Having Trouble Reading Subscriber Content? Read This First - UPDATED

By David Emmett | Tue, 28/03/2023 - 19:52

The start of the MotoGP season is often the point at which MotoMatters.com site supporters choose to either take out or renew their subscriptions. Your support is immensely appreciated, and make possible the continuing existence of the site, and allow me to produce the content you (hopefully) love.

But over the past week or so, I have received a number of emails from subscribers asking why they can't view subscriber content. The reason for that is because their subscriptions have expired.

The background

In 2023, the subscription renewal cycle has an extra complication. As I explained when the new and upgraded site went live, and in an email to existing subscribers, as part of the migration to the new system, I had to transfer subscriptions from the old site to the new site. I did this by manually* recreating the existing subscriptions, then adjusting them to reflect the expiry date from the old system. I took the original purchase date, then added 6 weeks to the end of the year duration of a normal subscription.

The confusion

Here's where the confusion sets in. As a result of manually creating the subscriptions, emails were sent out to all existing subscribers saying they had placed a new order for a subscription. In fact they had not, and neither credit cards nor PayPal accounts had been charged. These emails all went out on February 4th or 5th (2023-02-04 or 2023-02-05).

I followed those emails up with a separate email, reproduced below. If you were a subscriber at the time of the new site upgrade, you should have this email in your inbox somewhere.

What this means in practice

If you are a subscriber, and you go to your profile page (click on My Account at the top of the page), you should see a tab called Orders. If you click on that, you will see the order created by me to transfer your old subscription to the new site. If you have bought a new subscription since then, you will see both the new and the old subscription.

The table has 2 columns: Order Number, and Order Details.

The Order Details heading on the user Orders page

In the left hand column, in the middle, you will find the order number (where the orange line is in the photo). In the right hand column, you will find all the details of the order. The most important information is at the bottom of the page, where you can see dates with labels including Created, Granted, and Expires.

The details of tan order, showing the labels Created, Granted, Expires, and license type

For subscriptions which were transferred from the old site to the new site, Created will always be either 04/02/2023 or 05/02/2023 (February 4th or 5th), which is when the transfer of subscriptions took place.

Expires (highlighted in yellow in the image) is the date (in European notation dd/mm/yyyy, the default in the website) of when the subscription runs out. This is the date I calculated based on the subscription in the old site, with 6 weeks added on as a courtesy.

Obviously, if the date is in the past, then it means your subscription has expired. If you wish to continue supporting the site and reading exclusive subscriber content, you will need to take out a new subscription. We currently offer three variations:

If you think you did take out a subscription some time after February 5th, or you believe your subscription should be valid, please check your bank/credit card statement or Paypal account to locate the payment, and then email sales@motomatters.com.

If you have any further questions about this, please email me on sales@motomatters.com, and I will do what I can to help. If you are not sure whether your subscription has expired, go to one of your comments and see if you can see the Site Supporter badge: Site Supporter badge. If not, then your subscription has expired. I am currently working on a way of displaying this badge in the header, so that you can see at a glance if your subscription is still valid.

Here's the email sent out to subscribers on February 5th, 2023.

Dear MotoMatters.com Subscriber,

First of all, thanks so much for subscribing to MotoMatters.com. Subscribers have been the lifeblood of the site and the bedrock it is built on for nearly a decade.

Secondly, thanks for your patience in waiting while the the website was being rebuilt.

Which brings me to my third point:

Yesterday or this morning, you will have received an email with the subject:

Order #??? confirmed

Telling you that you had placed an order for a subscription to MotoMatters.com. This was sent in error during the migration process. I did not take into account that programmatically creating new orders would automatically send out new order confirmation emails. I should have disabled that step.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: You were NOT charged at any point in this process, nor will you be.

This was a process circumventing the payment process, so no money was involved. Just an update of the database to transfer your subscriptions from the old site to the new site.

My sincere apologies for the inconvenience, and any concern or worry this email may have caused you. And once again, you were not and will not be charged for this.

The new subscriptions are set not to autorenew. That will continue to be the default for subscriptions, but over the next month or so, I will be creating an autorenew subscription for those who wish to purchase one.

The good news is that this means that the new site is very close to being finished. It should be back up and running at some point on Sunday afternoon European time. It may already be up and running by the time you read this. On Tuesday, I fly to the Sepang MotoGP test to dive right back into writing about MotoGP, and concentrate on that once again.

Thanks again for supporting the website!

Cheers,

David Emmett

* "manually" is not quite accurate: the subscriptions were created using an automated process. There are (fortunately) too many subscriptions to do them all by hand.

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Comments

Thanks David, I checked mine and still have 5 or so weeks to go.

Just to clarify, does that mean those of us old "yearly" people who were "manually" translated to the new subscription system (but still have time left on our current subscriptions for now) will get some kind of reminder that we are due to renew, or not?

