I pulled both your names out of your profiles and emailed Viper HQ, I usually hear back in one business day, I will then update you guys here.
Unfortunately in the day of "Buy it now" we have become used to instant gratification, click the icon and you're in. The new paypal option is light years ahead of anything we have ever had, having said that this IS still a club and a few very good staff members at JR Thompson are responsible for translating literally thousands and thousands of renewals at this time of year into personalized memberships. They have to run the payment on the credit card just as any other vendor would do, they have to then record information for the club as to location (region) allocate the portion of funds from that membership to that region, assign a number, IN SEQUENCE, research whether the member is rejoining and assign him the number he had before (that's right, they never reassign a number) The then have to arrange for the printed membership card, organize a package to go out with the card when it arrives back from the vendor, stuff a small gift and the welcome letter in an envelope and get all that to the post ofice.
When you look at the process that way it's understandable that they "batch" this work in an assembly line fashion every few weeks. Just imagine 3 people assigning a number in sequence at the same time, one on the phone, one on the fax and one working the paypal deal. It's pretty clear more than one person would wind up with the same number.
So someone joining in late December would not really expect to have seen anything yet, but trust me the system that we have now that this group of National Officers have put in effect is light years ahead of a year ago, and as soon as someone asks a membership question here we can usually get that information in 24hrs, as can the member himself. Communication is excellent.
