| Mutant Mushroom 19.01.2011 08:24 |
Well I have been a member of the fan club now since '86 just got my renewal notice through £29 for nothing (18 months worth of nothing mind) or £34 with a half hearted attempt at a magazine once or twice a year. Having been loyal to the club for so long I am reluctant to cancel my membership now but really it's starting to feel like spending thirty quid on nothing when I could be buying remastered albums and other Queen related items. The only other advantage is the supposed first in the queue for concert tickets etc. considering i went through the club for the last QPR tour and got bloody awful tickets at the Liverpool Echo Arena I might as well take my chances with the rest of the general public. So I am looking for advice what else should persuade me to spend my hard earned cash on the OIQFC? |
| Holly2003 19.01.2011 08:31 |
Send it to me instead and I will provide you with some Queen information every now and then. Mind you, I'll need a bit more than £35 quid. In fact, you already owe me £5 just for reading this. |
| lifetimefanofqueen 19.01.2011 09:28 |
anything you pay for which is free on other sites isnt worth it, Queenzone is free and awesome! :) or just find loads of people on facebook that also like Queen ive done both :) |
| brians wig 19.01.2011 10:54 |
Mutant Mushroom wrote: Well I have been a member of the fan club now since '86 just got my renewal notice through £29 for nothing (18 months worth of nothing mind) or £34 with a half hearted attempt at a magazine once or twice a year. Having been loyal to the club for so long I am reluctant to cancel my membership now but really it's starting to feel like spending thirty quid on nothing when I could be buying remastered albums and other Queen related items. The only other advantage is the supposed first in the queue for concert tickets etc. considering i went through the club for the last QPR tour and got bloody awful tickets at the Liverpool Echo Arena I might as well take my chances with the rest of the general public. So I am looking for advice what else should persuade me to spend my hard earned cash on the OIQFC? -------------------------------------------------- Welcome to my world! :) YEs, the tickets for Liverpool were awful seats - I would have expected the fans at least not to shout, talk and constantly get up and go to fpor more beer, but I was wrong :( I've also been a member for nearly as long as you and I ignored my renewal form in October and I'm ignoring the one that came today (same as yours). Look at it this way. If the fan club has 1000 members left, each paying £20 a year (for NO printed magazine!), that's £20,000 she's earned for what? I mean, what exactly DOES Jacky do to warrant earning £20 grand a year???? I think the problem is that she's earned a ton of money in the past and now that memberships have dropped, she can't maintain the fantastic lifestyle she's obviously led. I wish I earned £20 grand a year! I don't feel sorry for her in the slightest (did anyone read the letter she sent explaining why the membership fee was increasing?), and she can take her own advice and get a flipping proper job like the rest of us instead of paying for all her trips to montreux and concerts etc out of "our" money. |
| Mutant Mushroom 19.01.2011 17:21 |
So it looks like i should start spending my time on here instead, especially as we get far more regular updates from Queenzone. |
| brians wig 19.01.2011 17:58 |
Mate. If you don't go to the UK fanclub convention each year then it's not worth it. She charges an extra £15 for non-fanclub members to attend, soit's always been kinda worth it to pay the £3 extra for the mags, but I ain't paying £9 extra for the mags! |
| Benn 20.01.2011 07:06 |
The OIQFC ceased to be of any use once Freddie passed away. Since then it has become nothing more than a holiday booking agent adding no value whatsoever. |
| A Word In Your Ear 21.01.2011 00:45 |
Been a fan club member since 1981 & I have to say that it has gone down hill since Freddie's death, but just for the extra days priority booking for tickets (as is 2005) has got to be worth something (but are Brian & Roger ever gonna do a big tour again?) Years ago before the Internet age, getting the quarterly mag was a must, to see what was going on release/concert/up and coming projects wise ect, but today, we tend to know what's going on before Jacky does, so hence when the mag is printed, it's all ancient news. It would be a shame for the fan club to cease, but do we really want to hand over our money for nothing? Now and again for Jim Beach & Queen to give Jacky a demo or something like that, to give to members as an incentive wouldn't go a miss, but noooo!!!, like that's ever gonna happen. |
| YourValentine 21.01.2011 01:07 |
