larrypennington

Hello Members, We thought today was going to be a day of celebration. As you’ll read in the July of Family Motor Coaching magazine, our expectation was that we would be opening the doors to the latest and greatest member benefit – unlimited, on-the-go internet access at a great price for all FMCA members. Unfortunately, despite months of negotiations, approvals and green lights, the provider (Verizon) pulled the plug at the last second. Magazines had been printed, pre-announcements tested, and the staff was standing by for the flood of enrollments. For more background on how this situation unfolded, see the post here. We are very sad. And disappointed. We were so excited to bring you this program because we know how important staying in touch – with reliable access – is while you’re on the road. Please don’t give up on us. After the unexpected cancellation by Verizon, we’re dusting ourselves off and getting back in the ring. We promise to keep working to bring you benefits of value and quality – the kind of service you expect from your RV family. Thanks for understanding. And keep having fun – because that’s what FMCA is all about! Charlie Adcock

VERIZON WIRELESS PLAN UPDATE As you may have heard, FMCA had been working with Verizon to offer a special rate on an unlimited wireless data plan. After the “soft launch” of this plan to a test group of FMCA members (before the planned launch to all members), Verizon called FMCA and told us to pull the offering. Verizon officials indicated that they will not be honoring any of the orders that had been entered during this test period. We are still working to see whether FMCA and Verizon can put together an advantageous plan for FMCA members, but at this point we are not certain what will result from discussions with Verizon officials.

As you may have heard, FMCA had been working with Verizon to offer a special rate on an unlimited wireless data plan. After the “soft launch” of this plan to a test group of FMCA members (before the planned launch to all members), Verizon called FMCA and told us to pull the offering. Verizon officials indicated that they will not be honoring any of the orders that had been entered during this test period. We are still working to see whether FMCA and Verizon can put together an advantageous plan for FMCA members, but at this point we are not certain what will result from discussions with Verizon officials.

VERIZON WIRELESS PLAN UPDATE As you may have heard, FMCA had been working with Verizon to offer a special rate on an unlimited wireless data plan. After the “soft launch” of this plan to a test group of FMCA members (before the planned launch to all members), Verizon called FMCA and told us to pull the offering. Verizon officials indicated that they will not be honoring any of the orders that had been entered during this test period. We are still working to see whether FMCA and Verizon can put together an advantageous plan for FMCA members, but at this point we are not certain what will result from discussions with Verizon officials.

FMCA recently sent out notifications to a limited group of members as part of a “soft launch” or “beta test” of a wireless data plan from Verizon. FMCA had plans to share this information with the entire membership after this test period. Online news outlets heard about the plan and released information before FMCA was ready to make the announcement to all members. Response during this test period has been overwhelming, and we have had to suspend entries to the program. Rest assured that once we are ready to release information about the benefit, all members will be given the opportunity to evaluate the program and enroll if they believe it will meet their needs. Stay tuned for additional information.

FMCA recently sent out notifications to a limited group of members as part of a “soft launch” or “beta test” of a wireless data plan from Verizon. FMCA had plans to share this information with the entire membership after this test period. Online news outlets heard about the plan and released information before FMCA was ready to make the announcement to all members. Response during this test period has been overwhelming, and we have had to suspend entries to the program. Rest assured that once we are ready to release information about the benefit, all members will be given the opportunity to evaluate the program and enroll if they believe it will meet their needs. Stay tuned for additional information.

Hi! I spoke with the Events Department and they will be sending out the registration packets the last week of May so you should receive it the first week of June. If you have any questions or need anything they said please call them at (800) 543-3622, and they will be happy to take care of you. Thanks, Larry Pennington

Hello Members! From the feedback we have received so far it looks like the FMCA Forums rebuild has been a success. Because of the inconvenience we would like to take this chance to explain why things took so long. Around last Sunday 04/23/2017 we started to notice issues with the web server that hosted the forums and how it was randomly just going offline. Usually with computers when this kind of thing starts to happen it means that a piece of hardware is going bad. As we were diagnosing issue the web server just died. We had backups of the forums and the database so we were confident that we could get a new server setup within a day or two at most and get the forums back online, but we ran into a major snag after loading everything up on to the new server. The forum software that we run that was previously purchased from invisionpower.com would not come online. After much research of the vague error code we were receiving we found out that the software had shut itself down because it recognized it was on a different web server than the one it previously existed on and it deactivated itself. The only thing we could do at this point (which was on Tuesday evening) was to reach out to the software manufacturer and ask why they had deactivated our license. So we looked up their website and there was no phone number listed to call them only a ticketing system for us to email them if there was an issue. We put in a request for someone to contact us immediately about why the our forums deactivated itself. The next day a developer for the company responded to us and told us that the forum software had shut itself down because it thought we were trying to run it on two servers and that we had only purchased a single license and that out software key was made invalid, and that we would have to be contacted by someone in their accounts department so they could issue us a new software license to reactivate the software. Over the next two days we heard nothing from the accounts department at invisionpower.com, we sent many emails to them and posted many tickets begging them for resolution. Finally on Friday 04/28/2017 after 4pm EST we got a message from the supposed CEO of the company that said that they were going to reissue the license. After they did we installed the new license and the software reactivated itself and we were able to bring the forums back online. No one in our current IT Department was working for the company when FMCA started using the invisionpower.com forums so we did not know how troublesome dealing with them actually was. Sometimes when using third-party software you find yourself in a position where your hands are tied and you have to work on the time table of the company that you purchased the software from. And that is what happened to us here, believe me if there was any way that we could have got things up and running faster we would have, we love our jobs and hate to disappoint anyone. So in closing we want to apologize to everyone, and promise you that we have added failsafe’s to our forum environment so we never have to deal with invisionpower.com for customer service again. Thanks, Your Web Team

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Hi All! The limit was set to only allow for 2 Meg uploads, I upped the size to allow for up to ten Meg uploads. If it were me I would resize the images using one of the free online tools because a 2 Meg image download when reading a forum post on a mobile device will eat up a lot of the person’s data plan over time. By resizing the images down to 800x600 you will reduce the file size greatly. Some free tools are: http://picresize.com/ http://resizeimage.net/ I especially like the first one, picresize.com

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Hi Blake, We are trying to recreate the glitch experienced right now, at this time we think it may have been related to one of our authentication servers updating earlier this morning. Thanks, Larry