$250. annual vs $5000. lifetime - so up front you have to figure that you will be into this for 20 years to net out.
And if you get declared with all certs and awards and membership cancelled - and you do your A to E to get back in then does it get reinstated or do you have to pony up another 5k?
I guess just going for the $250. can be interpreted as doubt that it will even be around in 20 years so that's kind of an annual lower condition thing right there.
I remember in the late eighties/early nineties, you got discounts on services if you were a member. I think it was 20%, and IIRC the percentage was the same for annual and lifetime membership (or it might have been a bit lower for annual membership). Then they announced that you would no longer get a discount on the price of services for annual memberships, but it was retained for lifetime members. Not sure what has happened since.
Anyway, it used to mean that if you were paying in for a couple of intensives of auditing, or a training package, then it was cheaper to get the annual membership at the same time, and then get the discount. Many memberships were sold on that basis. I suspect annual membership sales slumped heavily when they got rid of the discount.
It also used to be the case that when you paid your £3500 for your wheatstone bridge (er, I mean, Mark VII e-meter), you actually OWNED it. Then at some point they changed that, so that it's still the property of the org. So if you leave, you technically have to hand the e-meter back to the org. Presumably that gave an added impetus to indies to start making their own brands of e-meter, and selling them at a fraction of the price. That market might not have existed if they'd just allow anybody, indies included, to walk into an org and buy an e-meter. If they had any business sense, they'd have done a secret deal with Ron's Org etc where they supplied them with e-meters in a different-looking case. The gross margin on e-meters must be 3500%. They could have done the same with course packs. Instead, course packs are essentially provided for free in places like Ron's Org.
When S.O.B takes his trip to Bulgravia, I might apply for the position....
I've occasionally heard people say they think he is a business genius. I don't think he is. If I was in charge of Scientology, it would be booming. That smoke-and-mirrors package is easy enough to sell, and could be re-packaged in a way that people would not complain about. People spend decades doing yoga or meditation or tai chi and paying for it. They don't usually leave after two decades and denounce it as a cult. There's a whole wealth of books and lectures etc to keep people busy and interested for decades. It's really not necessary to have disconnection and loony prices and basics and golden age of tech VI and Idle Morgues and sending letters to ADDUNKs (address unknowns) to make that place turn a buck. Anyone at the helm of that who can't make membership expand doesn't know what they are doing.
W.