Unlike most of you I joined the FC only after the Freddie b-day event in 2006. I thought it's not fair to take the tickets from the fan club and not being a member. I have no sentimental feelings for the fan club and I hardly ever talked to Jacky. I think the problem is that Jacky never fully realised that the fans are actually her customers and you have to offer something for the membership fee. The fan club is a very closed community with a 300 member forum that is closed for the rest of the fans and where a critical word is simply not welcome. Instead the forum tries to figure out what the members can do to save the fan club. They do try by uploading all the old magazines to the member website which is very nice but nobody outside the forum knows about it. I am sure some people would pay a membership fee only to get access to the complete fan club mags since 1974. It's really sad that the fan club is coming to an end but only Jacky could change that. |
| PBB 21.01.2011 02:00 |
Probably the only reason why I joined the fanclub, was to get the Biography/Discography, they promised if you joined the fanclub. I haven't received it yet (6 years later or so). I tried to convince Jacky to upload it but nothing happens. I'm not renewing my membership if nothing happens very soon. |
| Makka 21.01.2011 02:19 |
If you're not getting anything out of it anymore then there's no real reason to be a member. With web communities like Queenzone everything is here and more! What more could you want? |
| ITSM 21.01.2011 05:45 |
...but what DO you get from the Fan Club in a year? |
| koronja 21.01.2011 06:09 |
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| koronja 21.01.2011 06:10 |
OOOOOOOOOOO this is great!!!!I've just payed the entrance fee a few days ago,if this happened earlyer,I would be richer with 30 euros today!!!!Hrrrrrrrrrr |
| YourValentine 23.01.2011 03:05 |
koronja - with your membership you can download the complete magazine archive since 1974 which is being uploaded now. IMO this is even better than a current magazine. |
| Mutant Mushroom 23.01.2011 03:48 |
I agree the files of the previous mags are nice (and I am furiously downloading whilst I am still a member) but even here more effort could have been made in presentation and maybe a downloadable zip file? |
| brians wig 23.01.2011 04:21 |
ITSM wrote: ...but what DO you get from the Fan Club in a year? ----------------------------------------------------- Well. This year fan club members got the following: 3 printed magazines A booking form for the convention. The yearly renewal slip for £18 A letter saying that the price was going up in June to £24 (for 3 printed magazines) and if membership continued to fall Jacky would have to get a job and run the club part time. And for those people who didn't renew (because there was no way they were paying £18 in November and another £24 in June), they got an extra bonus of a free downloadable version of the Winter magazine and a begging letter. If she'd asked for £10 in November, I would have been able to afford that, but no, Jacky wants the full 12 month amount for only 8 months membership. As for pre-release ticket sales, the best tickets I got for the 2008 tour were the ones I booked myself, not the shitty ones I bought from the fan club. If Jacky was to do a deal with QPL and offer the remastered albums for sale to members at a reduced price, then it would be worth re-joining. Of course. By reduced price, I mean at least £3 cheaper than you can buy them online... |
| Pim Derks 23.01.2011 05:29 |
As long as the band don't actively support the fanclub by allowing them to sell exclusive audio/video material the fanclub is not worth the money. Stuff like Brian's 1998 Albert Hall performance, Roger's Cyberbarn concert, the 1992 Smile reunion etc would be ideal stuff for fanclub-archive releases. No-one in the general public is interested in these, but would I pay good money for professionally recorded 1998 video of the Another World tour? I think so. I wouldn't be expecting a 5.1 mix and lots and lots of editing - just a good stereo mix and a nice mix of camera angles. But ofcourse, this is not going to happen. |
| ITSM 25.01.2011 17:38 |
brians wig - Thanks ; ) from what you're writing it doesn't tempt me very much to join... |
| Mutant Mushroom 28.01.2011 07:45 |
Decided going to save my money and spend some on the new reissues wth bonus material!!!!! (or am I being suckered again?) I was at the Smile reunion would love to have a copy of that. |
| Nightjar_ 28.01.2011 09:35 |
Mutant Mushroom wrote: Decided going to save my money and spend some on the new reissues wth bonus material!!!!! (or am I being suckered again?) I was at the Smile reunion would love to have a copy of that. I was also at the smile reunion. I remember watching it on QTV in my room. I wish I had the VHS with me that day...! |