Addressing the premium membership cancellation trap
tracked
Resi Pfeffer
As most of you already know. SL premium and premium+ memberships can be booked for a month or a whole year. Im gonna use the term premium for both memberships to keep it easy to read.
The monthly or yearly amount has to be paid the moment one chooses to upgrade their account from basic and is going to extend automatically until the user downgrades or payment issues arise.
The issue: As soon as the user downgrades from Premium to basic manually, all premium perks (Lindenhome, mainland parcel, reduced upload fees, linden stipend, etc) are going to be taken the same moment of the cancellation, no matter if there is one day or 11 months of premium time left. Is there any money refunded you may ask? No, not a single cent.
Why should the current practice be changed?
Because giving the customer what they paid for in advance should be something that we dont even need to talk about.
We pay up to 250 bucks for up to 12 months - thats a lot of money to still be asked from Linden employes to "just setup a phone alarm for ringing in 11 months"
Not going to refer to all the continents and countries, where that kind of business practices would already be sued into oblivion, as LL is located in the US and only has to stick to US law - nevertheless is doesnt shed a good light on how premium customers are treated, customers who send their money directly to LL.
Personally I didnt learn my lesson - im even premium plus since two years, but for the love of SL, not the company behind.
Log In
Lettie Linden
tracked
Lettie Linden
I apologize for any misunderstandings that may have occurred. When you downgrade your account, you retain all of your current membership benefits until your next bill date.
If you have attempted to downgrade and lost any of your benefits, please contact support with the details of when you downgraded, when your next bill date is, and which benefit(s) you have lost.
Wicked Nightfall
Lettie Linden It says this when you downgrade -
You can own up to 512 square meters without a monthly land use fee.
This new allowance takes effect immediately.
Not sure who is incorrect here - you or the system.
I did contact support - 2 months and only yesterday did it finally get answered. This kind of support is why I'm leaving. Thanks so much.
Lettie Linden
Wicked Nightfall: Ah, thank you for the clarification of where the incorrect information is coming from! I will pass this information onto our developers so that it can be corrected.
I am very sorry to hear that you are leaving Second Life. I know how frustrating it can be when you do not hear back on a support request in a timely manner. I know that our support department has been quite busy as of late, but they are striving to reduce wait time as quickly as they can. I hope that someday you will give us another chance - Residents like you are what make Second Life such a special place.
SL Feedback
Merged in a post from Wicked Nightfall:
Title: Unethical Membership Downgrade
Details: I paid for a full month at a higher membership level, then wanted to downgrade—and instead of honoring what I paid for, you immediately stripped away the benefits. No refund. No proration. No communication. Immediately I lose land allowance and amount of the weekly stipend. I paid for the full month so shouldn't we get the benefits for the full month? Almost seems like you are punishing us for downgrading.
LL doesn't seem to understand we are the customers - they need us to exist.
When someone pays for a month of Premium Plus, they’re not just buying features—they’re buying a full month of a specific experience.
To strip those benefits immediately upon downgrade is effectively changing the deal mid-contract without compensation. That's not trust-building—it's a bait-and-switch.
That awful practice may be legal in the US, but it’s not ethical. Illegal in the UK/EU as they value consumer protections there over enabling corporate greed like our laws in the US do.
It feels like punishment for spending less—and it’s just more of the same behavior that’s driven thousands of users away over the years. I submitted a support ticket asking why I didn’t receive what I paid for. Still no reply. Been almost 2 months - ticket sitting there untouched. 2 months! (They don't care and why people leave.)
This isn’t how you build trust or loyalty.
Let users keep their higher-tier benefits until the end of their paid billing cycle, then downgrade.
That’s what most platforms do—because it’s fair, intuitive, and ethical.
It respects the customer's purchase, avoids manipulation, and builds trust.
Ethical companies operate not just by the letter of the law but by good faith and fair dealing—especially in subscription services where trust and retention are critical.
This policy violates the spirit of that, eroding customer goodwill.
Spidey Linden
closed
Hello, and thank you for your feature request.
Incoming suggestions are reviewed in the order they are received by a team of Lindens with diverse areas of expertise. We consider a number of factors: Is this change possible? Will it increase lag? Will it break existing content? Is it likely that the number of residents using this feature will justify the time to develop it? This wiki page further describes the reasoning we use: Feature Requests
This particular suggestion, unfortunately, cannot be tackled at this time. However, we regularly review previously deferred suggestions when circumstances change or resources become available.
We are grateful for the time you took to submit this feature request. We hope that you are not discouraged from submitting others in the future. Many excellent ideas to improve Second Life come from you, our residents. We can’t do it alone.
Thank you for your continued commitment to Second Life.
Wicked Nightfall
Spidey Linden Easier to just not pay Linden Labs rather than support this very unethical practice. Policies like this are why people leave. It is wrong and unethical and breaks the trust with your customer.
Lettie Linden
Wicked Nightfall: I apologize for any misunderstandings that may have occurred. When you downgrade your account, you retain all of your current membership benefits until your next bill date.
If you have attempted to downgrade and lost any of your benefits, please contact support with the details of when you downgraded, when your next bill date is, and which benefit(s) you have lost.
Randy Pole
Your premium or premium plus perks remain in place until the expiration of that membership level. If you have lost any benefits right away then it is not correct.
Lucia Nightfire
I've downgraded several accounts and never seen this behavior. The amount of time left remained in effect. So did the perks.