Upcoming Change: Credit Escrow for IMVU's Creators Part 2

DarkAngel5

Upcoming Change: Credit Escrow for IMVU's Creators Part 2

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Hi, this thread is a continuation of the original thread located: Here

Staff will continue to post and respond to all questions from the first thread and the second thread.

[quote="Varsha"]In the near future, we will institute a delay before Creators receive Credits earned from the sale of virtual goods in the Catalog. This delay is called “Credit Escrow.”

We want you to be aware of these plans in advance so you can be prepared for any implications this might have for your Creator account.

What is Credit Escrow?

Today, Creators immediately receive their credits when another user buys one of their products or its derivation. Once Credit Escrow is implemented, Creator credits will be placed in escrow, a kind of a holding account, and not added immediately to available credit balances at the time products are sold. The credits placed in escrow will not be immediately available for the Creator to use or transfer. The Creator will have to wait for a certain period of time, discussed below, before the credits are available to use or transfer.

This escrow process is similar to the real world process of cashing a check. When you cash a check, it isn’t immediately available for withdrawal. The bank won’t make the check’s funds available until it “clears” (when the check writer’s bank says that the writer had enough money in their account to cover the check).

Many other online businesses also use a similar approach in order to protect buyers and sellers. Apple, for example, doesn’t release money to an iPhone application developer until 45 days after the end of the month of the purchase to ensure safety in a transaction.

Why Escrow?

We are implementing the new credit escrow process to protect the integrity of the IMVU economy and discourage credit theft, payment fraud, UFI content submission, and account takeovers. We are protecting Creators, users and IMVU.

We want everyone’s IMVU experience to be fun and safe. Like you, we wish everyone followed the rules, but the reality is that there are people looking to “beat” the system at your expense. Often, by the time IMVU becomes aware of some of these activities, the Credits have been used and are impossible to trace, harming Creators, users, and IMVU.

In particular, we’ve noticed that Creator accounts tend to be targeted for account takeovers since they usually have larger Credit balances than average users. Account takeovers and other types of fraud harm Creators the most, since large amounts of artificially generated Credits in the economy decrease their value for you and Resellers.

We don’t pretend we can ever completely defeat fraudsters, but Credit Escrow will help both you and IMVU dramatically diminish fraudsters. Importantly, Credit Escrow will help us to restore Credits to the rightful owner.

How Will Credit Escrow Work?

Only Credits will be placed in escrow.

Promotional Credits will not be placed in escrow, so developer tokens will still be available for immediate use if the purchases were made with Promotional Credits.

Creators will be able to see how many Credits they have in escrow as well as when those Credits will be available in a new section of Creator Reports titled Escrow Schedule.

In almost all cases, Credits in escrow will become available to Creators per the escrow schedule (see below). However, if a customer made the purchase with fraudulently obtained Credits, and IMVU discovers the fraud prior to the end of the escrow period, then IMVU will reverse the transaction.

Should this happen, the Creator will be sent a message with the details, the Credits involved in the transaction will be removed from the escrow account, and the product purchased with the fraudulent Credits will be removed from the purchaser’s inventory.

Escrow Schedule:

If you signed up to be an IMVU Creator BEFORE the date of the change, your escrow/hold period will initially be one (1) day.

The escrow period will be gradually increased in weekly increments until all creators have a 30-day escrow period.

We hope this incremental increase in escrow periods will allow you to plan and to manage your Creator account better and to help us address any bugs in the implementation (we hope there won’t be any!).

Example: If the date of the change is September 1, 2011

Credits earned between Sep 1 – 7 --- Escrowed for 1 day
Credits earned between Sep 8 – 14 --- Escrowed for 7 days
Credits earned between Sep 15 – 21 --- Escrowed for 14 days
Credits earned between Sep 22 – 28 --- Escrowed for 21 days
Credits earned on or after Sep 29 --- Escrowed for 30 days

If you sign up to be an IMVU Creator AFTER the date of the change, your escrow/hold period will begin with and stay at 30 days. In the future, we may raise or lower the escrow period at our own discretion, always seeking to protect Creators, users and IMVU.

We will communicate further details when the escrow change is live… so stay tuned.

Thank you, and we appreciate your support toward our efforts to make your IMVU experience a great one.

Helpful graph for those who signed up before the change:

Angelskiss2007 · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Posts: 3210 Location: USA - IL

How will this affect my tiers?

Staff has stated that tiers will not be affected by this. All sales and credits earned will be counted as the time it was made, but you just won't receive the credits until 30 days after the sale. So, to reiterate, you will make a sale and credits earned at a certain time, and this information will be recorded and evaluated in tiers, and then you will receive your profit 30 days from the sale.

Will there be a clear, visible way for us to check our escrow balance?

Yes. There will be a new report that allows to you see the credits that are currently held in escrow and their scheduled delivery dates.

Walk4Autism · Joined: 12 Nov 2010 Posts: 5 Location: USA

smdh, i just started dev, and now i gotta deal with this crap, smh
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LuiciaBella · Joined: 15 Dec 2009 Posts: 11 Location: USA - FL

I was also wondering about how our tier is affected by this? Do creators still level up and down by their sales per day and peer and forum post and income and so on.... or is there going to be a new system for the tiers?

Guest_EscrowAccount · Joined: 31 Aug 2011 Posts: 19 Location: USA

Prepare pixels!

This is going to be a long haul until the economy recovers once they launch.

Spread the word to your friends and be pro-active to get them ready since IMVU will not notify enmasse.

I pray this will be a solution. I think we need to be sure to get ready for the obvious. I don't like this "it could be next week" thing. That is not allowing for a financial hard ship that is impending.

I suggest:

Stop Creating.
Start Selling.

Focus on what you can do....without spending any credits to do so.

RAJDOOT · Joined: 08 Feb 2011 Posts: 11 Location: India

welcome to new post
ahem

xxxxxM0LLYxxxxx · Joined: 06 Aug 2009 Posts: 181 Location: United Kingdom

I state again...im sorry I do not offer credit facilities on sales! and i wish that to be taken into account....unless of course customers wish to wait 30 days to receive goods!

LiMoncc · Joined: 24 Nov 2007 Posts: 11 Location: Slovenia

RAJDOOT · Joined: 08 Feb 2011 Posts: 11 Location: India

Tell me just one bank in this world virtual or real applying similar condition for sale xD
I am not talking about IMVU
give any other example if you have ?

LuiciaBella · Joined: 15 Dec 2009 Posts: 11 Location: USA - FL

OK missed the post at the top .... either way i still dont get why they think holding credits for 30 days at a time is a good idea...

Lovey201K · Joined: 30 Jun 2008 Posts: 58 Location: USA - WI

Ok, so the Escrow thing is going to go forward, but still my question has not been answered and I think it is a really good that should be answered to make sure things are clear to all that read the ToS.

Is the Currency part of ToS going to be updated to reflect this Escrow?

Limited · Joined: 19 May 2008 Posts: 80 Location: USA - GA

This is why in the real world places stopped accepting checks.
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RAJDOOT · Joined: 08 Feb 2011 Posts: 11 Location: India

we are stopping working here on imvu.
We allready earned enough to play imvu for 20 years.
I hope its long duration to let them know what they are doing day by day
Smile

Hound · Joined: 16 Aug 2006 Posts: 18 Location: USA - NY

DarkAngel5 · Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:53 am Post subject:

Hi, I poked staff about testing. The response is: IMVU will be inviting developers to test the new escrow set up. This will be a small group of testers chosen by IMVU. Testing will not be open to applications. Thanks
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