On behalf of the Bristol Rovers Supporters Club I would like to thank all of the members who have auto-renewed their membership with effect from 1st July 2022. Furthermore, I would also like to thank the unprecedented numbers of you who have applied to join since the renewal date.
The Football Club is in a state of transition at this time and we pride ourselves that we represent the voice of the fans when working together with the Football Club for the betterment of all. The larger our membership, the larger our voice can be and so all new members are especially welcomed.
The Supporters Club is run by a small group of volunteers and if anyone has any ideas or questions regarding its running I would love to hear from you. Indeed, if any of you would like to join the Executive Committee and help out, we would be more than pleased to talk to you. You can contact me at the e-mail address at the end of this article.
I would now like to offer our sincere apologies for the fact that not all of you have yet received their new Membership Cards. We were hoping to get all of these out by the end of July, but I regret to say that we have missed our target. In part, this has been due to the overwhelming support that we have received and in part this has been due to an error that occurred during the renewal process (which has generated a volume of queries).
I would ask for your patience in finalizing the send out of Membership Cards and in resolving the queries that you have sent. However, I thought it might be useful to outline a couple of issues:
Renewal Process
During the renewal process, we identified an error whereby the membership categories: Junior (aged under 21); Adult (aged 21 to 65) and Senior (aged over 65) were not tested during the renewal process. We did not charge a renewal fee on 1st June 2021 because of COVID so the fact that we did not test ages during this renewal process means that anyone whose age transitioned across the membership boundaries in the last 2 years was charged the wrong subscription this time.
Again we apologise for this and again would ask for your patience in resolving the issue.
· We would ask for you NOT to contact the Membership Secretary at this stage as this merely fills up our inboxes. Instead, I can assure you that we are aware of the problem and are working on it. We will be contacting you directly to resolve the problem on an individual basis.
· As a supplementary issue, we are also aware that many of you have multiple memberships within a single account. In many cases it is apparent that you did not provide us with the dates of birth of your secondary member. We will also be contacting you directly to obtain these details.
· Please can I ask you to check your inboxes and “spam” boxes to look out for e-mails from “Membership@BristolRoversSC.co.uk
Priority Ticketing
As you may be aware, one of the benefits of membership of the Supporters Club is that you qualify for “Category 2 Priority Ticketing” for “all ticket” games.
In the past, all you have had to do to take advantage of this is to present your Membership Card at the ticket office. Unfortunately, since the introduction of the TicketMaster booking systems, the methodology has changed. The Supporters Club now has to provide a download of our membership data to the Football Club and this data is then uploaded onto the TicketMaster system so that it can always recognize you as a Priority Member.
To help avoid a massive overload on our Membership Secretary, Steve Lamble has assumed the responsibility for arranging this on behalf of the Supporters Club. He has already transferred the existing members’ data to the Football Club and provides further updates to the Football Club on a regular basis to ensure that all new members also qualify. Hopefully everything should be running smoothly but, knowing modern technology, I am sure that we will experience some problems.
If you do have any problems in obtaining Priority Tickets from the Football Club, please could I ask you:
· In the first instance, check your BRSC Membership Account – Profile Page, to ensure that you have ticked the boxes that give your consent to transfer your information to the Football Club. Under GDPR legislation we are not authorized to transfer your data unless we have your consent.
· If you still have problems, please do not contact the Membership Secretary. Instead, please contact Steve Lamble (E-Mail: steve.lamble@bristolroverssc.co.uk) . When contacting Steve, please will you quote the e-mail address that you use to login to your Ticketmaster Account.
Again, many thanks for your support and I hope that these notes are of help.
David Thomas
Chair