ECF Rolling Membership

[Dragoljub Sudar]

From the ECF site:-

"We’re delighted to be able to confirm that rolling membership has now gone live.
.....

We have put in place a manual workaround for people who want to upgrade their membership during the season as the membership system does not currently have the functionality to allow this to be done automatically. The way the system will work is that in the first instance you will need to pay the full membership fee for the new membership level, following which you will get a refund within the next one or two working days for the unspent portion of your old membership level."

I'm a little confused by this.

If a player buys Bronze in Sep 2022 but then wishes to upgrade to Silver in March 2023 will he/she have to buy a new 12 month Silver membership for £27 and then get refunded £7.50 for the remaining unused 5 months of the Bronze level? Will his/her expiry date change to Feb 2024?

If the player decides instead to upgrade by paying a congress the £9 pay-to-play surcharge, does he/she get upgraded until the end of August 2023? As that £9 is supposed to cover the difference between Bronze and Silver for the full 12 month period from Sep 2022 will the player be refunded £5.25 for the 7 months he/she was not a Silver member?

[Angus French]

If the player decides instead to upgrade by paying a congress the £9 pay-to-play surcharge, does he/she get upgraded until the end of August 2023? As that £9 is supposed to cover the difference between Bronze and Silver for the full 12 month period from Sep 2022 will the player be refunded £5.25 for the 7 months he/she was not a Silver member?

Good question.

Also, in the case of the direct membership upgrade, what does the "manual workaround" involve in terms of ECF work? Does it mean an ECF Office person has to manually put through the refund?

[Mike Gunn]

...
If the player decides instead to upgrade by paying a congress the £9 pay-to-play surcharge, does he/she get upgraded until the end of August 2023? As that £9 is supposed to cover the difference between Bronze and Silver for the full 12 month period from Sep 2022 will the player be refunded £5.25 for the 7 months he/she was not a Silver member?

That is an interesting question, but I would guess that (in this case) the answer is no refund and you will be invited to renew the whole silver membership in August (otherwise you would end up with two renewal dates in perpetuity for your ECF membership).

[Roger de Coverly]

(otherwise you would end up with two renewal dates in perpetuity for your ECF membership).

Surely the new system is going to perpetuate this?
Take someone who decides to play in a May Congress. If they are an existing Bronze member, they either upgrade just before the tournament or have the organiser in effect do it for them. If they aren't a member at all and join on 1st May, doesn't that Silver membership run until 30th April the following year? If they've played any League games they also get the effect of Bronze membership, but only for the period from the preceding 1st September to the following 31st August

[Bob Clark]

Having recently upgraded from Bronze to Silver, the new system seems to work very well.
It charged me £12 but I now have silver membership for a further 12 months.

However it did occur to me that most congresses charge a £9 fee for bronze members and this will cause some of the admin problems mentioned above.

It seems to me that if your a bronze member entering a Congress it’s a good idea to upgrade your membership prior to entry rather than paying the £9 to the Congress.

[NigelCollins]

I recently upgraded from Bronze to Silver using the JustGo website and it was very simple and easy. The cost was calculated based on the extra months required for Bronze plus 12 months of the difference between Silver and Bronze. A few days later In the same month, I then upgraded from Silver to Gold, again via the website, and broke the website membership fee calculations. The ECF Office was very helpful, fixed the software overnight, and processed my membership upgrade early the next day - excellent customer service.