Buy Fee Change Discussion

[Marianne Little]

1 hour ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

OK, even less impulse shopping. Byebye shopping events. Hello strict budget with one L$ puchase lasting at least two months.

If you insist, it shall be done.

I let my alt buy §L now. Because logging in an alt and let him give me money in smaller sums, is an xtra step that may let me cool off a bit. And I will not have a high amount of §L on top of the Marianne's screen, and feel that "I am rich and can buy all I want!!"

[Axel Naxos]

TAX MORE the poor because he is poor. I thought it was a third world thing, but I think I was wrong ...

[Sid Nagy]

It is all a matter of take it or leave it in the end.
If you are not satisfied you take your business elsewhere. That is the normal procedure everywhere.
Supermarket A gets to expensive? I try supermarket B. The quality of the jeans at store C is not as good as in store D? I go to store D.

Only thing is, where is elsewhere when it comes to SL?

And another fact of life is: There is no such thing as a free lunch.
LL has to pay the bills and make a profit. It is a business. Not a charity organization.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Cinos Field]

The thing is, it just feels terrible to get punished for spending money in-world.

It's hard to imagine what else they could monetize though, beyond basic users. Maybe the better way would be to encourage spending.

For example, I'd imagine heavily discounted homestead sims or land would bring in a lot of money, at least, from people who wouldn't get land otherwise. And the available space is both practically endless and cheap now that we're on AWS.

[Sid Nagy]

Land makes a big chunk of their income.
Every discount comes straight out of their wallet.

With more than 25,000 sims on the grid a relatively small discount like 10 USD a month would mean 250,000 USD a month less income.
That would mean that they would have to lease out a huge amount of extra sims before earning that back.

And that would still not bring owning a sim in reach of everyone who dreams about it every now and then.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Garnet Psaltery]

I'm grateful for the warning; I shall need to think more carefully before buying Linden dollars now.  There is just one other thought that occurs to me: Isn't there anyone else available (and cheaper) than Amazon?

Edited April 16, 2021 by Garnet Psaltery
Typo. Give me coffee.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

 Isn't there anyone else available (and cheaper) than Amazon?

there should be millions on the shelves after the goodbye to Sansar ..

[Silent Mistwalker]

19 hours ago, Reed Linden said:

Hi! I'm Reed Linden. I am the product manager for our payments team!  Ask me anything about this. I'm here to help.

Hi Reed. Nice to have met you. I'm sorry I won't be able to afford being in SL for much longer to get to know you better. I wish I was kidding. I need a new graphics card for my desktop but can't afford one thanks to bitcoin mining. So I suppose the fee rate hikes won't have much effect on me since I won't be able  to log in for who knows how long before bitcoin idiots remember there are other people in the world who need those things they are stock piling for stupid reasons. Money isn't the backbone of the world, it's people.

[Rowan Amore]

5 hours ago, Jeny Howlett said:

I am not a big spender and often buy lindens in lower amounts, yay to being penalized for it once again!

I, also, buy in smaller quantities.  The fee for those will still be 1.49.

[FairreLilette]

1 hour ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

There is just one other thought that occurs to me: Isn't there anyone else available (and cheaper) than Amazon?

What if they have a contract for such and such period of time?

The increase doesn't change me.  I may splurge during sales times for some extra lindens on an as needed basis and the $1.49 charge has already been there when I do.  What I save on the sales far makes up for that once in a while extra linden buy splurge where I'm charged an extra $1.49 because I want more lindens than my once a month buy wherein I'm charged a total fee of $1.49.  I've always paid an extra 3-4.5 dollars in fees during sales times, but, again, what I save in the sales far outweighs any extra fee of 3-4.5 dollars.  During Black Friday last year I saved 20000 lindens as some were 75% off.  So, I saved about $80 dollars.  

Edited April 16, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Silent Mistwalker]

10 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Why is it that almost every time some fee change (among others) is made, someone always has to chime in with the absolutely ludicrous idea that Linden Lab will do away with the free Basic accounts ....

They have had ample time and opportunity to do so and simply have not. They're here to stay and have been since June 6th, 2006.

Do kindly stop trying to cause a panic.

It's not impossible, just improbable.

[Silent Mistwalker]

10 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

it is the "least number of transactions" that will be impacted.  

So I save up what little money I can to buy Ls with (which is rare) because I just don't have the cash to spare most of the time so my L purchases are infrequent and in larger amounts than most because I can't afford to buy Ls on a regular basis like is seems most everyone else does. 

All that means is that one of the people who can least afford the fee increases will be paying the most in fees in the future. Where the hell is the sense/logic in that?

[Solar Legion]

10 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

It's not impossible, just improbable.

A probability that is rather close to zero.

[FairreLilette]

22 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I need a new graphics card for my desktop but can't afford one thanks to bitcoin mining. 

I'm in this boat as well.  I was planning to spend (some) of my stimulus money on SL but that is on hold now until I see what's what and 'if' a family member who builds computers can even get ahold of a card for me.  I also had just built a Tiny/Dinkie club and haven't had the grand opening yet.  If I can't see nor use the viewer, I will close everything for now.  What else can I do?  Why have something I cannot fully see and it's murky.  

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

let my alt buy §L now

Wait! Wait! SL alts can buy Simoleons now? Since when did alts play The Sims? 🤭

[roseelvira]

20 hours ago, Reed Linden said:

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. 

WHY???

If we are buying etc you should have clear answers. 

Until we get firm answers i will not be buying any more lindens.

