national trust

[My2favboys]

to lie on my national just form and use "dr" with a gender neutral name so either mu husband or my sister could use it depending on who's with my??

I don't see it as unreasonable. A member of staff at an NT property told me recently that each NT property gets a certain amount of £ back for every NT member through their doors - something like £2.50 per member - so surely it doesn't matter who the second person is, especially if you wouldn't otherwise go? Surely it's better that the membership is used??

Of course its dishonest, especially if you ARE a DR!

Why is it especially dishonest if she is a Dr?

I just came to say the exact same thing fleur

If you buy a joint membership and can use one to do visits with someone when you wouldn't otherwise go, then the NT property you go to actually gains.

Fleur34 - I think that the individual places get more money if you are paying the full entrance fee than they do if you are a member when they get a much smaller percentage. No idea how they calculate this percentage, but I guess it's a percentage of the total NT memberships paid. If you are not paying, there is less money in the pot to go round all the properties.

RHS gardens have a really good membership deal. My boss took out a family membership with me (the nanny) as the second named adult. Each named adult can visit with a plus one and up to four children, so they can visit as a family at weekends and I can take the children in the school holidays and take another nanny and two children in for free. We spend a lot of time in Harlow Carr gardens as a result!
I have a national trust membership and I think its great value for money - I regularly visit somewhere local to walk and parking is free for members or £5 for nonmembers so the money I save on parking pays for the membership.

Yes, unreasonable. NT are a charity. Its just taking the piss tbh.

Fleur, every time a member visits and a card is scanned that property gets £2.65. When you pay to enter the property the whole amount stays at the property.

Besides which, paying to enter to support a charity isn't an unreasonable thing for them to ask of you. It costs a lot of money to run the properties.

I actually find the NT lovely and flexible as they allow you to take assortment of children with you or family membership and are also perfectly happy for my parents who have normal adult membership to take my kids with them and show my family membership card for the kids rather than my parents having to get family membership too to be able to take the kids.

If you allow another adult to "borrow" the second adult space of a ticket then the charity loses out. We have a fabulous museum locally that does year passes and people are always asking on the local fb group if they can lend their pass to someone. No you bloody well can't! If you are lending it the that person isn't buying their own and therefore the museum is missing out on the fees. Same with the NT. So much of our heritage would have crumbled away or been sold into private hands never to be seen by the public if it were not for the NT (and other charities such as EH).

The thing about fleur's point is only that a family would make an additional visit, when they wouldn't otherwise have gone.

A national trust volunteer actively encouraged me to lie about my age to try and get me to sign up to the under 26 membership option. She reassured me that they never check.

(I didn't sign up)

You're a genius!

Of course you are being unreasonable (as you fully know) but that is a genius idea :)

I don't really understand what is meant by 'a family would make an additional visit?'

As an aside here's a quick round of figures for you:

A property local to me need to raise £50,000 to be able to fix their brickwork so it is safe. To raise that money they need to sell 451 family memberships. A family of four members (two NAMED adults, two children) would need to visit 4717 times. They need to sell 3480 adult house and ground tickets (11.50 + gift aid collected).

Blimey...only on mn

This is really useful actually. I didn't know how the funding (£2.65) worked before. We are members of NT and EH so go regularly. There are so many great places out there.

What I want to know is this.

On holiday, we went to Mont St Michael in France. 6€ entry for massive carpark, shuttle bus and entrance to the Mont itself. The €6 covered the entire family.

St Michels Mount in Cornwall, is about £30 entrance for a family, not including car parks.

Why are they so differently priced for what is essentially the same thing? (Although the French version is much bigger). I support the National Trust and am a member, but I do feel that the high entrance fees to some properties put people off. Although I do think they are more reasonable than English Heritage.

It's less than £100 a year for a family of 5... YABU

So not only are you intending to defraud a charity and try to justify it with flimsy excuses, but you tell others how to do it too, costing the charity even more.............nice

I don't fancy a NT membership, any idea how I could steal funds from another charity?

I suspect Mont St Michel is cheaper because they get much more by way of government subsidy.

If you buy a joint membership and can use one to do visits with someone when you wouldn't otherwise go, then the NT property you go to actually gains.

But, face it, people will mostly do this with someone who would otherwise go and would pay full whack. So the NT property undoubtedly loses.

It's unfair to other people who may be in the same situation and paying for three adults because they stick to the rules

No OP because you would be in effect stealing from a charity. Lying is also wrong in itself.

It's not stealing, she is paying for membership and wouldn't become one if she couldn't do it.
So, in a way she is enabling her membership and hence the money in the NT coffers.

YANBU in my opinion.

If I'm in a position where I'm going out for the day with someone who is not a NT member, we'd go somewhere other than a NT property.