PLEASE READ IF YOU ARE A PAID SCOUT SUBSCRIBER

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Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)
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  • #27540
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    Sorry to scream in caps and be redundant for many, but I am still struggling to get the word out to everyone. I am receiving emails from frustrated and unhappy customers who do not understand how the site change worked in terms of subscriptions.

    If you signed up through Scout, your Scout subscription will continue to be auto-renewed by them on your anniversary date – without a reminder – whether you are on a monthly, three-month or annual plan. The fact that TCN is no longer associated with Scout does not matter to them.

    To cancel your Scout subscription, you MUST contact the Scout.com Membership Center at 1-888-501-5752 between 8:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. CDT, Monday through Friday.

    If you do not remember which plan you are on and what your end date is, you can check yourself by logging onto the Scout site, scout.com/mlb/cardinals, clicking onto the circled head and shoulders icon at the upper right and selecting MY SUBSCRIPTIONS.

    #27568
    mudville
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    My anniversary date is in November. After reading a post by a subscriber who got shafted by Scout with their automatic renewal, I called them and got mine cancelled. I received a cancellation email from them which I saved just to make sure they don’t try to charge me in November. The attendant asked me why I wanted to cancel. I thought that was a dumb question since there is next to nothing on their site that is remarkable, and I told him so. I also get the impression that Scout is swindling people, and that they know it, since there is nothing new on their website anymore. I think it was an oversight by TCN to not negotiate with Scout to prevent this from happening.

    #27576
    UConn Card
    Moderator

    Paid - Annual

    I also get the impression that Scout is swindling people, and that they know it, since there is nothing new on their website anymore. I think it was an oversight by TCN to not negotiate with Scout to prevent this from happening.

    mudville,

    As a member of the TCN staff I’m simply going to address the ‘oversight’ part of the above.

    When CBS bought Scout there was a time period when Scout operated as it always has while CBS decided how they wanted to proceed with integrating Scout into their CBS network. CBS then decided the switch over from ‘Scout As Usual’ to CBS would take place on July 1st. Most importantly for our St Louis Cardinals’ board, they decided not to cover baseball’s minor leagues at all. Period. Nothing. Zippo. Zilch.

    Now the minor league coverage has been a key part of TCN’s identity and product dissemination so CBS’ decision was a tough one for us as we feel we have the most substantive and wide-ranging minor league coverage out there. The decision was made to continue operation separately from CBS/Scout. Hence, TCN’s contract with Scout & CBS ended on July 1st (the original switch/transfer date that has now been delayed.)

    There wasn’t anything for TCN to negotiate with Scout. Scout’s platform will merge with CBS at some point and I have no idea what will happen then but that’s their concern. From a baseball point of view, it will NOT include the minor leagues.

    Hope this clarifies things a bit. If not, please let me know.

    UCC

    #27602
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    How much negotiating leverage do you think we have with CBS Corporation?

    We have tried many ways in recent weeks, here and on the old site and message boards, to make everyone aware of a billing policy that we had no control over when we were with associated with Scout and of course, have no control over today.

    If you want to cast blame for us not doing a good enough job making you aware, that is your right. But to blame TCN for Scout’s long-standing and set in concrete business practice regarding subscription renewals is patently unfair.

    We cannot change that, but we can treat people right in what we CAN control.

    To that end, we are honoring every TCN subscription bought through Scout through the end of June here on the new site through its full term – at no additional cost to the subscriber – even though we do not get any of the money you paid ahead with Scout.

    Further, it is worth remembering that a Scout membership is good on all of the Scout sites. Many readers just came for Cardinals news, but I know many, many others who subscribed through other Scout sites who came and read our subscriber content for years without TCN getting a dime in return (other than a few pennies for ad clicks). That is the way their business model works.

    So use that to your advantage. Even if/when you cancel with Scout, your membership is active through the time paid ahead. Go and enjoy the other sports featured there, work from some very talented writers. Baseball is the only sport that is taking a hit in Scout’s new business focus.

    P.S. To date, only a small percentage of Scout Cardinals subscribers have hit their anniversary date. Almost all still have a chance to cancel before the next auto-renewal, if that is what you want to do. Those on monthly plans will be first to run into this, but of course, the amount of money involved will be less than for three-month and annual renewals.

