OK, I'm a cynic. So RD's put on these event's purely out of the goodness of their heart, and the love of watching others in pain ;) I don't buy it. The only inside word I have ever had, was that the RD was making in a very comfortable living, aren't they likely to still profit from the event, is it that they are considering their wage as one of the fixed cost's? By that logic, how does your wage not become equally as valid to protect, you should at least receive a percentage of the RD's profit.

Here in the land of Oz, consumer laws are very clearly laid out. Similar to what the OP is alluding to, a contract can state anything it wants, and you can sign it, but it means nothing if it contradicts Commonwealth Law (or other relevant legislation). So a race waiver may have the caveat of "no refunds" but depending on the circumstances they may zero grounds to enforce it.

A recent example of that occurred this year. A very larger and prominent 24hr team mtb event was cancelled with approx 24 hrs notice due to hideously bad weather. Under the law, given the decision to cancel was the race directors, and not that of individuals, then a refund was in order, even though the race waiver explicitly stated it was not. The race organisers, either through bad advice or ignorance, maintained that line, not to mention the huge costs they had to bear from hired equipment, personnel etcetc.

In the end, they had to give refunds (at least to those who knew to ask).

Whilst this was a huge burden to the race organisers the question has to be asked whether they are/were aware under the laws under which they operate (as a service provider) and are consequently bound to. If so, then insurance and contingencies would have been in place for such event. If there weren't... well, ignorance is no excuse, at which point it's just bad management.

Some of the best racing here happens in fall and coincides with the peak of Atlantic hurricane season. So, yeah, no one's going to insure the race because of weather in any sort of affordable way, so unless you want to be paying $200+ for an ordinary sprint, then the chance of a cancellation is just part of the game.

And yeah, I've lost an entry fee because the bike course has simply ceased to exist as a road a few days before, the swim course has too much rubble to be safe, and even if we just wanted to do the run part, the National Guard wouldn't let non-residents into that area for safety reasons anyways. The RDs got out the t-shirts as best as they could, and life went on.

No honest RD cancels a race lightly, so just HTFU, take the loss and move on.

I had a race cancelled in 2012 due to Hurricane related weather that moved up towards the Midwest. At first, the race director cited that no refunds would be given due to the cancelled race. A month later he announced that all entries would be moved to the 2013 race. The website continues to keep the "no refund" policy posted. This is a small local race so it wouldn't upset people as much as a $800 IM race.

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"That doesn't make any sense at all, you can be second, third, fourth... hell you can even be fifth." - Reese Bobby, Taladega nights

I dont think that's going to fly by Visa. There is no such thing as "attempting" to provide a product. Either you do or you dont. If Visa allowed merchants to "attempt" to provide a product they would be opening huge door to abuse. A plumber could charge you for his time saying he "attempted" to pick up supplies to fix your sink, but he couldn't and he's charging anyway. An airline could cut your Hawaii-to-NYC flight short in LA saying they attempted to get you to NYC but couldent because they ran out of fuel (or whatever other BS). I could go on forever and ever on various examples of how merchants could exploit "attempting" to provide a service or product. I doubt Visa would have any of it. Considering roughly 75% of disputes are resolved in the cardholder's favor, most of which are weaker cases than failing to receive the race you paid for, I am extremely confident Visa would find the RD in violation of their TOS and refund the money.

"I dont think that's going to fly by Visa. There is no such thing as "attempting" to provide a product. Either you do or you dont."

i didn't say the RD attempted to provide the product. he did provide the product. the product was the work that went into the race, but that didn't occur because of an occurrence that qualifies as a no-refund incident.

when an insurance company fails to pay a claim because of, say, force majeure, you paid for the product (the face value of the policy) but the product was not delivered, notwithstanding the company's intent to pay under normal circumstances. the incident that forestalled the provision of the product is considered beyond the scope of what an insurance company can perform. same thing for a race producer.

