I’m a bit surprised too. I noticed earlier this week that my sub was to expire today, and saw I was elligible for the lower price. I didn’t notice there was an exact time, I just saw Ed’s post about “On or before April 28th.” So, I thought anytime today would be fine.
I’ve re-upped at the full rate mutter and still show as “guest” mutter mutter.
I suppose when the system sorts itself, I’ll be just a “member” mutter mumble.
So, was there an exact time today I needed to reup by? Did I miss this? I don’t know which I miss more, my $7 or my “Charter Member.”
InkBlot
:eek:
p.s. I know what Strunk & White have to say about punctuation around quoted speech, but what about when using asterisks to simulate vocal sounds? If they want to slow the degredation of English on the Internet, we really need these questions answered! Strunk & White’s Elements of Internet Style?
I know I’m a day late on my renewal, and I paid the full price, but I’d really like to have my Charter title back too. I’ve been a member for since February 2001…
I’ll be patiently waiting in the wings for my gold star too! Except that I paid under the deadline by about an hour so I got to keep my Charter Member.
I don’t want to sound to harsh, but this really is a serious problem.
Most message boards on the internet are free. If you want people to pay for the SDMB, then the process shouldn’t leave such a bad taste in people’s mouths. I got no warning that my account was going to expire. I log in today, and discover that I have to pay double and lose my title?!
It’s tough enough to just get people to pay for the service. You shouldn’t be adding insult to injury by doubling the payment for people who didn’t know their year was up.
There should be a 30 day (at least) grace period for renewing charter members to be able to use the old rate and keep their title intact.
I was under the impression that “charter” may be going away anyway. I could be wrong. And yes half the reason I’m posting is to see if I still have mine.
I said this once before, when we first went to pay, and I’d like to take this opportunity to say it once again: I think the whole “Charter Member” vs. “Member” distinction is an Evil Thing.
It’s divisive, and prone to promote disharmony, pointing up, as it does, the difference between those who happened to get in on the ground floor of a bargain (and who will be rewarded for their good luck by getting halfies off their subscription in perpetuity), and those who–the Fates conspiring against them–did not.
I for one would be happy to have us all be just plain old “Well, hey, I ponied up” Members.
Or else switch over to custom member titles, then we can all be Intergalactic Overlords of whatever universe takes our fancy.
I put this in another thread, but I guess it bears repeating.
We do appreciate all our members, our subscribing members most of all, and we’re sorry to see some of you missed the cutoff date.
Let me explain what we did to make you aware of the situation.
A thread on the subscription renewal situation was posted in the About This Message Board forum approximately 1 month ago. The thread was “stickied” and ran at the top of each and every page in ATMB.
An announcement linked to the subscription renewal notice was posted in all the forum areas. The announcements run on top of every page of threads.
Another announcement on the subscription renewal situation was placed on the top of the Straight Dope front page – as we got closer to the expiration date, the notice was marked in bright red.
In the last week, all Charter Members who had not yet resubscribed and who also had indicated it was okay for management to send them email was sent a resubscription email. If you checked “no, I don’t want the administration to send me email” you didn’t receive anything. but that’s an individual choice.
Many people have indicated they finally found their notices in their spam filters. We cannot control how our users sort their email.
As we got closer to expiration (which was Thursday, April 28, noon CDT, Chicago time), we indicated time was ticking away in the announcements on top of every forum page and on the Straight Dope front page. Again, the notice on the Straight Dope front page was in bright red.
It’s very frustrating to us, too; we hoped everyone would read the announcements, look at the email and act on it, etc.
BTW, you can check your subscription status at any time by going to the User Control Panel and clicking on “Paid Subscriptions.” You can even renew from there.
I’m sorry this didn’t work so well for you this time and I hope we all do better next time around. Please check the board for updates on this situation…
Duck Duck Goose and Debaser both make good points.
I would like to see the “Charter Member” vs. “Member” distinction completely abolished. Charter Member was initially used as a marketing gimmick to get people to subscribe when the board initially went pay for play last year. We no longer need this meaningless badge of status.
I stumbled upon SDMB in December 2004. Had I known its existence ten years earlier I would have jumped on the bandwagon right away. I claim Charter Membership.
I hope my original post didn’t come across to others the way this one came across to me. I actually disagree with Debaser’s apparent sentiment in a couple of ways:
First of all, I don’t think the fact that most message boards are free is particularly relevant – after all, most message boards also don’t have the same operating costs as the SDMB. And I’m under the impression that even with the membership fees, they’re not making a profit. Surely no one thinks the Straight Dope is under some obligation to provide this board at a net loss to themselves? Or for that matter to provide this board at all? (I appologize if that’s not what Debaser meant, but it seemed like he was suggesting that even expecting us to pay at all was somewhat unreasonable, regardless of how it was handled.)
With regard to this “got no warning” business, they clearly made their best effort to notify everyone. I just want to make clear that I wasn’t trying to say in the OP that it was anyone’s fault other than my own. Clearly, if I don’t read the announcements for over a month, I’m taking my chances. To be honest I’d expected the answer to be more like “you snooze, you lose” – the fact that they’re actually going to let us get our charter membership back is a welcome surprise.
