Its no secret… (well now its no secret…) RAC is having some troubles and if there is no changes things will be looking bleak…
In my last post I stated that “Failure is not an option” and I thought today I would give you some examples of why…
The most basic amateur band in Canada is the 2m band. We have more repeaters around than you can shake a stick at. Most of these repeaters are co located on sites that are not owned by the Amateur Radio Club that owns the repeater. Many of these Site Owners insist that you have liability insurance on your repeater equipment before your repeater can be installed on the site…
Yesterday I looked at a few clubs websites looking for background information before posting this…. One Ontario Club cut a cheque for over $700.00 for liability insurance. Guessing that their membership rates would be in the $25.00 per member range… thats 28 members just to cover insurance costs. That does not cover site rental itself or the cost of the phone patch, upgrades etc. The repeater could easily in a small club be over 50% of their yearly operating budget…
Thats where the RAC Club Liability Insurance comes into play… Liability insurance at a much lower rate brings the costs down to where some clubs can afford to operate a repeater.
Now no doubt some of you were thinking well its only a repeater and we have lots of them out there… Well we do but not all over… Lots of areas in our country do not have the great repeater coverage we have here in the more populated areas of Ontario… For a rural club to lose their only repeater would be a great loss and not only for the locals, but for those of use who are travelling through their area. Remember if the repeater coverage is spotty there is a good chance the cell phone coverage is not much better. In fact I can think of a few areas where my cell phones have not worked (over the years with different providers) and my 2m rig did work so look at it that way… We can’t afford to lose repeaters …
Another bonus of the RAC Insurance is the liability insurance given at no cost to RAC Members. This in effect is supposed to cover you if you are doing an amateur radio event (display, operating etc) and there is a damage claim that you are liable for. There are a few of us who still operate Portable for DXPeditions, IOTA etc and that for the most part is done from some one elses property (Public/Private).
Speaking from experience when I organised the December 2006 CF3RCS Bate Island DXPedition right on the Land Use Permit Application I had to provide Liability Insurance information. They accepted a print out from the RAC Website that said that all RAC Members were covered for Liability Insurance. Without that insurance the DXPediton would not of taken place.
Its stuff we don’t use every day (knowingly at least) but how many clubs would fail or lose repeaters if they had to pay full pop for their insurance??? How many public events that do show off our hobby would not occur???
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While the Canadian Amateur Community is looking for answers on what we can do next let me remind you that the bottom line is not this.
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The answer is this…
Like I said “Failure is not an option”
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The above opinions are mine. Like most of you I have not been happy with everything RAC has been doing but I honestly feel that its better to fix the problems rather than reinvent the wheel.
Now that I have said that… the Board has to have heard the wake up call and act accordingly. We have to have heard the wake up call and keep things moving in a positive way…
Once again these are my opinions…
My name is Bob… My Callsign is VA3QV and I am a RAC Member
73bob
Tags: amateur radio, Bate Island DXPedition, CF3RCS, RAC, RAC Insurance, RAC Liability Insurance, Radio Amateurs of Canada
August 18, 2010 at 8:42 pm |
Bob,
I read those articles and I was quickly lost. It’s looks like it was written by a politician. Very hard to follow and I had to force my brain to keep reading. My brain wants to be reading about wilderness and adventure radio, not reading about minutes and management team ineffectiveness (yawn!).
The gist of it as far as I could tell is that RAC is headed for financial ruin because money out is exceeding money in.
So lets address money in.
You know one thing RAC could do a *much* better job of (and it cuts to the heart of the matter) is make it easier for amateurs to become members, confirm that they are still members and remain members.
I am a RAC member. I like you have filled out NCC forms when hosting events around Ottawa so I know the value of the liability insurance.
So – to me – RAC is something I cannot live without. It is indispensable.
In order for RAC to survive and keep members, it NEEDS to be indispensable. To every Canadian Ham. The sad fact is that to many members, RAC is a magazine subscription. And a magazine subscription is something you can live without.
So there is a challenge here: How to make RAC indispensable, and how to communicate that indispensibeness (is that a word?) to others – those who are not members and those who are.
But even if we can make RAC indispensable, so there are more folks out there who want to support RAC, how easy is it to do so?
I am such a person. I want to support RAC. I think I am a RAC member. I’d certainly like to be. So lets see how easy it is for me to confirm that this is indeed the case.
When I signed up with RAC, I remember that the form was horribly complex. I don’t remember the details but I remember there were different prices for every province, that I had to choose if I want a magazine, if I am blind, if my spouse is a member, whether I want to drop money into various donation boxes, eye color (okay I made that up), etc. Lots of choices. Too many for the average ham.
And why tell me some other province is getting it cheaper than I am, that’s just going to make me mad. You should know I am in Ontario from my IP address so tell me the ON price and let me override that just in case I am out of province while signing up, but for goodness sake don’t tell me that I have to pay more than BC and QC just because I live in Ottawa.
OK – I got over that and I am still there on the form.
Next question – why is there no option to pay by paypal on the new member form? Why can’t I set up a recurring payment? When I signed up for another similair organization I was able to set up a recurring payment out of my paypal account. Guess what?… I’m still paying that.
I do remember that the first few times I wanted to sign up I took one look at the form and said life is too short to read all these details and then I probably got as far as providing a credit card number realized my wallet was downstairs and gave up.
Overall impression: Very tough to become a RAC member the first time.
But thats not particularly relevant in my case because (though it was painful) I did eventually fill it out once when (as luck would have it) my credit card was nearby.