if you want to try to buck this, be my guest. you could try it 2 ways. you could actually try to sue. or you could just cancel your credit card transaction. if you did so, the credit card company would open an investigation. you might win, you might lose. but my guess is that by the time it's all over you'd feel as if you'd lost regardless of how it came out.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I remember on here at one point, a race organizer in CO somewhere had said that he'd had registrants go the credit card dispute route for cancelled/modified races, and that the registrants' success rate was fairly high. However, that organizer banned those athletes from his races in the future. I don't disagree with the idea of the RD in that scenario, as he's just doing the same thing he needs to in order to protect himself, just as the registrant feels he or she needs to and decides that the $85 for a local sprint is worth more than being able to register for a particular company's events

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IG: idking90

The vast majority of events out there are charity based events run by volunteer RD, this is why we never got into putting on races, we help organize 3 races per year on a 100% volunteer basis on our end. The % of RD making a full living on putting on events is fairly low and if they are making a good living on this they have a great event and do a good job at it. Participants are extremely demanding and it does not take long for them to move to another event if RD don't deliver. A good example is the Hot Chocolate series a few years back that had to adjust and deliver as they grew to quickly....

We score 750+ events yearly, I would estimate 70% of those events are run by volunteer organizations....

The title of this thread is very vague, there are so many reasons that an event could be cancelled, some reasons are 100% legit and do not require refunds, others are not...

You sign a contract, you are stuck with the terms of the contract. If an RD wants to keep your money and its in the contract, he can, even if he has no sunk costs. Is it legal? Yes. You could sue him, but you would lose in a civil court. People do commit fraud though, but victims or the government have to prove that the RD never intended to put on a race or somehow acted in bad faith.

This is an interesting read:


http://www.outsideonline.com/...Biz-Dean-Reinke.html

"However, that organizer banned those athletes from his races in the future."

exactly. and these athletes should consider themselves lucky if they don't get a ban from USAT as well. that's why i wrote that you might win in a CC dispute process, but you might find it a costly victory.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

"If an RD wants to keep your money and its in the contract, he can, even if he has no sunk costs. Is it legal? Yes."

actually, i don't think that's legal. if you sunk no costs into the race and you decided not to produce the race, that's fraud. a triathlon is like a stage play. by time you get to the week of the opening, you'll have sunk a LOT of time and money into the production. i've put on a lot of races, and until you produce races you don't understand that the money has already been spent way before race day. do you think the T shirts produce themselves on race day? the awards, emblazened with your event's name and the year it's taking place? it might take 3 or 4 months of your full time work to produce a race, not counting the part time work many months prior to that. do your own monthly bills just pay themselves if you can't produce the race?

if you got to race day, the race was canceled, and the RD could not produce permits, t shirts, engraved awards, and all the other trappings of an event about to occur, then it was fraud. it's no different than a producer soliciting all the money for a play and not ever hiring any actors. even max bialystock hired actors and had a script.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

The way you describe it, it is a fraud. But lets say the RD starts advertising on a message board a year out, no sunk costs, and starts accepting applications and money early. He makes arrangements to hire a scoring system, tshirts, etc., but does not actually pay for them. Then he finds out that the town won't grant him a permit. Cancels and keeps the money. Yes, he has some minimal sunk costs in terms of his time, and maybe photocopying and stuff, but no real costs. If RD can show that he tried to get it going and couldn't it's legal. The problem with proving that someone committed fraud is that you have to prove the actor intended to commit a fraud. That's the hard part.

" Then he finds out that the town won't grant him a permit. Cancels and keeps the money."

fraud. or, if not criminal fraud, at least not among the viable reasons for keeping the money.

just as in an insurance policy, where there are named exclusions, there ought to be named reasons for keeping the money. if you do everything "right" as an RD but then something happens that's act-of-goddish, the RD keeps the money. or he keeps part of the money.

