[Updated] Billing Processing Error Update
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 6:00 PM by: jplinden[Apr. 13 @ 17:00 PDT]
“Red-X” - We found and fixed the source of this error message that some residents experienced when setting up billing information. This should no longer happen. If after today it happens, please contact support for further assistance.
PayPal - Some residents using PayPal who have not updated their billing agreements in the last two weeks have reported “No Payment Source” errors, which we are working with PayPal to diagnose and fix. In the meantime, delete the existing agreement in PayPal and set up a new payment agreement. This has successfully restored PayPal as a payment source. Accounts that go delinquent due to this error will not go into automatic hold over the weekend.
AmEx Gift Cards - Gift cards issued by American Express starting with 379014 through 379017 are not clearing through the payment processor. We are working with the processor and American Express to diagnose and correct this.
For other billing specific errors, the recommendations below have proven successful. Thanks as always for your patience and understanding.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Most of the issues related to last week’s changes to the billing processing system have been addressed. There are two “Delete & Update Credit Card Info” failures that may still occur:
“Update Pending” - Residents who have attempted to update their billing information and have waited at least five minutes for a confirmation without success should call the support line. Go to the support tab at secondlife.com or paste this link and scroll down for the appropriate number: http://secondlife.com/community/support.php. After confirming account ownership, we will delete the billing information from our system. This will delete all billing information, including PayPal. Once the billing information is deleted, the resident should delete cookies and re-enter their billing information. Once complete, wait five minutes for the confirmation notification. In most cases, the error will be corrected. If after five minutes, “Update Pending” has not refreshed, it can also mean the issuing bank may have declined the set-up transaction. The card-holder will need to contact their card issuer for further assistance. It should not take five minutes to update billing information, but it can. One source of this error may be related to aborting one setup and initiating another while the first is in-process.
“Red X” - Holding the shift key and clicking reload should resolve this error. This may need to be done more than once. If it does not resolve it, contact us at support.
We also had reports today of an issue with PayPal billing agreement creation. This was a brief disruption and should now be restored.
We continue work to isolate the sources of these errors and will have these functions fully restored as soon as possible. Thanks as always for your patience and understanding. Thanks too to the teams who are working tirelessly to find and fix these errors.
April 10th, 2007 at 6:08 PM
Any news on using throwaway credit cards/gift cards not connected to a specific address or name to pay for SL? I’ve been trying to use mine since Thursday, April 5, but my payment info still shows as pending, and the billing page continually declines the card, though it does have a positive balance.
April 10th, 2007 at 6:21 PM
Yay billing error update.
But oh look. Everyone is getting held online. What are the lindens to do?
April 10th, 2007 at 7:19 PM
I did NOT attempt to change my billing information, but it is gone anywhay, WHY and WHERE to?Reported last week to support and billing, no answer so far.Is second life secure???
April 10th, 2007 at 8:21 PM
Even after my account summary changes from ‘update pending’ to listing the card type, the billing information page still says I have no payment info on file and to add a card. When I try a transaction to buy Linden Dollars, it won’t let me…it is not a problem with my card.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:25 PM
I don’t know what you’re still thanking the tireless Lindens working to fix these errors for, since YOU are the ones ruining it in the first place. With every update there are more problems and things need to be fixed. Then why update after all? With every attempt to update my payment info I feel that it was being leaked out more, since I don’t know for God’s sake where those information could have gone to.
We are talking serious security matter here, so you guys had better stop fooling around before the residents wil alll leave SL for good .
April 10th, 2007 at 8:25 PM
I have been trying to upgrade my account since the 3rd of april. my credit card info was there. now i dont see it, only that i have a paid account. this is very frustrating. I am wondering how secure this game really is. There are just too many major problems. And the last thing I need is someone going into my RL account.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:01 PM
This is not a solution to the problem in any way.. calling the help lines will just make is have to wait longer. What about prepaid cards such as those i have been using to buy and do things to pay for this… Game. Why dont you just re set to the other set up, there wre no problems with it in any fashion.. Or is this some way to further narrow down who plays and who dosent. Seriously now this is pretty messed up. We dont need to re, re Re do our account data it just needs to be fixed.. look for reicent changes and apply them on your end that is a lot more easier then having millions or thousands of people calling constantly and complaining about thier imaibty to pay for bills or things
April 10th, 2007 at 9:38 PM
i still have the problem i can’t go premium or even pay L$ its really anoying when it will be ok please if you know it don’t keep this in secret !
April 10th, 2007 at 9:39 PM
There is still a problem guys, I’ve been selling and buying Linden dollars for 3 years and it’s not allowing me to buy because it’s saying my payment info is not updated. I updated with my newest credit card and my paypal account has never changed and still it refuses to sell LD to me. Please address this issue.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:26 PM
*lol* five Minutes? I’ve been waiting about five DAYS without anything happen! Why i’m forced to enter credit card informations to visit the forums?
Erm.. It’s: “Please make sure, that [...] You have valid payment info on file for your account, if your account was created after August 20, 2006. You can update your payment information here.”. And i can only submit the payment info form, if i filled out credit card information. Ergo, i’m forced to enter credit card informations (i don’t even OWN a credit card), to visit the forums.
Yeah, i know, i’m repeating, but your billing system is such ridiculous!
April 11th, 2007 at 12:49 AM
My avatar is Anderson Toll, I´m from, I stay more one week with out login in second life, I´m not a premium, I dont have lands, I dont have nothing, I just have my objects in my inventory.
I like do a premium account in Second Life Brazil - http://www.secondlifebrasil.com.br but i have this problem more a one week and the support dont do anything for help me.
Login filed - Plesase visit website to renew your membership, BUT I´M NOT A PREMIUM TO RENEW MY ACCOUNT !!!
Thanks a lot for help me !!
April 11th, 2007 at 1:06 AM
At Last!!! a hint of an acknowledgement that something is wrong… thankyou for that now let me ask you ?