So I need to know if I am still a member, but how can I know? So I go to the RAC web page and click on membership search. It says log in. With what? my membership number. Don’t have that handy. So – too much work and I give up.
But lets say that I have just read a plea on Bob’s blog and I am really determined to press on and confirm that I am a member…
So maybe the ‘renew my membership’ link will tell me.
Darn, that needs me to log in as well.
Okay I have to bite the bullet and click on ‘Forgot your password?’. I have two options, enter my callsign or my user name.
I enter my callsign (I know that – I use it a lot!) and it gives me an email with my username.
Great. My username is a number.
Why? I have a callsign, shouldn’t that be my username? What’s a number?
Anyway – I enter the number in the next field (enter your username) and it says: Sorry, we couldn’t locate your username.
Great. (That was sarcastic by the way).
Oh there’s a helpful hint buried in some text. Perhaps I didn’t set up a password? Perhaps?? You know darn well I never set up a password. Why would I? The only thing which is protected behind that login is the renewal form. Ooops.
So … thus far I have sunk 20 minutes into this exercise and all I really wanted to do was check to make sure I am still a member and when I need to renew.
So I set up a password and how happy dance I can access the link to search members. So I enter my own callsign and – yes I am a member.
But for how long??
Couldn’t you have told me that right there?
Well long story short I did … eventually… locate that information (it’s in the member details form) so I know when to renew.
But you can be sure I will have forgotten soon enough.
So if RAC is worried about losing members, they need to realise that they are losing members who don’t even realize it and probably still think they are still members – sad.
Here’s what I would change if I were RAC.
1) Total redesign of the new members signup.
Check this out:
https://www.geocaching.com/membership/default.aspx
Whats at the top of the page? Member testimonials. A short statement from an existing member saying how indispensable the service is. Cool, thats me hooked.
Next there is a succinct list of check-boxes telling me what I am getting extra compared to those who don’t pay.
Great! I am getting something for my money.
I can pay by paypal. Right from the get go. I can set up a recurring payment which will just keep on trucking renewing my membership for me with absolutely no need for me to get involved unless I want to stop it in future.
This is very attractive for me.
If AB members pay less, hide that from me. please!
Don’t create me a ‘membership number’ and worse(!) expect me to use it to log into the web page. I already have a unique identifier, it’s called a callsign. Use that. please!
Don’t ask me for donations to various funds. Send me an email or something after I have been a member for a while. If you do want to ask me for donations, at least explain a little bit about what the donation is used for (there should be a little expander box or a hyperlink or something so I can find out what on earth the “RAC Foundation” is!).
Then once I am signed up, remind me of that fact when I visit the web page. Of course you need me to login before you can confirm that, so put something really essential behind that login. And use my callsign for the login, I know that.
Give me a little icon somewhere which tells me I am a paying member. When I hover over it, tell me how long I am a member for… When my membership is due to expire email me a reminder. More than once.
What about making RAC indispensable? Maybe there’s another similar organization we could look at for some clues?… like the ARRL for example.
I think the key here is to have some nifty services which are member-only (like ‘QST’). Thats right in your face – you want the service, pay up!
Perhaps in the same vein, RAC should change its policy and say that for a club to use its insurance, 100% of the membership needs to be RAC members.
Anyway, some thoughts…
August 19, 2010 at 5:27 pm |
Good afternoon,
There are some good suggestions here. A few comments are in order though I think. Reworking the RAC website is a huge job and as much as I would like otherwise it isn’t a quick job.
That said membership renewals can be paid by PayPal. Recurring payments have not yet been added and the new member form is still being rewritten to accept online payment. The point about the taxes is a good one which I will definitely have a look at.
The one point which I do want to explain is the reason for using the membership number as a username instead of a callsign. When we started building the membership section the callsign was the first thing we thought of however the first question which was asked is “what about members who aren’t licensed?”. While we could easily have come up with a different username for unlicensed members we realized that a unique and unchanging identification already exists in the membership number.
The process of changing a username when a member changes callsign had also to be considered or what about multiple callsigns?
One of our goals in setting up the member section is to allow the member to update their own information. While callsigns are unique at any given time they are not necessarily unique over time – I am the second or third holder of VE2VE, for example. If a member changes their callsign but the old holder is still in our database then that record must also be updated.
So, the short answer is that using the membership number is a bit less convenient for the member but it solves a great many other problems and therofer allows us to devote more time to making needed improvements to RAC’s internet presence.
We are making improvements and suggestions such as these are certainly taken into account.
Anyone wishing to contact me with a problem, question or suggestion is more than welcome to do so by sending an e-mail to vptas@rac.ca.
73 de Jim.
James R. Hay, VE2VE
Vice President, Technical and Administrative Services
Radio Amateurs of Canada
August 19, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Thanks for the visit and the comments James…. Answers are always better while the questions are fresh so your prompt comments are appreciated…
73bob
August 18, 2010 at 9:39 pm |
Martin,
Thanks for the visit and the comments…. You bring up some very good points and from my view of things a few items that I had not thought of…
Lets hope common sense will prevail …
enjoy yor weekend at MAPLECON…
73bob
August 18, 2010 at 11:25 pm |
Martin:
Bob alerted me to your insightful and thoughtful comments. I have forwarded them to the RAC board and executive team. You’ve given a couple of our exec members something to chew on. We very much appreciate the time you took to do this.
73 – Peter – VE3HG
Vice-President, Public Relations
Radio Amateurs of Canada