Lifetime and 10 year Memberships

Background

UL Computer Society is an old society and have offered many ways to be a member over the years such as 10 year Membership (2006).
Over time our membership offerings have changed due to both internal and external forces.
Internal tends to be more about securing sources of income into the future (Computer hardware is expensive).
External tends to be from C&S ensuring that we as a Society are healthy as well as being fair to our members.

Current status of Lifetime and 10 year Memberships

Long story short we dont offer a Lifetime or 10 year membership.

What now?

Since about 2016 we have offered a 5 year Membership.
Instructions on how to avail of it can be found on the renewal page.

More info on the removal of the Lifetime and 10 year memberships.

in 2019 two emails got sent out which covered why they were withdrawn over time.
Their inclusion here is to be informative.

2019/10/15

Hi,

Over 9 months ago we notified all Skynet users, that all previous multi year memberships had expired and that we now offer a 5 year discounted membership for Alumni.

The society no longer offers 10 year memberships to Skynet, this has been replaced by 5 year alumni memberships.

We are required by the Clubs and Societies office for every Skynet user to be a active member of the Computer Society.

In order to continue to have use of your Skynet account you must sign up for membership of the Computer Society on wolves.ie (instructions at skynet.ie/renew).

We are finally ready to start disabling accounts of users without memberships and this process will start on the 18th of October 2019 (This Friday), this is 6 months after the original date that you were previously notified of.

If you have received this email your account is on this list to be disabled on Friday and deleted following a 3 month period if the account is not reactivated.
If you are an active member or a UL organisation and believe this to be a mistake please send proof of membership to accounts@skynet.ie
No Wolves Membership = No Skynet Account

Some members have asked if they can just pay us and continue to use their accounts, the answer to this is no as wolves.ie is the formal way that memberships of all clubs and societies in UL is tracked.

You can now purchase a 5-year subscription for €40. This subscription is for a multi-year limited alumni membership of the Computer Society (This type of membership does not entitle you to society subsidies or places on trips). This money is invested into the running of the society and the running of Skynet.

For instructions on how to renew your subscription visit skynet.ie/renew. Until you both make an account on wolves and pay membership, you will not have renewed your subscription. Once you have completed the steps on skynet.ie/renew, you will have renewed your subscription and will be issued a receipt.

There are over 400 accounts queued to be disabled on Friday it's unfortunate that we have to disable these but cannot continue to maintain accounts that are not associated with an active CompSoc membership.

Those who do not intend to renew your membership we are sorry to see you go and we feel that you have been given plenty of time to migrate your information and services away from Skynet (Feb 2019).

Note: This email was sent both to your *@skynet.ie email and the alternative email address that you supplied when you registered for Skynet. We are trying a best effort approach to contact people so that they are aware of their pending account disablement. #

If you have any questions feel free to contact accounts@skynet.ie

Thanks,
Conor.

2019/10/18

Hi,

I have received a lot of questions from users, so I am going to address the FAQs all together at once.

Some users (not very many though) did not receive the first email in Feb as they do not forward their skynet email or monitor it anymore, in light of this the date for disablement has been extended to 25th October 2019. This is now the final date for this and will be the last time that this date is pushed back.

    What will happen if I no longer want my account?
        Your account will be disabled next week and following a period of time will be deleted. If you are sure that you no longer want your account I can delete it immediately at your request. If contact is made with us we can arrange to forward your mail to an external mail system. We can no longer use your username as this would be a data protection issue, so we are happy to do this.
    I can only register for 1 year of membership on wolves.ie
        This is correct once payment is received we will update your request to a 5 year multiyear membership.
    Can I pay any other way than bank transfer?
        Yes we now have a new paypal account - ulcomputersociety@gmail.com - please do not use the old one.
    But I have a "lifetime" membership of Skynet which I paid for?
        Unfortunately no you do not. Skynet operates as a sub-group of the UL Computer Society so our rules and constitution supersede any Skynet rules, policies or agreements. The UL Computer Society operates as a member of UL Wolves Clubs & Societies who's policies and common constitution supersede our own. Attached is the UL Computer Society Constitution, section 3 covers all of our membership rules. In section 3.1 the types of memberships we offer are listed as Full Members, Associate Members and Honorary Members. As per section 3.2.4 the term of any membership of the society is from the date the member signs up until Monday of Week 1 of Semester 1 every year with the exception of honorary members who will retain their membership in perpetuity (Section 3.1.3.1). The is part of the UL Wolves common constitution which I have also attached. C&S has never and will never allow the sale of lifetime memberships. So we are unable to honour or offer them. We worked with C&S to introduce the multiyear alumni memberships which we now offer. This is the first time any multiyear memberships have been part of C&S, the multiyear memberships sold before were not approved by C&S. But we did wait to start this project until all of the previous 10 year and 5 year memberships had expired.
    I made an "agreement" with X from skynet/compsoc for a "lifetime" skynet account, this deal was made before your constitution was enacted
        Anytime a new constitution is voted in by a club or society in UL the rules contained within it automatically over-rule any and all previous agreements or rules that were present within the group beforehand. So our constitution out-ways all rules and agreements that were made within the society and skynet even before skynet was part of the computer society and before the computer society was part of UL Wolves. Whenever the common constitution is updated it is done in partnership with solicitors and HR professionals so the document is fit for purpose and legally binding. So we can and are dismissing all of these agreements.
    What is our membership payment used for?
        Your membership money is used to allow the society and skynet to continue to operate and grow. The computer society has invested over €15,000 in skynet over the last 2 years, which is a very large investment for us and in order to ensure that money continues to be available for future upgrades we need the support of our members and the users of skynet. The society has won the title of the best society in UL for the last 2 years in a row and we have also been recognised as the 3rd best society in Ireland both this year and last year. So while we are doing very well we do need money to operate and continue to provide the services that we do.

If you believe that you are still entitled to a skynet account please contact accounts@skynet.ie but points 4 and 5 which I have addressed above are not valid reasons for you to still have a skynet account. Several skynet users have slipped under the radar for many years without paying for membership and that stops now!

Remember please contact me if you intend to not renew your account but would like your mail forwarded to ensure that there is proper continuity of service, many of our users do not have alternate emails listed in the system and many of the emails are no longer active.

Renewal instructions: skynet.ie/renew

Thanks,
Conor.