What is “Red X” is this some piece of Lindenian jargon? can’t you talk in clear understandable English that people who are fairly new to the grid can understand.
However 5 days on and 1 simple irrefutable fact remains. I still can’t upgrade my account and when I try to Create a NEW premium account it doesn’t let m because it won’t even ask for my credit card details.
And urging customers to contact the servce help lines/ support facilities only add salt on a very open sore… your support facilities suck. I’ve been waiting 2 days for a response to my last enquiries.
Looks to me like you need to call in some kind of digital Red Adair to sort out your Red X problem otherwise your assetts are going to leech away big style
April 11th, 2007 at 1:06 AM
I updated the CC info, and after a few minutes the “pending” turned to “Visa”, but when I get into the update payment info page i see no data and the message says:
“We do not have credit card information on file for your account. You must add a credit card to your account by updating your payment information below.”
It’s a long time I’m a premium member with info used, and it worked at least for the increase USD credit, so the CC is ok, how comes no info on file then? What shouls I do? *puzzled*
April 11th, 2007 at 1:19 AM
paypal… so is this why every other time i try to transfer money from my SL account to my paypal account it gets denied? I emailed billing about this ummm 3 weeks ago with no reply.
Would be nice to have the reason why anything got denied on the website for us to read instead of pondering it.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:21 AM
and update account…. heck im trying to update my trading limits 2 weeks later and still no email saying yes or no you can or can’t update your trading limits. 2 weeks is a long time to wait on something so serious.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:27 AM
Has anyone been sacked for all this bill processing fiasco yet? I’m voting with my feet. I won’t be investing another cent here until I see a big all clear and start reading som happy blog responses
April 11th, 2007 at 2:00 AM
What about all those of us who didn’t get our introductory L$250? Will we ever get it? I had to upgrade to premium just to be able to take part in this so-called life - nice welcome, thanks guys.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:57 AM
Lasher, you said it! There are so much offers to buy L$ from private people (313 L$ about one Euro, thats 1.33 US-Dollars, sold in packages by 5000 L$ is the best offer i know, and the best about: It just works!).
There is no reason to purchase a premium account, because, that, what i get is less that, what i could from other users for the same amount of money. Renting some land is very easy too. I got some nice offers to buy some land.
At all, if i don’t get me a premium account nor using Lindex, i’ll get more land and L$ for my money, But with the account, i want to support Linden Lab and SL! But, if they don’t want my support, i’m not willing to invest any more of my time nor my money in this ridiculous billing stuff here at this website!
It could so f’cking easy! Every stupid dingbat can set up a PayPal billing method, why Linden Lab can’t?
April 11th, 2007 at 4:33 AM
I have the same problem as #5… “Your account has been disabled, go to secondlife.com and renew your membership.” Maybe if I actually could access my account information I could! Instead the “My Account” page just comes up with an error saying “We are unable to process your request, please contact support.” So I did.
I emailed support, which told me to call the office, which told me to email the abuse manager. It’s been a week now and still no response from said abuse manager. Dang it, what am I going to have to do to get my account back? This is getting ridiculous.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:48 AM
I am having a simuliar problem as #5 & #11….
My billing info took over a week to process….My account was disabled…I updated my info and on the website it FINALLY says I am active! BUT….the kicker….I still can’t log on. When I try to log on SL (not the website) “Your account has been disabled, go to secondlife.com and renew your membership.”
This is frustrasting! I have called support, I have left messages (no return phone calls!). I have emailed support…and gotten AUTOMATED emails response with NO reponse updates on what is going on!
I want this fixed! I refuse to pay for a service that I can not access! I am donwgrading to a Basic Account!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 11th, 2007 at 5:01 AM
LOL … I´m so courous about a propper fix!!!
April 11th, 2007 at 5:50 AM
Do you mind giving back my 4 dollars you guys took off of my credit card to confirm the credit card???? Due to the fact I had to re-enter the billing info 4 times and it still does not work!!!!!!!! After 3 days. Charged my credit card 1.00 per time i had to re-enter it to get it to work!!!!!!!! And still you claim I can’t buy lindens because my billing info supposdly isn’t correct. Well ya if thats true how did you take 4.00 off my card??? I refuse to re-enter my info so you can take another 1.oo off my card because of your screw ups!!!!! This is ridiculous
April 11th, 2007 at 7:26 AM
I have the same issue as #1 above. I can’t use my $25.00 American Express gift card to purchase Lindens. I’ve always done it this way since as I don’t trust my real credit card to any online place. I need Lindens now…….
April 11th, 2007 at 9:14 AM
I try to buy Linden $ since monday, but it is impossible. My credit card is avalaible since june 07 and I have no problem to buy on other sites. (Excuse my english) GK
April 11th, 2007 at 9:33 AM
To Vixen, Valeria and Garance: Search for Cyrus Maroon in-game, and ask him, how to purchase 5000 L$. (I don’t want to tell the URL to the site here, because i think, that the moderator of this blog won’t set this comment online then *g*)
5000 L$ are about 21 US-Dollars plus PayPal fees.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:59 AM
gee, it only took 6 months of complete hell for all these new people to hop aboard the ‘holding onto my money’ bandwagon. My RL daughter and I stopped funding the Lab back after the major problems in September-October and things have not gotten any better - and it doesn’t look promising for the near future.
I believe the Lab needs to reread the original project goals for SL and rethink the strategy they have recently decided to take. They are taking far too much away from those people that make up the support base for their paychecks and offering nothing in return except some highly polished turds.
I remember when EA did nearly the same thing with Earth and Beyond. Adding tons of eye candy and GUI decorations to try and compensate for a bug infested product. It will only work for so long, as it did for them. But, then again, they say history repeats itself.
Perhaps if Labs fixed the product, they would have a larger support base of ‘premium’ customers and wouldnt have to cut back on all the necessities like actual timely support. Heck, if the product was FIXED, you wouldn’t need as much invested in the tech support aspect because people wouldn’t need to call on a Linden after every prim rez or teleport attempt or L$ purchase. Think about that.
