New Second Life terms and conditions

[animats]

Re: New SL terms regarding money:

4. STORED VALUE ACCOUNT

4.1 Generally

Linden Lab has contracted with Tilia Inc. (“Tilia”) to issue stored value accounts to you. In order to use this feature, you must agree to the Tilia Terms of Service. The stored value account is an account issued by Tilia in which you hold funds, denominated in U.S. Dollars (”USD”), which can be used as a funding method to make payments to Second Life (in addition to or in lieu of other supported payment methods which may be used with such service) (“Stored Value Accounts”). The use of each Stored Value Account is limited to Second Life.

4.2 Crediting the Stored Value Account

Each Stored Value Account may be credited through your exchange of Linden Dollars in accordance with Section 3 above. The amount of the credit to your Stored Value Account will be determined based on the then-current purchase price of Linden Dollars. Provision of this credit is subject to the sole discretion of Tilia.

4.3 Process Credit from Stored Value Account to Permitted Account

If you accumulate more value in your Stored Value Account than you need to pay amounts associated with your use of Second Life, Tilia may, in its discretion and subject to its agreement with Second Life, allow you to request a refund from your Stored Value Account. Subject to your compliance with Tilia’s Terms of Service, you may be permitted to request that Tilia process a credit from your Stored Value Account, in an amount equal to all or a portion of the available funds associated with your Stored Value Account, to your PayPal account or other account permitted by Tilia. Tilia, in its sole discretion, will approve or deny your request. If approved, the request will be subject to a fee (the “Process Credit Fee”) payable to Tilia, and the credit will be processed within approximately five (5) to ten (10) business days following the request. Some requests may take up to thirty (30) days to process. You may see this concept referred to as a “Process Credit” throughout Second Life and other materials.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, animats said:

Tilia may, in its discretion and subject to its agreement with Second Life, allow you to request a refund from your Stored Value Account.

Wow!

[Coffee Pancake]

Please mr bank sir, may I have the money I overpaid back ... 

 

So .. about that new wow expansion! They have a whole made up economy that allows you to exchange bear ankles for real money!!

[Prokofy Neva]

16 minutes ago, animats said:

Re: New SL terms regarding money:

4. STORED VALUE ACCOUNT

4.1 Generally

Linden Lab has contracted with Tilia Inc. (“Tilia”) to issue stored value accounts to you. In order to use this feature, you must agree to the Tilia Terms of Service. The stored value account is an account issued by Tilia in which you hold funds, denominated in U.S. Dollars (”USD”), which can be used as a funding method to make payments to Second Life (in addition to or in lieu of other supported payment methods which may be used with such service) (“Stored Value Accounts”). The use of each Stored Value Account is limited to Second Life.

4.2 Crediting the Stored Value Account

Each Stored Value Account may be credited through your exchange of Linden Dollars in accordance with Section 3 above. The amount of the credit to your Stored Value Account will be determined based on the then-current purchase price of Linden Dollars. Provision of this credit is subject to the sole discretion of Tilia.

4.3 Process Credit from Stored Value Account to Permitted Account

If you accumulate more value in your Stored Value Account than you need to pay amounts associated with your use of Second Life, Tilia may, in its discretion and subject to its agreement with Second Life, allow you to request a refund from your Stored Value Account. Subject to your compliance with Tilia’s Terms of Service, you may be permitted to request that Tilia process a credit from your Stored Value Account, in an amount equal to all or a portion of the available funds associated with your Stored Value Account, to your PayPal account or other account permitted by Tilia. Tilia, in its sole discretion, will approve or deny your request. If approved, the request will be subject to a fee (the “Process Credit Fee”) payable to Tilia, and the credit will be processed within approximately five (5) to ten (10) business days following the request. Some requests may take up to thirty (30) days to process. You may see this concept referred to as a “Process Credit” throughout Second Life and other materials.

So processing the profit from your SL business is now called a "refund." It's strange, but not unprecedented.

