I have been a member of AOPA since around 2004 when I did my flight training.
They are a worthwhile organization that lobbies hard for general aviation pilots and they do a lot of education and outreach.
Over the years, the cost of membership has gone steadily up and this was fine with me, the increases were in keeping with inflation and growth of AOPA generally.
I honestly cannot recall if I was notified about the price increases in the past but I know I was not about the more recent, much more aggressive increases.
One thing that will lose my trust really quickly is people changing things materially on me without the transparency of notifying me. It was one reason why I disliked Comcast – the bill was different every month.
AOPA’s member retention services seem to focus on sending me a new email every 3 days offering me this great one-time deal which is that they’ll knock the price down (for that one renewal) to what I paid last year.
I’m still trying to figure out, do people really receive the same notification over and over and eventually just fall for it?
Anyway, my trust has been eroded and I sent them the below message in response to their latest missive.
Does this really work? In the past 30 days you’ve sent me 12 exhortations offering me the EXACT. SAME. ONE TIME. “DEAL”.
I dropped my support for AOPA when, after many years of fairly reasonable price increases (5% in 2009, 13% in ’11, 9% in 2015) even a 20% hike in 2017 which was a bit galling but, whatever, fine.
But I got annoyed when, without any warning you hiked the price by a whopping 33% in 2019 and then proceeded as if nothing had happened. I have to guess many of the pilots are older people and they just don’t notice the increases.
AOPA does a *lot* of good work, but I do not trust anybody that is not transparent. When you are going to raise prices, let me know ahead of time and why (even “due to inflation”).
All I see is that you are now increasing the cost of membership because you can.
I am disappointed.
Regards,
Marc
I dunno, am I wrong here? Being petty? It’s only a $20 increase but it grates when a company seems like they can act with impunity.