Hey NRA! Why is it all so D*&$! DIFFICULT!

[drwalther]

So, I recently upgraded to Life Membership, on a great deal. I, like many of you, have been quite happy to see the NRA finally giving some love to Maryland. Maybe not exactly what we want, or how we want it, but like any neglected child, we revel in any attention when it comes.

Many months ago I had gone to the ILA website and signed up for the NRA legislative and action alerts, and I've been getting the "NRA ILA Daily Alert" which contains a smattering of stories from around the country, sorted by state. Usually about 3-10 states are featured. I read it thoroughly, time permitting. Yet, strangely, I get forwarded to me, an ILA e-mail about once a week, with a national issue, or even a MARYLAND issue, and I never got the e-mail myself! I entered my ZIP code when I signed up! So, I just got off the phone, after a 10 minute wait to talk to someone who didn't bother to identify himself and had one of the most "I hate work" tones I've heard from someone for months. This is the second time I've called. After explaining to him that I'd like to receive all of the national, state, and local legislative/action alerts germane to me, he said I was getting them. I asked why I hadn't received the Chris Cox alert "These 14 can kill or save freedom" e-mail to call federal senators. He then asked for my e-mail address and said he'd send it on. Having been told something similar before and never seeing anything change, I pressed the issue. I explained that I've offered a great deal of support to/for the NRA, despite the fact that we get very little return on investment here in MD, and that I'd like him to dig a little deeper and find out exactly what the issue was, and assure me that the issue had been resolved, and I was now going to get the appropriate alerts. He said his actual job was just to pass things along to other people, and he'd pass my e-mail address on to IT. I asked if he wanted my name, ZIP, or any contact info. He took my member ID, and stated again that he'd pass this along. I requested to have someone contact me when it was done, perhaps with an explanation of why I wasn't getting alerts. You guessed it! They "don't do that!"

kind of warms the heart doesn't it.

 

[Brooklyn]

OK. So now what.

Maybe you think they are busy right now? What with the 25 % increase in membership in the last month?

You think maybe they are overworked..

Hum..
You think what with all h.ll breaking loose in States all over the Union they may even have staff doing other things

Maybe the guy on. Phone is temp. Or maybe he is a volunteer from another department who does not know..


I love the way we eat our young .....

 

[drwalther]

Having gifted over 10 memberships, and recently upgrading to a Life Member, what I'd expect after waiting my 10 minutes because they ARE undoubtedly so busy, is that WHOEVER answered the phone would at least NOT SOUND as if he'd rather be getting a root canal, and that they would recognize that the purpose of my call is to further the defense of our gun rights (isn't that at least PART of the NRA's mission?) (I wasn't calling to antagonize their organization or our agreed upon goal!) and treat me as a friend, if not simply professionally. I would have been satisfied with anything like "Thanks for calling, sorry you had to wait so long, we've been inundated with calls....(listen to my request). Well, I'm not sure why you're not getting all of the alerts you'd like, but let me look into it. Could I get your (name, ZIP, NRA number...) please? It'll take some time for me to investigate this with our IT dept, and I don't want you to have to wait any more. Could I get back to you via e-mail or phone within the next 48 to let you know what we found and/or what we've done?"

In no way, shape, or form, do I consider this "eating our young." In my years in MD and WITH the NRA, it seems the consensus that the NRA hasn't done, and doesn't do all it could, and debatably should in MD. Not my lone opinion, or solitary rant. Many expressed surprise, even shock, that the NRA has made an appearance now that actual gun "bans" are being bandied about in Annapolis this session. Many are also disappointed that the media is crediting them for all the successes which were LARGELY orchestrated by the good grassroots folks working week in and week out behind the scenes in MSI and AGC Baltimore.

I am not leaving the NRA, and I would STILL continue to encourage people to lend their $ support to the 800 lb gorilla. BUT, I will continue to reserve the right to vent, and express my disappointment when they don't measure up with what I feel to be a very ENTRY level degree of professionalism. (Let me save us some time, as I have heard, and do NOT disagree, with the arguments in their favor about how they've done this and that, lest you make the mistake of misunderstanding my post as being a blanket condemnation of the NRA. It is NOT. I was just frustrated, because I continue to hope for more from them.)

 

[Brooklyn]

Having gifted over 10 memberships, and recently upgrading to a Life Member, what I'd expect after waiting my 10 minutes because they ARE undoubtedly so busy, is that WHOEVER answered the phone would at least NOT SOUND as if he'd rather be getting a root canal, and that they would recognize that the purpose of my call is to further the defense of our gun rights (isn't that at least PART of the NRA's mission?) (I wasn't calling to antagonize their organization or our agreed upon goal!) and treat me as a friend, if not simply professionally. I would have been satisfied with anything like "Thanks for calling, sorry you had to wait so long, we've been inundated with calls....(listen to my request). Well, I'm not sure why you're not getting all of the alerts you'd like, but let me look into it. Could I get your (name, ZIP, NRA number...) please? It'll take some time for me to investigate this with our IT dept, and I don't want you to have to wait any more. Could I get back to you via e-mail or phone within the next 48 to let you know what we found and/or what we've done?"

In no way, shape, or form, do I consider this "eating our young." In my years in MD and WITH the NRA, it seems the consensus that the NRA hasn't done, and doesn't do all it could, and debatably should in MD. Not my lone opinion, or solitary rant. Many expressed surprise, even shock, that the NRA has made an appearance now that actual gun "bans" are being bandied about in Annapolis this session. Many are also disappointed that the media is crediting them for all the successes which were LARGELY orchestrated by the good grassroots folks working week in and week out behind the scenes in MSI and AGC Baltimore.

