CC Premium membership thread

[TeeGee]

Membership for all, whether it be for you or a friend is 3500 credits per year.

However you can subscribe yourself and receive a discount, but I doubt you or anyone really would want to give a gift subscription.


is that clearer for you?

[owenshooter]

Honestly, $50 would be a reasonable price. That's less than two months of my gym membership, and I'm sure the equipment for CC costs a heck of a lot more than it does at the gym.

yes.. yes... this is the way to go... under 9300 members now (i don't care how the books were cooked earlier this week to find a missing 1200 members out of thin air), so why not increase the price?!! that is the way to make the masses run to the site!!! you are insane to say membership is worth $50, there is nothing that remotely proves this... it is YOUR perceived value of the site/membership, not mine or many other users... please post a thread with a poll asking if people will pay $50 a year for membership... please... this site could use a comedy break...
this site needs an enema...-Jésus noir

[BoganGod]

WPBRJ, unless you have superlative tattooing skills I suggest you stop wasting your time. Maybe if you tattoed your point(that I understand and agree with) onto the insides of the eyelids of the deliberately obtuse simpletons that can't get the point. Maybe then, possibly they would understand a little.

[macbone]

It's not the price increase that's the issue here. The main thing is that it needs to be clear that when someone signs up for a premium membership, the user is informed that their credit card will be billed in recurring installments. Yes, I know that other companies have done this without informing the user, like Discover with their credit protection plan, and they ultimately had to change their policy.

I try to assume good faith whenever possible, and I don't think bigWham was trying to trick anyone. He probably just figured it was industry-standard and that we'd know.

For a good website that I believe in, I don't mind spending more on it. However, I would love to see it simpler to purchase year-long memberships via a one-time credit card transaction as opposed to buying credits first or being enrolled in a recurring billing system without informing me.

I've signed up for offers before to get free stuff, like all the different companies sending 12 free Dr. Suess books with a recurring subscription that can be cancelled at any time. However, these companies usually inform consumers at the very beginning that it's a recurring membership. That's cool. If I don't like the service, I can cancel at any time.

Redhotpawn (annual membership: $39.95) identifies the payment as recurring on their subscription main page: http://www.redhotpawn.com/vstat/subs.php.

Gameknot ($39.99-$89.90/year) doesn't include the word "recurrent" on their subscription page because it's not recurrent: http://gameknot.com/premium.pl

WoW states clearly that membership automatically renews, which admittedly is convenient: https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/w ... bscription

[Dukasaur]

WOW

I think all of you defending this to the death should become politicians you all would make great democrats for sure. you get a talking point in your head and you say it over and over and over and over until people just stop caring.

I WILL SAY IT AGAIN IT'S NOT ABOUT HOW MUCH ITS COST RATHER THAN ITS ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE IN COST FOR MYSELF AND FOR ME TO BUY FOR SOME ONE ELSE!!!!!!!!! IT CAN BE $100 AND I AM FINE WITH IT BUT IF I HAVE TO PAY $150 FOR MY FRIEND AS A GIFT I AM ALL AGAINST IT LIKE I AM NOW!!!!!

The price is 3500 credits, regardless of whether you're buying for yourself or for a friend. This is what you're not getting. There may be different discounts offered to sweeten the deal, but the base price is 3500 credits.

If you're buying for yourself and a friend, you can buy 11000 credits for $100. You can get your own membership and one for your friend, and still have enough left over to buy for a second friend, or to buy yourself another year. $39 is just what it costs for 3500 credits if you pay for them in the most inefficient way possible.

There's tons of ways to make the price cheaper -- buying in bulk for the creds, or taking the discount for buying a subscription. There's also all kinds of way to get some of the credits for fre. You can win some of the credits in tournaments or contests, or you can earn some through the referral program, or you can earn some through the surveys and stuff. Tons of choices available to you.

[owenshooter]

There's tons of ways to make the price cheaper --

like making it the sticker price and not the sneaky sneaky CC price... *cough*...-Jésus noir

crazy duk's is slashing CC prices!!

