Everyone,
These are a few questions that I think can be figured out by reasoning, but want to double-check :
When Tournament Memberships were first started, didn’t they include one copy of the paper magazine? (There was no premium vs. regular distinction then) (and even though the paper copy might not be incentive to join {this has been hashed and re-hased to death before} the arrival in the mail was one more opportunity to remind the player to continue membership)
Now that there are regular memberships without the paper magazine, the TM’s don’t include one, do they? And since membership is required to view even the *.pdf copy of the paper issue online, TM’s don’t include “Chess Life” at all, do they? (Its not in the faq for TD/Affilliate, or TM explanation page - I checked.) OR, do they actually include “Chess Life Online” for some period of time?
-fb
(Related to premium/regular, but not TM’s) Since “Chess Life Online” has content that is not published in the paper “Chess Life”, doesn’t that mean that premium members without convenient internet access (yes, such dinosaurs still exist) are not getting all of the benefits for which they have paid?
I was under the impression that tournament memberships still included one copy of the relevant (either CL or CL4K) magazine. Has that changed? If so, I’m giving people at my tournaments the wrong information.
Correction: Yes, we should be sending out a copy of the next issue of CL to tournament members paying the $12 TM rate (eg, those over 24) but do not send out anything to those paying the $7 TM rate.
I haven’t done a TM in a while. I thought there was a field (required?) for an e-mail address for all TM players. Something about sending them a redemption code for a discount on a membership if they choose that route.
Would it be possible to do a monthly round-up of those TM e-mail addresses and sending them a .pdf copy of the next issue of either magazine?
I realize this would be a service not given to your regular members and there would be concern for free copies of CL floating around. It could help convince those players to become members while might offset the concern. Has this been considered?
I’m VERY reluctant to start sending out PDF files of CL to anyone, because they’re HUGE, and many mail systems will just reject them. (There are also some spam filters that will reject any email with a PDF attached, and there are reports that some viruses can be spread in a PDF.)
If we have an email address for a TM, we send that person an email letting them know they have a TM credit they can use. If we do not have an email address, we print and mail them a letter with the same information. So it saves the USCF both time and money if the TD gives us an email address for a TM.
It might be possible to send them a link to download the current issue of Chess Life, but we’d probably have to make some changes to the mechanism we use to authenticate/handle downloads, so it might turn out to be more work that it’s worth.
It’s requested but not required. Making it requird would be a really lousy idea, since it would make it impossible to rate the whole tournament without one. In practice, of course, you would simply enter a dummy e-mail, but then what is the point of the exercise?
Is there a place when entering a tournament membership to enter an email address? I know that you can (and should) enter an email address when you put in for a non-member ID which can be used for a TM, but what about a former member who doesn’t want to renew? Is there a way to enter an email address other than doing an address change?
It goes in the member record, so you need to do it through the membership module in TD/A.
There’s no place for it in the rating report fields, adding it is possible but is not something likely to happen quickly.
As I’ve said more than once, the TD/A membership module needs re-doing, we’ve changed the nature of USCF memberships quite a lot since 2003 when most of that code was written.
Hi Mike:
Have you considered sending them a temporary pin regardless of which tnmt membership purchased so they can look at and perhaps download the Chess Life files from the USCF website.
Regards, Ernie