this is one thing our sport just hasn't gotten its arms around. i have routinely railed against our sport as, along with perhaps the airline industry, being the 2 worst when it comes to how it treats its customers. when you sign up for an ironman a year in advance, and subsequently have a heart attack, or are forced into indigency, and you can't get your money back or transfer your entry, and that comes up on the forum, it turns into a fight between two competing views on the forum. in other words, 2 customers are fighting over the details of this very very bad customer service model. it's really like the 2 people who got into the dispute over the reclining seat on the airline, which became a debate over the person in the seat in front or in back was at fault. the airline was at fault! the airline is the cause!

race transfers, race cancellations, we haven't moved forward. we don't have expectations for cancellations. under what conditions? is it no refund? a partial refund? transfers, are you kidding me? what industry doesn't consider the "ticket" a tangible value? you buy a concert ticket, you have equity.

there is value in understanding that our sport's RDs cannot survive if they must refund the whole amount in the case of a cancellation. yes, they're out money. but they're not out the ENTIRE amount. so, can 30 percent be refunded to my credit card?

registration engines can do this. if they can't, this is a point of differentiation. active.com is now in a commodity business. it's easy to do what they do. active should be OUT FRONT in devising both the MORAL case for refunds and transfers, when they are applicable, how much, and the TECHNOLOGICAL expertise to execute them. but they're not. active.com is way behind. nobody else doing what they do has the vision to see how to differentiate themselves from the pack.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Sounds like an opening in the market to me. You are an internet guy with internet capability and the right connections. Why you not making it happen?? :-)

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He who understands the WHY, will understand the HOW.

"Sounds like an opening in the market to me. You are an internet guy with internet capability and the right connections. Why you not making it happen?? :-)"

i have certainly thought about it. and am still thinking about it. but one thing i have learned over the years: when you're on a cliff, overlooking the ocean, at perfect, virgin unsurfed waves, just because those waves deserve to be surfed, need to be surfed, i don't have time to surf all the unsurfed waves.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

First, I would like to separate the two discussions that seem to be happening simultaneously in this thread. The first is the moral aspect of the decision to ask/demand a refund when a race is cancelled. It seems that largely we are all in agreement that RD's take a huge gamble by attempting to hold an event and that we should support them for their effort. This is especially true when it comes to unforeseen circumstances (i.e. weather) that they cannot control or plan for. Whether that support stems from an attempt to propagate our sport, a moral decision decision based on equity, or simply our laziness to get the refund is immaterial.


The second discussion is of the legality of the "no refund policy". For the purpose of this discussion let's assume we can completely disentangle the two issues and make an analysis. Whether that would hold true in the real world remains unseen. For the legality argument, I fail to see how customers are liable for a cancelled race. The athlete is paying for the final product (i.e. the race). Whether or not the RD has spent time, money, or anything else to create that final product is not the concern of the athlete. This is the basis for our entire retail industry. The producer of a product takes a seemingly known risk to manufacture something and then tries to sell it. Hopefully that person prepares for contingencies and insures appropriately but, frankly, as a consumer we don't consider those issues. To say that the purchaser is somehow liable for the unforeseen costs associated with bringing an item to market is disingenuous. We pay market rates for a final product. Not for an attempt to bring a product to market. I guess one could say that the advent of sites like "kickstarter" has changed things, but that is a very different model as they specifically state there is no guarantee the product will ever come to life. In a business view, if a RD can't provide the product for whatever reason, how could he legally hold the customers responsible? I can't think of any other product that abides by a similar rule (outside of kickstarter genre). Even Ticketmaster, the gorilla in the room when it comes to attending an event, will refund ticket fees for a cancelled event.

What does this mean for the triathlon industry? I would hesitate to say that this is the death knell of our sport. RD's could continue to rely on the moral aspect of customers to pay, or a new system could develop to insure RD's against unforeseen circumstances. I have a couple ideas about how it could work but that's a different thread.

"For the legality argument, I fail to see how customers are liable for a cancelled race. The athlete is paying for the final product (i.e. the race)."

i just fundamentally disagree with this premise. again, when i take out a life insurance policy i'm paying for the "final product." but if i'm killed in a war, all of those premium payments i made go down the drain. i don't get the final product. i don't get a refund of premiums. i have no opportunity to get that investment back, nor do i get the final product. i have no legal leg to stand on, because i was actually getting the product, in a sense, all along: the good faith intent to provide the product, and the means to do so, and the provision of that product were it not for circumstances which everybody acknowledges are rare but nevertheless possible.

