Buy Fee Change Discussion

[Alwin Alcott]

44 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

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.

i don't rent the year round, mostly only during autumn till spring ( more time in sl) but i pay  by paypal at least  10 years to my landlord (always go back to the same one)

Edited April 21, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Jaylinbridges]

Some landlords have taken rent payment via PayPal or credit card for years.  After all, LL insists you pay your land tier in USD, which they take from your Tillia $ balance or PayPal or credit card, and they charge no fees for this.  So why would a private land company not be allowed to accept payment in USD, just as LL does?

My land company has always allowed this.  Here is the web page where I would make a direct payment from my Paypal for monthly parcel rent:

If I bought  Lindens each month to pay my rent, It  would cost me $50.65 x 1.075 = $54.45 USD/mo.   A difference of $54.45 - $47.15 = $7.30/mo more to buy Lindens with the new fee schedule.  Of course I could do a Limit Buy for $48.82 plus 7.5% fee and save a few bucks, but most Residents don't know about that, and just use the market price and buy through their viewer.

If your private landlord does not accept dollars as payment, I guess you could always suggest they do, or find a new landlord.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Rathgrith027]

15 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.

I'm surprised anyone even uses MySL these days. I've tried to get into Social Media platforms like Avatarbook and the sort but they never really have any weight to them, and feel like wasted potential that could have been better if they were used to replace mySL with them.

I just never liked mySL due to how barebones and lackluster it was. I'd love a redo of the whole in-world social media system in that vein, but we've got bigger priorities than replacing mySL. Fixing it and Group Chats? Yes, are of moderate priority, at least in my educated opinion, but higher priority is optimizing this burning wreck we call a viewer.

[Rathgrith027]

On 4/19/2021 at 2:19 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

This and a million other "bug fix" issues will do nothing for growth or retention, ever.

As a core part of the platform is expected that group chat will work. No one decides not to give SL a try because the group chat may or may not work. Same for map tiles or region crossing. These things should not be broken and should not even be brought up in relation to fee increases. 

Yes it does. It needs to be the new standard avatar. Otherwise anyone using it still a second class user and there is no point.

We need a standard, well documented, extensible, publicly accessible (no secret dev kits), open source body platform owned by LL that supports the needs and use-cases of actual SL residents. No one should be making or using after market bodies and heads, they should be making mods for the standard body.

The existing avatar & fashion ecosystem is a disaster and directly responsible for large social activities being fundamentally impossible,  it's unforgivable for a social platform to have de-rendering other avatars be the norm!!

 

THANK YOU.

I've been complaining about this for a hot minute, It's one of the points as to why I hate how LL is so "Laissez-faire" at times.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Rathgrith027

[Rathgrith027]

On 4/19/2021 at 4:42 PM, 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 🙄

It'll be a pain in my ass personally as I rent and own a few properties throughout SL, both personal and for MIRAI, though the best solution honestly is to just buy your L$ in bulk per month rather than per transaction. I used to pay week to week, but now I just pay for a month up front, buying it at 40USD (Which would come to about 43 after the fee change).

I personally dislike the situation, and hope that Linden Lab realizes that raising fees like this isn't going to bode well for Second Life's future unless they can provide a damn good justification for it.

Unless at SL18B I hear that we're either getting a viewer rewrite, that the rumored Vulkan update is coming sooner than when hell freezes over, or that ancillary services like group chat, mySL and others get more stable, I'll be putting Battery Street on blast. 

Edited April 21, 2021 by Rathgrith027

[Marianne Little]

How much work is it for landlords to set up so we can pay their PayPal directly?

And can you, @Rathgrith027send me the rental company's name in a PM, please? It is best that we don't name businesses in this thread.

[Doc Carling]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

My land company has always allowed this.

My land company allows also to pay with paypal. Though I stopped to use this method when I learned they charged a fee of about 300 400 Linden. Something that violates the Paypal rules for merchants.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Doc Carling

[Lillith Hapmouche]

2 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

...but most Residents don't know about that, and just use the market price and buy through their viewer.

I'm not doing those multiple days Limit Orders because they simply do not fill for me.

For example:

Let's say I'm intending to purchase about US$ 100 worth of L$, without the current transaction fee. I enter that into the "Best Rate Buy (Limit Buy)" mask. The suggested "Exchange Rate in L$ / US$1.00" is 249 and that would take 3 days to fill.

Now for 248, I'd get the L$ within 10 minutes. Roughly. For L$ 100 less in return. Waiting three full days for the sake of L$ 100 seems not very attractive to me. Especially since in the past, those orders went on and on to no avail. I think I tried thrice and I always cancelled the orders. I believe one order was partially filled, like L$ 1000 or such. But the rest would have taken... I don't know, days? Weeks?

For me, it isn't about the extra money, in theory I easily pay that. But from $ 1.49 to $ 9.99... too much, too soon.

I hope for a reply from the person I'm renting tier from, because I asked about a PayPal option. That's my regular main expense. And it that doesn't work... well, meh.

At the moment, I got like 6 weeks on the rental counter and like L$ 20.000 on hand. And this thing irks me to no end.

[Chris Corvinus]

On 4/15/2021 at 3:08 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. 

  

So what... Are you doing with all the money youre making from people who purchase private regions? Those are not just expensive to buy outright, but theres a $229 MONTHLY maintenance charge.. Is there REALLY a need in all of this? 

I think LL needs to be way more transparent because this doesnt add up. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

12 minutes ago, Chris Nova said:

So what... Are you doing with all the money youre making from people who purchase private regions? Those are not just expensive to buy outright, but theres a $229 MONTHLY maintenance charge.. Is there REALLY a need in all of this? 