April 11th, 2007 at 10:38 AM
Shenrock: hey, were you one of those predicting the demise of Second Life two years ago? You sound familiar.
April 11th, 2007 at 10:58 AM
i still cant teleport, pay or send objects to anyone on the grid… been 2 days now. why done we adress these issues as well…i seee nonthig here about them.
April 11th, 2007 at 11:11 AM
Larry, yesterday i was effected by the problem descrbed here:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/08/expect-occasional-problems-today/
My amount of L$ was not shown (not even 0), and i couldn’t teleport. I recoinnected three times, at the second time all my clotehs were changed to something complete black outfit, i do not own. not only black clothes, it looked like “missing” or “replaced” all textures with plain black color, and removed all prim objects, i had on.
On April 8, 2007 12:13PM PDT Robin Linden wrote: “We’re investigating the origin of the problem. In the meantime, any resulting issues should self-correct within 15 to 30 minutes”, On April 9, 2007 1:56PM PDT he wrote: “There haven’t been any further failures in the search databases.”, and yesterday, somewhat around 22 PM Central European Time it was STILL messed all up…
Yeah, i’m repeating over and over again, but this all is sooo ridiculous…
April 11th, 2007 at 11:25 AM
I have been trying since my usual billing date, the 7th of each month, to get LL to bill PayPal. When I send information to the Lindens, I’m told that PayPal is not doing ‘their share’ whatever that means!
I have updated my information with PayPal two or three times now, and they still tell me that Linden has NOT billed them for my regular tier fee, and I know I have an upcoming membership fee on the 17th.
In the almost three years I’ve been a member, I have NOT failed one time to pay any fees associated with my membership at SL…using the SAME accounts, and the SAME email addy.
When I call SL in CA and ask to talk to a supervisor, I’m told ‘there are no supervisors’…come on, I’ve worked in a customer relations call center before…there’s ALWAYS a customer service supervisor, sometimes as many as FOUR!
Now, I face having my service turned off AGAIN as it was in March for non-payment.
It’s not bad enough we have to put up with extreme lag, which makes me NOT want to shop EVER AGAIN…now their ‘bugs’ have to invade my PRIVACY with PayPal!
Get with the program, LL–if you WANT our money, at least make it tenable to do so…I’M willing! I HAVE been for almost 3 years!
April 11th, 2007 at 11:55 AM
Most of the issues have been addressed have they? Interesting. Tell me ‘jplinden’, have you ever considered taking up a career in the creative writing field? Fantasy Fiction maybe?
My Premium payment and Private Island Fees for April, which were due today, were charged and paid yesterday, yet still show as due today!
That may be your idea of ‘addressed’, but it certainly isn’t mine.
Come on, recurring charges via CC as an online transaction really ISN’T rocket science. The rest of the Web has it pretty much off pat and has for over 10 years - what is the problem here?
I mean, if your people can’t ‘get’ it, there are plenty of people who do, just bring in someone competent. Jeez! there are even books on the subject!
April 11th, 2007 at 12:06 PM
This problem is not effecting everyone. My RL daughter can purchase lindens on Teen SL just fine. However, only once when we logged in to help her purchase there was no credit card information so we redid it. I have not tried to buy any lindens as I have been getting my weekly stipend from SL. I am sure the problem is a localized one…. perhaps it is only for certain banks or type of credit cards…. SL really needs to narrow down the cause of this. It can not be all of us or my RL daughter would not be able to buy lindens on a regular basis.
For SL customer service not to return messages from people that have been charged on their credit cards or billed over the limit is ridiculous!!! They must reply and that is stealing… in the case of only $4 or $400 it does not matter the amount I would be contacting your bank about it and see if they can assist you in pulling your money back from them since they obviously refuse to reply.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:37 PM
Ingenious!
Linden erros in the insecure system kicked my friends CC-info completely - land trading is impossible for him now.
Support request gets no Answer.
Linden seems to be even incapable to give their own web adress correctly… that is realy sad. Trying the “http://secondlife.com/community/support.php.” - gives Error 404!
Lindens, that is no way to go on with your customers! You are massively depending on Customers who trust to the CC-Information they give to you.
Check this Issues as fast as possible - and there is life outside the US! Seems, european residents never get any support, he?
April 11th, 2007 at 3:50 PM
“CANNOT BUY NOW:
Couldn’t purchase currency. Failed to bill your account. Please double click your account’s payment settings.”
===
We sign up to play a game, and are met with lag, billing problems and a half a dozen or more problems. We the customers are expected to do what?… nothing?…wait it out?… These continual problems are NOT what I signed up for. I came to enjoy myself away from 1st life.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:47 PM
Shalori you have summed it up well. I am experiencing the same problems concerning my credit card.
April 11th, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Your request has been assigned an ID of [rt.lindenlab.com #776132].
I am still waiting answer.
best…..
April 11th, 2007 at 7:14 PM
Credit card still does not work-7:02PM SL. Why tell us to call 800# if u guys can’t do much? I call, Linden resets, doesn’t work and I’m told, sorry thats all He can do. Sheesh? I was able to set up the paypal later as an alternative on my own, but tonight, hours later, I still can’t purchase $ inworld! I’m running low on cash, Linden support tells me I’m in errors, (cause I can’t update my account, with the same card I’ve had on file!) Sorry, but this is really frustrating.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:43 PM
@27 Azrael: No, not 2 years. About 8 months ago (or about the time the Labs switched from the forums to this silly blog) My daughter forsaw things beginning to worsen.
