subscription renewal

[Rod]

I just ordered the new GP2 online and then decided to renew my subscription. The Web page crashed twice and still didn't get my renewal taken care of! What's going on?

rod

[bgl]

Rod,

Sorry about that! Let me check with Liz.

Bo-Göran

[Lizs]

Your renewal did go through. However, I was reuploading the database and several pages as you renewed. This could have caused the crash.

Liz Stansfeld

[JimR]

I just renewed my membership as well. I hope you will not mind a little criticism. Believe me, it is only meant well. The join and renew buttons on the site are inconspicuous to say the least. When they were finally discovered, I went to the renew section and signed in using the information I had received by E-mail. Working through these forms I absolutely failed to find any way to upgrade my membership from individual to life. However, each time I tried, I got an E-mail thanking me for renewing, although I had not actually renewed. In the end, I had to go the new member joining screen and act like I was signing up for the first time. This worked. However, it also assigned me a new membership number. At this point, I apparently had 2 discrete membership numbers. Luckily, Liz is on the ball. She recognized the problem and deleted the original membership number. In other words, the system did work for me, but it sure was not easy or straightforward.

[bgl]

Jim,

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad Liz was made aware of what happened. She's working to improve the website.

Bo-Göran

[Rod]

I got my palm society magazine and it said that my subscription had ended; however, I had pad for the renewal back in October. Liz said that the publishing co. and the palm society didn't use the same software to keep the subscriptions up-to-date. Let's get this fixed or we'll start losing members. This should be soooooo easy to do (renewals that is).

Rod

Phoenix

[bgl]

Rod,

Yes, you're absolutely right - this should be so easy. However, the main problem over the last few months has been the transition from Allen Press, and the way they were doing things, to Stansfeld & Fairbrother (Liz), with a different database (and not compatible with the old Allen Press database). Liz officially took over this responsibility on 01 Jan 2009, but has been working on the membership database for the last couple of months. Hopefully, most - if not all - of the major problems resulting from the transition are now either solved, or behind us.

Bo-Göran

[Walter John]

I tried to renew online just now, it said my card is out of date and it isn't for a few months yet. I'll try again later.

[phatmiata]

I just joined up for the first time, paid via CC, and it states im member number 150229.

So does someone add that little palm tree photo under you avatar or is that done by me somewhere in the "My Controls" panel?

Edited January 20, 2009 by ContractorChat

[bgl]

That has to be requested (PM to the Moderator). BUT, I just verified the payment and I'm alerting Dean, so no need for you to take any action.

[Kathryn]

Perhaps an option for the IPS logo could be added to the membership page? This feature could automatically alert Dean and also let more people know about PalmTalk.

[PALM MOD]

I don't know of an easy way to do this. One of the main problems is that people don't use real names on the forum. I get a lot of people who tell me they joined, and can they have the logo. But all I know is they call themselves "Joe Palm," their real name is "Joe," and they used a different email for the forum than they used for the IPS subscription. There is no way to cross reference.

So I would need to know their "Display Name" on the Forum, and the name they used when subscribing to the IPS.