i’ve noticed a lot of threads about the subscriptions, and in some of them questions were asked, but they got lost in a sea of opinions and comments and “i’m not paying!” “well, i am!” crap. i really need some questions answered here. mods, admins, if you don’t know the answers yet, that’s fine. but please try to explain this to me?
[ul]
[li]if i pre-register and we go to paid subscription, do i have to sign up right away to get the discount? or can i hold onto my pre-registration and lurk for awhile to see if it’s something i want to pay for?[/li][li]will credit cards be the only form of payment? will you accept money orders? i’m currently digging my way out of a financial hole, and while i’d probably have $20 for a year’s entertainment, i don’t have $200 to get my bank account re-opened and my debit card reactivated.[/li][li]would any of these situations involve a (partial or full) refund?[/li]a) i decide i don’t like it and quit.
b) you decide you don’t like me and ban me.
c) the whole idea flops and the board goes under before my subscription is up.
[li]would there be a seperate charge for each computer that i use? i post from work and home, and at work i have to change computers often.[/li][li]how about a new mother discount? no? c’mon think of all the baby pics starting in april! oh, shit, my tits are leaking… be right back…[/li][li]is there a possibility of any of the rules changing? like, maybe bringing back html and/or the posting of images?[/li][/ul]
thank you for your time!
oh, one more. have you considered possibly leaving about this message board as a free forum so that newbies can ask subscription questions before signing up?
Would you be able to post from different computers? Would the charter membership be piggybacked onto your computer’s IP number? The Better Half says they’d probably give us all a “charter membership” password, so you can post from different computers.
Also, I still wanna know about “family memberships”, if you have several family members posting from the same computer, or even from different computers (away at college, etc.)
When does the subscription start? The beginning of each year, or the one year mark of when a poster joins?
Let’s say that on Jan 1 you charge everybody 20. Then a newbie comes along on Decemember 2, 2002 and doesn’t get the special discount. He would have to pay to register, but would he also have to pay again on Jan 1, 2003?
As a newbie, the only way to ask questions and get them answered before joining is to email one of the Admins. This worked like a charm for me (thanks to TubaDiva).
I’ll try to answer what questions I can but I cannot speak for the Reader, this is all very much in discussion and nothing is solid yet, and for some of your questions we just dunno what the answer might be. Yet.
Nothing is certain, take all this with a box of salt and there’s a lot of WAGs, guesses and plain old I dunnos in this.
I would think that such a generous offer would only be available for a limited time.
Per user, regardless of where you read or post.
This would include people that share computers, each of you would need to sign up/pay separately, just as each of you needs to register separately now.
We’ve had people ask about a family plan or a group discount and nothing has yet been decided.
a) New users would get a free trial period, most likely; at the end of the period they would get charged unless they formally cancelled before the deadline. Renewals would also be automatic.
Past the trial period, you get charged, that’s it.
b) Banned people don’t get refunds. Period. We don’t throw anyone out without good reason. In fact, we expect better behavior from people, all the more so because being a member would have more value to them, they paid good money to be there. Being a jerk is worthless and will not profit you, now more than ever.
c) You’re probably SOL right there. So you have a built-in incentive to make this work, to get your money’s worth, if nothing else.
Again, a WAG on my part, but we have mentioned alternatives to the Reader such as PayPal and I would think that the Reader would accept most all forms of electronic funds handling. However, all this is yet to be decided.
We do not expect to be able to handle funds outside of electronic forms, checks and money orders are just too much trouble and an expense to process.
No promises, but I would think that we would have more consideration from our users and less online vandalism, so that may well be possible. We always want to give you maximum value and choices and all the good stuff we can; it’s saddened us that we had to remove so many things from the site over time. If we had less abuse, we could be more open. Again, if you value something, you treat it more carefully, that’s human nature.
With a healthy profitable site we might even be able to add other goodies to offer our members, anything’s possible here. What kind of other goodies? I dunno, what do you want? With an ongoing dialogue between management and users, who knows what we might find that works for all of us?
I fully expect we’d have a lot of online documentation, including a fully written FAQ . . . always with the option of sending us email if we don’t cover your question.
Every one would have their own anniversary date, that’s the only thing that make sense.
Is there any indication yet as to the number/percentage of “established” posters who have indicated thier willingness to continue on a subscription-based SDMB?
IOW are we any clearer as to which end of the $20-50 scale we are likely to fall?
