I have a major problem with the way our local zoo, the Woodland Park Zoo, conducts its membership.
I had a problem when the local zoo and aquarium stopped featuring a joint membership, but that’s not what I want to talk about. Yes, it used to be that a family could pay one fee for a single annual membership which included both the Woodland Park Zoo and the Seattle Aquarium. Unfortunately the zoo changed how it conducts memberships and pulled out of the joint agreement with the aquarium several years ago. Now we have family memberships to both the Seattle Aquarium and the Woodland Park Zoo, but it would be much more convenient if the zoo would reenter the joint agreement with the aquarium.
But, like I mentioned, that’s not the issue I wanted to bring up.
A few years ago, in August, we renewed our annual membership. So, annual membership should be from August of one year to August of the following year. We got a renewal notice in the mail, and without thinking, we went ahead and renewed our membership. You would expect this membership to extend for another year, to the following August.
Turns out it was an annual membership based not on what we have paid for, but instead is from the time the application for membership was submitted. So our membership, instead of expiring in August, is going to expire in May. That is either a couple of months worth of membership that I have paid for that we are going to miss out on or have double-paid for.
No, I did not notice this at the time.
This was all brought to my attention when we received a renewal notice for our current membership. Go ahead and look at the picture below.
Notice how our current membership expires at the end of May, but if we renew now we can extend our membership through the end of April of next year!
Wouldn’t I be losing a month of membership by renewing now?
Why wouldn’t renewing my membership extend it to May of 2017?
While I am thinking about this, when did we originally purchase our zoo memberships? How many years have we had a membership versus how many years have we paid for said membership? This all feels very sketchy on the part of Woodland Park Zoo.
I love the zoo, my kids as well. But this is the kind of thing that does not endear the zoo to parents or the community at large.
At times we think about dropping our zoo membership in favor of just having the aquarium membership. And now? We are going to be thinking about this even more.
UPDATE: I talked with Woodland Park Zoo membership and got some clarification.