Frequently Asked Questions

Membership

Why am I issued a Membership number?

Each member is allocated a membership number, sometimes known as a membership ‘id’. When you pay your subscription you should receive an email from us with this number in the form of a membership ‘card’. You can print this out or simply make a note of the number somewhere convenient.

When you attend a group for the first time, the leader will as you for this number. Periodically the leaders are asked to send through a list of these numbers to the webmanager. This allows us to understand how many people are attending groups and also to check that those attending have indeed paid their subscription for the year.

How do I use your Credit Card to pay my membership?

Malvern U3A does not see or store your credit card details at any time. The actual payments are processed by a 3rd party company called ‘Stripe’. After a successful payment they send us a receipt which contains nothing more than your name, your email, your member number and the amount paid. We use this to confirm your subscription and to generate an email to send your receipt.

When you give your credit card information this is a one off payment for a single years subscription. Nothing is created that would allow us to ‘auto’ renew you in future years through your credit card.

Why am I asked if am human when I am paying by Credit Card Security?

The company we use to accept credit card payments strongly encourage us to include what is known as a ‘Captcha’ test. Many systems on the web use it as an extra piece of security when people register on systems and/or make payments. The idea is to present the user with some simple (!) questions that a human will be able to answer but a machine could not. This helps stop automated, malicious programs from breaking systems by flooding them with lots of false requests. You can read more about these tests and even try out some examples here: Hcaptcha.

The set of pictures you see is random each time. If you find a particular challenge difficult then you can get a different one by clicking the ‘refresh’ option. This usually looks something like part of a circle with an arrow near the bottom of the set of pictures.

Why am I asked for a confirmation code when paying by Credit Card?

To protect you from fraud when you are shopping online, new regulations are being introduced. This will mean that you may sometimes have to confirm your identity when using your card online. A common method is to sent a short code when you are making a payment, by text or email, which you will need to enter to complete the purchase. It is important that you keep your mobile phone number and contact details up to date with your bank or card provider. This will ensure that you will be able to make that online purchase if your bank or card provider wants to check that it is you using the card to make the payment.

What does giving my consent mean?

Selecting ‘Yes’ to consent authorises Malvern U3A to contact you by email in the future. We are a small organisation and do not have lots of different check boxes for different types of ways of communicating with you. In practice the email communication is typically to send you the monthly bulletin. There will also be occasions where we may send renewal reminders at different times of year. If you select ‘No’ you will not receive the bulletin, nor any of these reminders. Twice a year in Spring and Autumn you can opt in to get the printed newsletters posted to you and once a year in Summer we post out the paper group directory for the forthcoming year. We don’t mind people saying no – at time of writing we have around 80 out of about 1500 people choosing to withhold their consent to receive emails.

How do I renew my membership in person?

We appreciate that some people will choose not to renew online. The alternative is to renew in person by coming to the group fairs day or one of the other ‘in-person’ events we outlined periodically. At these events we will have a card reader that can be used for contactless payments. This will work in a similar way to using your card in person in shops. When renewing in person at one of these events we will make a note of your details, and create your subscription on the system at a later date.