This is like the way your bank calls a transfer from PayPal a "purchase refund" even though it is income from work.

Elsewhere it says that it may seize your Linden dollars to pay your bills and also it allows from a "process credit" to your bank, but that does not seem to be installed yet.

 

[animats]

OK. So that's LL's text. This reflects the Tilia spinoff. 4.1 and 4.2 are reasonable enough.

4.3, though.

Tilia may, in its discretion and subject to its agreement with Second Life, allow you to request a refund from your Stored Value Account.

That's a problem. Tilia/J.P. Morgan Payments is supposed to be a regulated financial services company. They're a licensed money transfer business. Financial services companies do not usually have any right to refuse to allow withdrawals. This is a very strange provision to see from a company in the financial sector.

Also, this seems to make SL users subject to some non-public agreement between Tilia and Second Life. That has obvious problems.

...the credit will be processed within approximately five (5) to ten (10) business days following the request. Some requests may take up to thirty (30) days to process.

However, the Tilia / J.P. Morgan Payments service level agreement says: "It can take from 1 to 5 days to process a payout request. In some cases, payout requests may be declined. If there is a problem with a payout request, we will reach out to the customer directly to attempt to resolve the issue. Our SLA to complete the payout process is 5 days." SL's terms are substantially worse than the terms Tilia commits to provide to SL. That's strange and unnecessary.

Online companies are used to being able to draft overreaching EULAs. Banks and financial services companies have less freedom in that area. Tilia has obtained some of the privileges of a financial service business. That increases its obligations.

It's not like Linden Lab needs these provisions to operate. They're just unnecessary overreach.

It might be useful to have J.P. Morgan's compliance people to look this over.

Edited October 25, 2022 by animats
Remove whitespace

[Love Zhaoying]

I think that if I squint really hard, I can see what is going on here. LL is distancing themselves from Tilia meaning, if Tilla decides "to cash out" or "not to cash out", that is not Linden Lab's fault with respect to Second Life.

 

[Jaylinbridges]

39 minutes ago, animats said:

If approved, the request will be subject to a fee (the “Process Credit Fee”) payable to Tilia, and the credit will be processed within approximately five (5) to ten (10) business days following the request

Wasn't the reason they raised the process credit fee last time, was so they could transfer your money to pay pal in 2-3 business days on average?  Are they going to raise the fee again, so we can hope for 5-10 days?  

Edited October 25, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Coffee Pancake]

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Predictions: 

1) People will soon change their Profile pictures in protest over this.

2) People will declare they are leaving over this, probably to return. I have been told that I cannot use the term "flounce", if they are leaving for perfectly valid reasons.

3) There will be bitter complaints about this in various other threads.

I should buy a Lottery ticket!

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Predictions: 

1) People will soon change their Profile pictures in protest over this.

2) People will declare they are leaving over this, probably to return. I have been told that I cannot use the term "flounce", if they are leaving for perfectly valid reasons.

3) There will be bitter complaints about this in various other threads.

I should buy a Lottery ticket!

No .. but tinkering with the mechanisms that allow the economy to function and creators/landlords to get paid creates uncertainty and has a chilling effect.

Especially as these changes are coming from an external "spun off" company.

Whatever will they do next ... who knows, but we can bet it wont be good for us.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

No .. but tinkering with the mechanisms that allow the economy to function and creators/landlords to get paid creates uncertainty and has a chilling effect.

Especially as these changes are coming from an external "spun off" company.

Whatever will they do next ... who knows, but we can bet it wont be good for us.

Glad I don't try to "make a living" off SL.

But..it means any hope I had of a "giant project" one day yielding "profit" means, at the most I could hope to finance my Second Life.  

[animats]

Tilia has better terms than Second Life in this area. From the Tilia terms of service:

4.3 Withdrawals and Redemptions

You may redeem all or part of any fiat-denominated balance held in your Stored Value Balance at any time.

Now that's what it should say. That's what a proper money transfer service does, and is required by law to do.

The SL terms should be made consistent with the Tilia terms. None of this "sole discretion" stuff.

