Scouter can't renew membership; likely due to having been "opted out"

[SonjaKueppers]

I’m at my wit’s end trying to get one of our Scouters renewed.

As far as I can tell, the core problem is that his previous unit marked him as “opted out”. This prevented him from being able to renew his membership with our unit at the time when his membership was expiring. He wasn’t able to undo the “opted out” status, and we also couldn’t do it at the unit level nor could we process a renewal for him; the message we got was that he was “opted out”.

Now his membership is expired, but he can’t use our unit link to rejoin (he gets an error that he’s already registered with the unit), and he doesn’t have an option to renew when he logs into my.scouting.org.

Our council registrar also hasn’t been able to resolve the issue. How can I get this Scouter re-registered?

[jacobfetzer]

Sounds like you council registrar needs to open a ticket with national. They may be able to process it manually, alternatively.

[James]

I had the same problem today. The pack we used to belong to had opted us out, and for the Adult renewal, it was only showing the pack with red text saying “Registration renewal was opted out.” It wasn’t showing our current troop adult position, so there was no way to renew either adult position.

The “helpful” alert at the top perhaps explained this, stating “Multiple Positions are not displayed in this section, Click Start Renewal to see the full list of positions you can renew.” But of course we couldn’t click “Start Renewal” because we were opted out of our old unit. (Also note that I was doing this on the last day to renew before expiration, had we done it two months earlier (maybe even 2 days earlier), the link probably would have been there.)

I got around it by doing the following steps on a web browser on a computer.

RENEW ADULT MEMBERSHIP WHEN POSITION IS HIDDEN DUE TO PREVIOUS UNIT OPT OUT
(you can just skip to step 6, but I’m putting all the steps in, in case someone needs them)

1. The renewing scouter (adult) needs to log in to their account at https://my.scouting.org

2. Make a note of your Member ID on the my.scouting.org home page after you log in.

3. Click the “My Application” tile.
   

   

4. Click “MY RENEWALS”
   

5. You will see the scouter (adult) renewal item that says “Registration renewal was opted out” for your old unit (in this case our old pack)
   

   

6. Enter the following URL into the web browser address bar:

https://my.scouting.org/renewal/MYBSAMEMBERID/new/info

but instead of MYBSAMEMBERID use your actual BSA Member ID you noted in step 2

7. If it shows your current membership position in your new unit (committee member in a troop in our case) then you can renew it. (However if under “Current Memberships” there are no positions listed, then these steps won’t work, sorry.)

8. If there is a warning saying “You need to select a primary position to continue” then you must click the check box for “Select as Primary Position”
   

   

9. Now the “Go To Payment” button should be enabled, where you can complete the payment and the renewal.
   

   

10. Enter E-Signature, click “Go to Checkout Summary,” enter credit card info, and click “Complete Registration.”
    

    
    
    
    

That seemed to work, and now when I go to My Applications > My Renewals, it shows the renewal in the troop is completed and new expiration date is next year, 2026.