Mike, what happens when a life member purchases a “Family Membership 2” for his kids?
Since a Family Membership #2 is ONLY for members under 25, it is treated the same as for any other family purchasing it.
How is this supposed to be entered on line? I assumed that the adult should be entered as “Family Membership 2 $35,” and the others as “Additional member under 20 $0,” but that doesn’t work – the "primary gets an error message “Not under 24.” If I enter all of them as “Additional,” how do I pay?
The adult isn’t involved.
You enter one of the children as the primary (I usually submit that first separately) and then submit all the rest of the children as the additional $0 member.
The only question is who to make the primary. I usually do either the oldest or the one with the most current membership left.
Thanks, that worked. Those family memberships are a real pain, but since this is about the second one I’ve seen, I suppose it’s not a big deal.
The TD/A interface for family memberships is not very good, because family memberships hadn’t been created yet when it was being written, so they’re a bit of a kludge.
IMHO, the way family memberships are handled on the membership webstore is a lot more straight-forward and easier to use.
I will be redoing TD/A in September, and fixing this is one of the top items on the list of things to change or fix.
I’m not surprised John hasn’t had many occasions to do family memberships through TD/A, though, because only about 15% of the family memberships sold in the last 20 months came from the TD/Affiliate Support Area.
I do wonder how much of that is because of the lousy interface and how much of that is because the USCF has never created a nice flyer that TDs can have available at their tournaments to explain how family memberships work and why they’re a good deal?
Hi Mike:
I’ve noticed that the description of the Family membership #2 in the membership submission section of the TD/Affiliate area does not mention getting Chess Life for kids. It is also not clear if they get 6 or 12 issues of Chess Life. The description at the store is not clear on the number of issues question either. I sold a #2 last week and told them that they will get 12 issues, hope I was correct.
The best description of family membership plans is probably the one that is on the membership webstore:
Do they get 6 or 12 issues of Chess Life?
Um, read closely it says “the family’s monthly copy of Chess Life”…
I believe that anytime someone refers to a ‘subscription’ to a monthly magazine, that means it includes monthly copies unless specifically noted otherwise.
In the specific case of the Youth membership, it includes Chess Life every other month, but that’s an politically expedient move that was done so the USCF could offer a lower rate to players who are 13, 14 or 15 years old, since sending out only 6 issues rather than 12 saves us somewhere around $6 a year on fulfillment costs to that member.
Whether that’s been a success or not is harder to say, the membership numbers in those ages haven’t changed much in the last year. Looking at the last 12 issues of Chess Life, it isn’t clear whether the issues youth members get have much youth-specific content in them, either.
Has there been any thought on a Spouse + Kids family membership for a life member? I don’t need a 2nd magazine. (I"m sustaining right now but will be life soon)? Every time I’ve called the people on the phone said I’d have to buy a full family membership and get the 2nd magazine.
When I have my affiliate active, that would be 3 chess life, and 2 CL4K, I’d be getting.
Josh
When the Family Membership plans were created by the Delegates in 2004, the issue of how to deal with the spouse and children of sustaining or life members was overlooked. (As the author of the Delegate motion, I’ll take some of the blame for that oversight.)
The idea of family memberships had been kicking around for several years, but hadn’t really gotten to the detailed proposal stage. I was somewhat surprised when the idea started gaining acceptance during and after the workshops in Florida and then was approved.
The Delegates may have seen this as an alternative to the ‘membership simplification’ plan that came up at the Finance Workshop and was quickly put together by an ad-hoc committee but ultimately shot down by the Delegates, largely because of a lack of support from the EB.
We’ve only had a half dozen or so sustaining/life members ask about family memberships in the 3 years since family memberships were created, and I think those who asked were quietly accommodated by the USCF office.
I’ve suggested that this be dealt with more formally, though I’m not sure what solution would work best in terms of the membership webstore or the TD/Affiliate Support Area. I think the absence of a straight-forward solution to what appears to be a rather minor issue has worked against any kind of expansion of family memberships to deal with this issue.