A run-down on the a la carte userpics

[thatsamilkshake]

...Sorry, Tracy! *ducks*

For those of you who don't follow news, it's been announced in this post that they finally got a la carte userpics up and running! What does this mean if you're planning on running over to increase your slots for shiny?

Here's what your choices look like when you go to the order form:

1 package - 70 userpics: this is the exact same thing as the old "extra userpics" add-on, and the same price. It brings your paid account up from 30 to 100 total. (Plus any "loyalty userpics" you have.) Note: if you already have the old add-on, buying this will not increase your number of icon slots. It will only extend the time - it's like buying another year.

2 packages - 140 userpics: This brings your paid account up from 30 to 170 total. (Plus loyalty yaddayadda.) If you already have the old add-on and you want the 170 total slots, you must buy this one. The money you paid for the old add-on doesn't get eaten - it's used to add bonus time.

3 packages - 210 userpics: This brings your paid account up from 30 to 240 total. (Plus loyalty yaddayadda.) If you already have the old add-on and you want the 240 total slots, you must buy this one. The money you paid for the old add-on doesn't get eaten - it's used to add bonus time.

So to use Francie as the example, she has a paid account, with the old add-on, plus 60 loyalty userpics. So she started today with 160 icon slots.

If I bought option 1, she'd still have 160 icon slots; I'd just have extended them for a year.
If I bought option 2, she'd have 30 (paid account) + 60 (loyalty) + 140 (a la carte) = 230 total
If I bought option 3, she'd have 30 (paid account) + 60 (loyalty) + 210 (a la carte) = 300 total

Also, these things are gift-able, which is nice because they're freaking expensive and while we all may be happy shiny graphics whores, most of us are happy shiny graphics whores living in garrets.

(Brought to you by the fact that the News post explains So Very Little and you do not want to sift through the comments to find the overcomplicated, unintuitive answers to people's questions.)

Comments

[glacial_queen]

One potential momentary "WTF" I noticed here: I have automatic payments scheduled and couldn't access the new a la carte icons. I had to turn off automatic payments to be able to pay for the new icons.

This might be because I have another year of extra icon space for Karla past when my icon space expires for the 2009-2010 year (someone who, uhhh, totally wasn't me might have tried to buy 200 icons at once really late without reading the fine print) or (more likely) because they haven't set up automatic payments for the icon space yet. I just canceled my automatic payment and bought the icons. I'll turn my autopay back on when I'm sure my credit card will have the requisite $20 come the middle of May...

Hopefully this will say someone else about 10 minutes of clicking back and forth and demanding that LJ let them spend money, dammit.

EDIT: I'm hearing that buying them as a gift and them giving them to yourself would also work. And be less of a pain to do. I'll be over here, doing things the hard way.