I am not leaving the NRA, and I would STILL continue to encourage people to lend their $ support to the 800 lb gorilla. BUT, I will continue to reserve the right to vent, and express my disappointment when they don't measure up with what I feel to be a very ENTRY level degree of professionalism. (Let me save us some time, as I have heard, and do NOT disagree, with the arguments in their favor about how they've done this and that, lest you make the mistake of misunderstanding my post as being a blanket condemnation of the NRA. It is NOT. I was just frustrated, because I continue to hope for more from them.)

Fair enough but as this is a public forum not a private one, and appears to be indexed by Google perhaps we should consider that others might get the wrong idea

I still have people resist the NRA because of what they heard somewhere...

Just a thought ...

And as a lifer myself from NYS no less, I do understand. But I understand more that the national fight still helps us. That s organisation tends to put it effort where the membership is, so paradoxically the more members from MD the better the support.


They still think I am in NY got to change that

 

[drwalther]

Good points, and they are well taken.

Had it been a restaurant, I would have simply spoken to the manager, and no doubt all would have been easily settled. Since the NRA is undoubtedly very busy right now, and the person I managed to reach was notably eager to get to other phone calls, having it "escalated" was impractical, if not impossible. So I needed to vent. Also somewhere in the back of my mind, there lurks the hope that someone in the NRA MIGHT just see this, and be able to effect some useful changes to improve customer satisfaction

now, I am going to return to my calling list of Senators who "can kill or save freedom," since they need some encouragement to save (firearm) freedoms!

 

[44man]

i had some problems when i switched from easy pay life to full life. i got much better service by going to the member service site and signing up and contacting them there. they get back to you in a day or two and they took care of all my problems. i know they are VERY busy now and i feel giving them some leeway is a good idea.

 

[K31]

Not to sound stupid but have you checked your Junk folder? Have you whitelisted NRA and NRA ILA? Maybe even Chris Cox. Does you ISP also do filtering or have a white/black list?

 

[drwalther]

not stupid at all!

Yes, I do check and "unspam" e-mails regularly. Never have seen one from the NRA/ILA/Chris there. DO get the national survey of states "daily update" email from the NRA ILA...almost daily! It's great! That's primarily why I wanted to get the national and MD ones too

 

[Patriot87]

drwalther,

I work for NRA and am happy to try to resolve your issue. Unfortunately, we do have issues from time to time with some ISPs blocking our emails. I can't say for sure what is happening but if you email me at the address below, I will see what we can do to fix it.

As a former Maryland resident who still has family in the state, I assure you we haven't given up on Maryland. We've done a tremendous amount of mail to members and non member gun owners in the state to make sure as many people as possible are aware of what's happening in Annapolis. In addition, our lobbyist has been at the Capitol quite a bit as I'm sure you know.

Please feel free to email me at edila@nrahq.org

Scott

 

[drwalther]

Scott, I am most happy to make your acquaintance! thank you for reaching out! We are indeed thrilled to have the NRA championing our issues here. As a now/former MD resident, I know you know. We moved here from AZ, and have also lived in UT. I never knew how much I would feel the NEED for the NRA until we moved to MD. Let that NRA love reign down on this State, few others need it as much!

(I did get the postcard, and called the Gov. We already subjugated our state Senator on 281 )

I will e-mail you.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

 

[drwalther]

to those following this little drama, I have corresponded with Scott, and he has been the consummate professional. My interaction with him so far has been what I would want and expect from my NRA, and I'm proud to be able to report such is the case. I now have trust that this will be handled to my satisfaction, even if the outcome isn't exactly what I'd like (sometimes things go like that anyway.)

thanks Scott!

 

[drwalther]

because I feel I need to complete the circle, this is from a personal message that I sent to Patriot87:

You have gone above and beyond for me, and I am grateful. You stepped into the line of fire, and I admit, I was angry, and made it ugly, certainly uninviting. You performed the way a professional performs, rather than a whiny customer, as I did. You calmly obtained from me what my issues were. You offered me your assurance of your efforts on my behalf. Most importantly, you DELIVERED! I used to work for WordPerfect, I have some small understanding of the digital world. You didn't know that, but still you provided me with an explanation that was not condescending, and did not insult my intelligence. I am not perfect about reviewing all the mail that goes to my spam folder. I do direct occasional messages from my Inbox to the Spam folder, and assumed that Yahoo had a process behind the scenes that utilized my input to refine and update their protocols for sorting spam out. I wouldn't not knowingly direct an NRA message to Spam rather than just deleting it when done reading, or if I chose not to read it that day, not just because of my support for the Second Amendment, but because I wouldn't want the NRA messages directed to Spam filters in other people's e-mail accounts. I do frequently review my spam folder contents. I've found many things, both political and otherwise, that I didn't want to be there, and have marked them as Not Spam, which automatically directs them back to my Inbox. I SUSPECT that a message or two were automatically diverted to spam and auto deleted without my review at some point in the past. Perhaps because others have marked those messages as Spam and Yahoo updated protocols. That's my best guess as to why the NRA system had marked my preferences as they did. Perhaps someone at Yahoo simply made a unilateral decision. I will never know. BUT, because of your help, I DO know what happened with my e-mail address and the NRA messages, and because of your efforts, I am again receiving all of those e-mail alerts that I desire to have.

You resolved my issue to my satisfaction, and I am grateful!