CFC membership updates

[Adam Cormier]

I payed for my CFC membership this year during the University chess championships in early January. My membership is still showing that it has expired, when can I expect this to be corrected (has the CFC still not received the money from the executives who ran the tournament?). It's two months later and I was wondering why the extreme delay?

[Caleb Petersen]

Re: CFC membership updates

I'd email infochess.ca, I think that the email, check it on the CFC website though. For me I payed for it online and it worked perfectly, I guess the tournament payments could be different?

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: CFC membership updates

I payed for my CFC membership this year during the University chess championships in early January. My membership is still showing that it has expired, when can I expect this to be corrected (has the CFC still not received the money from the executives who ran the tournament?). It's two months later and I was wondering why the extreme delay?

Adam, I am still waiting for a complete membership report from the organizers.
They did send me a list of 16 persons who paid memberships, and those have been updated. Your name was not on this list.
In fact, I have sent them a list of 58 players who membership status is in question or expired.
No moneys have been received yet. To put it mildly, I am not a happy camper.
My reminder emails are becoming more and more hostile. Feel free to give them a poke on my behalf.

[Adam Cormier]

Re: CFC membership updates

Adam, I am still waiting for a complete membership report from the organizers.
They did send me a list of 16 persons who paid memberships, and those have been updated. Your name was not on this list.
In fact, I have sent them a list of 58 players who membership status is in question or expired.
No moneys have been received yet. To put it mildly, I am not a happy camper.
My reminder emails are becoming more and more hostile. Feel free to give them a poke on my behalf.

I talked to one of the organizers and was told that you would be sent a follow-up email about this, have you received this Bob?

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: CFC membership updates

Managing membership fees collected by organizers and not yet paid to the CFC office is a major headache for the CFC. In the past, this was in part due to deficiencies in the the approach to collection of funds due but this has not really been the issue in at least a year or more. Where Bob has to send multiple emails to obtain the funds collected by organizers it simply ties his time up when he could be doing other things on his lengthy "to do" list. Where someone holds a tournament and collects memberships the organizer needs at a minimum to accurately keep track of and then account for the funds collected and forward those funds to the CFC in a timely manner. We try not to penalize players for the deficiencies of organizers but your membership cannot be updated if an organizer does not tell us that you paid them. Even more frustrating is when players tell us several months after the fact that they paid such and such an organizer. We then have to chase the player to provide a scan of a possible receipt. After that we have to chase the organizer, often with multiple emails and/or phone calls.

Most organizers are honest and fully intend to pay the fees but occasionally they are not very organized and when this intersects with an overloaded CFC office the stage is set for some frustrations which ultimately could result in the requirement to change some of our practices.

[Fred Harvey]

Re: CFC membership updates

Seems to me that if this is a problem, which it appears to be, you simply make the office the sole place to join the CFC. Why complicate things by asking tournament organizers to do your work for you? If for some reason a player shows up at a tournament without a membership, tough, it will only happen once.

To quote the troll on here....so simple, this organizing! LOL!

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: CFC membership updates

I talked to one of the organizers and was told that you would be sent a follow-up email about this, have you received this Bob?

The last correspondence I received was an email from Mike on Mar 3rd telling me that a cheque is being processed and not to worry because they will take care of any missing memberships. This is not even close to being acceptable! I need a list of memberships collected ASAP.

[John Coleman]

Re: CFC membership updates

It's first thing in the morning, and my coffee transfusion hasn't completed, but it seems to me that if an organiser collects memebership money, and doesn't submit it, then that is a form of theft, or maybe fraud. Or some other eff-word. For an event with a lot of renewals, that could be a lot of money.

I wonder who is liable here... is the organiser acting as an agent for the CFC, in which case the CFC should process the membership, if the player has a receipt.

As a previous poster said, maybe the CFC office should be the sole place to sell memberships.

[Paul Leblanc]

Re: CFC membership updates

Sometimes I tell the office what memberships I sell at a tournament then wait months for an invoice or confirmation that the CFC agrees with my calculation.
So Bob is chasing people who are avoiding him and can't get to people who just want to pay their bills.
I have suggested this before but why doesn't the CFC ask for a few volunteers to spend a couple of hours a week helping sort out things like this so Bob can get on with his "to do list"?

[Gary Ruben]

Re: CFC membership updates

Seems to me that if this is a problem, which it appears to be, you simply make the office the sole place to join the CFC. Why complicate things by asking tournament organizers to do your work for you? If for some reason a player shows up at a tournament without a membership, tough, it will only happen once.

To quote the troll on here....so simple, this organizing! LOL!

My own thought is if the person who collected the money is authorized by the CFC to do so, and doesn't deny having received the money, the membership should be honoured. The difficulty would be between the CFC and the authorized organizer.

It's part of the cost of doing business.

So simple is organizing.

[Fred Harvey]

Re: CFC membership updates

My own thought is if the person who collected the money is authorized by the CFC to do so, and doesn't deny having received the money, the membership should be honoured. The difficulty would be between the CFC and the authorized organizer.

It's part of the cost of doing business.

So simple is organizing.

Well, no! You've just identified a "difficulty"........

[Peter McKillop]

Re: CFC membership updates

I think Fred Harvey has the right idea. If one incompetent organizer can cause this much extra work and aggravation for the CFC, then people should be required to purchase their memberships/renewals directly from the CFC.

[Roger Patterson]

Re: CFC membership updates

I think Fred Harvey has the right idea. If one incompetent organizer can cause this much extra work and aggravation for the CFC, then people should be required to purchase their memberships/renewals directly from the CFC.

I find the suggestion simply bizarre. If chasing down the membership for one tournament causes the office so much grief, imagine how much grief the cfc office will have chasing down the membership for every tournament. And as the tournament is already over, and the office is not dealing with the offenders in person, the office will have no leverage in actually collecting.

I suppose you can require organizers to turn away new players with cash in their hands at the door...after all, who needs new members?

[Fred Harvey]

Re: CFC membership updates

"I suppose you can require organizers to turn away new players with cash in their hands at the door...after all, who needs new members?"

Simplicity, Patterson, simplicity! Of course you can refuse the potential player....it's just another rule of the game. Why keep spoon-feeding the great unwashed...is the CFC that desperate? Think of all the money you save with fewer members.......

[Felix Dumont]

Re : Re: CFC membership updates

If the organizers were to stop collecting membership, I would predict a huge drop in CFC membership...

I think the solution is easy : if organizers give you trouble like this, simply tell them the next time their tournament will only be rated once all the memberships are received... And if the tournament get rated way too late because of this, simply redirect the players' complains to the organizer. Honestly, if an organizer was to make me wait 2 months for the rating because of memberships (it's extremely easy to collect them!), I would not participate again in a tournament organized by him/her. I'm sure they would get the lesson.