joining fees/ annual subs

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grizzler

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been threatening to join another club for quite some while. £500 joining fee and about £650 per year fees to be paid in advance. real good links course with good practice area/ facilities etc. Does this sound like good value in the current climate, i would have thought many courses have dropped their joining fees?
 
Alot would depend on Location tho & other facilities, (wheres this new club situated) i thought most clubs had done away with the joining fees .. they have over here except for the "exclusive" type ones .. is it this type of club ..

Whats up with your current club ? why you thinking of changing , you must be unsettled there if you thinking of changing for quiet a while ?
 
I think joining fees are killing clubs. I joined my first club 3 years ago, the choice was between 3 local clubs, 2 had joining fees (member owned clubs) and one (a proprietor club) did not. Guess which one I joined

Both the member owned clubs had waiting lists and interview procedures a few years ago. Now they are advertising for members, but the members stubbornly will not remove the joining fee. One club has said it can be paid over 5 years. But it’s still a joining fee.

I can see the point of view from the existing members; they paid, so everyone will have to pay. New courses have sprung up everywhere in the last 20 years, mostly proprietor clubs with no joining fees.

The old stick in the mud members clubs will sooner or later have back down
 
I think I qualify for a 'country' membership at The Glen in north Berwick, £470 sub, no joining fee.Not very good practice facilities, but I wouldn't be joining for that.

If I can get in a course like that for that kind of price, other courses who still insist on joining fees are pricing themselves out the market.
 
I'm £720 + £50 bar voucher on my prepaid card.

That's my 2012 fees.
 
I didn't pay a joining fee at my club.
Although there are quite a few clubs in my area to chose from, some with joining fees & some without, taking travelling time into account & fuel costs it boiled down to a choice of 3x clubs for me.
I picked mine solely because it was the nearest & as a newish player I needed to spend lots of time there for practice & playing, I will re-join again in April because my game is still improving, but once my game settles down to something that I am a bit happier with I may consider moving clubs as my current club is ok to a point, but there are quite a few things that I am not keen on.

If I do move a joining fee won't put me off provided that I am sure that the new club has everything that I want, I would need to play the course a few times & check out the facilities & weigh up the general attitude of the existing members.

In short, I think clubs with a joining fee will have a more settled membership with less members leaving every year to join another club, there problem in the current climate is attracting new members when they need too.
 
Most of the more established members courses in my area have a joining fee,although most do allow new members to pay this over a 5 year period.Most are between £700 and £1500,plus annual subs of between £800 and £1200,but almost all of them are offering pay and play memberships for about £1000 a year.
My last club was privately owned,and the members had virtually no say in the running of it,even though they were paying annual subs that were comparable with most members clubs in the area.When i visited the club for a game last august,i looked at the handicap list.When i was a member there were 4 pages of names on the list,now there is less than 3 !!
 
bladeplayer said:
Alot would depend on Location tho & other facilities, (wheres this new club situated) i thought most clubs had done away with the joining fees .. they have over here except for the "exclusive" type ones .. is it this type of club ..

Whats up with your current club ? why you thinking of changing , you must be unsettled there if you thinking of changing for quiet a while ?
Click to expand...

currently a member of a 9 hole course its ok in the summer but for 4-5 months in the winter its like a bog lol, maintenance non existent. got a few mates at the other course played it quite a few times really enjoy it(unless the wind is blowing!!)
 
My playing partner and I decided to join a more challenging course and approached the owner saying that we would like to join the club but were reluctant to join due to the fact we were members of a nearby course and couldn't justify the expense of the joining fee.

The owner told us that if we joined when the memberships were due we wouldn't have to pay the joining fee. Since then several of the local courses have waived their joining fees.
 
Bit of a sore point for me this one. My club has dropped the joining fee and will welcome new members with 15 months golf for the price of 12 and they can pay the 2011 rates. There has been no mention of the joining fee being waived for those who have part paid and certainly no recompense for those who have recently paid in full. Furthermore, there is rumoured to be discussion of increasing fees for existing members by up to £90.

As you can guess, not overly impressed especially as there are no plans announced to help keep and integrate these armies of new members should they show up.
 