[Bree Giffen]

I think it just sounds more ominous in the TOS than what is really happening which is a separation of SL and Tilia when handling money exchanges. I haven't heard of any recent ruling in the US law recently that may change how SL handles these withdrawals. 

[animats]

There's an opportunity here for Linden Lab and Tilia to make it clear that they handle customer's money properly, unlike those crypto metaverse guys. Search for "crypto withdrawals halted" to see the scale of the problem in crypto land. That's why "sole discretion" is a red flag.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Hopefully a Lab staff person can pop in and explain what's going on and try to put the customers at ease.

[Istelathis]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

2) People will declare they are leaving over this, probably to return. I have been told that I cannot use the term "flounce", if they are leaving for perfectly valid reasons.

I'm OUTTA here!  

 

Actually, I don't even know what is going on, this legalese talk just adds to the confusion that is my life.  We need Mr. T to intervene on our behalf and put an end to this jibba jabba 🙃

 

[Rowan Amore]

Best flounce ever!

[Adamburp Adamczyk]

28 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I'm OUTTA here!  

 

Actually, I don't even know what is going on, this legalese talk just adds to the confusion that is my life.  We need Mr. T to intervene on our behalf and put an end to this jibba jabba 🙃

 

Sorry, can't really help.  regards, Mister Tea.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Adamburp Adamczyk said:

Sorry, can't really help.  regards, Mister Tea.

Please tell me you're wearing pants in there, Santa.

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, animats said:

There's an opportunity here for Linden Lab and Tilia to make it clear that they handle customer's money properly, unlike those crypto metaverse guys. Search for "crypto withdrawals halted" to see the scale of the problem in crypto land. That's why "sole discretion" is a red flag.

At first I read that some withdrawals may be declined as "they found a money launderer".

However, the reason crypto land has exchanges halted is 1) They filed for bankruptcy, and 2) They shut the exchange down temporarily due to high sell volume coming in (which leads to A - they are bankrupt).  

Dang it to that sole discretion stuff.  

Edited October 25, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Gabriele Graves]

Quote

2.3. Your Privacy

Protecting your privacy and your personal data is very important to Tilia. Our practices governing the collection and use of your personal data are detailed in our Privacy Policy. Please review this policy before you provide us with your personal data in order to better understand our commitment to maintaining your privacy, as well as our use of your personal data.

Your decision to use the Tilia Service is purely voluntary and optional. However, as detailed above, to use the Tilia Service, you must have a Tilia Account which we require certain of your personal data to create. If you elect not to provide the requisite personal data then you will not be able to create a Tilia Account or access or use the Tilia Service.

LL really needed to explain properly and specifically what it means to not have a Tilia account and what ramifications it has on your SL account and what the process is for closing an existing Tilia account.  Also what happens to your SL account if Tilia terminates your account.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

Is there a short version that's not a bunch of legalese?

[animats]

6 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Is there a short version that's not a bunch of legalese?

The words "sole discretion" mean "We can do anything we want with your money and you can't do anything about it."

(Yes, LL people, that's harsh. But your lawyers wrote those words, your management signed off on them, and that's what they mean.)

[Gabriele Graves]

53 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

LL really needed to explain properly and specifically what it means to not have a Tilia account and what ramifications it has on your SL account and what the process is for closing an existing Tilia account.  Also what happens to your SL account if Tilia terminates your account.

I've put in a support ticket to ask about this relationship, be interesting to see what we get back.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Gabriele Graves

[Kathlen Onyx]

11 minutes ago, animats said:

The words "sole discretion" mean "We can do anything we want with your money and you can't do anything about it."

(Yes, LL people, that's harsh. But your lawyers wrote those words, your management signed off on them, and that's what they mean.)

It may be harsh but you have to agree to the terms. It's not forced upon you. If you don't like the terms then don't use the service.

I wonder if LL realized that taking away the ability to discuss anything other than SL topics really just put a microscope right on them. What else is there to talk about?