Allegro Club International

[Dave Smart]

It is 2014 and this has to be so kind of joke i do not get, why is this the worst website ever!!!!!!!! trying to renew my membership , fill this form in, then one is sent back ,which doesnt open and wont let you pay by paypal. how come ebay there is a paypal button which lets you pay instantly????? then there is uploading photos, facebook theres an upload button and its instant ,not here you have to piss about ,going here ,getting url's, copy,paste ,piss about, its about time this website was fully redone and joined the 21st century rather than being stuck in the early 90's, somebody do something.
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The Super Vroom Bitch Is Back...............

[Richard Howe]

eBay and PayPal are run by the same massive company, they have many more resources than we do to have webmasters working at keeping their stuff integrated. Same with Facebook. Hosting images on dedicated image hosting sites is perfectly normal; switching to hosting them all ourselves and allowing uploads to our webspace would increase our hosting costs significantly as well as opening the site up to abuse from hackers and the like.
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...that's why Allegro will look as good 5 years from now as it does today.

[Dave Smart]

Utter s**te, so how come nearly every other small business,that has internet access to purchase items, can manage a pay by paypal button or mastercard or visa or visa debit button yet here you have to piss about,sending forms and downloading forms(that don't open), and as for security again it is no more secure than other websites from hackers and such like. Get someone who has an idea of what they are doing and this early,out dated website can be brought into the 21st century and not left in the last one.
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The Super Vroom Bitch Is Back...............

[Graham]

I had a similar problem. I share your frustration. I emailed membership@allegroclubint.org.uk and explained the problem I was having and got a nice, prompt reply with an email address I could send my Paypal payment to. Easy. I expect most members still pay by cheque using snail mail so the problem isn't too prevalent.

Can the process be simplified? e.g. we email our details as per the form, which are required for the club stats and membership database etc. (so I get why you need it) but just let us pay the email address by paypal with our membership number as a reference?

The web site is, hmm, how do I put this, politely. Quaint. As well as the notable laments regarding a Paypal button, it is often out of date and important information does seem to get missed off which is a real shame. Sort of matches the car though, don't ya think?

But most car forums I've joined want you to use photobucket or dropbox or the like to put pics up. I think that's the norm.
And is the Allegro Club Int even a small business? If it is a business at all, it's mini err micro, miniature, tiny, teeny weeny err, small is too big to use really??

Unfortunately, the size of the club and the small number of members, (as well as the age profile, I guess?) means we don't have the resources of the bigger car clubs who probably have plenty of web masters and magicians in their midst to help push their clubs along. I wish I knew more about it because I wouldn't mind having a go but a web wizard I'm not!

I have to say, a few improvements would be welcome but well done to those that are doing what they can to provide us with this, inadequate, quirky, out of date, quaint website and forum I'll still carry on using it anyway. For at least 5 years

[Paul-V]

I think Graham has summed up the situation quite well.

Giz, our Webmaster, stood down recently due to family commitments and as is often the case in small clubs for less than 'popular' cars, we don't have a long queue of people desperate to fill his shoes. We continue to be indebted to Mike Dean, who does an excellent job of basic admin tasks keeping the site afloat and protecting us from spammers, but he does not have the time to take on a full Webmaster role.

Any volunteers would be welcome, although we have the added complication of the whole site being built on a rather old platform (Think Marina/Ital )

At the last committee meeting, the current situation was discussed and Colin Corke has gone away to explore the cost and feasibility of having a new site built from scratch on a more user-friendly platform that will be easier to keep updated.

[Mike Dean]

Hello Dave and Graham.
I am sorry that you had so many problems with the new membership forms. I do agree that it is not as straight forward a process as one would like it to be, but we are limited by the tools available. Paul has already explained some of the limitations we have to work with.
I believe that the the problem that you and others have experienced have been largely due to the use of Google Chrome. Let me explain -

The process of joining/renewing on line is a two stage one.
Firstly we need to know your name, address and other details. Paypal do not offer us an easy way to capture and validate this information and the tools behind the website do not make it easy for us to do it there, so, we felt that a pdf form would be the best way of dealing with this. I have just produced a new version of this form whic takes into account the new options for 2-year and 5 year membership. This form then needs to be emailed to membership@... It could work if people were to just email their details directly but experience shows that this often leads to incomplete details being sent.
The second stage of the process is to make the payment via Paypal. This is done by following a link on the form to a webpage where we have embedded buttons for making your payment. The link is given in the form to discourage people fromm making payment without submitting their details. This page is not as nice as I'd like it to be as I have no means of calculating the amount due and so have offer the full range of possible payment amounts. The alternative would be to give the option for the member to make payment of whatever amount they choose to specify and then run the risk of it not being clear what they are paying for.