We've dropped the joining fee. If a member introduces someone to the club they get a £100 credit on their bar card (I'm happy to sponsor anyone wanting to join - beware though it's a goat track according to many sagely heads on here
 
I think there are only about 4 golf clubs in my County that still have a joining fee.
Lots of clubs in winter months offer 15 months for 12, and Ive even seen 18 months for 12 in a place.
Golf clubs in my area are not all in a great financial state at present, it seems golf has skipped a generation or 2, I dont know about other areas of the country......??
There is even a group of courses trying to join together and forge a type of alliance whereby they may share machinery, form a buying group for things they all use, such as feed, seed, sand, fertiliser, thereby trying to get a better deal as a bigger buying unit.
Only a few are doing well.
Probably down to the fact there are probably just too many courses in the area, 1 or 2 less courses, and everybody would have full membership books.
There are around 14 courses in a 15 mile radius of where I live.......!!!
My current club fees are £540 per year, no joining fee, but large membership.
This is about average for my area.


I dont really understand, How, in this age of equality, that a club can get away with dropping the joining fee for Women Only ........... as dotty001 has just posted.
Im surprised men arent objecting to this......
 
HomerJSimpson said:
We've dropped the joining fee. If a member introduces someone to the club they get a £100 credit on their bar card (I'm happy to sponsor anyone wanting to join - beware though it's a goat track according to many sagely heads on here
Click to expand...

Over the last few months I am sure you said you were considering alternative courses Martin, because of the state of the course ? Poor greenkeeper/state of the greens something like that.
 
moogie said:
I think there are only about 4 golf clubs in my County that still have a joining fee.
Lots of clubs in winter months offer 15 months for 12, and Ive even seen 18 months for 12 in a place.
Golf clubs in my area are not all in a great financial state at present, it seems golf has skipped a generation or 2, I dont know about other areas of the country......??
There is even a group of courses trying to join together and forge a type of alliance whereby they may share machinery, form a buying group for things they all use, such as feed, seed, sand, fertiliser, thereby trying to get a better deal as a bigger buying unit.
Only a few are doing well.
Probably down to the fact there are probably just too many courses in the area, 1 or 2 less courses, and everybody would have full membership books.
There are around 14 courses in a 15 mile radius of where I live.......!!!
My current club fees are £540 per year, no joining fee, but large membership.
This is about average for my area.


I dont really understand, How, in this age of equality, that a club can get away with dropping the joining fee for Women Only ........... as dotty001 has just posted.
Im surprised men arent objecting to this......
Click to expand...

correct. Question 7........

http://www.scottishgolf.org/files/U...e_Note_5th_edition)_-_FINAL_December_2010.pdf
 
Last edited:
richart said:
Over the last few months I am sure you said you were considering alternative courses Martin, because of the state of the course ? Poor greenkeeper/state of the greens something like that.
Click to expand...

We're in limbo at the moment. Our head greenkeeper has been on long term sick and so the club hasn't known whether to get someone in to do it, try and manage his absence through formal channels and get him out or to wait and see. As it goes, the work we started doing last Autumn to eradicate the moss has been wasted as it hasn't been followed through. Don't misunderstand me, they putt pretty true but look a mess. The rest of the course is playing well with no winter mats although we're on temps given the hard frosts we've been having. They were experimenting with light frosts about keeping us on the full greens. After all they are hardly going to get more damaged with the moss.

What I was/am unhappy about is the lack of direction and planning. Its been an Ascot trait for years and when we were on the racecourse and they provided the staff for the greens we knew they were in good hands and could forget about it. Now we've had to fend for ourselves for the last 7 years we're realising perhaps the guys we've got in aren't as good as they led us to believe (my opinion only of course) and that we're not sitting down and working out what we need to be doing and finding the cash to do it.

As a course it is immensly playable and challenging. I am just reviewing the options at places that have better greens. Sadly most don't offer non-booking which is a big plus for me, especially at weekends and surprisingly a lot are actually more expensive. I'm probably going to see how the greenkeeper's absence pans out and what the clubs does this year to sort the problem and decide next winter. I love the place and the people and don't want to jump if the grass really isn't greener (or moss free) on the other side
 
Ours still has a joining fee of 2x the annual subs (and they ain't cheap either...) We're still full but there's no longer a waiting list (but thats mostly due to the membership numbers being put up by an extra hundred or so).

And yes, we're not so far from Surrey...
 
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