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By Xavier Mohr, Publisher
SLReports.net
Today was interesting to say the least. It's hard to really tell what I want to tell you without actually giving a ton away about my real life, but just bear with me and I think I can get the point across.
I walked into my home office today, as I normally do, and attempted to log into Second Life. Instead of the usual barrage of IMs that pop up when I log in, I got a different message. My account had been suspended.
Without giving away my exact account balance, I can easily say that in lindens I have an impressive six-digit figure to work with - mostly company money, but still... money. What floored me, was when I logged onto the Second Life website and found my account was suspended for $139.00. That's about L$40,000.
I knew what had happened. A little more than a week before, my real life partner lost his wallet - which contained bank and PayPal cards associated with my own primary accounts. He had not been anywhere that day, so I did then and still assume that the wallet is somewhere in the house.
Rather than going through the drama of cancelling cards and waiting about two weeks (if your lucky) for new ones, I simply withdrew some money and transferred some to savings. So, I had no money immediately available electronically. At this point it looks like I will have to cancel them anyway, but waiting to find the wallet was definitely my first choice.
It was my fault that I forgot about my upcoming Second Life billing cycle. First off, I rarely log into my SL account at secondlife.com, so it was easy to forget. Secondly, I get so much email each day that it is highly possible I deleted any payment reminder that was sent to me. Oh well. Lesson learned, but easy fix right? All I needed to do was convert some money from L$ to USD and cover the balance.
Wrong.
When your account is suspended, apparently it takes a real-life payment to get it back online. Even if you have several thousand USD worth of Lindens accumulated and only a balance of a hundred or so bucks.
My first choice to resolve the matter was to log into Concierge chat and talk to a representative. No Luck. I tried from 3:45pm to nearly 5:15pm SLT. I was connected to an operator probably 4 to 5 times, but this same operator each time would not respond to my inquiries.
I decided to go old-school on Linden Labs. I picked up the telephone and called. After about 20 minutes of waiting, a young man came on the phone. I gave him my real-life name and my Second Life name, and he immediately started answering questions about my account. Back up a step, though... this individual did not ask for an account password, last four digits of my credit card number, or ANYTHING verify that I was who I said I was. He just started talking to me about my account. Scary. Definitely not the picture of security I had hoped for with an account primarily used for business.
I was very quickly informed that they would not allow me to convert Lindens to pay my bill. Despite my glowing account history financially, I was informed that they would require an off-world payment to restore service.
I was upset. My jaw dropped. How in the world can they refuse to let you pay your bill? They allow you to convert Lindens into US Dollars when you need to cash out, or before your bill is due, but not when you owe them money.
I finally got the situation resolved. A wonderful friend on the grid graciously agreed to PayPal me $140 in exchange for the L$ equivalent. I paid the bill and sign on.
What worries me though, is how many people out there are stuck in a situation like this. Having a lot of money in SL, none in RL, and a suspended Second Life account. Although this was not the exact case with me, it seems like a person in this situation would face comparable challenges to what I faced today... not being able to gain access to their Lindens for conversion.
Nothing major, just annoying. Sometimes I don't see how Linden Labs can justify these ridiculous policies. I wonder if the 90% turnover rate of Second Life in any way helped by whirlwind customer service like this? Yeah... right.
Just a rant.
Until Next Time,
Xavier
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