Never ending subscription?

Hello, I've been a subscriber here since July 11/05 and on July 11/06 it

should have expired then. In my "workspace" at the top of the page, it tells

me - already expired - (in red) and - click here to renew - but when I load up

a picture it tells me that I AM a subscriber and my little red box with the

bow continues to follow my every comment.

 

Now, is this just some faulty script on PN or something? The reason why I ask

is that I've NEVER been notified if some overly kind soul purchased a

subsription for me, for which I don't deserve, because I'm not nearly active

enough to warrant one. Plus I've have never lost the benefits to being a

subscriber, not even for a minute...thus far (:

 

Not that I want everthing to disappear, but if a subscription was purchased

for me a thank you in my bio page is long over due.

 

Can somebody clear up my confusions for me or take away my seemingly fake

subscription? Please, I think!

Hi Don,<br>

If a subscription has been offered to you, you should have received an email.<br>

I think PN is a bit (blindly) *floating* these days... Have a look on this <A HREF="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Hhv5&tag=">thread</A>. Could looks like an explanation of some *dysfunctions*.<br>

Cheers.

Everybody usually gets 4-6 weeks of grace to renew before the icons and the photo.net forwarding addresses are removed.

<p align="justify">

Brian,<br>

Why this isn't simply written somewhere? (the fact 4-6 weeks of grace are offered). I guess an *alert* email should be sent when the subcription is expired... Often, many members questions have simple answers but members don't know how to find them else in this forum. Of course, I know it's one of its aim to reply to such questions but a more complete *guideline* could be useful.<br>

Please believe I don't critique admins work (sure, you (and them) are still working). I just find photo.net a bit *strange* these days.</p>

Yann,

You say that when you are offered a subscription, that you recieve an email. Well...I got one and didn't find out about it until I looked at my member page and saw the subscriber icon beside my name. Now I am really confused. Brian..any help on this issue is appreciated. I realize that this is the wrong place to bring up my concerns, but I tried posting a thread soon after the subscription was given to me, and I got no response.

 

Thanks.

 

Megan

Brian, thanks for that, I now understand. I plan to renew my subscription in the future but for now, time and money seem to go hand in hand. Unsurprisingly!

 

Hi Yann! yes, I skimmed that thread just before my post here, it was a bit of a surprise since I haven't checked out the site feedback forum for some time. As for an email alert for expirations and guidelines to explain things...well, I can see their point. If everybody knew they had 13 1/2 months before having to renew, I believe some lost revenues would follow. Ideally though, in my opinion, eliminating uploading privileges as a subscriber I think would encourge members to renew more efficiently. Maybe some fine tuning of their marketing tactics might be an idea. (:

Megan,<br>

Well... I got one too and seemed to me that I've received an email. I didn't keep it, maybe I'm wrong then. (?) If I am, sorry.<p>

I think that Brian will answer us as soon he'll be on line again.

You have nothing to be sorry about Yann. I'm just curious as to why some people a) get emails and b) know who the gift is from and others do not.

 

Megan

To Brian .

I know that this is not the forum for this but I have written 3 letters and got no response.

My problem is I want to subscribe and pay by credit card, but my country Philippines is not in

the list. Any solutions?

The system does send one email reminder a few weeks before a subscription is about to expire. We don't want to spam people with naggy reminders, so we only send the one reminder. We also notify people in their Workspace that their subscription has expired.

 

The icon and mail-forwarding address is not removed automatically on the expiration date. We run a procedure to do that about once per month to take away the icons, etc, of subscribers whose subscriptions have expired more than a month ago. It isn't documented that there is a "grace" period, because we don't want people relying on the grace period. We want them to resubscribe. There is no promise of a grace period, and we could change this at any time.

 

The system also sends email notifications to people who receive gift subscriptions.

 

There are many reasons why emails might not get through, and I can't really say why any particular one didn't unless it was very recent and I can track it in the mail logs. Because of all the different schemes mail service providers are coming up with to block spam, email is getting pretty unreliable. I hope this changes before long, because it is big problem for us, but it seems to be taking the email industry a very long time to get its act together regarding spam, and I don't expect this to change in the short-term.

 

Regarding subscribing by credit card from countries that aren't supported by our credit card processor: we currently accept payment from about 35 countries. North America and Western Europe are pretty much covered. Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Central and South America, Asia, and the Pacific are, with a few exceptions, mostly not covered. If your credit card was issued in one of the countries that is not covered, then you can't use your credit card to pay our subscription fee, I'm afraid. The list of supported countries is expanding (slowly), but that is under the control of the credit card processing company. Unless you have a friend in another country who will do the transaction for you, please continue to participate in the site as a Trial/Guest member.