Unfortunately, not all pdf viewing programs implement the full standard for supporting pdf functionality and so you run into problems. My advice is to always use Adobe Reader to open and complete the form. An early amendment that was made to the process was to modify the link to the forms to some code which would initiate a download of the form rather than opening the form directly. However, if you are using Chrome as your browser, and select to open the downloaded form it will use it's own (limited functionality) pdf viewer to open the form, rather than any other software (such as Adobe Reader) that you may have on your computer. If, when you have the form open, you click on the pdf icon to the right of the document name, Chrome will tell you "Parts of this document could not be displayed" and gives you the option to open the document is Adobe Reader (if you have it installed). Details of this limitation, and some options to deal with this, can be found here:
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1060734

What would be really helpful would be your input into additional instructions that we should provide to make the process easier for others. I look forward to your constructive advice as a contribution to the the club.

Mike.

[Graham]

Hi Mike, I think my problems were due to using web mail. I normally use outlook but due to laptop meltdown I'm using a spare laptop and want to leave my emails on the server to collect later when my laptop is repaired.
I don't use chrome, I use firefox, not sure if that has the same issues?
Anyway, I've just gone back and had another look at the process and I can't really figure out where I went wrong! It all seems to be straightforward so I must have done something wrong when I tried a few days ago. Part of the process asked me to fill in my email details (including server, cant remember the other detail, password maybe?) which is where it possibly went wrong??
Anyway, a quick email to Peter and everything was sorted, no dramas!
Thanks for looking into it though!

[Dave Smart]

Mike, it really isnt that difficult,unlike anything you try and do on this website, to be able to pay by paypal the ACI must have an account, usually an email or phone number, this is unique to that account. If the members have this account email or number then they can renew by sending by 3 ways through paypal, pay now,which incurs a cost, pay a friend,which incurs a cost or gift,which doesnt incur a cost. So if the members have access to pay pal they put in the account to which the money is going to, they can also add a message to the payment and all that needs to be is name and membership number. when payment is made an email is generated that goes to the payer and also the payee with details of who you have paid and the recipient gets one telling them who has paid. None of the fill this ,send this ,get form back, piss about,wont open,find cheque book, write out cheque,re write cheque because you havent done it for a while,find envelope,buy stamp,post the bloody thing. it is 2014 and i think a vast majority of the 218 members on here are computer literate by now, so the argument for the older generation(in the previous comment) still using snail mail doesnt wash. Waiting with anticipation. Dave.
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The Super Vroom Bitch Is Back...............

[Mike Dean]

Hi Graham,
From your description, I suspect that you probably selected to submit your form using the Desktop Email Option rather than Internet Email. This would have resulted your computer opening Windows Mail or Outlook Express (or whatever mail client is installe of your computer). The mail client would have then gone through the process of asking you for details to configure it - hence your being asked for your email details &c.. Unfortunately the prompt and explanation for the Email options are generated by your PDF viewer so we have no way to simplfy/clarify them.
Mike.

[Mike Dean]

Dave,
Thank you for the explanation of how Paypal works, I'll try and remember in future. If you had read the instructions on the first page of the application form you would have seen the address of the webpage where you can make your payments via Paypal by selecting the relevant membership option and clicking the Pay Now button. If you use a functional PDF viewer the address is actually a hyperlink which you can click on to go directly to the page rather than running the risk of mistyping the address.

When membership payment via Paypal was introduced, there were several concerns which led to the use of the PDF form.

