Changes to subscription prices

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Really nice to have the support from you guys mrs hippy that is praise indeed thanks for understanding guys.

JJ
 
Outrageous ... I`m off to ukcougar.net ... friendly, helpfull, total freedom of speech and above all free.

Hilda Gronk
3 Ironside Villas
Scunthorpe.
 
I think you'll personally struggle to meet their membership criteria Phil, but you go for it!! My application was unsuccesful as I fall into one of the "Banned" Regions. Bit like Insurance companies not insuring certain cars in certain areas is what I put it down to.........................................




No need for a coat, can't lift my arm far enough to put one on lmao...........>
 
Chris said:
how do other forums manage to operate without charging subs? I know some have adverts etc but there are adverts on here?
Who actually is the Treasurer of the Forum?

A £5 jump in subscription is approx 37% increase and if you do the maths there are 365 'active' members which is an annual income of £6,570.00.

A large bandwidth costs about £500 per year (cataprint.com costs me £2.99 a month) so where does the money go and is there any official accounts?
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Should have also put we haven't a problem paying the subs but it is a large amount of money so just wondering what it is actually spent on, which, being business people we think is a fair question :oops:
 
We agree with Kev and Nancy, we wouldnt even mind the increase if we knew where it was going and what it was being spent on? As I am a member of other various car clubs, from which I receive newsletters, events calenders for main shows and monthly updates on regional shows, I can see where my money is going and how its spent at these other clubs. So you should be able to understand where we are coming from wanting to know this information. Thanks, Andy and Vicky
 
This is by no means exhaustive so please excuse me if I have things wrong.. im not the bean counter JJ and Matt handle the money..

Our outgoings are..

server costs x2: One for the front ukcougar.com homepage and a dedicated server for the forum. Because of my new job and restricted time constraints disaster recovery is now done by the host and I only deal with glitches, coding, software upgrades etc.

Public Liability insurance: this is the single most expensive thing we have to pay for. This covers any member attending any show whilst on our stand.

Paypal fees: of the subscriptions taken paypal has a cut

Licencing for software: software that we use and the licences need to be renewed yearly

What is left yearly is then injected into fest to subsidise the event.
 
No problem at all it is a lot of money and it is perfectly justified asking where it goes.. Like I said that list isn't exhaustive as I don't deal with the purse strings as they keep me locked up in the under stairs cupboard looking after the geek stuff :LOL:
 
As Rob has said he has a good grasp of the costs involved IIRC the subs have not increased for 5-6 years all the while our costs have which means sometimes the club has had to be propped up especially when paying for the problems we had with the forum going down three times when it was on a different server/host it does not get fixed for free and IT support costs a pretty penny when they rebuild databases on the server.

Current subscribers is 292 that are paid and active.

Paypal takes a fee from every £13

public liability insurance which we are looking at changing to a lower cost provider.

Rob does not take a fee for ANY of the work he does although when funds allow I try to give him something for all of the hours he puts into the forum which is a hell of a lot more than most of you realise ( which I would add is no where near what he could charge if he was so inclined and justified in doing so) I think the last "glitch" we had he put in over 16 hours of work to fix them lets say he only charged £10 per hour which no IT support does (usually more) you can see where I am heading.


We have two lots of hosting to pay and two lots of bandwidth which we need to pay for (the forum alone is near 60gb now each month).
 
We're not complaining about the increase, just want to know, as a forum and a business there should be public accounts viewable to all subscribers, its a lot of income money per annum and as droidgordie said he gets newsletters etc from his other forums.
 
It is not a business and when it was decided that we as individuals could no longer cover the costs we looked into it and the reason we have subscribers rather than members is it negates the need to get accounts done and hold AGM's appoint treasurers etc etc it was looked into very closely by all involved with advice from a lot of people who know as they had been in the same position themselves.

I just wanted to make it clear how long it has been at £13 for (with a fee deduction of 76 pence for paypal) and the reasons for the increase of £5 I am not saying anyone has a problem with it and we have put this off for over a year now, it actually did not need a increase of £5 as £3 would have done it but as we got caught out with the three times the forum was offline including once for a week with not enough money in the club to be able to pay the bill so I paid it out of my own pocket which is something I could now not do ( by circumstance not choice) as I have said this increase is to cover running costs AND ensure any eventualities/problems can be covered by the club.

JJ
 
I also want to make it clear Rob has NEVER asked for money from the club at any point but I do not think he should give up that much of his own time for nothing IF the club can make a small payment to him from time to time for all of his efforts.

JJ
 
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