Phil Deakins

GingerHenderson wrote: I did try it first at the store before, then looked up the name in the marketplace and my mistake was that I did not notice the user/store was different till it was too late so I admit it was not wise in my part. But the point I am making is nothing to do with me but the fatc that it is still there for months doing this. Why didn't you buy it at the store then? You were there and it would have been much easier and quicker to buy it there. The marketplace has been killing stores and creation since it started. Anyone who wants to help creators and creation should always buy at the inworld store when there is one, and never on the marketplace. Don't find things in a store and then buy them in the marketplace. That's the wrong way round. Find them in the marketplace and then buy them in the store if there is one. It would not only have prevented you losing money and the thief gaining money, but buying inworld means that the creator gets more money than they would from a sale in the marketplace. Support creators by buying inworld.

Moni Duettmann wrote: So now my SL experience has come to a first halt after being a constant user for seven years. Neither will I use the horrible SL viewer, nor can I use an alternative viewer. My prediction, that SL would kill itself, if the company running it wouldn't concentrate on improving the viewer experience instead of going into all kinds of coul-de-sacs with fancy "game" features et al, seems to come true. You must be using a different SL to the rest of us, because SL is very much alive and well. LL's V2 was absolute garbage, but their V3 is excellent. Perhaps you haven't tried it? It does everything that a viewer should do.

If you can do what Innula suggested, it's the best way of doing it - that's create your own male alt, but as has been said, I doubt that you'd need to pay for a model. You could always go around and ask nice looking avatars if they are interested in modelling for you. Also, if you can run 2 avs, and you create a male one, you can get exactly the look you are after. I've usually used my own alts for testing couples animations and positioning them in furniture. That way, you get exactly what you want without the need of explaining it to someone else. Also nobody will get bored and disappear or chat when you want to concentrate.

Qie Niangao wrote: This tier setting thing has been confusing for a long time. What I think is supposed to happen is that the tier settings control the level at which you'll get a warning if you try to buy land that exceeds that set amount; otherwise it assumes you mean to use the tier you've set. And what you're supposed to get billed for is the largest amount of land you've owned + group-contributed at any point in the past 30 days. I suspect that some of the confusion comes from that "past 30 days" thing. People may reduce their landholdings without lowering the tier setting, get billed for the past 30 days -- during which time they actually held enough land to be billed at the set tier -- and conclude that they had to reduce the tier setting to avoid being charged. Then they lower the tier setting and the next billing date are charged less, "confirming" that reducing the tier setting was what reduced the bill, when in fact the bill was lower because of the reduced landholding from more than a month ago. tl;dr: People may get confused because Mainland is billed in arrears. Yes, I'm sure that paying for mainland in arrears can and does confuse some people. I'm not one of them though I've halved my land, knowing that the half cost won't happen until the 24th of next month. The amount I am charged for this month, on the 24th, won't change. It'll be the same as last month's cost. I think that the selected tier level really does do what it's supposed to do - warn if you are about to exceed the selected level. I'd known that from way back but, since I was having the problem of not being able to select the next level down, I didn't feel secure. And it turned out that I wasn't secure for the reason I wrote in a previous post - that I don't own the extra 10% of land that the group is allowed. The group owns it - not me. So I can't donate it. But my new donation figure included that extra 10%, so that 10% was in the next tier level up from what I intended. If I hadn't started this thread, I would have been comfortable knowing that the selected tier level isn't what's charged for, and I wouldn't have received the suggestion from Knutz. Without that suggestion, I would have got it wrong and I wouldn't have cut my tier cost for next month. I would have been paying an extra month at the higher level rate. Maybe I'd better shut up or Knutz will be wanting some commission lol.

Suspiria Finucane wrote: madman626 Fall wrote: I wondering if LL is going to try to take over the TPE`s like they did the market,, Ummm... who owns the company? You may not know that LL bought out two 3rd party shopping sites, closed one down and operated the other, which eventually became the marketplace. In that way, LL took over the market as madman626 said

lol good one!

Fruitbat Oh wrote: Podex is now closed . LL shut down the accounts . Anshex also closed . There wasn't any chance of LL closing Anshe's account because she makes so much money for LL. I'll add that this is one bit of special treatment that Anshe got from LL - not closing her account for keeping the exchange open - but I don't believe for a moment that she gets the special treatment that some people imagine she does. Anyone else in Anshe's position would have got the same special treatment this time and any other time, and anyone can get themselves into Anshe's position. Not from scratch because those days are gone, but with money.

