Common Dues Terminated WRITTEN BY Jonathan Medina

Hello PucaTraders!

I know there are some questions about moving forward after Mitch's post—I will be publishing an article addressing some of those questions in the next day or so, but we wanted to get this announcement out first.



In September of last year we implemented a new policy for common members. This policy required 300 PucaPoints to be paid as dues by common members each month.

Effective immediately this policy has been terminated. Common members will no longer be required to pay dues.

What Happened?

As many of you know we have been working to address an inflation problem within the PucaPoint economy. The common dues were deemed the least impactful option for expediting our progress towards a healthier PucaPoint economy. In the execution of the dues, the membership attrition and public outcry were greater than anticipated. This negatively impacted our projections and brought into question the usefulness of continued presence of the dues.

While it's true that staying the course would reduce points in the system and bring us closer to a healthier economy, we believe this comes at the expense of a healthier community. With the change in PucaTrade leadership, we will be presenting a new posture of service-oriented initiatives. The termination of this policy is the first step in these initiatives.

The Details

I'm sure that there are questions that you might have. Let me answer the ones that I think are at the forefront of your mind:

Q: Will common members keep the ability to add foils to Want lists?

A: Yes. This has been a long-requested feature and as it's based on the dues already paid, it feels right to continue to provide this feature to our common members.

Q: Will you refund the dues already paid?

A: No. As much as I want to answer yes to this question, it's not prudent management to do this. There are many reasons, but the principal reasons are:

We've made some progress economically, and we'd like to keep the ground we've gained.

Refunding creates an awkward scenario where who people who used PucaShield and Promotions to avoid dues are now unable to recoup what a person who paid dues would recoup.

The administration (if possible) to do this would take time away from our forward-looking initiatives.

Q: What will you provide to paying members to replace the foil feature that was passed on to common members?

A: Providing more value-added features to our subscription tiers is something we want to work toward in 2018. We have recently provided some Promoted Want finding tools, and we will continue to work in this area.

We at PucaTrade want to apologize to our community for the negative impact that this had on our members. While the dues were accomplishing what we hoped for the economy, we failed to fully realize the damage that they would do to our community, and for that, we are deeply sorry. We are grateful for you all. Thank you for your patience and dedication to this platform.