Royal Founder account upgrading questions

Hello everyone. At current I have a Royal Founder flagged account currently at the Knight tier and am considering a last minute upgrade, but I have a few questions before doing so!

First and most importantly, as a (RF) Knight, should I upgrade to Knight Marshal or above, I want to ensure that I will not "lose" RF status overall just by upgrading at this time, correct? I can't imagine this would be the case, but I wanted to check.

Next, if I upgrade at least to the rank of Lord, will I retain my RF status and thus qualify for the Founder rewards of the Lord tier?

Furthermore, I am considering upgrading via monthly installment. Once an installment plan is chosen, can it be edited and still applied to a given account? For instance, let us say that today I decide to upgrade to Knight Marshal via plan, yet a few days (or a month or two) later I decide I'd like to upgrade to Lord Marshal. How would this be accomplished? Likewise, if I apply Recruitment Credit bonuses during the pay-period of the installments, does that affect (lower, I'd imagine?) future monthly payment amounts?

Thank you for your time!

 

You would not lose any of the Royal benefits at any tier. The new Knight Marshall and Lord Marshall tiers don't offer a "Royal" option, and only one set off pledge awards. All the previously designated "Royal" items are unchanged if you choose one of these tiers.

The Royal Founder status would continue unchanged.

I edited, and closed out my installment account several times. When you upgrade your payment pledge, you pick a new amount to put on the installment account, and a new installment plan is set up. You then cancel the old one.

 

It is great to hear that you don't lose Founders status and, if I am understanding you correctly, actually "gain" Founder's rewards for tiers above your current one that have Founder's benefits. I just wanted to be sure that if I upgraded to Lord or above, it would be the "full" version of Lord, unlocking all the (Royal) Founder's Lord benefits in addition to the Benefactor ones. Ever since the end of the April 2014 Founder pledge/gift period, when trying to upgrade a pledge that was tagged Royal/ Founder's, it didn't have the (F) symbol as it used to on the upgrade pulldown, so it seemed possible that the new tier would not be considered Royal Founder's if upgraded into after the lockout period, disappointing as that would be. Thus, it was something I had to know before pledging. Note: I am pretty sure that, even if I would unlock the full RF Lord's tier if I upgraded to it from RF Knight via an installment plan, I would not qualify for the discounted "Pre April Founder's Prices" of $1500 on the tier any longer, even if I was upgrading from a pre-April purchased pledge?

Thank you for your time and answers to my inquiries thus far!

 

You are right. The founder prices have ended and Portalarium made it clear, that they do not even let you keep the already granted bonus for your current pledge, if you decide to upgrade.
*Salute*
Olahorand

 

I can understand that - I don't mind that the prices are a little higher just as long as I maintain all the Royal Founder benefits at every level, old and new. The only thing that I've run into that makes me slightly worried is the fees that are added for monthly installments. At least at the higher tiers, it can be a non-trivial amount. Are these different between methods of payment (ie CC vs PayPal vs Amazon?) While I understand a minimum payment necessary to cover the fees of the installment (ie at least $10), it would be nice if fees could be waved if the monthly payment itself was over a certain amount, or just removed above certain tiers (ie Dev+ ?) as a courtesy! That said, does anyone know the current state of purchasing items (new pledges, add-on store items) that can be turned into store credit and then applied to upgrade an existing pledge? Thanks!

 

Add on store items can be melted into store credits and applied to other add-on store items or a pledge upgrade.

Pledges cannot be melted down.

 

I assume you can contact Portalarium to merge a new pledge with an existing one. But I would not bet that the Alienware bonus would make it over, and if you got any referral bonus for that new pledge on the main account, that might be gone as well.