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Old 04-24-2006, 11:26 PM   #2
Bill
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: The mountains of Scottsdale, AZ, and the beaches of Maine
Posts: 10,088
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Joe -

I can't speak to the Trailblazers fee (I'm not a member). But as to the $12 for TMO forum membership? You'll never find such a good deal again!

Contrary to what you suggest, the TMO forum has no connection with the manufacturer. The TMO forum is completely independent. If you pay $30K for a TM, then you paid $30K for the TM, and nothing else. Not one penny of that goes to the operation or maintenance of the TMO forum. No one who works at TM is a member of the Forum, or (to my knowledge) has ever posted here. That ensures that we, the owners, can all express honest opinion - good or bad - about our TMs. The owner/admin of the forum is not obligated to make the posts look good.

So why the fee? A board like the TMO board really does have expenses. Seems to be free? Try to buy a solid, professional, web hosting service for free! Or try getting the phpBB software for free! Try registering a domain name for free! Chris has done a marvellous job, and he (as well as the moderators) do everything with NO PAY! Since advertisers don't pay the freight, the membership has to pick up the expenses. And a good measure of the value of the forum is the number of people willing to pony up $12 each year. In my opinion, that isn't much, and a lot of folks seem to agree with me. The number of Sponsors continues to increase.

Don't believe me? Check some of the other RV-oriented forums. All forums have real expenses, and most of them pay for them with ads at the top of the page, ads at the bottom, ads at both sides - and the forum content is squeezed into that little area in the middle. Boy, is that annoying! Not my style at all, dunno 'bout you. Some people have more tolerance for relentless ads than I do.

The TMOwner forum has no ads. Chris set it up that way several years ago, and holds to that promise, and I like it. The TM forum is not beholden to any advertiser, to push his product. I like that A LOT! Anything you read on the TMO forum is honest opinion, even if it is not always expert. And you can always ask a question, and receive an answer that is more helpful than the common "It rocks!" or "It sucks!" - the useless stuff you get on other forums.

I was e-talking with a non-TM friend the other day. He is an expert in solar power, and he is a moderator on a solar power forum. Like us, he has a camper, and he uses solar power in the real world. He told me that he has given up on the general RV forums, because he found "the level of civility and the level of technical knowledge to be too low" to be useful. Compare that to the TMO forum. We are different. That is another thing you get for your $12 - a well-behaved, technically excellent source of information.

So anyway, you have to decide for yourself if you are willing to invest the price of a pizza in a year's worth of the TMO forum. After a month as a Trial Member (free), you should be able to make the decision, and if the decision is "NO", then as the bard says "Be well and prosper!"

Bill (one of the long-suffering unpaid moderators!)
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