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As the contact email for our website I regularly receive forwarded ‘sneaky’ requests from non members attempting to obtain technical information or support from Hobby through our club.
My normal response is to suggest that they join our club where they may glean a wealth of information and support from the members.
However, I am now in receipt of the fourth of a series of requests for help from a desperate non member detailing what does seem to be a serious water ingress problem on a Hobby Premium Drive / Van. He has also recently had all his windows replaced.
Obviously I have again recommended that he join our club. I could offer to place the content of his emails, including photographs showing the black mould where water has entered, on our forum on his behalf in the hope that current members may wish to communicate with him.
Do you think it is acceptable, to offer this service, or should we just wait to see if he joins our club?
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Hi Tony,
Thank you for your valued opinion. I am aware that the subject of this post does not affect both you and I but never the less your observations are important. I originally asked the question in case any member who could possibly be affected by the content of the post may wish to communicate external to our forum with this particular non member. I certainly would have. However, for me to simply paste the content of that persons emails on here could have been considered scaremongering.
Past experience would prevent me from agreeing to a ‘help me’ section for non members which would open up the forum to a barrage of advice from those I consider to be ‘armchair experts’ and ‘armchair barristers’ of which there are a noteable few out there. A particular peice of technical advice gleened from another forum I chose to swallow the very same evening that I had paid a large deposit on a new van had me convinced that the manufacturer had got it wrong. Only after a very sleepless night and many telephone calls to both the manufacturer and VOSA the following day was I able to rest assured that the advice I had foolishly chosen to swallow was in fact a load of tripe. As you quite rightly say ‘often wrong answers’
I agree with you that the best place for advice from an experienced member regarding a Hobby is here on our forum. We have many long serving members here who will have experienced all things Hobby, I only wish they were more active here on the forum. I am sure there will be at leaast half a dozen members here who could provide constructive advice for instance a ‘top ten’ of do’s and dont’s with regard to Fiat, Habitation, Water, Heating, Electrics etc.
With regard to a donation type system, it could be made to work but one issue to be aware of if opening up the forum to non members would be that we could exceed our expected monthly visitor numbers allowed by our hosting package. Agreed, it could also have the effect of slowing the site down but you should have noticed some improvement since yesterday. I for one could not agree to our club paying more for a hosting package which would allow these ‘armchair experts’ a platform to freely spout their tripe. Perhaps a topic for the AGM ?
P.S. I received an email recently from the non member with the water ingress problem to say that all was now sorted to his satisfaction and at no cost to him but his closing message was that anyone who may be affected should have it checked out. Even though we were unable to offer any help I thought that it was very kind of him to keep us informed. -
Hi David , ive just noticed that my original reply to your post didnt manage to get on here . i think it went something along these lines ……one of the reasons we joined the club was to pick the brains of other owners who might have had similar problems to us with our vehicles . it is far easier to ask the experienced owners for advice than to trawl the internet for often wrong answers ! . also these people may well have an area of expertise that might assist existing members with problems . its always nice to be able to help people but this must be measured against not giving too much for nothing .
i think if queries were posted and answered it might encourage more people to join ( although any more people using the site might slow it down even more ! )
why dont we have a ” help me ” section for both members and non-members to post queries in , we could always encourage them to join the club to reap further benefits and we might also learn something ourselves from them .
another possibility would be to ask them to make a small donation to help with club funds in return for advice .
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