I Just Canceled My Subscription To Model Railroader Video Plus

I sent this e-mail to David Popp. I've complained to him before about the amount of non-exclusive content on the site. I pay for a membership, but an awful lot of videos there are free to all comers.

Well, I note you’re adding Kathy Millatt to MRVP. Leaving all else aside, I’m back to wondering why we would want to pay for material that we can find for free on YouTube, as MRVP itself acknowledges. One of my consistent concerns about MRVP is that a fair proportion of the material that paying customers see is given away to all comers. I just checked her YouTube channel, and there are 135 videos available on it for free, plus her blog, plus her posts on free forums. I note that she appears to have free videos available on the very subject she discusses on MRVP, eBay trees and how to use them.

However, I really hadn’t looked at her YouTube channel much until she appeared on MRVP, and I went to see what I might have been missing. My own reaction is that her focus is overspecialized – there’s a video on how to model pond scum, another on how to model oil slicks. But when I went to her tour of her own layout, I found it disappointing – very little is finished, and it doesn’t look like she runs anything at all.

I’m increasingly concerned that we aren’t getting what we’re paying for, too few exclusive videos for subscribers – in fact, the overall numbers lately seem to be falling off.

I’m beginning to re-evaluate whether I should keep subscribing to MRVP.

He replied,

Yes, we found Kathy while we were looking around Youtube earlier this year for up-and-coming video presenters that we could pull into MR Video Plus. She does have an extensive background of modeling work, not only in model railroading, but also in the world of plastic kit modeling. I visited her New Haven layout last month, and she has made the 12 x 12 attic in her UK home work very well for a double-decked layout. The plan for her series is to work on the scenery for a section of her layout using a variety of techniques. We are very pleased to have her as part of the MR Video Plus team.

I am sorry that you are disappoint with our MR Video Plus product. I will be the first to admit that we do what we think is best for showing techniques and entertaining our viewers, and it is impossible to please everyone. As for frequency of content, as always, we post a minimum of 3 new videos per week. That hasn’t changed since the product’s launch 4.5 years ago.

Only you know how you the value you feel you get from our service. There will always be free video available on YouTube and similar sites, and there is nothing any of us here can do about that. As you can imagine, we cannot make videos without subscribers, but we are not forcing anyone to stay with MRVP either if they feel they can get the information and entertainment they are looking for elsewhere.

I do thank you for trying MR Video Plus, and I wish you well in your endeavors.

So with a little effort, I saved my credit card that bit of monthly billing. I guess I could get some detail parts or something with the money that I would find more useful.