I think LL needs to be way more transparent because this doesnt add up. 

The same thing they were doing when they had a $295 MONTHLY maintenance charge.

[Chris Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

The same thing they were doing when they had a $295 MONTHLY maintenance charge.

I just cant see the justification for this increase. They are so slow with changes. They talk alot in blogs but then turn around and take years to implement anything... except when it comes to money increases 🙄 

[Jaylinbridges]

1 hour ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Now for 248, I'd get the L$ within 10 minutes. Roughly. For L$ 100 less in return. Waiting three full days for the sake of L$ 100 seems not very attractive to me. Especially since in the past, those orders went on and on to no avail. I think I tried thrice and I always cancelled the orders

Go 1 Linden farther and your Limit Order will fill in minutes. And there is about a 750 $L savings using a Limit Buy order vs a Market order. The 10 min wait was for 249 $L/USD.  Enter 248 and its only a few minutes.  You still save about $3 USD additional on a $100 order before the fee increase with a Limit order:

Edited April 21, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Jaylinbridges]

4 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

And can you, @Rathgrith027send me the rental company's name in a PM, please? It is best that we don't name businesses in this thread

I am not Rathgrith, but I made the post you are asking about.

I won't reveal the company here, but it's one of the top five SL land companies in holdings, and the name begins with Z.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Ted McGregor]

Ah .. so they found another cash c...alve ?

Fine by me since I'm cancelling my private region this month anyway.

[Mari Moonbeam]

Some landlords don't want to take  PayPal or credit cards because they could lose if the renter complains they didn't get what they were lead to believe they would get and wants a credit.

PayPal isn't going to make an avatar and come in world to see if the tenant or the landlord was right, if they could tell. 

Especially on homesteads the profit margin is thin  so a few complaining tenant charge backs  and the estate is in the red.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

32 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Go 1 Linden farther and your Limit Order will fill in minutes. And there is about a 750 $L savings using a Limit Buy order vs a Market order. The 10 min wait was for 249 $L/USD.  Enter 248 and its only a few minutes.  You still save about $3 USD additional on a $100 order before the fee increase with a Limit order:

 

I'm not talking about market orders at all. L$ 248 is listed with 10 minutes, right.

L$ 249 did jump to 3 days for me, all the time, and ultimately, those order never filled.

Hence why I've been buying for L$ 248. But anyway, it'll go up to that $9.99 when exchanging over $113.

[Jaylinbridges]

20 minutes ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

I'm not talking about market orders at all. L$ 248 is listed with 10 minutes, right.

No

249 was listed as 10 mins, so I use 248 and it executes in minutes. The minimum "wait time" is always 10 mins with Tillia's software, even if you will accept 100 L$/ 1 USD.  But if you are first in line, you get instant execution.  

If you want to see how many orders are ahead of you, look at the live market transactions, updated every 15 seconds on the Lyndex.   If there are only 10,000 $L at 248, and  since First In FIrst Out is the algorithm, your wait will be very short.  Paying directly in USD avoids all these trading games of course, and avoids the new fees.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Lillith Hapmouche]

That's sweet that you are experience something else. For me, the lowest time limit I get is 10 minutes, even for something like L$ 220 / US$ 1.

[Doc Carling]

1 hour ago, Chris Nova said:

I think LL needs to be way more transparent because this doesnt add up. 

Companies owe transparency the tax authority not their customers.

[Jaylinbridges]

15 minutes ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

That's sweet that you are experience something else. For me, the lowest time limit I get is 10 minutes, even for something like L$ 220 / US$ 1.

 10 mins is just some text message inserted in Tillia's software because there is no way they can predict execution times less than that.  And as they say, 10 mins could be 10 hours, since they can not predict the future. 

As I said just bid a a price in the money, where the software will always execute your order first and you only lose 1$L in exchange rate which is trivial.

I think I assumed you always did Market Instant orders, which is really only for the financial "impatient", to be kind.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Sassy Kenin]

2 hours ago, TDD123 said:

Fine by me since I'm cancelling my private region this month anyway.

Doe's this mean you and luna are finally moving in together?

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 hours ago, Chris Nova said:

So what... Are you doing with all the money youre making from people who purchase private regions? Those are not just expensive to buy outright, but theres a $229 MONTHLY maintenance charge.. Is there REALLY a need in all of this? 

I think LL needs to be way more transparent because this doesnt add up. 

They stopped being transparent years ago when they realized the transparency exposed too many things that "didn't add up". They do this when they think no one sees what they're up to. Problem is, someone is always observing, putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 4. It might be known but again the ones who care are powerless and the ones who don't care drive the bus.

[Ted McGregor]

5 minutes ago, Sassy Kenin said:

Doe's this mean you and luna are finally moving in together?

 

If I were to say we'd let go of eachother , would you let it go to ?

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

1 minute ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

They stopped being transparent years ago when they realized the transparency exposed too many things that "didn't add up". They do this when they think no one sees what they're up to. Problem is, someone is always observing, putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 4. It might be known but again the ones who care are powerless and the ones who don't care drive the bus.

And toss some under the bus. I was a RL bus operator and think LL would figure a big extra charge to issue you the bus transfer!

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Doc Carling said:

Companies owe transparency the tax authority not their customers.

In Germany maybe, but in the US if you want to retain customers you need to be transparent. Companies wouldn't need to be so transparent if they didn't use shady business practices or cook the books or any number of illegal and/or immoral acts.