Clues were a serious increase in grid attacks, the account folley of the web being hacked, the Lindens beginning to say that certain forums were being closed due to being ‘outdated and unused’ (namely the help and gripe type forums). Slowly things began to degrade. More and more blog comments from unsatisfied customer support users, the same bugs being reported after every patch/update (3 of which are reported by me faithfully after every patch but never addressed or even put into the ‘known issues’ page that hasnt been updated in like forever)
It was great that they shoved the client code out into the PD arena, however, imho, using a wiki style presentation is also silly. The new bug jira is far too complicated for the average user. The moral of this paragraph? Each and every thing the Labs has changed over the past 6-8 months have seemingly been designed to make things harder for the customer to find information, feedback on that information and file legitimate complaints. While I also see that it greatly reduces the amount of whining that they have to hear, it is simply not fair to those of us that do not (normally) bitch and moan at every turn.
I still believe in the original goals and mission statement that drew me to this game. I fear, however, that the dream that was sold to us is long gone, never to be seen again, at least not to the extent we all were led to believe a year or two ago.
Something has changed, internally. That something appears to be for the worse for all of us and for the livelyhood of the Labs itself. While many of the choices made in the last several months have been GOOD ones, they have, each, been made at a very inappropriate time. For instance, the unverified signups. Great idea; wrong time to impliment it. The servers and databases are still far from being up to snuff enough to handle the massive influx that ensued.
While I still feel that the life of SL under the umbrella of Linden Labs has seen its glory days come and go, I truely hope that folks take up the reigns of the 2 open source projects (client and server) and show the Labs just how things should be done.
I, myself am no programmer. Last time I did any coding was under MS DOS 6.x and Windows 3.11 - called QBasic. But that doesn’t stop me from believing in a goal.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:56 PM
I experienced the “no credit card info” on file error message–with a valid credit card on file. Went thru all the steps needed to correct the bug. After a few hours of aggravation–I was able, once again, to buy lindens.
However, the timing of the experience was dreadful. I standing with my new landlords attempting to pay for a long-term lease on a commercial property when it occurred. Luckily one of them had just tackled the same error problem. He believed me. If he had not had his own round of frustration over it, I could easily have lost the lease.
I have suffered the common bugs of inventory losses unreplaced, crashes, greyed out buttons, log-in hassles, copybot fears and every other inconvenience associated with being an SL resident without complaint. Screwing up my credit card registration and preventing me from accessing my own money, well I don’t take this well at all. This bug BUGS me hugely.
Why? Because every reputable web-based business takes care to keep customer confidence high over their MONEY.
LL, you are pushing my money button with this bug. It reminds me that my money is not SAFE with you.
My husband suggested I get a low-limit credit card used only for SL so that when inevitably something else goes wrong–I can’t lose too much money. (you know the security of your financial information must be at high risk when a bug like this one happens.)
I thought a low-limit credit card was a good idea–and passing it along for others consideration.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:06 PM
Shalori Reports:
>“CANNOT BUY NOW:
>Couldn’t purchase currency. Failed to bill your account. Please double click your
>account’s payment settings.”
I am getting the same error. I run a RL business inside SL, have a premium account, was unable to pay my tier fee due to this “bug”, and would have lost my lease had it not been for my virtual neighbor who kindly stepped in and paid my tier fee.
Needless to say I am furious. Get. This. Fixed.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:47 PM
I cancelled my credit card that I was using the last time LL screwed up and people had access to our details. Since then, I’ve not trusted them, they’re not professionals, the customer care shows that. I now use a separate card, one that is set up to only allow money out of it which I’ve put in a few days before. It’s a pain but as LL so obviously cant be trusted, its the only way I feel safe. If I get charged even a penny without me authorising it, I’ll take action without a second thought. Theft is a crime anyway you look at it, and taking money without say so is theft
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/10/billing-processing-error-update/#comment-212395
I hope you get some kind or refund. thats really not good customer service, LL!!
April 11th, 2007 at 11:32 PM
sitting here tapping fingers on desk…well Lindens what have you got to say? when are we going to get a response?
April 11th, 2007 at 11:52 PM
I don’t know what issues you are saying have been almost cleared up, but I can list what hastn’t been…
My neighbor can’t register a new account
Teleporting is haphazzard at best….
Still limited support for VISTA…thay call me “Crash” now
Lag is going up, up, UP!
and let’s not even start with the credit card issue….
Please, we have invested MILLIONS of dollars collectivly, aren’t we worthy of a product that works?
April 12th, 2007 at 12:00 AM
I Tried to update my billing information, and it seem to go ok. but after checking my account again no card type was blank. Then i tried to buy some Lindens but it failed to No payment info error.-
I wanted to make sure that i wasn’t billed anything and wen’t to check my RL bank account. Guess what, i was billed 2 times 0.76€=1US$ ! Seems that validating card costs you 1$, even if it don’t make it valid payment method! Only worrying thing here is that IT DOESN’T SAY IT ON THE BILLING UPDATE PAGE! At least we should be informed about the costs.
After billing me 2$ account still says that i don’t have any card avaible to buy L$, if i don’t have any card avaible how on earth they could bill me 2$ ?
I know that it’s my own fault to even try entering CC info, but i was quite suprised about that 2$ bill even when my card wasn’t accepted.
Now i cleared all credit information from my account.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:08 AM
I won’t even think about going premium unless I read here or on the forums that billing issues are fixed for good. LL please set your priorities right, this is a bread and butter issue for you. Would be such a shame to see you going down the drain for something unrelated to the core competences! Ah well what am I saying, you must know that yourself. Most companies I know don’t even want to mess with that, they have it handled by their bank or a trusted service provider. Oh yes and don’t forget those living outside of the US where credit cards are not so popular or hard to obtain! I’d love to see LL accepting transfers or checks coming via XETrade, or just plain bank transfers (that’s how most Europeans pay their bills, I know it’s not so popular in the US). Anybody looking into that? Thanks!
April 12th, 2007 at 2:31 AM
is anyone else been getting TP problems?
i was trying to TP home and the game keeps logging out when i TP anywhere else
April 12th, 2007 at 2:47 AM
@Shenrock Miles
I agree with much that you said, I have only been in SL for 10-months, I joined just before the gates were opened for unverfied sign-ups (This is not a go at NPIOF). So I have seen the change in SL as a continous decline of quality while the resident numbers has increased. More residents would be really great if the quality had not suffered.