[IcePack]

There's tons of ways to make the price cheaper --

like making it the sticker price and not the sneaky sneaky CC price... *cough*...-Jésus noir

So top secret that were openly talking about it and the information all readily availible on the store tab. But shhhhhhhhh we are being sneaky and secretive

[owenshooter]

There's tons of ways to make the price cheaper --

like making it the sticker price and not the sneaky sneaky CC price... *cough*...-Jésus noir

So top secret that were openly talking about it and the information all readily availible on the store tab. But shhhhhhhhh we are being sneaky and secretive

NOW!!! AFTER CC WAS CAUGHT BY DISGRUNTLED USERS!!! don't even try it, ice-pop... go back to the jr. mint forum and let the big boy mods deal with the men in the forums... go help the rest of the team cook the books to pump those numbers up!!!-Jésus noir

cookin' the CC books!!!

[IcePack]

There's tons of ways to make the price cheaper --

like making it the sticker price and not the sneaky sneaky CC price... *cough*...-Jésus noir

So top secret that were openly talking about it and the information all readily availible on the store tab. But shhhhhhhhh we are being sneaky and secretive

NOW!!! AFTER CC WAS CAUGHT BY DISGRUNTLED USERS!!! don't even try it, ice-pop... go back to the jr. mint forum and let the big boy mods deal with the men in the forums... go help the rest of the team cook the books to pump those numbers up!!!-Jésus noir

cookin' the CC books!!!

The information has always been there, disgruntled CC users (as you put it) may have asked for and received clarification on subscriptions, but the information has always been there and the pricing remains the same / hasn't changed. Which is what we were talking about. The price.

[BoganGod]

LicePrick, we are not just talking about the price. We are talking about the WHY behind the price. The whole subscription thing is also a major part of what we are discussing. Sad that you can't/won't see the point that the OP is making. Am assuming english classes were a nightmare at highschool. You poor thing.

[owenshooter]

pricing remains the same / hasn't changed. Which is what we were talking about. The price.

this shows how little of this conversation you have understood... wow...-Jésus noir

do you understand the words that are coming out of my MOUTH?

[IcePack]

pricing remains the same / hasn't changed. Which is what we were talking about. The price.

this shows how little of this conversation you have understood... wow...-Jésus noir

do you understand the words that are coming out of my MOUTH?

LicePrick, we are not just talking about the price. We are talking about the WHY behind the price. The whole subscription thing is also a major part of what we are discussing. Sad that you can't/won't see the point that the OP is making. Am assuming english classes were a nightmare at highschool. You poor thing.

Can you two read? I'm specifically addressing what Duka wrote and the previous conversation had addressed. Which was the price. Not the OP. Or the why. Apparently I'm not the one with trouble in high school English and reading comprehension. But good effort! I'll give you a C-

[lokisgal]

Sooooo

Youve been able to earn credits for member ship for a while. It was until about a week ago that you got 10 credits if you started one and did not qualify now suddenly its only 5. Me thinks someone wants the hard cold cash over people cashing in credits..
Also a lot of the surveys dont work correctly
http://www.your-surveys.com/offers/end_new?s=2

just took this it just kept giving me surveys and redirecting me to the next one never got the credits it promised. Something stinks around here

[TeeGee]

Sooooo

Youve been able to earn credits for member ship for a while. It was until about a week ago that you got 10 credits if you started one and did not qualify now suddenly its only 5. Me thinks someone wants the hard cold cash over people cashing in credits..
Also a lot of the surveys dont work correctly
http://www.your-surveys.com/offers/end_new?s=2

just took this it just kept giving me surveys and redirecting me to the next one never got the credits it promised. Something stinks around here

If the surveys don't work it has nothing to do with CC, however admin would like to know.

As for the credits issued, that is also controlled by the supply company. They may be based in a different country and the local currency may be taking a dive against the US dollar?? There are many factors that control things and it is not always greed.

[Dukasaur]

Sooooo

Youve been able to earn credits for member ship for a while. It was until about a week ago that you got 10 credits if you started one and did not qualify now suddenly its only 5. Me thinks someone wants the hard cold cash over people cashing in credits..
Also a lot of the surveys dont work correctly
http://www.your-surveys.com/offers/end_new?s=2

just took this it just kept giving me surveys and redirecting me to the next one never got the credits it promised. Something stinks around here

If the surveys don't work it has nothing to do with CC, however admin would like to know.

As for the credits issued, that is also controlled by the supply company. They may be based in a different country and the local currency may be taking a dive against the US dollar?? There are many factors that control things and it is not always greed.

