25% annual increase? Annual? As in every year? When was the last increase? When I joined it was $5, in 1960. The movies was 25 cents, are the movies still 25 cents?
An interesting, but incorrect assumption. You previously attacked my earnings, and now you are attempting to attack my education. Try not to take these posting personally, people tend to respond in kind. That said, I do have a proper education in mathematics and I earned a degree in it from DePaul University over two solar cycles ago as means to pursue more advanced graduate degrees, which I successfully accomplished. I am not going to ask about your educational background, as it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Back to what this thread is about... Sure, no increases for a long time because they knew it would hurt their membership numbers. Otherwise, they would have raised rates slowly over the years. It is a wise business decision for any non- or not-for-profit to maintain a healthy financial coffer to address the unknowns of the future to ensure the survival of an organization. Yet ARRL opted not to pursue that path over the years when it came to membership revenues. Now you have new leadership which frantically pushed to make a 180 turn in the opposite direction to significantly raise membership funds. Do you believe flip flopping is a good business decision? To me, it demonstrates a disregard for their membership and provides an insight into their leadership woes. It is a major problem when you have a 25% dues increase while ARRL states the numbers of Amateur Operators are growing in the US. They rather raise dues by 25% than improve their services to attract and retain membership! ...they do not provide an online log or free personal web pages as offered by QRZ.com, no user reviews of equipment and antennas like eHAM.net, no consolidation between eQSL and LoTW for electronic QSLs, a poor search engine which has difficulties finding archived information in QST magazine, etc. They do not seem to understand the younger generation, including Millennials, which demand everything be electronically formatted and accessible. They also demand easier payment terms, as many of them cannot afford to start their professional lives after graduating from College. They are the future of our hobby, like it or not. As for ARRL defending radio spectrum with the Government, I am not impressed. There are 344 registered countries which allow Amateur Radio service. After all that ARRL lobbying, how much more radio spectrum do we have in the US compared to the average registered country? I work a lot of DX on 30M and 60M which is not represented by ARRL, yet they have spectrum privileges to the latest bands. The ARRL does, however, protect radio spectrum from being taken by commercial entities, which is of critical importance. That said, ideally I would like to support the ARRL mission and believe all Amateurs should. I am not against ARRL - I would like them to be much better than what they currently are. However, their electronic services cannot compete with the offerings of online third-parties, which they should have been leading since day one and they disregard and alienated their membership with the recent 25% dues increase. They do little to earn new membership other than placing their sales people at major Hamfests. Again, not impressed. Perhaps I will join back one day if they innovate and start leading like they should be. Thanks for supporting them during the interim.
Annual as in 2016. Nobody said it would be every year. Perhaps if they reduced your social security payout by 25% for just one year, it can be argued you would still receive 837% more than what you would have received in 1960. Nothing for you to be alarmed about, as 25% appears to be meaningless to some on this thread.
Somebody said it, you did. Annual Definition: occurring once every year. Do you see 25% once every year? Last Dues increase 2001 2002 0% 2003 0% 2004 0% 2005 0% 2006 0% 2007 0% 2008 0% 2010 0% 2011 0% 2012 0% 2013 0% 2014 0% 2015 0% Inflation was 27% in that time. I can't wait to see your response. Betting your smart enough to just shut up.
Even when the definition has been clarified for you that there was just one "major" annual increase in 2016 and no increases over several years, you still pursue the matter. Let go of your frustrations, as it appears to have clouded your comprehension of what was previously posted. The definition from the infamous Merriam-Webster Dictionary is shown below. The word has two meanings, I was referring to meaning #1. Full Definition of annual 1 : covering the period of a year <annual rainfall> 2 : occurring or happening every year or once a year : yearly <an annual reunion> 3 : completing the life cycle in one growing season or single year <annual plants> Based on your annual chart, again, answer the question. Is it good business to increase dues by 25% for the same services with one whopping annual increase? Again, nobody is saying $50 a year is out of line or expensive. I think with the 25% increase in 2016 the pricing is still beyond fair. But that is not the issue being discussed. The issue is not the pricing, but how the organization manages itself in a haphazard fashion with out-of-line dues increases which could have been handled better. Negative perceptions are created by those who have not been members since 2002 whom did not enjoy the zero annual due increases as you have. That detracts, rather than attract, membership. I think most people would agree having their social security payments reduced, or taxes increased, a single time by 25% is completely unreasonable. The same applies to dues or anything else in life. One expects a huge improvement in services given such an increase, but it has not been forthcoming. I trust you see my point - I do understand where you are coming from and the basis of your argument. Depending whether you have been a member for a long time or not, the increase can be seen as reasonable or unacceptable. The creation of such a disparity is not beneficial to the organization.
