LustyLexxi Larimore

As someone who has attempted a price change from the last increase, customers will go elsewhere for something cheaper. There will be those few customers that will understand and are loyal to a fault but that is not everyone. I will most likely eat that doubled processing fee to A: keep my customers happy as it is NOT their fault LL decided to increase fees B: To be competitive as possible. I get some of it because servers are expensive but damn it still hurts for small businesses that don't care about profit primarily as that is NOT what drives them -, they do what they do because they love their customers, they love SL, and love what they do regardless...it's that passion for what they do that drives them, not the profit at the end of the day BUT as someone who is that small business owner, my expenses cost real money to be able to provide the services that we do and that 3.5% for selling L$ then another 5% will addup and make it hard for us to just keep our services inworld. I don't want to have to raise my prices & lose customers in the process and I don't want to have to remove my business from SL because it cost to much to maintain my business with the fees and I wouldn't be able to simply pay at the very least the expenses that is required to be in business : Servers, paying my staff members, billing system, software upgrades, software itself to run shoutcast servers, so on and so forth. Hell, I can only imagine the impact this will take upon designers inworld as they have upload fees, marketplace fees, paying their staff if they have them, paying for their land as lot of those designers have a lot of land to be able to hold all their works of art, and etc. It just all adds up. At the end of the day though, I'll just suck it up, obviously, and eat that increase so I can keep my amazing customers happy and work on other ways to help balance that increased fee out.

I have had a discussion to a lot of my customers so I'm not alone when I say people are not at all happy all across the board. The doubling of the processing fee will hit the small businesses inworld, there is no doubt on that. I'm NOT going to change my prices because that is just unfair to my customers so I have already taken in ways to combat the increase. Hopefully others will be able to do the same. These changes just sometimes makes me wonder what LL is thinking...are they trying to chase people out of SL? There are so many people that have already left for a multitude of reasons including these issues here.

It's a bit of a big deal to small businesses inworld who want NOT to have to change their pricing. I'm a stream provider inworld and that doubled processing fee adds up. I cashout the total cost of my servers, software payments, billing system, etc all at once which makes a difference. Like what I just cashed out was only $7 in the process fee, that same amount will be now $14.00. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way because they are small too and those fees hurt while trying to maintain your pricing to keep customers happy and not broke when purchasing from them..