I have recently down-graded from premium and sold my land - I still love the idea of SL - but partly though a certain degree interest fatigue and partly though frustration at the state of the world I only go in-world for a couple of hours a week now.
On an optimistic note - I have noticed an interesting point in the offical SL statistics - over the last few weeks I think that the new sign-ups and those logged in over the last 60-days have peaked, so maybe as the population starts to shrink, some aspects of the old SL will return …like usablity
and LL will have a wealth of experience to maybe move SL forward into SL2 –if their business model survives. We can hope.
Thx
April 12th, 2007 at 3:42 AM
@32
Kitty the manner in which a financial institution will deal with unauthorized charges is to reverse them. Make sure you change to a different credit card first. otherwise your account will be locked and you won’t even be able to access the web page to correct it until the charges are unreversed. yes thats right. if you dare to accuse them of fraud thru legal means your not coming back to sl.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:10 AM
instead of dealin with voicechat LL should fix the real problems !!!
thank you
April 12th, 2007 at 4:33 AM
@39
“On an optimistic note - I have noticed an interesting point in the offical SL statistics - over the last few weeks I think that the new sign-ups and those logged in over the last 60-days have peaked, so maybe as the population starts to shrink, some aspects of the old SL will return”
Good try, I have an object in-world that keeps track of the daily signups and sends me a total each day. Here are the most recent five days worht of signups:
Saturday’s number of resident signups - 29333 (4-7-07)
Sunday’s number of resident signups - 29054 (4-8-07)
Monday’s number of resident signups - 30572 (4-9-07)
Tuesday’s number of resident signups - 30961 (4-10-07)
Wednesday’s number of resident signups - 29784 (4-11-07)
As you can see, apparently the same amount of residents that start the query system to choke are signing up everyday. As to the online in last 60 days, that is only updated once a day at 23:59:59 PM PDT. Some times this number goes for days without being updated, so I wouldn’t trust it much.
But this blog is about billing, which was working fine till they decided to change some hardware. How would changing the hardware cause the loss of data, isn’t this triple-backedup? It’s easy to point the fingers at others, and Linden Labs seems to be doing this. I had a verified account payment agreement through PAyPal and their site should it as active. I, however, discovered that my tier wsn’t payed. Lucky enough, I was able to sell Lindens to cover this month’s payment. I have since cancelled all agreements with LL and created a new one, according to the latest, this issue has been fixed. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and wait for May.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:48 AM
@41
Damn! I thought I saw a glimmer of hope for a bit …lol
Thanks for the correction & data though. So maybe SL will ever expand like the universe after-all
Quant
April 12th, 2007 at 6:13 AM
still I can not see my personal data i my SLprofil; I can not telepot in other land from my residence Ivory. And not anwer of my requesting helps. The ID adress assigned not accessible.
Help me please
April 12th, 2007 at 6:32 AM
Well, after trying for days to update I’ve given up.
It accepts my card, says it is pending, then later shows “Visa” as my billing method… but there is nothing more showing.
Of course I can no longer buy Lindens now on the market… but otherwise SL seems to be working as usual.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:46 AM
I can’t teleport, cross regions can’t contact Help Request it just says i’m the only one in the session, all my friends are shown offline. Nothing really is working. Whats going on!?
April 12th, 2007 at 7:55 AM
Well, I realize land issues where latency and even client crashes may be suspect. In combination with Landbaron Merlin, this has added up to $4500 US losses over the last 3 days. That ties into billing issues, I suspect.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:07 AM
FIC YOU
April 12th, 2007 at 9:38 AM
I have tried to put in my gift cad#, Debit card#, master card# which nothing works still says update pending—now i have given 3 different accounts and have no idea if any will eventually be cha=rged or what is with my information i put in!!!!!!!! Its getting really old that i cannot upgrade my account or even buy lindens!!! I have called the billing to wait 7 minutes on hold to leave a message never returned! I have emailed billing with no response in 3 days-I have tried help request only to be told to contact billing. i just wanted to get on with my SL life!
April 12th, 2007 at 10:56 AM
OK, I checked both of my accounts.
Each one tells me it has no credit card info on file.
DOES THIS MEAN IT REALLY DOESN’T HAVE MY CREDIT CARD INFO ON FILE?
Because I know that if I were to put in new credit card info for each account, it might well refuse to take it.
So I’m scared to do that.
Is my credit card info REALLY STILL IN THERE or not?
coco
April 12th, 2007 at 12:58 PM
I have a premium account, and today things are even worse. My tier fee for my office can’t be paid because I can’t buy Lindens because the billing system has been hosed. Wonderful. This really does nothing to help my business reputation., and if I lose my office space, then what? Create another account? I spent hundreds of RL dollars and manhours building this office.
What good is a premium account if I can’t get premium customer care?
April 12th, 2007 at 2:35 PM
I ended up just sending my fiance money via Paypal and having him buy and send me the Linden$ so I could cash that out and pay my tier. I’m not worried about losing land, I donate my tier to the Shelter, but they shouldn’t have to lose out just because the Lab messed up their Billing. And I am worried that LL no longer has payment info on file for me despite repeated attempts to update, trying all the workarounds, sending a support ticket, getting a reply with instructions that did not work, and still seeing an “Update Pending” message. Why fix it if it wasn’t broken? I realize it’s a scalabliity issue, but the Paypal option wasn’t broken and now it is.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:10 PM
i just loss all my lindens in world.and PLEASE.will you fix the game for once????people are com plaining everywhere!buy better servers or do something.after all,we pay to be here.at least the premium ones.and if you were expecting 5million should be prepared for 15.cause when things are good people bring other people around,and there are people leaving cause of in game frequent problems.how do you expect people to invest if things are frequently messed-up??u dnt know how many of us might be just exploring to evaluate further investments,or do you?we´re all inside the game because we love it,but you are doing and excellent job on boring people around with this issues.some group notices not working like the one on the club i manage,and that´s just a insignificant problem,lag almost everywhere,inventory losses,tp lag,several crashes,bla bla bla.and i´ve never seen more than 40,000 people online simultaneous,imagine if 500,000 remember to log-in at the same time…so please make our SL a better experience like we expect you to. ty very much 4 the attention.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:53 PM
Hello. This morning I tried to buy some lindens, which I never had a problem with before, and ran into the billing process update. Had to work with tech support to get it working again.
