Am I being a bit sensitive ?

I joined a running club last year but only managed a few events due to injury.  I  had already spent a few quid on a new club jacket, sweatshirt and vest as i intend to stay with this club.  

Imagine my suprise when i recieved a  short curt letter telling me that as i had not paid my subs ( £ 10 ) for this year i was now no-longer  a member and i must not wear club kit at any future event !

 The wording on the letter was very harsh in my view .  Why didn't someone just send me an email to say my membership subs were due or even to ask me if i was  ok ?   

I have now paid my subs but it has left me feeling a bit gutted.  Am i just being a bit sensitive.

Try not to be too sensitive about it.

I obviously don't know the full details, but I think it was probably just a standard letter that gets sent out if you don't pay your subs by a set date.

I know that for our club, the membership secretary tries to contact recently active members to chase up the subs before sending out letters etc, but for very large clubs I can see that this wouldn't be feasible. I suspect that if your injury kept you away from the club recently (and no one knew this fact), that they may have assumed that you had just given up.

yeah i think you are right Sanity.

I think i'll just forget about it now and  in the future make sure  i pay my subs on time.

whilst injured have yiu kept up with what the club is doing via there website and/ or facebook.....this would means you would still be in the loop even when you can't run...

seren nos yn canu  I take forever to type  and my English is not too good so bear with me. Thinking about it now  maybe i should have contacted someone . i don't do Facebook but i do receive a monthly newsletter so i suppose the mistake in the first place was mine.

The letter was a bit mean though.

Waccy, i'd have just binned them off.

There's ways and means, and if an impersonal harsh letter is their way, then screw them. Find a club that treat you better.

Stevie G -   I am  also a member of a local club who are my number one club.  They have all known  me for many years so it would never happen there.  The letter was sent by my second claim club who are a national club where i am not so well known.    

I think i'll give them the benefit of the doubt this time with a years probationery period . There are so many wonderful people at the club it would be a loss to me just to walk away.

Must be a pain to be a membership secretary though........forever chasing people up..I suppose they just get pissed off in the end.people know when they are due.they probably put infor on the website and then put it in the newsletter as well.If people want to be part of the club then they only have one cheque to worry about.......

but agree that the wording could be nicer.but maybe they decided that if people do not pay be a certain date then they will not chase them up... just let them go..and remind them that without payment they can not benefit form any of the club membership rights...

Maybe the chap earlier was right then... a big faceless national club probably can't do it softly softly.

Why the 2nd claim club by the way?

My experience of this is that it's pretty pointless. You can't count in a team for the 2nd claim club unless it's a closed league, and as it sounds like your 1st claim are local, and thus you'd train with them, why need a 2nd club?

seren nos yn canu wrote (see)

people know when they are due...

not necessarily.

If you never go to the club, and don't go on their website, or always read every word of every spamtastic email you get, you can quite easily miss it.

I've been months and months late signing on before. But my clubs have generally been fine about it.

Usually because I haven't raced in the meantime.

If you're miles overdue and still using their name for races, that's a bit rude.

Seren nos yn canu. -  I can be a bit silly at times as far as dates and times  go. I thought i was only a few days late when the letter arrived but it turned out i was 3 and a half months late. I should have taken care to read all of the newsletters but they are very long and  I am  not much cop with computors.

Stevie G.   I just wanted to broaden my horizens.  I'm not bothered about points or prizes. I did not join them for that. I've got to know some of the runners on my travels up and down the country and found them to be truely amazing people. When they said to me that i should join their club i did give it plenty of thought at first then after a few years of thinking i decided to join.  I think it is a smashing club .

Stevie .. maybe your clubs are nice to you as you are fast and score points for them at leagues etc

Seren, funny you should say that, as I had a bit of a rude awakening in the summer, concerning the whole 1st/2nd claim club business.

I'd basically been part of a local club as 1st claim for about 6 years, but grew a bit frustrated the club would finish about 8th out of 13 teams in the XC league.

I joined a team who compete for the title each year as 1st claim, yet kept my links with the local lot as 2nd claim.

Now, I knew the rule that if both your clubs compete in the same league you have to race for the 1st claim club, no problem.

However, I'd presumed I was still ok to race and count in team scores in open events....

So, leading home the 2nd claim guys to a 10k team win in the summer,delight turned to being GUTTED, when I found out a team mate had RATTED me out to the organisers as "Only" being 2nd claim.

Realised that if you can't count as a 2nd claimer, it's a pretty damm pointless thing to be, so quit the club i'd been linked to for so long, with a little bit of bad feeling really.

So the moral of the story is don't bother with 2nd claim, unless you have no interest in placings etc

I thought you could count for 2nd claim team as long as the first claim weren't doing the same event........

I do not know much on these matters as i rarely place.......

yep, you'd think that would be the reasonable rule. But no.

Was a particularly disappointing day, as coming 4th home in the race, but a chap ahead being a Vet, there was a 50/50 chance they'd give him V40 winner, and give me 3rd senior man.

But instead they went with 2nd for him, and first vet went to about 9th place.

Still had the team prize at least I thought...

waccyracer wrote (see)

Stevie G -   I am  also a member of a local club who are my number one club.  They have all known  me for many years so it would never happen there.  The letter was sent by my second claim club who are a national club where i am not so well known.    

I think i'll give them the benefit of the doubt this time with a years probationery period . There are so many wonderful people at the club it would be a loss to me just to walk away.

I am not normally one to spread discourse but, on the face of it, I think you are being extremely generous of spirit.

Some membership secretaries (not just running clubs) seem to be so wrapped up in themselves that they seem unable to see that ordinary people have ordinary lives that doesn't revolve around the club.

It doesn't sound like a running club that I would want to belong to.

Run Wales.....membership secretaries have their own lives to live..all everyone needs to do is give them their money and then the secretaries job is to fill in the paperwork and make sure everything is as it should be.....

Their job should not have to be running after adults who are acting like kids forgetting to pay because they are busy or can't be arsed to pay ..Memberships secretaries are not supposed to have to be members mothers.. wiping their arses  and cleaning up after adults who can't do the simple job of paying what they owe ever year 

As a commercial writer can I just add that some people just have poor written communication skills and that the person that wrote it might not have intended the tone of the letter to come across as it did.

That said, I would have imagined you should have received a reminder first and there's no reason why all this can't be done by email in any case. You send one mail, copy everybody in, job done. Surely that can't be much of a drain on anybody's time?

I imagine processing the payments is the more time consuming bit.

Thanks for the input folks. I'm going to take the heat on this one for being

not much good at dot dot dot dash dash dash.    Hardly got a penny to my name which doesn't help.   Why do i find those facts so funny ?

I do love the old running game so i shall just carry on doing what i do. 

If you see a funny looking fellow at your next event  making the most of the free water and banana's give him a huge from me.

Best guess is that someone may well have been putting gentle reminders out on facebook or the club website for a while and, getting no response sent the letter which translated probably read ' well if you dont want to be in our gang then we did not want you anyway'.

It is the assumption that 'most people I know are on face book therefore all are' which is flawed. Assumptions of one size fits all are not good. One gentle reminder by post should really have come before this one.

With me the one size fits all assumptions that dont apply are that I own a car and can arrive at a 9:00 start race on a Sunday before public transport starts running and that I wish to give my bank details on line rather than send off a cheque.