Once you're registered as a NESA member.......you're, ermmmm.....a member.
I understand fully what you say, ecoli and I did suggest (a good few years ago) that some sort of membership card would be handy.
However - I'm not sure how many members you had in the "royal mail club", but there are over a thousand registered NESA members......and they are from all over the country (we even have a few from overseas)......and they are ALL entitled to any discounts offered by dealers to NESA members.
It would be impossible to police due to several factors - some being:
1 new members are registering every day
2 some members just dissapear from the Board
3 Some register and never post - maybe they don't even look in again after they've registered.
Like everything else on NESA - the discounts offered to NESA members are largely down to a matter of trust. In this instance, trust on the part of the dealers - and I thank them for THAT trust.
The dealers offering the discounts are mainly NESA members themselves and know many of the other members anyway - either personally, or by their username on the Board. Often they have a PC connected to the 'net on the premises, so it would be a simple matter to check out those registered usernames.
As TC rightly says, it is down to trust