Your profound insecurity is now clearly evident by the quoted statement, then coupled with your verbose passage used for self justification of your belittlement of the ARRL and their managements decisions. If your are the well educated and self proclaimed expert in business management, finances and marketing that you claim. Make it your mission to shore up what you perceive as the leagues short comings in attracting new members. A start would be to draft promotional material for member recruitment that is focused on your area's demographics, that piece would be much shorter than your combined writings on this thread and time spent bashing the league.
You said, "If you are the type to accept and defend a 25% annual increase." If you meant just a 25% increase there was no need to use the word "annual." You should have said, "If you are the type to accept and defend a 25% increase", it would have meant what you are now claiming you meant. Your diatribe reminds me of how the Soviet Union twisted what they meant. Are you a politician? As far as frustrations, you totally have to be kidding, this is ham radio, nothing in ham radio rises to that level. I was frustrated yesterday in softball when I hit the ball well but right at a fielder, twice.
It seems like everyone wants everything for nothing now. Free education. Free healthcare. Free food. Free housing. Let someone else pay for it. Just like our local repeater group. The repeater usage is now dominated by non-members. Let someone else pay for the repeaters as if they think they are entitled to free usage. ARRL membership seems no different. Let someone else pay to defend our bands and my usage. Come on people. pay up for the ARRL support and repeater usage. Stop being a bunch of freeloaders using the excuse "I disagree with this and that with the ARRL"; oh please, enough of the excuses for not manning up and helping support the groups that you benefit from every day. This country has conditioned people to think they are entitled to everything and just let someone else pay for it. No wonder so many people were drawn to Bernie Sanders. However, you only have to look at Venezuela to see how it will eventually all work out - once you run out of other people's money. Yup, feel the Bern, or is it really feel the Burn.
You are speaking to someone who has always voted the straight Republican ticket. Never received anything for free, paid all my student loans off with 8% interest and pay more than my fair share in Federal taxes to support some of your entitlements. So please, don't verse me with your ignorance and continued naive assumptions. Add Greece along with Venezuela to your list. On the bright side, you guys opened my eyes to the importance of supporting the ARRL membership. And that is something I do appreciate now that I have returned to the hobby after many years. If any of you cronys dare work me on the air, rest assured I will not send you a QSL card because of your despicable forum behavior. However, you will receive a LoTW confirmation (assuming you have sufficient intelligence to have it working on your computer.) You guys made me chuckle a few times, which is always a good thing.
Do I need to reprint the Dictionary definition again involving the possible usages of the word "annual" for you? You are not allowed to modify the English language, nor the Dictionary ;-) It sounds like you enjoy softball... a lot of fun actually, it has been years since I last played. So...between you and me, I just renewed my ARRL membership for 3-years. I have no time to dedicate to an organization (perhaps if I were retired it would be different.) Do me a small favor and don't tell those no-good cronys about my renewal. Thanks!
Don't just talk about it do something , I am planning on volunteer work when I retire and will look forward to working with you then. Won't argue a bit with that, LoTW needs some help. It took me several attempts to get it up and working.
This is how it should be! Everyone happy, including me. Thanks to all for their feedback in making me realize the benefits of ARRL support. Sold! LoTW integrates very well with my QRZ online log. They need to update the front end to make it easier to install - very secure, but a bit overly complicated, as it marries itself to your computer's MAC address and you have to put in a request to open an account specifically for that computer. Online banking doesn't even do that.
You are totally correct, ARRL sent me 2 or 3 passwords before I got it figured out. I wonder if that is why I don't get many qsl cards verified by DX and even USA stations?? Even on QRZ I don't get very many contacts verified, back in the old days (40 years ago) I remember getting at least one card a day from somebody.
