How about one or two delayed posts with a reminder message starting about 2 weeks ahead of time?
Hell, even I managed to re-up in time, and I had assumed for a month or two that my original subscription had lapsed in the last period I was without internet access a while ago. Heck, I was probably the only person here happy to get the email telling me to pay for a new year. Especially since it came after I stopped being too damn broke to justify spending $7.48 on a membership to a messageboard that I almost never use.
Test to see if I can post again.
This is exactly the way that it should work. It’s tough enough to get people to pay for a message board when most of them are free these days. Trying to force all the users to pre-pay before their subscriptions run out isn’t a good idea. Punishing those users who don’t pre-pay ahead of time is an even worse idea.
It should be a simple process: When a membership runs out, the person loses the ability to post. Then they pay up the fee and are a member once more. No punishement fees or pre-pay reminders should be required at all. I have no idea why they would be. It just makes the process overly complicated and results in hard feelings from people left out.
I’d like to see the number of users on the SDMB grow, not shrink over time. This is a bad way to go about it. I hope that going forward this pre-subscription idea will not be used.
“Thunderstorm”? Say what? I got one e-mail, and I would have missed it if I hadn’t decided on a whim to browse through my spam folder one day.
As for the “announcements,” I don’t read the boards every day; I’m in the middle of first-year law exams, and I often go a few weeks or more without even looking at the board. Anyway, it’s all moot; I’m paid up now.
Okay. I’ll bite. In fact, I’ve bitten.
But I’m still only listed as “Member.”
Can I get a “harrumph?”
Harrumph. I got one email, sent in plenty of time but I forgot about it. I think at least a second reminder would have been appropriate. I happened to be out of town on the last chance day so I just missed the boat. It would have been better to cut off posting privileges before the opportunity to renew at charter membership rates expired.
I didn’t get an email at all. I’ve been a member for nearly four years. Who bothers to update their email on a message board profile? I change emails all the time. Also, I’m sure that I chose not to recieve emails from the board at all. When you’re first signing up you don’t know if the board can be trusted or not, and everyone is concerned with spam these days. I certainly wouldn’t ever give out my primary email to a random web page.
I too go long times without posting on the board. Also, why would I read a thread about registration? I’m already registered! It would never occur to me that they would have a penalty for those who don’t pre-register ahead of time.
I’ll add my voice to the chorus saying, “This kinda sux.” Especially for those of us with Attention Deficit Disorder, who either never got the email or might as well never have. Now we can’t resubscribe, only subscribe - as a Member. Which I’m content to wait till next November to do anyway.
I’ll happily pay seven and a half bucks per annum for the privilege of not having “Charter” affixed to my handle. Seeing as I wasn’t here in '99 anyway (altho I did pipe up now and then at the old AOL stand), all it can mean in my case is “you say jump, I ask how high.”
[$.02]
Come on you guys!
Who didn’t know when they signed up a year ago that the membership was only good for a year?
I myself couldn’t remember the exact expiration date but I had a sense it was close to expiring before any notices were posted on the boards and the e-mails sent out.
Don’t blame anyone but yourself for your tardiness. And take whatever measures the board deems fit to either give you a grace period or to re-instate your status gracefully.
After all, it aint like anyone cares what your title says, I look at the JOIN DATE and the number of POSTS if I want an account of your activity. Or I’ll do a search if I’m really interested. Charter, Shmarter.
Just be happy that you’re still a member of the bestest message board that money can buy. 
Although, I kind of agree with the grace period and the warning posts, but sounds like lots of you would have missed those too, with the erratic nature in which some of you post. I mean, no system of reminders would be perfect and catch everyone. I guess it boils down to your responsibility to remember your SDMB anniversary. Imagine if you forgot your wedding anniversary.
Why should the users have to remember anything?
I mean, imagine if other bills worked this way. The electric company doesn’t bill you for a year, and then turns off the power randomly one day. After all, you are supposed to remember when to pay, right?
I’ve never heard of any type of service fee (web based or otherwise) where the customer has to rembember an annual date to pay or get hit with penalties. It’s just not something you do to customers.
Sure there are. Not everone gets paper notices of payments due anymore, especially if you pay electronically, you might not have enough in your account (or forget to fix your balance) when they try to withdraw your payment - that’s one. Two - No interest for a year type of payment plans often don’t send you monthly bills. You have to pay them the total before the year is up or else the interest is acrued from day one wether you pay monthly or all at one time at the end - they don’t want you to pay on time, they make their money on the interest.
The only step I could see that would be most perfect would be for you to send them a SASE (Self Adressed Stamped Envelope) and have them fire it back to you about a month before your subscription ends. But that means you’ll have to give someone a real address and that would probably not work for some of you either. That would also mean that someone at the SDMB would have to tackle these mass mailings.
Debaser, what’s your solution?
Forgot to address this part;
They don’t, actually. The SDMB took fairly substantial steps to be sure everyone got the same information. Four fifths of the members took action before the deadline and most of the rest of them admitted that they knew but weren’t proactive in paying. The remainder either forgot, or didn’t care, or ?.
How many annual message board payments do you actually have to remember?
Fer cryin’ out loud - have you never subscribed to a magazine? And your lapse date is printed on your address label, and they mail you a renewal notice, and if you choose to ignore both guess what - you don’t get the “renewing” rate.
Not exactly rocket science, pedro.
It’s true that many people might only view the boards once every few months, and some folks check their e-mail rarely, or have overzealous spam filters. So it’s understandable that some folks might not have gotten the reminders. But what do you expect the Board and its administration to do about this? They used all of the communication channels available to them. They sent out plenty of e-mails (one in this case is plenty), and they put notices all over the web site. What more could they have done? More e-mails would be pointless: If the first one got shunted off to the spam folder, they all would have. There weren’t any other places they could post it on the Board. They told everyone the plan (which they’ve stuck to) when they subscribed in the first place. And even after all of that warning, they’re still offering a break (above and beyond anything they’d said they would do) to the people who weren’t paying attention.
What is there to complain about, here?
First of all a magazine has valid addresses for all of it’s customers. So, they know that everyone is being reached by the renewal reminder mailing. Secondly, if you don’t re-subscribe to a magazine the subscription will lapse. However, this doesn’t mean they will charge you a penalty for re-subscribing after the lapse date. A magazine that did this wouldn’t do this because they want to keep customers, not aggrevate them.
:rolleyes:
On the last page. Post #44.
This is already the way that it works for regular members. It should be this way for charter members as well. Unless, of course, the SDMB is making it difficulet on purpose to try and get more money out of us.
Ahh, that post should read “a magazine wouldn’t do this because they want to keep customers, not aggrevate them.”
I sent an email to the referenced email address and it got kicked back as undeliverable.
I paid…
really I did…
I swear…
I’m only supposed to make the list from people who send me email . . . you’re lucky I checked this thread for stragglers.
Jerry has/is going to spend hours doing this, and so have/will I, just to get this fixed.
No offense meant here, really, and I do want to help people here, but at some point we do should start counting off for not paying attention and/or not reading for comprehension.
your humble TubaDiva