The surveys are pre-qualified now, so some of the problems they used to have should have been fixed. They used to make you do the whole survey before they told you that you were in the wrong demographic or whatever. Now they ask a couple of pre-qualification questions right off the hop so that if you're in the wrong demographic you don't have to waste time doing the whole thing. I've dona a couple recently and it seemed to me that they had really listened to earlier complaint and the pre-qualification was really quick and easy.

Still, could be some problems. If there are, I would definitely file an eticket.

[_sabotage_]

700 surveys to get premium? I'm guessing someone who needs to go this route wouldn't qualify for many marketing demographics. If you could do 1 a minute, you'd be earning $3 per hour and not qualify for the demographic, making less surveys available. In order to achieve 3500 credits, you are looking at around 200 hours of work more realistically. If this is a thing you are considering, hit me up with a PM, I'll pay you $60 for 200 hrs of work.

[Endgame422]

Sooooo

Youve been able to earn credits for member ship for a while. It was until about a week ago that you got 10 credits if you started one and did not qualify now suddenly its only 5. Me thinks someone wants the hard cold cash over people cashing in credits..
Also a lot of the surveys dont work correctly
http://www.your-surveys.com/offers/end_new?s=2

just took this it just kept giving me surveys and redirecting me to the next one never got the credits it promised. Something stinks around here

Yep. Alot of those peanut lab things are straight up scams.
Earn 300 credits!rewards in 2 minutes!15 minutes later no credits and yet peanut labs has more of my data to sell and im getting their free sample in the mail.
Those ones do not even give you the 5 credit thanks for your time.
They are 3rd party so i dont think the admin team has too much say in them,but theres no doubt some of those offers are definetly fishy.
And as to the credits vs cash thats why there was a 20 percent increase in the cost from 25 to 30 and a roughly 35 percent in the cost if you pay with credits from 2500 to 3500.
They make nothing when credits are spent so they make it easier(cheaper) to pay with cash.

[casper]

Thanks OP. That was a sneaky little change. I certainly never saw any mention of auto-renewal. Maybe it was there in the fine print. Anyway, I just logged into Paypal and canceled Big Wham LLC from my preapproved payments.

[BoganGod]

Thanks OP. That was a sneaky little change. I certainly never saw any mention of auto-renewal. Maybe it was there in the fine print. Anyway, I just logged into Paypal and canceled Big Wham LLC from my preapproved payments.

[Trevor33]

Remember good old days when you could get a sub for buying some other product, can't remember the name but I used to get it for almost nothing. I'd say $35 is a good price but the fact that a gift can be more expensive than just paying it for yourself is completely insane and WILL cost CC in the long run. A flat $35 for everyone and no one can complain.

They should have brought in recurring subs a long time ago, but at the same price each year. That's how you reward loyalty. The regular price goes up but a renew says the same... of course people will then complain when their card expires and have to pay the new price.

Agree with mets(stop the earth I want to get off, something is wrong) that the membership fee has been undervalued in the past. As a person that has frittered away large portions of my life on here, would have been happy to pay more. In particular if the following were addressed.

[ConfederateSS]

-----A little help from The Blue and Silver Rebellion...Bringing it up from page 6. I love noname..Like a Clint Eastwood cowboy drifting though the WEST... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...

[ConfederateSS]

----Bringing up for you dyrtydog. ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion).

[Ronaldinho]

To be honest I don't buy the whole 'It's a business thing' regarding the sneaky underhand ways in which you can or cannot buy premium for friends/yourself at a set price. CC was built on a community that loved the site & what it had to offer, in return you would make the effort to gift or buy premium to help the sites costs etc.

However this has been lost over the years, I have no idea who BigWHAM is (never even seen him post?) but he's obviously doing this to make money no other reason, I suppose when you buy a website you don't have that love for it like you would if you built it from scratch so these decisions are 100% money related, rather than saying to yourself 'Okay. If I make buying premium 1 price, auto renew it for the members quietly & then make the gift a slightly higher price, how would the community react?' - & the ONLY logical answer is poorly. You cannot put a spin on it.

Honestly if BW came out openly to say the site needed to make a little more money & was completely transparent with everything that is happening & just said 'look guys I hate the fact i'm doing this but premium is now $40 & the reason is XYZ' I'm sure everyone would be onboard.

[iAmCaffeine]

My main issue is that buying premium for someone else costs more than buying it for yourself. That is completely counter productive to increasing membership.

