On 20 Nov 2008, at 07:44, James Farrar wrote:
2008/11/19 Michael Peel <email(a)mikepeel.net>
Information is given on the form about membership
fees (£12/year
standard, £6 for concessions); these need to be paid by cheque
initially, although we hope to accept other forms of payment in the
future.
You really need to do something about that very quickly - many of us
do not have cheque books.
The big advantage of cheques before we have a bank account is that
you will hold on to the money until we are actually able to process
the membership applications, which obviously isn't the case with e.g.
cash or postal orders. Plus, I don't really want cash / postal order
membership fees hanging around in this initial period, as it is easy
to dissociate them with the application form, and they're difficult
to return if need be.
To summarize the other possible payment options for the future:
- Cash: has to be in person, not sent through the post, plus the
above issue
- Postal orders: see the above issue.
- Bank transfer: requires bank account
- Direct debit: requires bank account + extras
- Paypal / Google checkout: requires a bank account; also has fees
charged which means we would get less money through this mechanism
- Debit / credit cards: requires bank account, plus extras (or a
paypal/google checkout account); also has fees charged.
Once we have a bank account, then we can start accepting some of
these other options. Until then, I think that just accepting cheques
is the best approach. My apologies to those that don't have them. I
thought that they were pretty standard from 16+, and people younger
than that can normally get their parents to write one, or am I
showing my age?
Mike