I will be honest I am not sure if I'm more angry about having to pay or the way the Club has gone about it or how they are justifying it
I just read this reply from Mr RFO on BF:
"First and foremost, we want to ensure that all members who are eligible to attend the cocktail party can attend. Last year we had around 1000 members who were not able to get tickets, despite the fact they qualified for the event, having been members for longer than 5 years. To overcome this issue in 2012, the Club have booked a second night at Crown, which ensures that we can take double the amount of members to the event. To cover the costs of a potential second event, we have introduced a small charge of $35 per person.
Prior to introducing this charge, we investigated the reward and recognition program at other clubs and found that Richmond were the only club offering an event, such as the Members’ Cocktail Party, free of charge to members. Combining this point with the fact we can no longer cater for the members who want to attend, we introduced the nominal charge." Link:
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showpost.php?s=7dde985b4f460249d143be3842165fa7&p=23676908&postcount=5343 points:
1/ As I said originally, if it is a Members ONLY event then why sell "guest passes"? Surely that allows for more members to attend
2/ Is there a 2nd function or not? Fine print on the invite (& BTW I still haven't got mine
) says there maybe one not that there will be one. Original notice from the Clubs website says the $35 fee is to assist with the cost of the 2nd event. What happens if there isn one?
3/ Can I say I get really annoyed when the Club mentions they base part of their decision making on what other clubs are doing. Quite frankly I don't give a "rats tossbag" what other Clubs do, how they do it. We are Richmond and it's about how we do things that I'm interested in
Thus endeth this morning rant