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At the very least they should make the race entry transferable. Why not allow you to sell your race entry to another triathlete?
Because then you would have opportunists buying up all the slots they can and then selling them at even more ridiculous prices, thus ruining the sport for a lot of people.
Yep. I think they should quit overselling, allow for half a refund and auction the now available slots proceeds to some local charity(s).
So if I pay $600 and cancel(and let's say they put a time limit, you need to cancel 60 or 90 days in advance), WTC gives me $300 back, puts the slot up on ebay and pockets the first $300 and the rest goes to some local homelss shelter, boys club, or whatever.
There is a cost to WTC to do that. They already have your money. Why would they do that?
WTC is a business. The point of a business is (generally) to make money. Not sure why people think of WTC as anything other than a business out to make money.
Cost is pretty minimal. Since they have been having a PR nightmare lately it may help their image a bit.
The cost isn't just financial. It's also to the experience of the race itself. The business model apparently counts on people not showing up. If everyone who signed up showed up, the race would be even more overcrowded (you think it's bad now...) and the quality would go down.
Selling out (and the fear of a race you want to do selling out) is a huge cachet for these races. Look at the Boston Marathon the past couple of years. Four years ago, you could sign up in February. Last year it sold out in November. This year it sold out in 8 hours. It's not because so many more people want to do Boston. It's because they were afraid of getting locked out. The moment that fear goes away, well then either a) it doesn't sell out until late and a higher percentage of signees actually run the race or b) it doesn't sell out at all (and again, a higher percentage actually show).
Either way, it's bad for business.