Details witheld when Joining BOF

[Karen]

So have all your club membership secretaries sent their comments to BO office yet?

[Failing Eyesight]

Ours have - at least twice (I think) and they havent even received the courtesy of a reply - not even an aknowledgment .....

When are BOF going to realise that the members are not theirs, but are the clubs ..

[Karen]

"When are BOF going to realise that the members are not theirs, but are the clubs"

Exactly. Having central office administer the membership was supposed to reduce the work for club membership secretaries, but I now seem to spend almost as much time checking their work and trying to get their mistakes corrected. Our December returns have 0 fee besides several memberships instead of £10. (all for the same day 1-2 Dec, so possibly something like all the folks who pay by direct debit). There doesn't seem to be anyone monitoring what goes out. And we still don't know when someone new joins the club, or transfers from another club, unless I spot an unfamiliar name claiming to be a club member on an event results sheet . I know I couldn't set up this sort of computerised system myself, and it is very complex, but this has been dragging on for several years now, and I'm getting fed up with having to apologise for the inefficiencies of the system

[Clive Coles]

There is another problem with the on-line membership renewal system which could result in existing members thinking they have renewed for 2010.

The BOF system sends out the

Congratulations
Thank you for renewing your membership with British Orienteering

message before the banking software attempts to collect the money.

When I first renewed in December the Congratulations message was followed by a futher messsage informing me that the collection had failed. Being a Sunday ( a non banking day) I guessed that the banking data centre had taken their systems off-air for some form of maintenance or back up.

The next day I tried renewing again: the BOF system allowed me to do this even though their system had previously congratulated me that my renewal had been processed.

I then received another Congratulations message !

Thankfully I have now received just one BOF membership card.

I reported the bug to BOF mid-December ~ no acknowledgement as yet that any correction has been undertaken.

It is possible therefore that some folk will turn up at events in the new year without a membership card believing their on-line renewal has been accepted.

If your 2010 membership card has not arrived you could look to see if you can still submit a 2010 renewal via the web site. Where a renewal has been accepted you should not be given the option to renew again.