    #27627
    stlcard25
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    Brian, I always thought Premium access was for each individual site. Not that it matters but I checked another Scout site I’ve been a part of and had no subscription access.

    Anyway, as I mentioned, Scout’s terrible ability to get out of a subscription was the reason I hesitated to sign up at TCN. I was able to get through and cancel my Scout membership and plan on upping here in the next week or two. The coverage here is pretty thorough and much appreciated compared to other Cardinals sites.

    #27628
    mudville
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    UCC – I don’t completely understand everything that you are talking about in your post. But I fully understand that you care about your subscribers and their interests, and that’s enough for me.

    mud

    #27634
    UConn Card
    Moderator

    Paid - Annual

    Re Scout subscriptions – A subscription allows the subscriber to access ‘Insider’ articles across Scout’s network and access to one team’s Premium/Insider message board. In my case that was the St Louis Cardinals’ Insider message board. But access to another particular team’s Premium/Insider message board – such as University of Illinois, for example – requires a separate fee.

    No control over that.

    #27636
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    I hope stlcard25 does not mind me using him as an example, as the details may help others.

    AT SCOUT
    He is a monthly subscriber, with his due date each month the 3rd. So on July 3rd, even though TCN was off the Scout network, he was billed, same as every month, this time for the period of July 3-August 2. He would be billed again on August 3 and September 3, etc., had he not called to cancel. During this final month, his Scout access is just as UConn Card explained above.

    AT THE NEW TCN
    Completely separate, we honored his last payment to Scout here on the new site, even though that money all went to Scout. His membership here also runs until August 3. He will receive email reminders prior to August 3, reminding him that his time is almost up.

    To continue here after August 2, he will need to enter his payment information for this site (though very secure PayPal). The first time you do that, your initial payment will be billed immediately, but you receive full credit for the time paid. After that, you will be billed on your anniversary date.

    So, if stlcard25 entered his billing info on the TCN site today to extend his time beyond August 2, he would be billed $7.95 right then. His membership would be extended through September 2. On September 3, he would be automatically billed for the following month. And so on.

    (Or if he chooses, he could switch to a three-month or annual plan and it would work the same way.)

    My initial thought in setting up the new site was to not have auto-renew. However, once I got into the morass of how these systems work, I came to the practical realization that sending new bills to every monthly subscriber each month would be extremely difficult to manage for me and a pain in the rear for you. Auto-renew is a necessity.

    The big difference here is that I am your support and you will be treated fairly.

    Hope that explains in more detail about how the billing will work.

    P.S. If you want to check the status of your billing here at the new TCN, here is how. At the upper right, click on “WELCOME, (your name)” then “MY ACCOUNT”. There, you can see all of your particulars and when you are ready, you can enter your payment information to extend your membership.

    If anyone has specific questions about the details of your account, please contact me individually and I will reply quickly. The fastest way is via the site contact form. In the top menu, click on “CONTACT US”.

    #27683
    stlcard25
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    Not a problem, Brian. I will happily pay, knowing that it goes to providing the high quality stuff that we have access to.

    #27914
    Bw52
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    Just called Scout and cancelled my subscription which was paid thru October 18th .Asked about a refund for the balance not used and was told no refund because I cancelled.I said so you people are screwing me over about the difference.What a bunch of scumbags at Scout.After refusing to give a refund the person then said “have a nice day sir”.

    #28166
    14NyquisT
    Participant

    Just cancelled my Scout subscription and re-upped here. I used paypal and it was a snap. Thanks Brian!!!

    #28168
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    I am glad it worked smoothly for you and very much appreciate your continued support of the site.

    #28548
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    To say I am disappointed is putting it mildly. Scout pushed the button on their system conversion. The new site is called “Cardinals Dugout,” a generic name they use on sites with no publishers. That is not the problem, though.

    All prior articles have new URLs that are not linked to the original article URL. Further, the new URLs are not structured in a way that one could just change a few characters to find the original articles.

    Here is an example.

    2017 draft day 3 – new site
    https://scout.com/mlb/cardinals/Article/The-St-Louis-Cardinals-selected-30-players-in-concluding-day-thr-74902592

    2017 draft day 3 – old site – link is now broken
    https://www.scout.com/mlb/cardinals/story/1784862-cardinals-complete-2017-draft-with-30-picks

    The only articles I can see with the new URLs are from the final few weeks we were on the site. I cannot locate anything older. They may be there, but I cannot figure out any way to find them. Even the feed has just CBS content.

