I think it should be left up to the new subscriber if they want to give a referral to someone on this community, without any encouragement from community members. I certainly don't want to see posts from members saying "if you found this post helpful and decided to switch, please consider giving me a referral." And if you are talking about recommending another person for referral credit, then that can open up the person making the recommendation to criticism too (e.g. favouritism, etc). There is too much potential for discord. This community is great becouse of the members' general orientation toward being helpful and sharing their experience. To openly encourage referrals for members, especially for individual cases, would turn the help forum into a competition. Not something I want to see.
PM is not a traditional carrier in that it has no call centre support, nor is it a particularly well-known company compared to the competition, so a potential new subscriber should be doing a lot of due diligence before signing up. Part of that diligence should be checking out the community where the support is provided. In doing so, they will easily see which members are being helpful. When I signed up, I was the only one in my family/friends circle who even knew of PM, and I had no one to whom I could give the referral credit. Without any encouragement, I chose one community member whom I saw was being very helpful with quality responses, and offered it to them. I think that's the way it should remain, entirely up to the new member. If they don't want to give a free referral like I did, that is up to them.
