The Membership Benefits Program provides PEF members’ group rates for a variety of services. The PEF Membership Benefits Program remains committed to providing the highest quality plans and services at the lowest possible cost. Our goal continues to be to improve existing programs while adding new meaningful benefits.

For the first time in the history of our Cellular Phone Program, we are now able to offer a statewide plan. Through a competitive bidding process, The Membership Benefits Program Trustees have worked out a three-year agreement with Verizon Wireless. The new plan will offer a program that will provide a discount to all types of users – analog or digital as well as low, medium or high-end users. One plan includes 70 minutes of airtime, and charges a low monthly access fee. For PEF members who use their phone more than 70 minutes, you can take advantage of a group discount on any of the general public Verizon plans. The group discount will range from two percent to 10 percent depending on the volume of our account. We expect this discount to average six percent during the first year. The Verizon Wireless program will also offer PEF members another plan that has a low monthly access rate with no usage included (not available in New York Metro or Long Island markets).

The Program Trustees are again subsidizing some of the cost of admission to the following amusement parks: The Great Escape, Waterslide World, Six Flags-New England, Seabreeze, Water Safari, Canada's Wonderland, Six Flags-Darien Lake, Six Flags-Great Adventure, Cedar Point and Dorney Park. For the fiscal year ended 5/31/00, the Program sold 10,547 tickets and this year’s sales volume is enormous, necessitating an additional staff person to help with sales as well as assisting the bookkeeper and the purchase of point-of-sale equipment.

Last year, Membership Benefits test-marketed discount tickets for Albany’s Triple A baseball team, the Diamond Dogs. The response was significant, with 1,124 tickets sold. With the success of this program, we added the Buffalo Bisons and the Rochester Red Wings. Sales so far have been impressive for all of the venues.

The Membership Benefits Program has a statewide discounted movie ticket agreement for Hoyts, Cineplex, General Cinemas, National Amusements, Spectrum, United Artists and Regal theaters. In addition to the volume discounts the Program subsidizes the tickets. The number of theaters PEF members can attend at greatly discounted prices is approximately 145 and 32,011 tickets were sold this year

Last year the Trustees selected Liberty Mutual to provide its voluntary Automobile and Homeowners Insurance Program and they began marketing their program in December. In selecting Liberty Mutual, the Trustees weighed a number of factors, including past experience in providing Group Auto and Homeowners Programs, accessibility to member service representatives and competitiveness of insurance rates. To date, there have been very few complaints and Liberty has sold 3,952 policies to 2,562 members.

A full-service travel agency, purchased in 1994, will pay PEF members to go on vacation because of their policy of rebating five percent on travel packages booked and paid for through them, excluding taxes, fees and meal packages. This benefit continues to grow as our regular members and retired members become aware of it. Toward this end, we have conducted a mailing to prospective retirees and have added 400 new members to this group who will now be eligible to take advantage of the travel rebates.

Membership Benefits Program utilizes a combination of on-site visits, direct mail, and The Communicator advertisements to promote the benefits and discounts offered. Since the last PEF Convention, Membership Benefits’ representatives attended 64 on-site visits.

Direct-mail campaigns for the year have also been quite aggressive, with over 38 direct mailings sent to members, leaders and fee payers. Of the 38 mailings, two were statewide mailings, ten were regional mailings, five were plan participant mailings, five were PEF leader mailings, one was a fee-payer mailing, and 15 were to promote the on-site visits.

• Term Life Insurance

• Short-Term Disability Insurance

• Long-Term Disability Insurance

• Universal Life Insurance

• PEF Legal Service Plan

• Driver safety classes

• Car-rental discounts

• Hospital indemnity

• Assault, Trauma and Attack Program (premium paid by the Membership Benefits Program)

• $ 15,000 Accidental Death and Dismemberment (premium paid by the Membership Benefits Program)

• Legal Defense Benefit

• Private Retirement Annuity