Selling a boat, trying to join the RYA

Q

Quandary

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In the process of selling, I decided to use the advice and sample documents offered by the RYA, I found their bill of sale available to download elsewhere on line but being almost honest and wanting to use their format, I decided to join, Impossible! when you go to their website there is a big red button [JOIN] but when you click on it a banner comesup telling you that there is a new site which you should use, Scottish RYA is the same, no obvious clue or link to where this new site is, it is implied that the change took place in 2008! Google gives me half a dozen links to RYA but all behave the same.
So I rang them, the receptionist said she was unaware of the issue but would get 'membership' to call me back. Nothing heard and I want to get on with this.
Any members who have an address where I might join, pay a sub and download the model sales and purchase agreement docs. Not that I am keen to join when I am packing it in, I do have affiliation through my club but for this I understand you need personal membership.
How many potential members has this cost them over the years?
 
Their web management is starting to bug me. It seems to lack quality control and I question its value for money. I used to just mail them whenever I found problems (which was all the time) but I got no feedback. Initially I thought they outsourced it. They seemed to be making changes which broke things in the middle of the day. I mailed them to ask who they were using and suggesting they should consider changing to a provider with some quality control. I talked to the guy who heads up the operation who seemed to think I was touting for business and said no, they did everything in-house.

But it's really not great. I'm always finding broken links. When I was trying to renew, the "renew your subscription" path just went nowhere and I ended up having to ring them up and pay by card over the phone. They said they'd already had reports of a problem.

Perhaps members who've noticed this and think it could be improved should give feedback to the senior management team as doing so to the tech folk might not result in change.
 
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I can’t follow the link as my one email address is already registered. @Badvisor was the fail because you are an existing member and it was correctly coming back with a ”fail”? If not then it suggests something is wrong. I’ve only had to phone then a couple of times over the last 4 years and found them very helpful.
 
No, I'm not an existing member.
I agree with your analysis that "something is wrong".
I won't be phoning them - I'm really not that bothered. I only clicked the link because I'm always interested in web sites that don't work. Any that just dumps a potential member with a cryptic error message is one that doesn't work.
Edit: I suspect that what it's doing is comparing my email address with the membership database. It hasn't yet checked whether my address is real and belongs to me. So you could try inventing an email address and entering that to see if you get the same message.
 
I wonder if you are misinterpreting the message on the top of the screen, I suspect that just applies to existing members, who it appears need to re sign in. I am a member so can’t fully test, but have you tried clicking Join then Register to get to here Register

PS. As others have said, the new website is very recent, and just part way through transition. Not a 2008 change
 
I did later wonder whether I should leave the email & password boxes empty despite the fact that it asked me to complete them (usability fail if that's the case), so I left them blank before clicking Register.
It took me to the page you just linked.
I gave it an email address and clicked "next".
It took me to the error page I described before.

Having done some more digging around, I think I know where their problem is.
 
dunedin said:
I wonder if you are misinterpreting the message on the top of the screen, I suspect that just applies to existing members, who it appears need to re sign in. I am a member so can’t fully test, but have you tried clicking Join then Register to get to here Register

PS. As others have said, the new website is very recent, and just part way through transition. Not a 2008 change
Click to expand...

But where is the new website and why is it hidden?
If I could get to it perhaps I could join. I have just tried to 'register' at your link, it then offers me three choices all based on already being a member. It is quite frustrating spending so much time going down blind alleys, so much so that if I could breach their copyright and access the sale and purchase agreement or create an alternative I would. Trouble is that the purchaser has confidence in the RYA that I now lack and I feel that I owe it to him to use that version of the sale agreement, the bill of sale comes later and is not so urgent.
 
Hooray, I have cracked it.
You do not click on the 'JOIN' button, ignore it
Instead you click on 'membership' beside it, it takes you to a different page which offers choices about categories and subscriptions and then after a quite convoluted process allows you to pay your £47 .
Now all I have to do is puzzle out where they keep the info. I am seeking.
 
Quandary said:
Hooray, I have cracked it.
You do not click on the 'JOIN' button, ignore it
Instead you click on 'membership' beside it, it takes you to a different page which offers choices about categories and subscriptions and then after a quite convoluted process allows you to pay your £47 .
Now all I have to do is puzzle out where they keep the info. I am seeking.
Click to expand...
try the Document Finder.
 
Quandary said:
In the process of selling, I decided to use the advice and sample documents offered by the RYA, I found their bill of sale available to download elsewhere on line but being almost honest and wanting to use their format, I decided to join, Impossible! when you go to their website there is a big red button [JOIN] but when you click on it a banner comesup telling you that there is a new site which you should use, Scottish RYA is the same, no obvious clue or link to where this new site is, it is implied that the change took place in 2008! Google gives me half a dozen links to RYA but all behave the same.
So I rang them, the receptionist said she was unaware of the issue but would get 'membership' to call me back. Nothing heard and I want to get on with this.
Any members who have an address where I might join, pay a sub and download the model sales and purchase agreement docs. Not that I am keen to join when I am packing it in, I do have affiliation through my club but for this I understand you need personal membership.
How many potential members has this cost them over the years?
Click to expand...
I havd cancelled my Subscription to the RYA, after 15 years Just as I have cancelled my Which Magazine Legal Aid subscription, yes they will give advice if you have a problem, but they wont actually do anything.
 
Quandary said:
Hooray, I have cracked it.
You do not click on the 'JOIN' button, ignore it
Instead you click on 'membership' beside it, it takes you to a different page which offers choices about categories and subscriptions and then after a quite convoluted process allows you to pay your £47 .
Now all I have to do is puzzle out where they keep the info. I am seeking.
Click to expand...
If it like the old site look under legal and buying a boat where there will be links to the pdf documents. That is where I got the BoS 2 years ago.

Although a member I have not tried to log on having had difficulties with an earlier iteration of the new site.
 
Quandary said:
Now all I have to do is puzzle out where they keep the info. I am seeking.
Click to expand...

I thought you had already found the info elsewhere, and wanted to join the RYA to make you feel better about using their documents. Frankly, after the ridiculous website problems you've experienced, I wouldn't have paid anything and just used the documents anyway.
 
I must say I was tempted but I only managed to find the Bill of Sale, the 14 page Sale Agreement eluded me. So once I paid up the information was not too hard to find and print off, I still think they need to look at the consequences of clicking on their 'JOIN' button though.
 
I received an email informing me that my RYA subscription had expired but "it's not to late to renew".

I debated whether I really cared enough to renew, and decided for some reason that I did.

Then spent a fruitless half hour trying to give them some money, with no success.

I then spent another 10 minutes writing a polite email explaining the problems I had experienced, and that issues with their website were well publicised, and if they don't make improvements, members will leave as who can be bothered with all that?

Received an email back with started

"Hello

you will need to go myRYA and scroll down to.... etc etc"

And ended without any mention of how they would improve things in future.

Totally missing the point. So the advice given is that *I will need to so stuff* to make up for the shortcomings of *their* website. The reality is that I don't have to do anything at all. So they won't be getting my £45 or whatever it is.

Are there any vaguely customer focused yachting organisations I should consider joining instead?
 
Sandy said:
What sort of sailing do you do?
Click to expand...

Not a lot at present. The aspiration is coastal cruising in UK and Europe.

I do have a dinghy as well, intending to teach the kids, ended up mainly teaching myself so far, but no intention to do any racing either in the Westerly or the dinghy.
 
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