You don't know any men, do you? What you wrote is garbage.

If I'm not mistaken, PayPal takes money from the bank account when needs, so a person would only need to have money there.

Then what they did to you was ridiculous, Lucretia. But it's LL, and ridiculous is the norm for them. In fact, what they've done to their paying customers through the years is one of the 2 reasons why I've been reducing my land, and abandoning it instead of trying to sell it.- so they'll lose some tier, at least for a while.

Someone using the av then

Doing that did allow me to change down to the $40 level option. Thank you, Knutz! And I'm pretty sure that not doing it would have caused me to pay $75 for next month. I'd donated all of the 9568 to the group when the 8704 was sufficient. I think that's due to the fact that I don't get the 10% extra - the group does - so I couldn't donate it. If I'd left it as it was, with 9568 donated by me, I would have been donating some land/tier that would have been in the $75 range. I'm still sure that checking the $40 option in the list wouldn't make any difference, and I'd only pay for what I actually used, but donating the + 10% part would have made all the difference, and I'd still have been at the $75 level.

Hmm... Thank you both for your input. Lucretia. That was a bad experience you had. Are you certain that you didn't have any group donations active at the time they charged you? I.e. did you overlook changing the group donations to zero? Knutz. I'll test that idea out. This is the 3rd time I'm halving my land in recent times, and I don't remember having this problem previously. Maybe I just took it for granted that the selected level is ignored, as I'd been told by a Linden. At the top of the Land Use Fees page, it states:- (You may remain at the higher tier level without penalty; tier fees are only charged for the total amount of land actually held within your billing cycle.) The "higher tier level" refers to the list of radio button options. It should say "land/tier" because tier can be donated to a group without the need of land to go with it.

No, ARing Governor Linden is the normal way to do it in some cases. In fact it's recommended when it's applicable. It does have the tendency to draw more attention to the problem from the AR team. Incidentally, Governor Linden isn't a person.

I'm in the process of reducing my land from 16k to 8k. All of it is group-owned and the 8k that I'm keeping must remain group-owned thoughout the process. I have abandoned enough land so that I am left with 9568 sqm:- 8192 (the 8k) + 512 (the premium tier-free allowance) * by 1.1 to arrive at the total including the 10% group bonus = 9568. That figure has been confirmed by Guy Linden. So the land itself is sorted out. What I'm struggling to do is change the data in my account's Land Use Fees page. The 1st field (Square meters owned) is 0 because all the land is donated and I don't actually own any. If I change the 2nd field (Square meters donated) to 9568 and click the 'calculate' button, it tells me that the monthly cost will be $75 - the 16k level. If I change it to 8704 instead and calculate, it tells me that the monthly cost will be $40, which is exactly what I'm after. 8704 is the amount of land without the 10% group bonus, and $40 is the 8k level. So I click the Save Changes button and I get the message that it has been saved to my account. Unfortunately, 8704 hasn't been saved to my account. When I refresh the page, the previous value is in the box. At no time did the list of options below the Save Changes button allow me to select the 8k ($40) one. At all times, it only allowed me to select upwards up but not downwards. As far as I know, the selected option in that list is irrelevant to how much I will be charged, because I will only be charged for the land I've actually used during the previous month, irrespective of what option is selected in that list. Nevertheless, I'd still like to feel really safe by changing that selection to the $40 option in advance of my billing date on the 24th. I have changed my group donation to 9568, so that isn't getting in the way. So, is there a way to change to the $40 option in the list and keep the remaining land group-owned during the process? Or will I have cross my fingers that my understanding is correct about not being billed according to that selection? ETA: On reading the text at the top of the page, it does appear that my understanding is correct, so this request for help may not have been necessary. Even so, if anyone has any insight, I'd appreciate it.

You could try ARing Governor Linden for allowing the griefing to continue for 4 days. That's what I'd do now.

One of my early thoughts about it was pretty much the same as yours - that LL wants all the commissions for themselves - just like the unscrupulous thing they did with sales, which resulted in the marketplace. But the consensus of opinion suggest something quite different, and I have to go along with that, especially since LL is talking to some of the external exchanges with a view to finding ways for them to be used.