Hello David, this renewal was a bit messy but in the end I managed to do it. Just one thing, I wasn’t able to make the annual membership payable in euros despite selecting the appropriate option. So now I’ve been charged 49.99 USD instead of euros… I still don’t know if it’s better or not but usually my bank charges some extra for other currencies so maybe try to fix it for next year?

Cheers,

Alessandro

David, is there a problem in re-establishing the link to new comments? You said weeks ago it would be fixed. It makes no sense to have to scroll through an entire article and every comment to find  a new comment. This has become a significant issue for me. Update please or reasons why not. 

Dropped here for a bit, 17 min heart filled video re Dani Pedrosa's Spanish GP wknd. Well worth the watch!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A79f5Uodx0M&t=313s&pp=ygUZRGFuaSBwZWRyb3N…

Short answer? Let's all go ahead and click the annual Mutterer's contribution. Why? This is THE best journo offerings MotoGP has seen. Alien, bringing the Paddock to YOU on a plate. The old print "insider's club" died. David is THE best new school way of doing things. Be a part of it! S U B S C R I B E !

Mutterrers Get Together?

Sunday October 1st track day, Portland International Raceway

Non-technical, safe, high speed easy learning track...perfect for all skill levels. Happy to do skill share and track intro for any newbies. Pit together, use my tools etc. Possibility to take my lovely Triumph Daytona 675R out for a slow group session for the sane and responsible. A few out of towners are welcome to stay at my house the night before, I am quite closeby. Can do a airport pickup. If you fit size 52/54 Euro I have extra leathers, Sz 9 boots. One Ninja 400 on street tires avail for a beginner for the day as needed. Sober/mindful meal together Sat eve. Party together after Sunday, either in the pits or we can head over to a local restaurant (likely BOTH, will have refreshments and snacks, and a "rider of the day" award).

Link to MotoCorsa (local Ducati's track day, good program):

https://www.motocorsa.com/join-us-to-take-a-ride--track-days

Jensen Beeler, you're local I hear...are you a reader? Take your Kramer out for a spin? Andy DiBrino, are you reading here yet? Who else is in the Pacific NW, USA? Two and a half weeks out, be in touch!

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Just finally renewed (barely here but want to anyhoo). I want to be of support to David Emmett. If we are disappointed or frustrated, let's keep aware that he is rider/crew chief/data engineer/Team owner of the best journalism in our sport. He's been spearheading the transition from the old print establishment to something better. Including geeking the website!

Cloverleaf, not implying you are out of line in any way. You're a good guy Mr Seymour! I'm aware that I am getting through a bit of a tantrum-reaction struggle of my own with MotoGP, this site, and the the pandemic impacted World in general.

David isn't perfect. Nor should he be. He has taken on a great deal. I was disappointed personally with unmet expectation that is good for me to get past. It may be in his "do it all! And invent each wheel!" makeup to struggle with overwhelm. If we can wait 5 years for a Michelin front, let's wait for Winter for him to finish ironing out the site user experience.

Thanks for your work David. Not here much anymore as I move from screens to real life post pandemic. I will try to pop in here and there with positivity. Done complaining about the obvious post 2021 MotoGP issues.

:)

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P.S. the Supersport catagory has held my interest. Lots could be said. Suzuki is very strong w the 750 4 cyl, easy and cheap to run after you get the bespoke ride by wire conversion. KTM is coming with their up and coming generation RC8 parallel twin. They have absorbed the Kramer GP2 bike based on the 890 Duke motor and are taking it that next step forward. I remain enamored with the Triples, and riveted to the class. If you have only sport ridden 4's and Twins, try a Triple. Magic power delivery. Lacks inline 4 over rev, but more than makes up for it below that.

News? Aprilia breaking the seal this week on their Lightweight Supersport KILLER RS457. Keep your eye on this. The Superbikes are just too damn much bike for really doing the business on as a recreational rider. The market for 600's dried up. I get it now. No shit, after ripping around on a most spirited and physically unpleasant ride Thursday on the Triumph I looked into riser bars for the first time ever. Feels worse than needing reading glasses, or sensitive teeth toothpaste. More like adult diapers? Distasteful. Track? It is great! (See Ninja 400 below).

The Middleweight Twins had solid steps forward resulting in the R7 and RS660 doing the businessvia improvement in sporting performance design over the old school SV650 and Ninja 650 not so super twins. Mild suspension changes and the usual Supersport uncorking bring the Aprilia 660 to a delicious competitive track bike. There is some "performance creep" in this class rising towards the old Supersport's rear. 68hp stock is now 100hp.

