The timing is quite bizarre.
If this is supposed to be effective Sept. 1, why wait until August is nearly over to inform people? You'd think they would give the JWs a couple of months of lead time, to allow elders to encourage people to begin pioneering, to allow people to plan & rearrange schedules, etc. With just a few days' lead time, I don't expect many people to sign up for Sept. 1.
If new pioneers are not signed up by Sept. 1, they can't go to pioneer school the following summer. If you sign up for October 2008 or later, you can't attend school until August 2010. And that school is viewed as the "reward" for toughing it out the first year. If a JW has to wait 23 months (instead of 12) to attend the school, that's not much of an incentive.
The change from 90 to 70 hours was at least one month in advance, maybe longer - don't recall. And it took place in January - middle of the service year.
The organizational changes continue to lurch along - there seems to be no planning, no thought to finding the ideal time to announce these things. It gives the appearance of an organization in disarray, that is thinking up stuff and implementing it off the cuff, no thoughts to repercussions, consequences, etc.
Very different from the past, and very odd. What's going on?