I’d like to suggest a compromise for Founding Member numbers and profile badges.
When I turned off auto-renew, I received the following message:
“Auto-renew is currently turned off. If you miss your renewal, you will lose your founding member number and will not be able to recover it. We recommend leaving auto-renew on to avoid any disruption to your account.”
Instead of completely losing all evidence of being a Founding Member during a period of time, if a subscription lapses, consider adding some kind of permanent Legacy Founding Member badge to the member’s profile. It could display something like:
Founding Member #742
Founding Member: January 2026 – January 2027
If you still want to recycle founding numbers for active subscribers, that’s understandable. Perhaps the original number could be reassigned while the original member retains a historical badge showing they were an early supporter and the period they held that status.
This would recognize the people who helped support WRL in its early days while still allowing founding numbers to remain a benefit of an active subscription. It preserves the historical significance of being an early supporter instead of making it disappear entirely if someone ever misses a renewal.
One additional observation: I couldn’t find anything in the Terms & Conditions that explains this policy. The first time I became aware of it was when I turned off auto-renew and was shown the message:
“If you miss your renewal, you will lose your founding member number and will not be able to recover it.”
If losing and permanently forfeiting a Founding Member number is an intended part of the membership, I think that should be clearly disclosed in the Terms & Conditions and/or the Founding Member subscription description before someone signs up; not only when they disable auto-renew. It’s a significant condition of the benefit and one that many members may reasonably assume is permanent unless told otherwise, not after the fact.
Lastly, thank you for everything you and the team have built. WRL is an outstanding platform, with incredible people making it happen. I have no intention of leaving, I simply don’t leave auto-renew enabled for most subscriptions outside of utilities and essential services. I prefer to decide each year whether to renew, so seeing this message caught me by surprise. I appreciate all you do and hope you’ll consider this suggestion as a way to preserve the user history in your backend databases.