[Dukasaur]

My main issue is that buying premium for someone else costs more than buying it for yourself. That is completely counter productive to increasing membership.

I agree with you it's a bad policy. Just wanted to make that clear before I answered Ron's comment.

However this has been lost over the years, I have no idea who BigWHAM is (never even seen him post?) but he's obviously doing this to make money no other reason, I suppose when you buy a website you don't have that love for it like you would if you built it from scratch so these decisions are 100% money related,

BW did post a bit when he first took over, but the people who didn't like his changes were pretty savage in their attacks, and he withdrew from the forums rather than stress about it. I can pretty much understand that decision.

But I would challenge you about who loves this website more.

Lackattack started it, and in the beginning it was his lovechild, but after the first couple years there is clear evidence that he got bored with it. After those first two years he withdrew from the community, rarely played a game here, stopped accepting PMs, and had the "Community Manager" handle all interaction with the community and the forums. He may have loved it at the beginning, but the love affair turned sour pretty early.

CC peaked in 2009, and by then there was almost no direct interaction with lackattack. Updates were fewer and fewer after that, and the "Community Manager" spent most of his time making excuses for why there were no updates, and vague promises of updates to come in the future. As the years went by, the promises got more vague over time, as he got progressively more embarrassed about having to make excuses for the absent owner. At that time (and note this, because it becomes significant) CC was still making (by my estimate) something between $250,000 and $300,000 a year. CC was in decline after 2009, but still making decent money. Lackattack, even if he was sick of the place, could have hired an outside programmer to make some upgrades. (Actually, he did, but he cheaped out and hired unknown offshore programmers who didn't have a clue. He wouldn't spend the money to hire anyone good.)

By the end of 2012, CC was in freefall, and lackattack ditched it for an undisclosed price. All these numbers are estimates based on the number of the people on the scoreboard and the percentage that are premium, but I'm guessing that in the 5 years lackattack had made $500,000 clear on the site even before the sale.

The next owner was El_Jefe. El_Jefe spent a lot of money advertising CC. Nobody knows how much money, but the El_Jefe reign was the only time that I saw advertisements for CC on other sites. Advertising isn't cheap, so I suspect it was a lot of money. The advertising didn't help. Thousands of new people came and checked out the site, but few of them stayed. The decline of CC slowed down but didn't stop. Whether the ads were targetted at the wrong group or whether CC is an acquired taste that needs to be sold by word-of-mouth, who can say? El_Jefe definitely lost his shirt, because his love affair with CC also soured quickly, and in under a year he was selling it again. During his reign, membership dropped from 14K to 12K, and the estimated income from probably an annualized $170K to an annualized $130K or thereabouts.

The third owner was/is BW. He too was a long-time player. Actually he was a Top 10 player long ago. Taking over CC was definitely a culmination of a long love affair. BW doesn't have El_Jefe's millions to play with, but at least he was a techie. The membership was still dropping rapidly, and the site was long overdue for a revamp, so with no money to pay for outside help, he started working long days writing updates himself. The first two changes he introduced -- polymorphic games and 12-player games -- were very popular and got tons of praise. After that, however, there were some unpopular updates, and the community which loved him in November of 2013 was hating him by January of 2014. Amazing how fast people will turn on you, and how viciously. If you'd read some of the stuff that was posted here in early 2014 you'd think BW was the left hand of Satan.

Since then, of course, membership has dropped even more, and revenue, even with the price increase, is probably below $100K annually. Part of the problem is that the people who wanted change didn't get enough of it to make them happy, and meanwhile the people who don't like change have gotten a lot more of it than they want. There's no solution to that. If the new owners had followed lackattack's Do Nothing strategy, the site would still have declined, albeit probably a little more slowly. We might be at 9500 members now instead of 7500. BW doesn't believe in waiting to die slowly. He believes in continuing to try new things, always hoping that the next update is the one that will ignite people's imagination and give the site new life.

So, Ronnie, I ask you now. Who loves this site most? The original founder, who cleared at least half a mill, and then walked away when it started going downhill instead of trying to save it? Or the second owner, who unfortunately didn't have any tech knowledge, but poured big bucks into trying to reverse the decline through advertising? Or the third owner, who took over the site when it was already half way into the grave, and has been working 14 hour days ever since trying to modernize it and save it?