I want it done today

Five magic words.

Of course, you have to say it firmly, in a tone that says, "This is not up for negotiation." And, of course, you have to be demanding something reasonable and clearly within your rights. It also helps that you have a ticket that's been ignored for two weeks.

In this case, I reiterated what I already said when I first called on Thursday -- that I simply wanted my account downgraded so that they could cancel that $72 charge for a year of premium membership, which prevented me from accessing my account. Then I said those five magic words, and then paused.

It feels good to be Opal again.

/me downgraded; therefore, I exist.

Persona non grata

Okay, this blog entry is a long gripe. You've been warned.

<gripe>

If you look in your Friends List and you notice that Opal Lei is not there, no, I did not take you out. If you go to Search and look for Opal Lei, she's not there either, that's why.

And here's why she's not there.

On September 4, I got a notice from Linden Lab, saying that they cannot charge my Paypal account for the $72 annual premium membership renewal. It sounded like the same issue they had in March. So I looked in the KnowledgeBase for the instructions about deleting the payment agreement inside Paypal and creating it again. Then I tried adding credit to my SL account. It didn't work. It didn't work in March either because it was an issue between LL and Paypal. So, I created a support ticket to let them know that the same situation that happened in March seems to be happening again.

The Customer Support rep who responded to my ticket merely skimmed over my ticket and resolved it with the reply: "it looks like you do not have a verified paypal account." I reopened the ticket and asked him exactly what he meant by "verified" and what I had to do manually. If I could get into Paypal and change payment agreements, doesn't that imply that my Paypal account was verified?

Two days later, on September 6, he marked the ticket resolved again, "You will need to access your paypal account and make sure that it has a verified source."

And I had a lengthy reply to that:

John,

I have been using Paypal since February 2000 with my checking account as primary source and two credit cards as back-ups.

I used Paypal to pay Linden Labs for the following transactions:
2006 Sept 3 - $72 for annual account dues
2006 Dec 15 - $50 cash transfer to SL
2006 Jan 12 - $9.95 for an alt
2007 Jan 15 - $9.95 for another alt
2007 Apr 8 - $50 cash transfer to SL

My last Paypal transaction was a cash transfer to my sister on August 15, 2007. I hope that proves that I have a verified source of funds, if that's what you meant.

In March 2007, I was unable to transfer cash to SL from Paypal and I found the instructions in https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/security.asp, but those instructions did not fix it. A blog entry later said that it was an issue with Paypal not accepting any charges from LL and that LL was working on the issue with Paypal. By April, I was able to transfer money again.

I tried to simply transfer USD from Paypal to SL and I am unable to do that. It looks exactly like it did in March.

Now, my account is at risk of being shut down in a few days (7 days from the original notice) because you are unable to charge Paypal. Now, is it fair to refuse me access because Customer Service will not properly investigate this issue?

All I ask is that you speak with someone who knows about that issue with Paypal in March/April and check if that is happening again. And make sure that my account is not shut down until you resolve that issue.

And if you cannot do that, please forward this case to someone who can as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Four days later, on September 10, still no reply, so I added another comment which, I admit, is extra bitchy: "Am I purposely being ignored until my grace period expires?"

On September 12, I was locked out of my account.

On September 13 (yesterday), I called their 800 number and argued with a very sweet young man in the UK named Nabeel. Poor Nabeel. Well, all he could do is escalate my ticket to the billing department in San Francisco. And he assured me that I should get a response by email the following day because the queue for that department is short.

Now, here's my argument. I can't get into my account because I owe LL $72 for the new year. I want to pay by Paypal, but LL and Paypal have issues that prevent me from paying by Paypal. I can sell Linden $s to cover the charges, but I'm not allowed to exchange currency because my account is on hold. And they won't let me downgrade back to the *free* basic account, unless I pay $72 for a year's worth of premium membership. My only recourse is to give them my credit card number (so what's the point of using Paypal then?) and then downgrade my account and apply for a refund by opening up a new support ticket, in spite of the fact that the reason I'm in this bind is *precisely because they largely ignore support tickets!*

I dunno what Linden Lab calls it, but I call it "extortion."

Today, no email. I called again just before they closed down at 6pm. Poor Nabeel had the bad luck to pick up my call a second time. He added a note to the ticket with a request to have someone send me email tomorrow (Saturday). I guess we'll see.

So that's why Opal Lei is persona non grata.

</gripe>

Who am I?

Last night, a new friend noticed when I referred to my avatar in the third person and it struck him. He says he thinks of his avatar as himself. I told him that I started dissociating from Opal the first time my heart was broken. It was my way of dealing with the pain. This morning, I wondered, what if I dissociated with my real life self? And -- boom! -- it hit me. I found one answer to the age-old question "Who am I?"

Who I am is not this physical body in the real world, and certainly not my avatar. Who I am is not the personality, not the mind. Who I am may not even be what we call the individual soul. All those are just tools to bring forth who I REALLY am. Who I really am is the sum of my actions, my experiences, my thoughts, my emotions, my memories.

But let me demonstrate how infinite that sum is. You see, my actions, my experiences, my thoughts, my emotions, and my memories are tightly integrated with the actions, experiences, thoughts, emotions, and memories of everybody I've encountered and everybody who has ever been affected by my actions. Life is a shared experience after all.

Therefore, who I am is also the sum of the actions, experiences, thoughts, emotions, and memories of all those people. And each of them is the sum of their own actions, experiences, thoughts, emotions, and memories, and those of every person THEY've encountered. And so on, until it comes back to me and goes around again. Ad infinitum.

So, who am I? I am you.