Now, I just happened to find out about this just by trying to buy some L$. What would have happened if it was the system trying to bill me for land tier? If the system said “No payment, no land tier” then it would be a pretty awful thing to have one’s land taken away if they thought that billing was working as normal.
I’d very much like to hear an official answer on this. Some of us own hundreds, or even thousands, of US$ in land, so this is by no means a trivial matter. I’m just glad I caught my instance of the payment glitch well in advance of my tier payment date.
Thanks,
Windy Lurra
April 12th, 2007 at 7:23 PM
Well, waited until I thought you might have the problems lined out on the new client, then finally downloaded it, it sucks worse than any of the other shit you put out, I now crash continually and can’t build. Is there anything on Second Life that works? Maybe it is time to clean house there.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:04 PM
Same problem as Eirene Janus. I’ve contacted support, got their lovely autoresponse to “expect a reply within a day” as long ago as Monday, not heard a thing. It’s not my card, its not the ‘update pending’ issue. It openly claimed to have -accepted- it, yet didn’t record it.
April 13th, 2007 at 12:11 AM
EH! RED X ????? what on earth is that - the only ‘red x’ I know about or see is the one that closes the web page - is it a way for Lindin to slam the door in our faces or what? Jargon or Gobbledegook - I dont know arrrrg
April 13th, 2007 at 12:26 AM
#63 or is that a White X oh ‘whateverrrr’
April 13th, 2007 at 1:04 AM
#63 I agree many organisations use jargon to spin bad news thus if you are not smart enough to understand what they mean then by default the problem is partly yours for being too dumm to understand that Rex X is not something we used to add to our gass to make our engines run more smoothly.
Offficial silence on this whole thread has become almost deafening whilst the collectives groans are becoming a roar.
What has happened to jplinden has he been given the high jump? or done a runner with the funds?
The keywords “Head” and “Sand” come to mind
April 13th, 2007 at 3:41 AM
I frankly am tired of all of these billing problems , I am not also being charged a foreign currency fee for anything I buy with second life. I never used to get charged that on any of my credit or bank cards. This is getting out of hand as of this moment I am not buying any more lindens from secondlife.com and I am downgrading my account because it doesn’t really matter to have premium. I will give my business to slexchange.com / ginko / apez and many other wonderful linden exchange services on second life. I don’t mind paying a buck fifty extra for lindens from slexchange at least I have no problems with billing.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:43 AM
I am astounded not only that this problem still persists, but that no one from Linden Labs has weighed in on the issue.
They say its fixed - it obviously isn’t. I’ve been trying to get my teenaged daughter an account now on the teen grid for almost a month; the process doesn’t work, and such suggestions as we’ve gotten from support either ignore the description of the problem or fail to produce results. We’ve tried following the suggestions of support (they want to treat it like a lost password, but since the account has never been properly created this tack is simply nonsense), and we even got the process to complete recently validating the account with paypal, but the account is still not active after three days.
What the hell is going on up in Mountain View? Did the staff desert the comapny en-masse? Somebody needs to own this, or its gonna be a really black day at Linden Labs.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:50 AM
#65 Ah well you see I’m english and in England we use petrol not gas and probably a different additive - (anyway, I only care about the colour of the car lol)- so I wouldn’t know about the connection - And there is ‘another world’ besides the USA who may not understand ‘in-house’ references.
But on a serious point - why is it sometimes I can buy $L even though it says ‘no info’ blah blah! and at other times I can’t when it says it has my card - stranger and stranger (adjective not noun lol)
April 13th, 2007 at 8:18 AM
This is happening to me now with Paypal, i haven’t been able to transfer any funds all day
April 13th, 2007 at 9:43 AM
I am a professional Web developer with a stack of clients dying to set up in SecondLife, but at this point, with the way the billing/payments system is f#(&ing up it would be negligent of me to recommend they do so - get your act together Linden Labs - even Microsoft offer better support!!!
April 13th, 2007 at 9:46 AM
Just so everyone knows, they’re not precisely sleeping at the switch…I just got email from JP to assist me with my account creation issues.
Thanks JP!
Laz
April 13th, 2007 at 9:57 AM
Not fixed yet kids!! It’s been a week that I cant buy lindens neither by credit card nor gift card. I’ve sent 4 letters too and no reply. I NEED to know if you (Lindens) are discontinuing the use of gift cards and disposable credit cards? I have a credit card but much preffer paying through gift cards so I dont put myself in dept. If any residents know the answer, please IM me and leave a message if Im not here. Thanks
April 13th, 2007 at 10:20 AM
I’ve updated my cc a FEW TIMES. It took long enough for me to credit my balance by about 50 bucks, but made me do it in $25 increments. What a PITA. Then it wouldn’t work anymore, said it had no CC info on file. I’m bout ready to cancel my account all together
April 13th, 2007 at 10:41 AM
Thank you JP for getting back to me!! I Appreciate it
April 13th, 2007 at 11:39 AM
just ran head on into this today. Tried to buy Lindens in SL and got denied. Now my Paypal account is suspended for suspected 3rd access today. What are the odds? Sounds like I got suspended trying to access Paypal through SL.