"What does this mean for the triathlon industry? I would hesitate to say that this is the death knell of our sport."

it's a good thing you hesitate, because it's ALWAYS been like this and our industry has climbed to the point it has irrespective of this truth. i can only assume you are relatively new to triathlon, or you've just been living a charmed life and have never had to experience this. most people live that charmed life. race cancellations are pretty rare. that's why our industry will do fine.

that said, we ought to firm all this up into a more commonly understood set of rights and responsibilities. USAT has never done so because it realizes it would have a revolt on its hands if it required RDs to, for example, enact a reasonable transfer policy. since USAT makes almost all its money off race insurance and sanctioning it can't afford to cheese off RDs. obviously the consumers are not going to change this by themselves because, just like they keep buying coach tickets on airlines that offer ever-shortened legroom, triathletes keep entering races with truly onerous policies.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Please dont think for a second I am defending the practice. Legal, probably. Justified, sometimes. Immoral, sometimes, and not all the time.

What kind of person wouldn't be pissed that a $100-$800 race can be arbitrarily canceled with no refund or recompense? Of course it should be illegal. $100 - $800 is a lot of money.

Also, you'd think a race promoter who did that wouldn't get any racers the next event he put on. Oh wait nm, forgot we're talking about the snobby world of triathletes. True triathletes wipe their ass with $100 bills and sneer at sub $4000 bikes.

A lot of people seem to be under the understanding that since the RD already spent the money, s/he is not liable to refund it. Let's think about that for a moment. In what small business industry is there not some type of initial financial risk? Consider if I opened a restaurant. Before I even make my first cent I have to pay for: a building, tables, china, employees and training for the employees, food, electricity, insurance, water, supplies, signs, advertizing, and a hundred other things. Before I even open my doors I might have a million dollars sunk in the business. What happens if the business goes south? I loose the money. End of story. I cant charge my customers and not provide a product because I dont have enough remaining money to refund their purchase or provide the product. When that happens, lawsuits typically arise, the defendant often looses, the defendant tell the judge he doesent have any money left, and do you think the judge says "okay, no problem then"?

I don't think your example makes sense, unless you are planning on opening the first restaurant in history where customers have to pre-pay for their meals

The example may have sucked, but you get the point—all businesses have initial investment risks and not all owners recoup their investment. That's the cost of doing business. By all means I want to see the RD come out on top, but saying that the money is already spent is not a valid reason for not refunding the ticket as there is money invested before the business opens in every sector in existence. This is nothing new.

IF the RD's bore the sole risk for having a race cancelled, THEN none of them would ever put on races.

Being "pissed" about something, and it being "illegal" are 2 entirely different things.

When you register for these events, you sign a waiver stating you understand that if it's cancelled, there are no refunds.
You can be pissed all you want.

I suggest that *you* try being RD for some races, and offer a full, money-back guarantee in event of cancellation.
Good luck with that.

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float , hammer , and jog

Some interesting events currently unfolding in Boston this weekend. Mudderella, a women's only rah rah for a cause spinoff of Tough Mudder moved their upcoming race 3 hours away from the originally scheduled venue. This will likely have some visibility as it pertains to the OP question…

http://www.wcvb.com/...channel%2B5%2Bboston

As some who is trained as an attorney, I'll say this "it depends." Contractual law in the U.S. is generally state specific, so what may be illegal in Mass. maybe be perfectly legal in Wyoming. You also have to account for the facts of situation, precedents, etc. Also just because VISA or Mastercard forces an RD to refund the money doesn't, ipso facto make the cancellation without refund illegal. That would be an entirely separate issue.

See things like this are really nuanced and the result will often turn on the actual facts of the case.

Also, why the hell do non-attorney, internet lawyers, always want to to sue via class action? It's inane.

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My triathlon training blog