** Info - Downtime on 1st November **

[tommundy]

Hi Jimi,

Thanks for the feedback. Please see my comments below:

I'm not keen on the new "What's New / Activity Stream"format preferred the previous "Latest Posts" format.

I've changed the tabs so that when you click on "What's New?", you get the new/latest posts. However, the activity stream is still available for users that want to use it.

"Validity periods marked with a * indicate that this subscription is recurring. After the initial subscription period is complete, the subscription will automatically be renewed with a new charge."
I don't like that at all, in fact I'm seriously considering not resubscribing because of it. Why can't we have the option to have a manual renewal each year for those who would prefer it ? I'm quite sure I won't be the only one who objects to an automatic renewal
Jimi

We've had a few discussions over best how to handle this and it's a tricky one to handle from a personal point of view and also a technical one. The automatic renewals will work for some people, but not for others. They are a bit of a pain as they maintain the same price from when you joined, regardless of whether this amount goes up or down in reality. One bugbear with manual subscriptions is that once a subscription comes to an end, there is no grace period for you to re-subscribe. This would mean that people could potentially lose PM's etc. when their account is downgraded. Going the other way, we don't really want people to have to be effectively paying twice for the time close to the end of their subscription (The system can't 'add' time to a subscription length).

I've been doing some thinking and playing about with ideas over the last hour and have come up with the below solution.

• We won't have automatic renewals of membership unless people specifically ask for them. (This can be added as an option quite easily, so you can either join for 1 year or for 1 year with automatic renewal)
• The membership period will be 400 days, which will give you a 1 month grace period to renew.
• This, I think, accomodates for all eventualities.

Obviously, any offline payment methods will remain as before.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Cheers,
Tom

[jimi]

Tom
Thanks for getting back to me, software changes/upgrades are always a busy time and the fine tuning can drag on

I've changed the tabs so that when you click on "What's New?", you get the new/latest posts. However, the activity stream is still available for users that want to use it.

much prefer that

I've been doing some thinking and playing about with ideas over the last hour and have come up with the below solution.

• We won't have automatic renewals of membership unless people specifically ask for them. (This can be added as an option quite easily, so you can either join for 1 year or for 1 year with automatic renewal)
• The membership period will be 400 days, which will give you a 1 month grace period to renew.
• This, I think, accomodates for all eventualities.

Obviously, any offline payment methods will remain as before.

Offering the option seems very sensible, the grace period should work. I'm not sure it even needs to be as long as a month, 2 weeks seems reasonable. Does your software have the facility to warn members when their subscription is due to expire ? the software we use on the OC sends out 3 mails, 1 month, 1 week and 3 days before the membership expires, gives people plenty of warning.
Been down this road before with the OC and got the T shirt, it's not easy I know and no matter what you do, someone won't be happy. You can only do the best for the club as you see it