Should OCUK forums go subscription only?

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we provide the forums free of charge.

it is free because it adds value to the prospect of shopping with us and allows customers to become educated on their purchases without having to tie up a salesman for trivial issues.

the forums are a great place to learn and having them attached to our shop is a massive asset. no other retailer has a forum on the level of success as ocuk

it is a great way of speaking to the community that revolves around the shop and a nice way to bring new customers to us through deals and community membership.

like myself. many longer serving members of staff were forum members before we were employees at ocuk

the thing that makes ocuk what it is, is all of us.

asking you to pay wouldn't happen.
 
A fiver a month to be harangued and berated on the internets..........yup, that'll work!!


Lol. You would end with a forum membership in single figures.
 
No, you would lose people who contribute but maybe can't afford £4.99 a month.

People are very quick to criticize the poor for paying for things they don't need, how would someone say on benefits be able to come here and not be shouted for wasting the tax payer's money on a forum subscription they don't "need".
 
spoffle said:
How is this an issue? People like to lurk and read threads without an account, I did for a while.
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In the simplest terms it would affect those who were banned. Why should they still get all of the benefits of the resources this forum could provide?

Also, for lurkers there is a simple solution, register. It takes a minute.
 
Oxy said:
No scum and a lot less children?

It could also allow a wage to be paid for someone to moderate the boards properly, paid wages for someone to write articles professionally on a range of topics?
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What? The whole point of a forum is for discussion and debate, and this one is great because it gets input from a vast number of people with different backgrounds, experiences and views. We don't want to read articles.

Plus, who would decide who writes what?
 
It wouldn't work because there's a huge number of people who come and go.

A fiver a month is fine if you're using it, but I could go 18 months and not bother about the forums. I'm not going to pay £90 when I'm not using it, and I'm not going to start a subscription again in order to start using it.
 
High brow is boring. If this forum was high brow then you wouldn't get people like me posting totally unrelated, yet amusing gifs.

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The strength of the ocuk forums are the diversity of people that are here, sure there are some idiots but then that's life. 95% of people wouldn't pay for something that is free in so many places on the internet so the community here would just end up dispersing in all directions
 
Ahleckz said:
What? The whole point of a forum is for discussion and debate, and this one is great because it gets input from a vast number of people with different backgrounds, experiences and views. We don't want to read articles.

Plus, who would decide who writes what?
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Caseking.
 
Kol said:
Maybe a one off payment, but £4.99/month is too much.

On a different but related note, personally, I'd rather at the very least that you must be logged in to view the forums. When someone is banned/suspended they still have the 'benefit' of the forum but just without posting rights simply by logging out.
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Agree with all of this;

The issues with charging users to use these forums is that a lot of members simply wouldn't pay. There's no guarantee that those that pay would in fact add any thing more to the forum and those that do pay would have more grounds for complaints. As it stands now, it's a free service which OCuK reserve the right to do what they want with it. If it became a pay service then there would be a need to change it's approach to the forums into a more "pay services" as they would be supply a paid for service.

Keep it as it is, other than change the need to log in to view the forums.
 
I would consider a one off payment, but only because I already read the forums. As somebody joining up, I wouldn't pay anything! Plenty of morons have money, it's only some of us that don't!
 
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