Premium Membership and Land Question

[KarmannGhiaa]

Hi everyone. I'm looking for some clarification please. If I have land and I want to downgrade, am I still able use the land up to the downgrade date if it is assigned to a group?

So let's say my renewal/downgrade date is September 30th and it want to start the process in July. Will I be able to downgrade and still have use of the Group assigned land?

[Qie Niangao]

I think the answer is yes, but there's a part of the question I don't understand: What would you do "to start the process in July"?

To be able to downgrade, you'll need to remove your tier contribution to the land-owning group; presumably you'll want to do that just before your renewal date. You won't disband the group nor be forced to abandon the land at that time. In fact, even after nobody is contributing tier, the Lab won't immediately reclaim the group's land, in hopes some group member may yet contribute tier.

Of course if you wanted to sell the land, you might need some time for that. It doesn't sound as if that's the plan, but whereas (perhaps obviously) a group can't buy land without enough contributed tier, until that land is reclaimed the group can try to sell it or otherwise dispose of it even with nobody covering tier. There's no guarantee the land won't go poof at any moment, and I've never personally done this, but I've seen it done (way back when Admin mode revealed tier contributions to any group).

[KarmannGhiaa]

Well, my plan really is to upgrade, have land, downgrade a few months later but still live on the land. Upgrade again when my premium expires and downgrade a month or so later again, repeating the process.

Basically, I want a premium plan with out the automatic billing. If they had that as an option, I would already be using that.

 

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, KarmannGhiaa said:

Well, my plan really is to upgrade, have land, downgrade a few months later but still live on the land. Upgrade again when my premium expires and downgrade a month or so later again, repeating the process.

Basically, I want a premium plan without the automatic billing. If they had that as an option, I would already be using that.

You should not expect to be able to keep land without having enough tier to hold it. Even if your main account goes Basic, your alt or your friend would have to maintain enough tier to pay for the land. You could abandon part of it, but then you'd have a smaller parcel. If you try to keep land without having paid for your tier, your Premium account(s) would be locked out of SL. If you were to then try to come back & reinstate your Premium account, you would still be required to pay all your outstanding debt before your Premium account(s) could get back into SL. The best way to avoid a monthly or quarterly automatic billing, is to pay for a yearly Premium account, which is only $99/ year. Then your recurring payment would be yearly though.

Edited April 28 by Persephone Emerald

[KarmannGhiaa]

That's the issue. I don't mind paying for a year or more up front. 

I had a friend pass away in RL who had her account auto-renew shortly after her passing. The renewal caused a lot of drama with her family. Sadly, we never know when it's "our time." I don't want anything like that happening. That's why I ended premium after 5 years.

[Qie Niangao]

4 hours ago, KarmannGhiaa said:

The renewal caused a lot of drama with her family. 

May she haunt them to their graves.

I do see what you mean, though. Some possibilities come to mind:

• Maybe Billing can set up a Premium account that doesn't auto-renew. I don't remember this being an option but that doesn't mean it can't exist.
• There actually is such a thing as a "Second Lifetime Premium" that only charges one time, so there's no "renewal" involved. I got one of these at the last SL Birthday celebration and it was promoted as a rare thing, so maybe it'll never be an option again, but you might keep your eyes open during the upcoming Birthday, just in case they decide it's a successful program worth repeating. (You could ask Billing about it while you have them on the phone; they'll surely say they aren't privy to such discussions, but hearing continued interest might improve the odds of a repeat offer.)
• What I'd do when this all falls through: remove all payment methods from the account's Billing Information page until just before renewal time, let it renew, then remove it again.

Also, credit card companies (or PayPal?) may offer some "renewal-immune" option. For security purposes there are one-time-use credit card numbers backed by a regular account, and those would surely be unable to be renewed, but I've not used them myself. I don't think the merchant (Linden Lab) can tell they're one-time-use numbers, but I'm not sure about that, nor whether it would matter to them if they could.

