In November 2009 it was announced that Linden Lab had struck a deal with Dragonfish, the payment processing arm of 888.com. This was discussed on the official forum back in the day. This was followed by a beta billing option entitled local payments, which you can read about here. Basically local payments allowed people to pay Linden Lab via a currency other than US Dollars, which will explain why US residents may have no idea what I’m talking about, US residents were never put in the local payments beta.
However over the last week or so, those of who were in the local payments beta, many of us not through choice, will have received an email informing us that local payments beta has ended:
Dear Ciaran
This email contains important information that affects your Second Life account and requires action in order to continue any payment transactions with Second Life.
Due to the conclusion of the Second Life local payments beta program, it is required that you add a new credit card or PayPal account by going to your billing information page on Secondlife.com.
Best Wishes,
Linden Lab and the Second Life Team
Now if you have received this email, you will have been given a date by which you need to update your billing information. This seems to suggest to me that the Dragonfish deal is at an end, although there has been no official confirmation of this, I can think of no other reason why I’d have to update my billing information again.
I know there were issues with people trying to use Paypal with the local payments system and I know there have long been complaints about billing issues, but that happens for customers whether they are using Linden Lab or local payments.
As I said, there has been no official word from Linden Lab or Dragonfish about this, so I may be miles wide of the mark, but local payments are coming to an end, let’s hope there aren’t too many problems as people switch their billing information.
Based on the past experience of changes in LL’s system and due to the numerous problems I encountered in the Local Payments beta, I’m quite anxious of the changes. For me, the date is set for January 9th. Let’s see if I can still pay my rent 2 days later. Stocking up on L$ for several weeks would sadly be a bit expensive for me.
By now, buying currency from within the viewer is the fastest way to actually receive L$, while using the LindeX pages has been nothing but a great pain and source of frustration. Trying to explain the flaws to customer support was quite pointless, since the responses I got were extremely polite, but in the end, completely missing my point, although I had provided step-by-step reports of my problems.
I better start dusting off my Virwox account, which would give me less L$ for the same money, but at least, I hope it’ll still work if all ties break.
Indeed, although I ended up on local payments because my payment to Linden Lab at the time failed, I know there were a lot of people who had trouble paying Linden Lab or buying Linden dollars during that period.
Hopefully all will go smoothly, but past experience does warn us to be prepared.