PEOPLE     NEED     EXACTS!!!   

Why do i feel i am watching TV ( "circle back") reading the above  quote. ❓😒

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by roseelvira

[LittleMe Jewell]

9 hours ago, jyosonia said:

Burden on Small players like me, who use to buy Lindens worth of 10-15 US$....

Not a wise decision... Big players dont even care of these fees but it hurts a lot to small players like me. 😒

 

There will be absolutely no fee change for anyone that is buying L$ for US $19.87 or less.  In other words -- there will be no impact to you at all.

 

 

5 hours ago, Jeny Howlett said:

I am not a big spender and often buy lindens in lower amounts, yay to being penalized for it once again!

See above comment.   If your spend US $19.87 or less on your L$ buys, then there will be no impact to you.

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[Silent Mistwalker]

8 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

A probability that is rather close to zero.

I tend to not count my chickens until the eggs hatch. You never know which one is going to be banty. Never say never because as soon as you do, it happens.

[Solar Legion]

I am not at all saying "never" I am simply saying that the probability is extremely low. That's it.

Can it happen? Not wholly out of the question. Will it (ever) happen? Answer is above. If it ever does, the backlash would make what they're seeing now look like a cooling summer breeze.

[Marianne Little]

14 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Wait! Wait! SL alts can buy Simoleons now? Since when did alts play The Sims? 🤭

Never played The Sims, but I think my son has. 🤣

These Simoleons sound tasty!

[FairreLilette]

7 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

I am not at all saying "never" I am simply saying that the probability is extremely low. That's it.

Can it happen? Not wholly out of the question. Will it (ever) happen? Answer is above. If it ever does, the backlash would make what they're seeing now look like a cooling summer breeze.

Exodus the 2nd probably.  

[Silent Mistwalker]

27 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

I am not at all saying "never" I am simply saying that the probability is extremely low. That's it.

Can it happen? Not wholly out of the question. Will it (ever) happen? Answer is above. If it ever does, the backlash would make what they're seeing now look like a cooling summer breeze.

Now yer talkin. 😉

[Orwar]

6 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

My common purchase is 20 000 L/83 US. That puts me in the group that will have increased fee.

I am considering fewer and higher buys. But if that is difficult, I should lower my purchases and buy more often? Sorry, I suck at math.

   I usually do L$10,000 a pop, did that after the fee was raised to $1.49 to compensate (I usually bought L$5K a pop before then). Now there's no way around it being more expensive for 'our group', the only thing we could do would be to buy annually rather than monthly or on demand.

   If you bought L$20,000 once a month, you'd have to split the fee cap of $9.99 with the current fee of $1.49, which comes to 6.7 - so bulk purchase of 7 months' worth every 7 months to keep it 'the same'.

   My economy is fixed, and in summer there's going to be 3 months without income (with seemingly little chance of a summer job due to the pandemic, yay?), so I'd have to save up for 14 months to do an annual bulk purchase .. But then in 14 months my economical situation will change yet again as that'll be past my graduation, so that money may well end up going towards something else instead ..

   As a student, this fee increase does affect how much L$ I'll be able to get. Guess I'll just have to consider dropping fashion photography and find a cheaper virtual hobby .. Maybe I can go wiggle my pixels on a stick and have someone throw some L$ at me instead.

[Silent Mistwalker]

23 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

Never played The Sims, but I think my son has. 🤣

These Simoleons sound tasty!

It's the Sims version of money and that's the symbol for it. I play (build mostly lol) and have been playing it for ... oh no... over 20 years now. I'm doomed I tell ya! Doomed! EA/Maxis really have improved the game an enormous amount over the years, mostly for the better. It was the method of getting there that people had trouble with. Objects in the base game not being put in until years after the base game is released and that sort of thing. The similarities between The Sims and SL is rather interesting when you stop to consider just how many former EA employees are now (or have been) LL employees. Mostly management. If you know EA, think about that for a moment. I'm not saying bad job but I'm not saying job well done either to LL. They do need to "up their game" but the methods they are using are more than just questionable. 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

12 hours ago, shireena1 said:

Well, like everyone here, thanx for the heads up.

I guess i am lucky in the fact that my subscription for membership is due the day before this change happens. 😁

I let mine go long ago. I'm a forum junkie so I still hang out here. 

12 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I am waiting for the next shoe to drop:  The elimination of the Basic free account entirely, after the usual "one month free trial" offer.  PIOF will be required to pay dollars or currency equivalent to SL to log into SL.   A fee less than Premium hopefully, with a reduced or no stipend payback.  This should cut SL active membership to at least half of present as most of the Alts drop out.  But that won't look good when claiming millions of members - just count prior accounts as potential pay accounts even if 3/4 of the inactive accounts are the same people, or dead people.

 

Don't see that happening as a majority of the players are not premies.  But never know with the new company that took over LL.  But I didn't expect the fee increase either.

12 hours ago, JanuarySwan said:

I hope not.  I do not like automatic withdrawals from my bank.  But, if it does, what's next...bitcoin mining hits the grid and everyone will need to buy $10 to $15 thousand dollar graphics cards?

There is no change in my fees.  I usually buy about 10,000 linden a month.  At 1.49 twice for 5000 x 2 or 3 dollars for 10000 once, it's the same and the same as it ever was.

I would like to see bitcoin die. The way it mines coin is a big energy hog and causes shortages of video cards competing with their bots. One of my cousin's recently stop playing a MMORPG game due to the publisher's intent to integrate crypto into it and putting miners within the game's client.