[members-discuss] Billing Changes in 2019

Dear members,

The board has been following this discussion with great interest and I 
think now is the right time to comment.

Over the past two years, your feedback has been that the RIPE NCC should 
be looking to increase efficiency and that processes should be automated 
and optimised as much as possible. We heard you and we acted on this.

In 2017, the organistaion received 11,000 billing tickets for around 
17,000 members. Any company that has to answer more than one billing 
query for every two of its customers should be taking a hard look at its 
processes.

One of our initiatives was to look at what creates the most work, and 
this is tickets processed by the RIPE NCC. Quarterly billing is a 
massive source of additional work in this respect and we decided to 
simplify this process by moving to a single annual payment (which is how 
the bulk of the membership currently pays its fees).

This was presented on a few months ago at the last General Meeting 
(webstream link at the bottom of this email):
https://www.ripe.net/participate/meetings/gm/meetings/october-2018/ripe-ncc-financial-update

While under no obligation to do so, the RIPE NCC has offered quarterly 
payments to its members for a long time. This dates back to when the 
membership fee for a small LIR was almost double what it is today. 
Continuing to offer this service has become less practical as the 
membership has grown. It is not the sending and processing of invoices 
that is the issue - this is about as automated as it can be. The problem 
is the amount of reminders, queries and other communication that comes 
with each billing cycle. This is getting worse as the membership grows, 
especially with the opening of multiple LIRs.

Recognising that this that might cause inconvenience for some members, 
we instructed the RIPE NCC to offer an individual payment plan on 
request.

The RIPE NCC will soon provide more details on how it intends to manage 
this transition for members that require support. If you will be 
negatively impacted, please contact the RIPE NCC via this option. Not 
only will it mean they can help you individually, but it will also let 
us see how many members will be affected. This mailing list is not 
always a representative sample.

The RIPE NCC is here to support you and your business. If the new rule 
creates more harm than benefits for the membership, then we can always 
revisit our approach.

Best regards

Christian Kaufmann
Chairman of the Executive Board