[Alwin Alcott]

On 4/27/2024 at 6:56 AM, KarmannGhiaa said:

Hi everyone. I'm looking for some clarification please. If I have land and I want to downgrade, am I still able use the land up to the downgrade date if it is assigned to a group?

So let's say my renewal/downgrade date is September 30th and it want to start the process in July. Will I be able to downgrade and still have use of the Group assigned land?

stop the prenium and start renting. A rental will evict you when you don't show up to pay.

[KarmannGhiaa]

14 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

• There actually is such a thing as a "Second Lifetime Premium" that only charges one time, so there's no "renewal" involved. I got one of these at the last SL Birthday celebration and it was promoted as a rare thing, so maybe it'll never be an option again, but you might keep your eyes open during the upcoming Birthday, just in case they decide it's a successful program worth repeating. (You could ask Billing about it while you have them on the phone; they'll surely say they aren't privy to such discussions, but hearing continued interest might improve the odds of a repeat offer.)
• What I'd do when this all falls through: remove all payment methods from the account's Billing Information page until just before renewal time, let it renew, then remove it again.

That lifetime premium would have been amazing. I'm sad that I missed it. 

I guess I'll just do premium and rent. Cancel and repeat each year. It really is unfortunate that I'll have to pay rent again when technically I pay for rent with premium. It's a terrible system.

[Persephone Emerald]

21 minutes ago, KarmannGhiaa said:

That lifetime premium would have been amazing. I'm sad that I missed it. 

I guess I'll just do premium and rent. Cancel and repeat each year. It really is unfortunate that I'll have to pay rent again when technically I pay for rent with premium. It's a terrible system.

You don't have to pay rent with Premium if you use a Linden Home, and you don't have to pay for Premium if you only want to rent a place from someone else.

If your concern is the automatic renewal with paid accounts, I don't know what to do about that except to write the renew date on a calender and tell one of your friends or family members if you're afraid you might miss it for any reason. You might also use PayPal to pay and be sure you have at least $ 99 in there to cover it or keep $ 99 in your SL dollar account.

[KarmannGhiaa]

4 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

You don't have to pay rent with Premium if you use a Linden Home, and you don't have to pay for Premium if you only want to rent a place from someone else.

If your concern is the automatic renewal with paid accounts, I don't know what to do about that except to write the renew date on a calender and tell one of your friends or family members if you're afraid you might miss it for any reason. You might also use PayPal to pay and be sure you have at least $ 99 in there to cover it or keep $ 99 in your SL dollar account.

In order for me to downgrade I have to give up the linden home, so I would need to rent somewhere for the remainder of my premium time. That's the main problem. If I could downgrade without being forced to immediately abandon land, I'd be ok.

[Alwin Alcott]

7 hours ago, KarmannGhiaa said:

. It really is unfortunate that I'll have to pay rent again when technically I pay for rent with premium. It's a terrible system.

It's not a terrible system, it just doesn't fit what you want.
You can't have a LH when downgrading, but you cán own mainland when downgrading ( if it's not locked that track since i last did that) by group use.
But you could also give instructions to a close friend or familymember or your lawyer; ... close my account if something happens....

 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, KarmannGhiaa said:

In order for me to downgrade I have to give up the linden home, so I would need to rent somewhere for the remainder of my premium time. That's the main problem. If I could downgrade without being forced to immediately abandon land, I'd be ok.

I'm sure I'm just being dense, but there's something here I'm not following: Why would you need to downgrade to avoid the auto-renewal? I suggested simply removing the payment method from Billing information until it's time to renew as one kind of brute force approach, and I wonder why that wouldn't solve the problem: the account would simply lapse after it tried to renew without a payment method, right?

Coincidentally, a Lifehacker article just drifted through my newsfeed that recommended a one-time-use credit card number for just this kind of renewal-averse situation. Turns out they're actually called "virtual credit cards" and I actually use them every time I use Google Wallet (or Apple Pay, I suppose) tied to my normal bank credit card. (Used that way, it's a security feature because the merchant never gets a credit card number any employee can use again.)

Maybe neither of these works for this situation but I'm genuinely interested in what I'm missing.