I'm not too happy to find out that I'm now a lesser category of member, with some content denied and reserved for the elite lifetime members. When I signed up, it was for premium access to all articles.

Something is amiss...

If you subscribed you should have access.

Use the Help/MySupport (upper right) to state your case. It will get resolved quickly.

Although it looks "gear" oriented, Help is also for this sort of issue.

Edited by greg23 on 09/22/2010 12:18:53 MDT.

Hmmmm...What article(s) do you not have access to?

ok,maybe I exaggerated a little, but in the Sept 22 newsletter I just got, they announced the lifetime members category, with an exclusive forum I can't read, and there was also a BPL Cocoon that was a featured product. I clicked on it and got access denied, then went back and looked again at the newsletter. It said these items were reserved for lifetime members. I assume there will also be articles reserved for these members.

Yes, you are a lesser member than lifetime members who have their own forum and get deals not offered to you (or me).

Edited by jshann on 09/22/2010 13:07:15 MDT.

Ralph,

When BPL instituted the LIFE membership status they did disclose that there would be some additional benefits to making the Lifetime membership purchase. Amongst those was access to a LIFETIME members: "ask the expert" forum, as well as a BPL business strategy forum, invitation to occasional "friends and employees" sales, free ground shipping on items purchased from the shop, invitation to annual meeting in Bozeman, annual reports and updates.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe LIFE members receive first dibs on BPL released products, and are able to place a pre-order on those items? That may explain why you were denied ACCESS to the article's content... for the time being.

Edited by Eugeneius on 09/22/2010 13:06:16 MDT.

Eugene is right. The lifetime members get a "sneak peak" into some of the new gear offerings and have the opportunity to pre-order those items. Keep in mind that a couple of days or a week later they become available to everybody.

As for the additional forum, it has a few discussions that are ongoing, but there really is not much activity. Also, as far as I know there are no Lifetime only articles.

It just caught me a little wrong this morning, to get "ACCESS DENIED" when I just wanted to look at a product. I don't object to special rates, invitations, etc for lifetime members, but I don't like being denied the opportunity to read a product description.

Hi Ralph

You have access to ALL articles.
If you have any problems you should contact BPL.

Cheers

A bit of a late reply but I still wanted to comment:

Having instituted the Lifetime Member option at BPL relatively recently we are still ironing out the best ways to balance privileges that everyone in our community has. The first new product launch produced some hiccups and we took what we heard from our members and righted it for the next product launch. We'll continue to iron out these details constantly as we improve everyone's experience.