Remember the rule, Patti... don't feed the troll

We used to get a lot of the sorts of questions you're describing. Less so recently, I think that a lot of the q's are answered in our knowledgebase in our member ticket system (which I'm fighting with an upgrade right now... arrgh...) because we get reports from it that say things like "54 tickets were entered, but 37 were answered through the knowledgebase and were closed to the customer's satisfaction"

I do think that a short answer that isn't boilerplate goes a looong way with surfers these days... if they know someone cares and responds, they are much more likely to subscribe and stay a member.