April 13th, 2007 at 12:15 PM
i think sl is a really good program but i too have the same problems but i know the servers need to be updated and cleaned as well as peoples personal computers/and the servers are of not equal compacity resulting in lag too and people need to adjust their settings on bandwidth couse standing next to someone and your avatar gets sluggish and if the world owners were to defrag/clean their systems/ive worked around most of them by maxing out page file of 4096 on c and d setting up sl then copying so to another drive then add-remove sl and go to documents/settings and delete all sl from c drive including all registry values create shortcut to desktopfrom d sl and play/works faster less lag and is more responsive/dont forget to manualy copy your vb dlls and open al and gl to d sl folder reboot computer not just sl and go to task manager and shut down all unnessesory programs then defrag then start sl and let it load and defrag while its loading from the server/your lists and stuff are on the server and is updated and any corruptions you had like textures are gone enjoy//its working for me like and i crash less/but my problem is im on the basic and dont want to lose everything ive accomplished couse i cant upgrade to premium/i click continou no cc info on file and when i want to give cc info new name ect/but all in ann its not a full setup offline game its online and constantly changing and peoples world scripts need to be consistant
but hey please dont give up/its big and complicated profram to run and maintain when your shoes fit on monday but your feet grew anf friday their too small see.
April 13th, 2007 at 3:59 PM
Does anyone know where I can get the previous client, I need to uninstall this piece of shit “upgrade” since I crash 10 seconds after getting online. Of course, it happens more often with the 35K+ online, but now it is EVERY time.
April 13th, 2007 at 5:05 PM
I always like to speak as loudly when I get helped as I bitch when I can’t get get help
JP is on the job, and making things happen. We got my daughters teen grid account working as of a few mins ago.
GO JP!
Hopefully he’ll be able to help some of the rest of us out soon too.
Cheers!
Laz
April 13th, 2007 at 7:36 PM
wow this sounds bad… my account just f****d up too as of yesterday. I get this message when I try to sell my L$:
This transaction would exceed your daily trading limit by US$XX.XX.
Your daily trading limit is US$0.
• The system encountered an error while processing your order, please try again
up until yesterday I had no problem selling L$ everyday…
guess I am joining a rather large club here. I hope this gets patched together again soon.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:27 PM
I got the same problem that WADE1 Jya (81), can’t sell my L$.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:49 PM
Well. I’m pretty worried that my premium charges and tier are going to come due pretty soon here, and I haven’t heard ANYTHING FROM THE LINDENS regarding the fact that I don’t seem to any longer have payment on file, yet I’ve read not to mess with it, because if you do try to update it, it will erase what should be there, and then it won’t take the new one.
So I’ve done nothing. Hoping the info really IS in there, or they will find it when they need to charge me.
I have to say, I have truly never had such a problem paying a bill in my life, not to mention never having been presented with such a terrifying situation that I’m scared to touch it.
I just don’t know what to do.
coco
April 14th, 2007 at 12:52 AM
I hope the Lindens don’t plan on charging me any fees this month, I can’t play if I can’t buy currency and I have wasted many hours in the past couple of weeks.
IT AINT FAIR TO CHARGE WHEN THE GAME AIN’T WORKING
Do the Lindens actually do any substancial testing before doing an implementation??? For the sake of the great prophet Zarquon, you are dealing with people money here! It is not appropriate to release software that deals we people financials if it hasn’t been thoroughly and robustly tested! Have you tried a bug bounty on the beta program?
SL is a GREAT CONCEPT, shame the implemation is not living up to expectations.
Magi.
April 14th, 2007 at 1:08 AM
WARNING: WARNING: WARNING: WARNING:
Be VERY careful about purchasing Lindens on eBay to get round the problem, it appears alot of the vendors do not already have the Linden$ they are auctioning/selling. After waiting a couple of days for a vendor to deliver I have been told they are out of stock!!
Yeah right, I bet they just weren’t planning to purchase the Linden$ till after the auction and have been caught out with the same problem as the rest of us!
Magi.
April 14th, 2007 at 1:57 AM
Linden Purchase problems, TP problems, search menu problems - the list is endless…..this has been going on too long.
April 14th, 2007 at 4:05 AM
Spent 20 minutes on the phone to be shuffled off to a automated attendant *Shakes his head in disgust* If I ran my RL business this way I would be broke and on the street…….Oh wait I am at least in SL…..I have been using the same credit card on my account since day one and when the billing was switched to a U.K. company my Bank decided not to honor these transactions……You may ask why….”I did” My answer was that this billing company is listed as a on-line gambling site and my rules forbid my card from being used as such…….The question I ask now is “Am I really gambling if I continue to use this service known as “Second Life”
A month ago I would of and did defend this rapid growth but today as it hits me personally I have my doubts.
April 14th, 2007 at 5:07 AM
Dear LL
As of today 14th April at 12.31 GMT i tried to increase my credit balance and it said i am not allowed to have 60USD as its over my limit by 35 USD which we all know is BS. I have requested a review though why i am requesting a review for something that LL has broken i dont know i dont want any extra trading limits i just want the normal limits i was on to be restored not have to ask LL while we know all these emails wont get read as they is just to many imho.
I am away this week and wanted to ensure my account had a positive balance to cover things whilst i am away.
I dont suppose its to much to hope to get some resolution to this problem before Monday? or should i just forget it as you dont offer any Customer Service at the weekends?
Please fix this as this is a serious issue as reading the blog we are all in the same boat and not to fix the financial engine for here is not a good idea, especially as that is the main point in all your advertising blurb for here, but i suppose now we are at the weekend and we all know that there is no customer service for here then
LL used to listen to its customers but for me, recently ive seen just a steady decline from Lindens that cared to Lindens that just now placate the membership base as problems occur.
I just wish that LL would be HONEST with us so at least we all could make future plans about here and at least know where we all stand. We can all be truthful but make that truth serve our purpose, but being honest takes guts, so how about it LL? we all care passionately about this game and i think if we had more honesty from the company im sure that you would get more support and help as we all want to improve here in some small way
April 14th, 2007 at 7:11 AM
Adding my spleen to the others… been tying to buy some new land for a week now… but sl won’t allow me to buy Lindens. Never had problems… still on same card… but keep missing packet after packet of land. Same issue as many above.
Throughly hacked off!
