Subscription reminders

About This Message Board
1

I’ve been travelling lately, and so haven’t used the Straight Dope much, and have only been picking up my e-mails every few days.

On 25 April an e-mail was sent telling me that “Your access to the paid subscription “Straight Dope Message Board” is about to expire” and directing me to the subscription renewal page. This was the first and only subscription reminder I received.

Heaven forbid that the message would contain any useful information like when my subscription was about to expire, or advice that, if not renewed before expiry, I would lose my charter member status. In fact, the e-mail didn’t mention my charter member status at all.

I picked up the e-mail today, 29 April, and went immediately to renew my subscription. Presumably my previous subscription has expired some time between 25 and 29 April, because I find that I’m a “guest”, and I’m being invited to pay the full whack to resubscribe - and presumably will be, for ever after.

OK, I accept that I didn’t pick up my own e-mails for four days but, hey, this is foreseeable. People get sick. They go on holidays. They have all kinds of reasons why they don;t pick up their e-mails the instant you send them. It seems to be to be a bit unreasonable to wait until very shortly before expiry to send subscription reminders, expecially if there is a substantial fee penalty for not renewing before expiry. And, if there is a fee penalty, it seems to me a bit thoughtless, to put it no higher, not to point this out in the e-mail and not to give obviously relevant information like the deadline for renewal to avoid the penalty.

I’m a bit annoyed, to be honest. It doesn’t seem to me that a lot of thought has gone into the renewal procedures. With 1,600 posts under my belt I like to think I’ve made a bit of a contribution to this community, and I did support it by signing up early as a charter member - which was the whole object of offering charter membership. I don’t see why all that should be ignored because I wait four days before picking up my e-mails.

I don’t really begrudge you the $14.95 this year, but what are the chances of getting my charter member status reinstated for future renewals?

2

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  1. 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.

Short of coming to your house, what else could we have done?

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…

your humble TubaDiva

3

Please see this thread.

4

Well, I did renew last week, but I can see where people are coming from. I never did get an e-mail reminder, not even in the spam filter. AFAIK, I have “mail from admins” turned on, so I don’t think that was the reason.

Also, why was the cutoff time noon, rather than midnight? I’m just curious, I guess, since it didn’t really affect me, but I noticed that, when I renewed, my expiration date was given as 4-28-2005. Well, I’d have assumed that meant midnight on 4-28, not noon. I’d really hate to have, well, you know, put it off, gone to work, noticed at work that it was the 28th, scribbled notes on my hand to renew once I got home, and then found out that it didn’t really matter anyway. Why didn’t you give people the whole day? I didn’t realize the cutoff was noon until I saw former Charter Members turn into Guests yesterday afternoon.

5

It was 12 noon because usually there’s no tech people hanging around the Reader building at 12 midnight. That’s how things get done with this sort of situation, it’s when the tech staff is on hand to do do the voodoo that they do so well.

your humble TubaDiva

6

Bless you, sir. You have a kind heart.