Which confirms that the comments in this thread, about credit card usage in Europe, are meaningless The first time I ever heard of 'payday loans' was when I got a U.S. client (for seo) who was in that business. At that time, such loans didn't seem to exist here in the UK, but now they are all over the TV ads, so I assume that it has spread from the U.S. to here. Imo, they are a nasty part of life.

How to be a cool former? Take a bath in ice water

Some general comments, not specifically to Qie... 1. Europe comprises many countries, some richer and some not so well off, so the idea of credit card use in Europe doesn't make any sense. 2. Judging by my supermarket checkout experience here in the UK, I doubt that credit cards are any less used here than in the U.S. In fact, it's quite rare to see someone pay with cash. I recently started paying everything I can with cash, but that's because I saw my annual credit card statement, and the interest I paid in the year for not clearing the account each month. Not because I couldn't, but because I'm very bad at doing that sort of thing. I've become something of a rarity at supermarket checkouts 3. As Qie said, the use of a credit card actually builds a person's credit rating. That's the only reason I started to use one - after a relatively bleak period in my life when my credit rating tanked. 4. Also, as Qie said, insurance against losses through stolen cards is automatic here, so having a credit card doesn't cost anything.

Kamimatsu wrote: 5. Don't live in America? Then you can't withdraw L$ anymore. Have fun. Rubbish!

Why would anybody ban a sweet girl like you? To make up for it, I invite you to spend as much time as you like in my park. It has everything a park should have - grass, rock, rock, grass, and much much more, such as grass and rock. It's a dream park - if you like to dream about rock and grass, that is. It's a grass and rock enthusiast's paradise. From now on, you have unrestricted access to it

To answer the question in your original post... the new ToS won't cause me to do anything different. For some years I've been letting the store wind down. In the process I went from a sim, to half a sim, to a quarter sim, and now I've just squeezed the store into an eighth of a sim (8k) and I'll abandon the other eighth in a few days time, just before my billing date. So the ToS makes no difference to me at all. I don't see that the new ToS makes any difference to you either. As far as I know, you don't receive L$ for anything such as sales or rent, so it will all stay exactly the same for you. Or maybe you do rent some land out. If I were in your shoes, I'd leave things exactly as they are and see how it all pans out. Somebody posted that LL are trying to come up with ways for those who cannot now buy L$ to actually buy them, so the problems that some people currently have may be quite short-lived. You did mention your RL finances in the OP. The ToS doesn't make any difference there and your best bet is to only pay in as much as you can afford to pay in and, if that means getting rid of some land, do it. You'll still have some to see if you can sell stuff if you fancy having a go at that. To be honest, I don't see that you have a problem that you wouldn't have had if the ToS hadn't changed. Note: I do remember saying to you, some years ago, that you could capitalise on all the traffic you had with the changing rooms. If you'd done something then, you might even have got a flourishing business going, and RL finances may not now have had any significance at all :smileytongue:

Nyll Bergbahn wrote: Reminds me of the time I was looking around a large fashion store owned by a male resident who clearly thought he was God's gift to women in terms of supplying their fashion needs. He thrived on female avatars telling him in group chat how wonderful his clothes were (I suspect most were female alts of his). Anyway, seeing nothing that took my fancy, I was heading towards the exit when he sent me an IM asking why I was leaving without buying something, and could I not find something I liked? I replied politely saying no, I didn't see anything I wanted today, maybe another time, whereupon he had another go at me over not even taking the outfit from his free group gift vendor and what was wrong with it. By this time I'd had enough of this arrogant clown so just muted him and left the store and group. oooo - cynical lol But I think you were right because everyone knows that I am God's gift to women as far as fashion is concerned, simply because I've completely steered clear of that market ETA: I must admit that in my early days as a store owner, I used to watch people in the store, thinking,"Buy something!" I reminded myself of 2 TV characters in UK sitcoms. One was Auntie Wainright in Last Of The Summer Wine, and the other was Arkwright in Open All Hours. They both had the attitude that is a sin for someone to go into their shop and leave without buying anything

You can only do what you can afford to do and are able to do. But I don't understand what your problem is, Melita. It sounds like you won't be able to pay your tier, but tier is paid in US$ and not L$. How have you been paying it if the inability to buy L$ makes it not possible for you to pay it? Anyway, if you can't get the money to whoever wants it for your land's tier each month, you have no choice but to dispose of some of, or even all of, the land. If you have things you can sell, you could certainly try that. It would be a new interest for you and you can't lose by doing it if you only sell on the marketplace or on land that you would hang onto anyway.