1. The existing website structure, tools and skills available meant that it was not possible to set up a web page to capture all the required information for a new member. The Paypal tools available meant the information could not all be captured at the time of making the payment. The PDF form was the best option available to us and was known to be being used successfully by other clubs.

2. Having Paynow options equal to the fixed amounts for the various membership / renewal options, rather than having people make ad-hoc payments was decided upon because of the disproportionate cost of resolving incorrect payments.

3. The idea of not requiring the form for membership renewals was rejected for two reasons:
- "When cheque payments are made it is common for the cheque name to be different from the member's name and presumably the same could happen with paypal"
- "When members return a form with their cheque payment they often then inform me about their new postal and/or e-mail address or that they have changed their car etc. Car details are helpful for [the spares secretary] also, as I record the chassis number/VIN number on the database to which he has access. It is very rare to get notification of changes between renewals."

I hope Colin Corke is successful in finding a cost effective solution to have the website redeveloped. If not, would you be interested in applying your expertise for the good of the club and taking on the role of webmaster?

In the meantime, I hope to put together some more detailed instructions to be given prior to the download of the application forms as there seem to be more and more alternative pdf viewers which fail implement much beyond basic viewing. Sadly the limitations are not made clear, even to computer savvy users (e.g. the only indication I see with the Chrome pdf viewer is the message "Parts of theis pdf document could not be displayed" after clicking the pdf icon to the right of the document name at the top). Unfortunately this is a particularly busy time of year at work for me, and my personal commitments are currently quite demanding, so I'm not sure how long it will take to implement.

Mike.

[Graham]

Thanks Mike, I guess the present payment system works after a fashion and if it works ok for Peter and the officers of the club I don't mind the small inconvenience and effort required if it helps the unpaid volunteers in a small way. I'm not sure what went wrong for me, I don't have any email client loaded on this machine but resolution was simple. Just a quick email to Peter and it was all sorted. When I retraced my steps it all seemed so easy. I did find the Paypal button, with the drop downs for the amount to pay. I like to think I have got a bit of a clue so navigating a simple pdf shouldn't be too hard really. I have to say not many others have chimed in to say how difficult it is. Maybe it's just me and Dave The answer, methinks, is to do what I have done and pay for 5 years, I'm sure it'll all be sorted by then!!
I do know there are far more than 200 odd members of the Allegro club and I stand by my statement. I expect the majority pay by cheque in the post! So this is just a small inconvenience for the club as a whole.
Dave, you seem to have some knowledge of the way it all works, I'm sure the committee would be very grateful for any help with the web site, simplifying payments etc. To be honest though, although the payment system is a bit clunky, I'd rather more time and effort was spent keeping the web site up to date with up coming meetings and reports and photos of recent get togethers.
I feel like this is all a bit of a storm in a tea cup, so I do hope no offence is taken and any criticism is not taken too much to heart!

[John W]

My view.

After buying my Allegro in August, I tried to join the club immediately using the Paypal route. This didn't work despite several attempts-I now know this was due to the Google Chrome issue after Mike very helpfully clarified it to me. However, by this time I had given up and printed off the forms, posting them with a cheque. This form and cheque never arrived.........
On my return from holiday, I tried the online method again using internet explorer and of course this time it worked.

I suppose my thought is that I was determined to join the club. A lot of people who might want to join on the spur of the moment may give up and not be so tenacious. It might be worth looking at the way other clubs manage their membership applications and Paypal payments?
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Kind regards

John

1975 Allegro 1100DL 2 door
1975 Allegro 1750 HL (Series 1)
1982 Porsche 924 Lux
1998 Jaguar XJ8 3.2

[Graham]

That's a very good point.
I only really looked at the issue from a "renewals" point of view!

[norway_triumph]

tried to renew - but cant find my membershipnumber (its probably on the envelope- but i always toss that away - anyone knows the username for the membershipsecretary then i could pm him
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Jan-Ivar
Driving is believing
http://www.albion.no.com./
http://www.morrismarina.org.uk/

[Mike Dean]

Your Membership number is on your membership card.
The Membership Secretary's contact address, curiously, seems to be missing from the latest Quartic, but is on the Membership application/renewal form. It is membership@allegroclubint.org.uk

Mike.