So do we know when exactly this took place? It seems to have gone completely under the radar, as I had not heard of it before today. I did do the installment plan but ended up paying it all at once and getting over with it, but I think it was only $1075 then. Ria N2RJ On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 9:33 PM Bud Hippisley <bud@w2ru.net> wrote:
Mark & ODV —
N2COP and I “missed the memo”, too. For *us*, the subject came to our attention when a *younger* (20- or 30-something) League Member cornered each of us individually at the Shelby NC hamfest on Labor Day weekend and asked why ARRL Life Membership was no longer available on the time-payment plan. (And, to be clear, *other* Members have asked me about it since then.)
As soon as we got back home from Shelby, Bill and I exchanged a series of e-mails with Diane Petrilli and Diane Middleton regarding the change. Diane P. confirmed that the time payment option had been eliminated and Diane M. explained the financial rationale behind the change. In short, HQ has taken the position that younger Members can effectively create their own “time-payment plan” by charging their Life Membership to their own credit cards. I don’t know about other young adults, but my 29-y/o son would only entertain a $1700 lump-sum charge to his credit card if it were a necessary home repair or medical expense. Otherwise, his response would be “mañana”.
As I pointed out in our September e-mail exchange, if it hadn’t been for the time-payment plan when *I* was in my 20s, I would not have been able to become a Life Member when I did. It seems obvious to me that the longer one waits to obtain a Life Membership, the less monetary sense it makes to the Member who is potentially interested. From HQ’s point of view, removing the time-payment option appears to have been a pure dollars and cents decision. From the younger Member’s point of view, however, “perception” is often a bigger factor than what “works” for HQ, and the perception of flexibility on the part of the League to *accommodate* a Member can only help build and assure future membership totals — even if HQ believes the incremental increase is too small to cater to.
Another part of the HQ argument I heard was that on the one hand the life membership option was expensive for the League to maintain — yet, on the other hand there were few, if any, “takers”. If both “facts” are true, then I would suggest perhaps our time-payment accounting system was the wrong one.
I thought perhaps I hadn’t known about the change in policy because I didn’t come on the Board until January of this year. But perhaps others on ODV in 2018 and earlier weren’t aware of the change, either.
In any event, as of this writing, the time-payment option for Life Memberships is not currently available. I believe this is a decision that has not been completely analyzed but perhaps there were surveys that I’m not aware of that have been conducted to explore younger Members’ propensity to obtain a Life Membership if a time-payment plan were available.
Bud,W2RU
On Dec 27, 2019, at 12:26 PM, Mark J Tharp <kb7hdx@gmail.com> wrote:
I may have missed the memo, but I saw a post that the payment plan had been removed for Life Membership options.
The current form was updated in September removing the payment plan , and adding the option for the new magazine. (see below)
Was that posted here, or on line some place?
Mark, HDX
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Membership/LifeMembershipApplication.pdf
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