggestion.. try fixing things first, give everyone a bit of stability, where things are actually working again, and THEN you can talk about justifying increases in fees, like this one...😡

 

Will keep this short as much that I "could" say on this but dinner is cooking.  I agree that thing seemed pretty wonky during and after cloud migration.  I just wanted to note that since I got my new verey powerful computer I have had no issues at all except some odd disappearing textures once (documented on a blog post). I have NO idea what was causing that -- maybe a bad connection?  Not my expertise. 

 

So it is very likely that some of the issue are on OUR end. SL has alway really wanted the brightest, shiniest and fastest computers.  Lots of folks try and run it on middle of the road or lower laptops.  I have it on mine for emergencies and it does NOT do well.

 

And then again there is that "their platform" part of the equation.  When you make your own --- YOU get to set the rules :D. 

[Angelina Sinclair]

So today I figured out what I'll be doing. Since the people I am renting land from are offering a paypal option to pay for tier with I'll be doing that from now on.

LL won't get a cut of me buying lindens nor a cut of the cash when my landlord cashes out. This will save me money in the long run.

As for my shopping sprees... I don't know, maybe it is time I'll temper it down and wait to see how shops respond. See if they cut prices or do more specials.

[Qie Niangao]

1 minute ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

So today I figured out what I'll be doing. Since the people I am renting land from are offering a paypal option to pay for tier with I'll be doing that from now on.

LL won't get a cut of me buying lindens nor a cut of the cash when my landlord cashes out. This will save me money in the long run.

Yes.

And if Tilia and Second Life are distinct business units, it's Tilia that loses out.

I wonder whose idea it was, and whether they thought it through.

[LittleMe Jewell]

I went looking through my purchase history and noticed that I have decreased my inworld spending quite a bit since the new year.  So I'm thinking that the large L$ order that I just did is going to be able to last me for quite a while.

[Theresa Tennyson]

15 minutes ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

So today I figured out what I'll be doing. Since the people I am renting land from are offering a paypal option to pay for tier with I'll be doing that from now on.

LL won't get a cut of me buying lindens nor a cut of the cash when my landlord cashes out. This will save me money in the long run.

If customers don't pay in Lindens landlords won't be "cashing out" at all. They will need to put cash in to keep their regions.

 

[Rachel1206]

19 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yes.

And if Tilia and Second Life are distinct business units, it's Tilia that loses out.

I wonder whose idea it was, and whether they thought it through.

To me, it looks like an armchair decision - I wonder, if there have been made any sensitivity analysis. And next step for many costly transactions in SL between people, would be to pay a creator/services/scripting jobs direct avoiding the L$ exchange.

As I wrote earlier, I predict, it will be changed in the near future, as LL will see a decline in revenues on L$ transactions.

[Rowan Amore]

8 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

If customers don't pay in Lindens landlords won't be "cashing out" at all. They will need to put cash in to keep their regions.

 

Don't region owners pay with their payment info?  Seems as though it would be one less step for them to have to do and no fees attached for cashing out Ls.  Or am I understanding it incorrectly.

[Drayke Newall]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

Don't region owners pay with their payment info?  Seems as though it would be one less step for them to have to do and no fees attached for cashing out Ls.  Or am I understanding it incorrectly.

You are correct. I would assume it would work out better for the landlord and renter. Basically as it is now they would pay LL in USD the region tier monthly and then would ask renters to pay in $L. By having renters pay now with Paypal directly to the landlords account it would mean that the landlord will not be at the mercy of cash out exchange rate ($L -> USD) or cash out fees and the renter will not need to purchase $L saving the transaction fee.

All in all means LL loose potentially $100's of dollars that they would have otherwise received without the fee increase.

[Lucia Nightfire]

2 hours ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

So today I figured out what I'll be doing. Since the people I am renting land from are offering a paypal option to pay for tier with I'll be doing that from now on.

LL won't get a cut of me buying lindens nor a cut of the cash when my landlord cashes out. This will save me money in the long run.

Curious which landlords are now offering such payment options.

Also, curious how long before LL changes their ToS to try and deter it, heh.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Curious which landlords are now offering such payment options.

Also, curious how long before LL changes their ToS to try and deter it, heh.

I heard of landlords doing that years ago, so I don't think it is a new thing.  It might become more common though and that might make LL change something.