Look also at what is going on down in the "300cc" Lightweight Production class? (I have been calling it Moto4 for fun). The KTM 390 Single does better than it should while being overly respectful of the formula (think what capacity they could be getting away with, 520cc?). The rest of the field moved into capacity creep...Yamaha just 320cc, then the Honda 500 pig is allowed but sucks. Ninja 400 breaks through besting the field. So just now, Black arrives with the clear weapon of choice at 457cc. The top dog is unleashed. You sit a bit down in these bikes, and the bars are high and close. The chassis and kit has been much more lower strung and basic than "real sportbikes" of a bit ago. But again, creeping upwards.

I have been joyfully focused on my newish Kawasaki 400 project. Such a joy to thrash! The riding style is between Sportbike and Supermoto. It is COMFORTABLE (hence the Triumph gets dusty).

So perhaps the natural order of things is returning in production bikes. There are still Ninja 636's, R6's and such. But the class has moved up a step into the vacuum behind Mega Superbikes. Today's Supersports are becoming yesterday's Superbikes. Big Twins, 750 4's and lovely 800cc Triples. Then these punching above their capacity 600's. The new stuff is available naked mean Tuono-streetfighter custom and they are COMFORTABLE to ride! Some of THOSE then you can put on track in various guises. Even in fairings and with clipons/rear sets. Huh! Just like that. An odd circle.

This formula changing "performance and capacity" creep up in Supersport, Middleweight Twins and Supersport 300's is going somewhere. There is historically significant diversity in the Supersport class and a high rate of change. The old days of intake restrictor plates are long gone. Not long ago in the USA, MotoAmerica simply posted a new engine management data file for the Ducati and Suzuki Supersports. "This needs to be downloaded on your bike by 2 Rounds from now." That's it! Honda returned with their 2007 generation 600 seemingly in hopes of receiving performance accomodations. 

The Supersport 300 bikes are a hoot on a kart track. You can daily drive it with huge pleasure...SO fun! Hooligan joy on a manageable and playful level. Yeah, we did it with liter bikes and it really WAS wonderful...but have you done it on a 400 Twin? It is a blast! More comfy than a Supermoto too.

If we are currently in a revolution in the boosted Supersport (trans 600) class, another is coming just behind it. It has a collision course with Electric bikes. It is coming, and the production class arising will be a revolution. The 890 Duke and an Energica are racing in MotoAmerica Super Hooligans. Good old Jeremy McWilliams is doing exactly what he wants on an Indian 1200 of all things. Former 250GP National champ Roland Sands started and organizes Super Hooligans. He has been flat track and old school American Twin (Zzzzz blech) focused, and the air cooled 125hp Indian FTR 1200 is his baby. So the rules favor it. The KTM is forced to carry a weight ballast penalty (that has been decreased but not enough to best the Indian). The Indian should get a power cut but isn't. 

This weekend they were at COTA, and you really should watch the race if just for the last few very dramatic and aggressive knife fight amongst friends. Look at the three bikes on the podium! Check out the KTM 890, note Ducati has two very different bikes out with women riding them, a Hypermotard and a Monster. Oldest school air cooled thumping 1200 USA Twins. Importantly the Energica E-bike. 1st and only E-Bike vs Petrol ("I C E" is something we will be hearing lots soon). They are currently in the process of splitting the class in two, having had over 50 entrants.  

The Energica ROCKETS the start via full torque on tap. It changes direction pretty well but is a bit heavier. Oddly, in hot ambient temps it loses significant power - heat dispersion is a limiting batt/motor factor. (If the old cornerspeed vs stop and go was a big disparity between GP Yamahas and the V4's, it is 5x that here). This Energica is quite old relatively, E-bikes are really on the...err...gas...in a rush of development. I expect Middleweight Twins, this Kitchen Sink Hooligan class, and perhaps even some Supersport dropouts/street going versions of Supersports to merge as our next big torque filled class. (Does Aprilia bring a 880 Twin next?) Et al...the torquey comfy rideable sporty-bike is blossoming. 

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Super Hooligans Race 1 COTA Saturday...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFa6uqdSOk&pp=ygULbW90b2FtZXJpY2E%3D

22:49 thru 37:04 is a great watch. Set your drink down when the last lap starts.
From 2 min to 5 min catch the highlights from Laguna Seca. Then see the kitchen sink list of bikes on grid, and the start. I'm backing local Andy DiBrino, great guy on the KTM (and now also a privateer MV Agusta in Supersport too). Red flag,  restart at 23 mins. Fantastic battle at the front! Jeremy McWilliams (age 59)!

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See how behind the now 750ish Supersport class something is coming from the horizon? A kitchen sink class that includes the soon to be popular Electric sporting standards, and oddball bikes. A Chinese bike with a parallel twin with a displacement edge could be there etc. There is a vacuum to fill and we can see what is popping up. 

Cheers

v Thank YOU Mr Emmett! Tuck in the slipstream, get a tow - Neil Morrison, Steve English et al can help you preserve your tires. Take good care and relax, prioritize, delegate, get a massage etc so we get to keep you and your work for the long haul.

:)