Membership renewal

[Frank]

What a awful prolonged way to renew a simple online
membership Only 1 out of 10 im afraid

[nigele]

I’ve just renewed online, and it was quick and easy for me.

Nigel

[taroz]

Ditto. Paid online on Saturday and my card arrived this morning. Thought that wasn’t too bad for an org run by hobbyists.

[richardthestag]

There are only 2 salaried folk (afaik) in SOC, the rest are volunteers. I think that if you have ideas about how the experience can be improved you need to contact them via detail in the club magazine and make suggestions. Or better still offer your free time!

[DJT]

Set up a Direct Debit and get automatic renewal. Simples.

[staginmacc]

+1

[ramjam2005]

Don't recall any issues whenever I've renewed online, think I even paid via PayPal without a problem.
I'm pretty sure you can't renew online until you have received the postal card renewal reminder. Did you get one ?

[gbb483]

The renewal details are now sent out printed on the cover sheet with the magazine. Those of you like me, who discard that cover sheet without reading it, won't realise they are being asked to renew. So if your renewal is due (or was due awhile back) and you haven't seen the reminder, then go to the stag.org.uk web site and do it.

I suggest this post gets bumped up once a month to remind everyone.

[APS]

I had the renewal on the reverse of my magazine address cover sheet last month. But I went online to the club website and renewed it as it saved postage. Very simple to do. My new membership card came in post around the due date. No problems whatsoever.

[mike@thenook]

Set up a Direct Debit and get automatic renewal. Simples.

+1 on that, couldn’t think of any other way…..

[Registrar]

If everyone gets familiar with online renewal that would help enormously. I was a staunch supporter of cheques (and still protect my own right to be able to issue cheques as they suit me) but the Covid problems introduced many people to new technology (how many 'oldies' started to order their Tesco grocery delivery online during Covid ? Or contacted family through video calls ?). For a while now 95% of new members are joining online so everyone whio has joined for the last ten years has used the system - please continue to do so. If it is 'difficult' then something is wrong (usually the payment process) so we need to know about it - contact the webmaster who set up the system

To cover a couple of myths

You don't actually need your renewal card to use the renewal page - that request has been put in to stop people renewing early and leaving us with piles of paperwork on the desk which cannot be processed yet. As that is a good way of losing stuff, we try not to go there. All we need is to be abole to identify you so your name and either a membership number or an address - or even just a postcode and name, we are vey good at tracing people on the system.

We do not do direct debit - the continuous payment system set up many years ago was 'standing order'. We don't need two continuous payment systems so please spare Marilyn and I the problems associated with having another system to set up and check just so that half a dozen members don't have to learn how to renew online, ressurect their old cheque book or put up with sending a standing order mandate instead of a direct debit mandate..

Although we have always believed in getting the job done ahead of small expense differences, posting the old renewal card is now expensive (nearly 90p a time or £3,200 a year) whereas the magazine cover is almost free (not quite free but the cost is really small). I have always been aware that the front sheet is thrown away quite quickly and that is why it has taken us a while to use it but the expense of the card is just not justified when all UK members receive the magazine - you just have to wait, not for the card, but for the magazine. We do send a 'super reminder' when we do not receive money quickly enough but we would like to do away with this as well (cost around £2,500 a year at the moment) but until everyone has grown comfortable with the magazine reminders and more people renew quickly, we will not stop doing this.

Marilyn and I are not actually 'salaried' but we do receive payment for being membership secretaries - this is through our family business which appends the SOC stuff onto the side of what we do in the office. The payment equates to roughly 20 hours a week at the minimum wage as set in 2007 and hasn't changed since.

Peter