Membership Increase and Poor Customer Service
Not a question, but a comment. I have had a prime membership for years.
Recently got a renewal notice announcing that the annual membership would go to $160 per year (+/-0). No reason given. I have been paying $99 per year
for quite some time. This is a pretty exorbitant increase, particularly for someone who is mostly retired and on a mostly fixed income. I have sent 4 emails to customer service; no response except a form email reminding me how great this service is. Just spoke to someone in customer service, who was not helpful. I have cancelled the renewal at this time. I’m seeing much more in the way of sponsored content now, and the independence of GBA seems to be slipping away.
Rich Wickman
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Replies
$3 per week or $13 per month seems fair to me for the amount of information provided here. But I understand that if you aren't in the business or building your own house that it could seem like a lot.
I find the service to be an incredible value. I can get timely and expert answers to building questions, without which I would have built wrong which could have resulted in devastating consequences (mold, rot, etc.).
Without GBA, where would you be getting timely and expert answers to questions, and at what cost?
GBA seems to serve mostly contractors and homeowners doing remodels, both of whom are presumed to have money. What is it that you need GBA for if you're neither? Maybe they'd give a discount for your particular situation if you asked.
Maybe the admins/owners will take some of that additional $60/year and use it to improve the functionality of the site; for example, writing a search function that has better filters, sorting, and so on (you know - the "advanced" search nearly every other Web site offset).
You can make Google do the work, by adding "site:greenbuildingadvisor.com" after your search string in the search bar. That will restrict Google to only results from the GBA site.
Bill
Excellent tip, Bill, I use exactly that all the time, but I forget that others don't know about it.
It's hard and time-consuming to write a good search feature. Much easier to have Google do the heavy lifting, as they've already done the work.
Prompted by a listener suggestion, Patrick McCombe said he would pitch a GBA+FHB bundle membership in a recent edition of the FHB Podcast.
If this combo membership goes through, it would give me a reason to continue my membership after our house is done (likely a year from now)
Ben
I wish they'd add a "report spam" feature. Post #2 is what got this thread revived from January and it's -- you guessed it -- spam.
While we're suggesting improvements to customer service, it would be immensely less frustrating if the GBA website's "search" function added some now-commonplace capabilities found on other up-to-date sites, including the universally useful "sort results by" option that allows all manner of getting to what you are looking for more quickly. Given the daily dated postings on the GBA site, it is particularly frustrating to not be able to retrieve those on a specific topic ordered by "most recent". While wading through posts from a decade of more ago is of interest for some purposes, when the latest updates on a topic are the goal, its discouraging to get get deacade old posts even when the current year is added to a search. If I am missing.something, I'd be happy to be informed.