    At least at this point, Google searches lead to old Scout URLs that are dead, such as the one immediately above.

    I tried the search feature on the new site using several minor leaguer names and received no hits on anything we ever ran.

    So, even if you as a subscriber decided to stay on because you wanted to reference our over 12 years of historical content, there seems no way to locate it.

    Update: It appears that Scout has shut down the Cardinals message boards entirely, locking us out of the history they said they would protect during the conversion to CBS’ 247 system.

    #35627
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    A long time subscriber emailed me with this information today. It might be useful to you, as well.

    “Scout automatically renewed and billed me. I spoke to them to no avail and then challenged the charge through my bank card. The charge was reversed and Scout never filed a rebuttal.”

    Another subscriber told me they changed their credit card on file with Scout to a bogus number to ensure they could not be renewed.

    #36467
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    Reminder. As a subscriber, if you are logged in, but are blocked from reading a premium article, simply re-load the page and it will appear.

    Some devices are configured to save the image of a page to speed its re-displaying. So this is almost certainly the problem if you tried to view an article when not yet logged in, then log in and are trying again to see it. Just reload it and you will be set.

    #38891
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    One of the top baseball sites that remained with the Scout network covers the Padres. Here is what they tweeted today:

    Scout, the parent company of MadFriars, has moved to 247sports, and with it included a significant increase in the price of our subscriptions that we were not consulted on. Until the subscription prices are resolved to our satisfaction; all content is free.

    https://twitter.com/madfriars/status/938352556111142914

    Sadly, I am not surprised. (The new prices are $12.95/month, $149.95/year, almost double!)

    REMINDER: IF YOU WERE ON AN ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION TO SCOUT FOR THE CARDINALS SITE, YOU MUST CANCEL OR YOU WILL BE AUTO-RENEWED AT YOUR ANNIVERSARY DATE. I NOW HAVE NO IDEA AT WHAT PRICE THAT WILL BE.

    #40342
    thejager
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    Brian. I got an email saying my payment for cardinal nation was canceled. Can you explain? What do I need to do to make sure it all Ian taken care of?

    #40352
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    Jager, thank you for bringing this up and I apologize for the problem. You are still subscribed for the time for which you have paid, so you can ignore the cancellation notice.

    However, in three months when your time is up – unless I can get a fix in the interim – your auto renew will not work. You would have to re-subscribe at that time. That is not acceptable.

    There is a bug between my payment code and PayPal. A subscriber’s first and second period (monthly, quarterly or annually) are paid normally, but just after payment #2 is made successfully, the system cancels the recurring payment from then on.

    I have sent emails to those affected through last weekend explaining this and am escalating to get support from my payment code vendor.

    Again, I am sorry for this and it is a priority to get fixed ASAP. I don’t want to lose my valuable customers!

    #40353
    thejager
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    Thanks for the quick response

    So I don’t need to do anything?

    #40354
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    You do not have to do anything at this time. You should have full access for the time you have paid.

    You may need to re-subscribe at the end of your current three months, but I cannot say for sure until we find the problem and determine what is needed to fix it.

    #40368
    thejager
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    Ok

    So I’m signed up for 3 more months then?

    #40373
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    Yes, sorry if I was unclear about that.

    #42297
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    A heads up that the recurring billing cancellation problem has been fixed and tested over a multiple week period. I emailed all affected subscribers giving them free time as my apology for the trouble and explaining their next steps to keep their subscription going after the free time ends.

    If you believe you were affected but did not receive this email, please let me know and I will make it right.

    Thank you again to those who have paid memberships. Your support keeps the site in business!

    P.S. All other subscribers will continue to be auto billed on your anniversary date as always. The above problem affected only a limited number of subscribers.

    At any time, if you want to check your membership status, here is how. Log in, then at the upper right, click on “WELCOME, (your name)” then “MY ACCOUNT”.

    If you have any questions about your specific account, please use the site “CONTACT US” form (always on the top menu bar) or email me, rather than post your personal information in this public forum. My email address is included at the bottom of every article I write.

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