Guess I'll have to spend mah bread on hookers and cocaine now......Damn you! DAMN YOU WTC!!!!

I didn't necessarily think that the IA program was wrong. I was not going to pony up to be a member, but they are running the business, and the program was based on economic motivations (perhaps based on misguided assumptions, judging by how they cancelled it). I think his description of why they created the program is nonsense. I don't believe for a second that the motivation was to free up spots that were otherwise going unused. That rationale was a reach at best.

In the end, good on them for listening to their audience and making a change when they saw the PR backlash. Lots of much larger companies have not been flexible to change course, leading to their demise.

Eaxactomundo! I could not have cared one way or the other...but from my seat...that's what I'm seeing.

If I were him I would be pissed off too. They tried to do something different, it didn't work. Sometimes you work hard on an idea and are blind to just how bad it is. Obviously there was enough emails and facebok comments to change their minds.

I think it's huge that a company can admit to a mistake and pull the plug so quickly in a response to the customer. Just think how long it takes Microsoft to fix a bad decision they make!!

Rapid response, good job WTC.

Damn, I just burned my two copies of Lava magazine. Crap.

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Founder of THE TRIATHLON COLLECTIVE (Closed Facebook Group). A SBR discussion group without the white noise/trolling!

I canceled my subscription. Dang.

Their people are just thinking of another way to give less and gain more. Like someone else said, What's next? There is no way I could sit in that round table meeting and agree that that program was a good idea.

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"injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" MLK

Totally disagree. Quote from President of WTC: "If you guys say we are wrong, then we are wrong". This phrase used by WTC President will come back to haunt them in the future. HUGE mistake to make that video.

Still will never do an IM brand event again.

For my $.02, if you were pissed about IM and swearing them off before, there is no reason to not carry through on voting with your wallet. I think this was a bad PR move, but did not affect me one way or the other. Blackout dates are my real issue, and you will notice they have not budged on this issue.

Ken
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Frankly, I've lost more respect for WTC now that they have changed their minds on this -- two days of some nastygrams on Slowtwitch and they cave like a house of cards? How thin skinned is everyone over there? I didn't realize that WTC was a democracy.

Running a business is tough and sometimes you have to make choices with your business model that aren't popular at the outset. This wasn't New Coke or CBS cancelling Cagney & Lacey, it was a little pay-to-play scheme that tested the upper bounds of what the market would bear -- boo hoo. So they were trying to eek out some additional revenue for their investors -- they have a fiduciary responsibility to do so.

Me too.....Give them major cred for stepping up to the plate. The outcry must have been overwhelming

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Michael in Kansas
"Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit"
"Its not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up" Lombardi

So they will add more magazine subscriptions and a free hat?[/reply]

No, they are going to increase the price not decrease it.

Here's how it went:

1. They say "lets make more money from the people who we thought only made 150k but the paper says makes 175k".

2. They come up with this plan, and release the info.

3, we went insane on the feedback

4. They said how do we get them to accept this? Oh I know, we'll tell them that by doing this, we'll actually be opening up more slots, not filling slots.

5. they say this wasnt working and caved.

They were way to late on their defense, and frankly, no one was going to buy this line. Especially because sold slots that are empty actually lower their costs because if no one shows up, they dont have to do any work to support them, and have a higher profit margin.

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You don't have to like what I say but you should respect my right to say them and I'll do the same to you.

I, for one, have to eat some crow. I thought (and said) they'd never respond to the e-mails. I tip my hat to them.

And apologize to whomever I may have scoffed at.

Truthfully this is a good thing though. You see now I don't have to start my own 'WTC' like ironman distance triathlon series. This was going to be a daunting task that was destined to take away a lot of my training time, so I'm back on schedule.

Or to quote George Castanza's dad, "I'm back baby!"

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Founder of THE TRIATHLON COLLECTIVE (Closed Facebook Group). A SBR discussion group without the white noise/trolling!

They could have at least come up with a better excuse for what it was designed for. Seriously, free up slots? That's the best you got? You is crazy Mr. Fertic

Just say, Greed is good, but too much can have a bad backlash and we don't want to give away our dominant market share so we'll just pull it back since it would have only been 100k or so anyway per year. We can get you morons to buy tons of retail junk and make that easily.

It's obvious that they are reading Slowtwitch. So, with that in mind:

PLEASE GET RID OF THAT VILE POWERBAR PERFORM DRINK.

Thanks in advance.

That's the way I see it too.

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EXACTLY. The release is complete BS to try and make it look like a different animal than what it was

It was nice of Ben to come out on video and say "we listened to the feedback, we're human, we make mistakes".

That would have been the perfect way to get out of this. Trying to justify the strategy by talking about freeing up slots was a bit like Bush going in to search for weapons of mass destruction :-).

But overall, I think it was a good PR move.

Who is going to write the Harvard Business School case study on this one?

So why don't we say they are wrong not to off transfers/wait lists. They are wrong to have courses filled with FAR too many people?

This seems like a great opportunity to get some stuff fixed.

In a capitalistic viewpoint this idea wasn't that good to begin with. It was way too transparent and really didn't captilalize on the full reach of their brand. They seriously thought adding more spots to a race and then asking people to pay more for them was a good idea? Because that's all it really was- making the same race more expensive for some people. The same amount of race slots were still available to the average person- did I understand the program correctly? I actually came up with a more profitable idea today that would bring in more money, but with less backlash and more buy-in.

 

x2

about the weakest excuse they could have used. they 'love' no shows at races. they are all sold to 120% capacity with the expectation of the no shows. transfers/refunds would be a 100% hit to their margins.

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it's all about the run

Well I think they could still do the transfers and make money, but in short, when it comes to selling $1000 VIP packages versus transfer fees, it is far more profitable to sell the VIP packages...

Secondly, the Transfer / Wait List program would MAXIMIZE the utilization of slots.

So VIP / Ironman Access. - Maximum Revenues... possible WORSENING of utilization of slots

Wait list / Transfer program - Less Revenues... HIGHEST Utilization of slots..

Which way did WTC choose. Nuff said.

In fact... WTC WANTS to oversell events. Ironman Access contributes to this as well, not alleviate it.

There has been a lot of WTC bashing on this site (and most of it justified). WTC acknowledged the out cry over the Access Program. I think all the people who have been bashing WTC (me included) have to take the high road and thank WTC for reversing this program. "WTC, thank you for listening to your customers." I will also be sending a message direct to WTC thanking them.

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Barry Dmitruk
2017: Florida 70.3 (done); Mont Tremblant 70.3 & Ironman