April 15th, 2007 at 2:47 PM
I went through this process with support, and now have a new billing agreement in place, but my exchange limit, despite being 180 days old, has reverted to only 25USD!!! The billing system is completely fuxored.
April 16th, 2007 at 12:40 AM
It would be very nice to see a message from a Linden on here of how long we might have to wait for this to be fixed? After notifying LL through all available channels whats the expected wait time before i can sell L$ normally again?
April 16th, 2007 at 2:20 AM
Just twelve days without billing information; getting the Red X page everytime i try to update.
Several e-mails sended to billing@secondlife.com and support. I’m also wondering if Lindens are thinking in rewarding us for the damages we are suffering. I wasted a lot of precious time and lost great opportunities because of this neverending issue. Excuse my english.
April 16th, 2007 at 8:55 AM
HELP!!
My account will be closed-have tried for WEEKS to pay but to no avail!
Have called and sent several emails to LL’s-no responses. What am I supposed to do?!
April 16th, 2007 at 9:48 PM
I have being trying for the pass few weeks to get help from tech support to ,explaing why my account is desaibel.
n need to renew my account…i cant even get to my account billings.
its not abailabel,i cant see my biiling and cant log in on my account.
i being verry patiend waitting ,i resieved an email but no help..
i have about $4000sl dlls 2 lands n building and a renting a condo,no mentioning all the money i have spend shopping..
i would not pay eny extra or late fees as i can t see my billing account and my rents are do and have no acces to loging in or account status is gonna be 3 weeks already….
all i ask is guidesness to fixing this problem and my account back how i left off.
i can wait for rest of it as long as i can log in to see my friends and my lands and money….please i really will apreciated eny help or info sent my way…thank u verry much ..
i understand the that are in fact problems but dnt want to end up getting taking advantage twise or worse then already seems… ty aging,…a.s.a.p pleasee…. celina cortes
April 17th, 2007 at 12:28 AM
this obviously aint gonna be sorted anytime soon with all these complaints, i too am un able to purchase lindens using paypal with my switch card is back up funding. this has worked fine for me in the past so dunno wats wrong now, not had any response from support.
i need to get lindens asap so where else is trusting i can buy them from?
April 17th, 2007 at 8:56 AM
Yay! Very cool. JP Linden is very cool & fixed my problem very promptly. Thank you JP.
April 18th, 2007 at 4:15 AM
I m having same problem…Emailed billing& support several times,and nothing.Update Pending is all I get,and even after they deleted my info,and told me to try again,nothing…still update pending and red cross error saying they can’t contact their credit card processor.
SO JP LINDEN PLEASE HELP!
April 18th, 2007 at 11:08 PM
My last credit card purchases went through on your end I recieved the credits, account said you charged my credit debit card but on bank end nothing has went through in last 8 days from Linden labs or more.
I sent this to billing.
I wonder though when charges are going to be deducted or when? At least greatful I didn’t have the reverse of this problem or not be able to proccess anything but I did have tiny error right after this happen where I wasn’t able to make any more purchases.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:18 AM
I HAVE BEING WAITING FOR INFO ON MY BILLING ON MY ACCOUNT SINCE IT HAS BEING DESAIBEL AND SAYS NEED TO RENEW ACCOUNT???? .IT DOSENT HAVE ENY INFO OR CAN NOT BE ACCES AT THE MOMENT .I RECIEVED AMY CC BILL AND THERE IS A CHARGE OF $287.00 RL DLLS IN MY BILL THAT I DINT ALLOWED TO WITHDRAL
I MUST SAID I DID SPENT ABOUT $75.00 RL DLLS .WHY IS MY MONEY STILL BEING WITHDRAWL AND HAVNT HAD ENY ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT FOR 3-4 WEEKS. I HAVE 2 LANDS (BUILDING) RENTING A CONDO,AND HAD $3000 OR MORE SL DLLS IN MY ACCOUNT.
I HAVE OPEN A SECOUND ACCOUNT AND WAS OK FOR A WEEK NOW IT TELLS ME I CANT ACCESS SL 1.1.4.1 FROM MY COMPUTER ,(WHY????) I DOWNLOAD THE TEST 1.15.1 AND IM THERE BY MYSELF CAN NO LONGER SEE MY FRIENDS,CANT TP ENY WHERE AND ALL MY OLD LAND MARKS DONT EXIST????
\
I HAVE BWEING PATIEN FOR THE PAST 3-4 WEEKS I WILL ATLEAST LIKE TO KNW INFO ABOUT MY ACCOUNT N $$$$$$$$ I INVESTED ALOT OF MONEY AND TIME ON SL I WILL APRECIATE IF USL HAVE THE CLASS TO GIVE ME THE RUN AROUND AND UNSTED OF FIXING THE PROBLEM HAS GAVE ME MORE EVERY TIME I SUNMIT A COMMENT ..MAYBE ALL THIS VOLENTIERS DNT REALLY KNW WHAT THEY ARE DOING AND RESPONDING TO ALL SL ACCOUNT W NONE SENCE INFO OR SOLUTIONS…..
I WOULD REALLY LIKE SOME REAL AND HONEST RESPOND I WILL SEE WHAT THE NEXT RESPOND IS GONNA BE OR REALLY STAR DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS ISSUES (SO NOT FAIR FOR THOUSANDS ORE MILLLIONS OF US) I WILL APRECIATE IF FIX THE PROBLEM AS SOON AS U CAN OR BE ABEL TO GIVE ME ACESS BACK TO MY 1.14.1
I UNLOADED - N DOWLOAD IT AGAIN (NOTHING) THANK U FOR TIME
PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT ALL OUR COMMENTS SERIOUSLY …..
THANK YOU I WILL REALY APRECIATE TO FIX THIS A.S.A.P.
SL (CELINA CORTES)
April 19th, 2007 at 7:06 PM
Still not able to use throwaway Visa card. Is this going to be fixed at all or is this LLs final word on those types of payment methods?