Much of this (running on another bib) could be alleviated by races allowing transfers. Frankly, I think it's sort of asinine that we as athletes allow RDs to have no-transfer policies and "we can cancel it for absolutely no reason and keep your money" policies.

Agreed.

As I've said before, the better online race registration suppliers can build transfer capabilities and functionality into an events registration system. However typically there is a cost for this - a charge from the online registration company per transfer, and then depending on how sophisticated the transfer functionality is, admin costs, usual in time, for the event. Note that last point carefully - these transfers, are very often wanted, right in the last week or so before the event, when an events staff is very busy with all manner of other things getting ready for the event.

However, having spent two years in the online event registration business, this is not something that many race directors pay attention to( some do - but many don't), in that they don't look deeply into the features and functionality that their registration supplier can offer or look at other suppliers who may be "better".

Now some events, even some big well known ones still have a no-transfer, policy, but typically there is a very good reason for this from the events perspective, and they go out of their way to make sure that all participants know this. In a way it is buyer beware - and the race participant is the buyer, here.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

...and there are no gay people in Russia.

Great points Fleck. As a long-time RD who tries to provide good customer service, a lot of the reluctance to provide bib transfers comes down to the ability to get it right. One race we produce is an 8500+ runner marathon/relay. If a runner signed up but couldn't attend we used to offer the ability to transfer a bib to someone else or defer your entry to the next year (pay half price next year). That worked good for 2 years, but then runners figured out how to game the system and we went from a race that sold out 4-5 months in advance to a race that didn't sell out because runners knew they could always wait until somebody else got hurt closer to raceday. We'd end up with the same number of runners on the course, just a whole lot less confidence in our revenue stream (but the same cash outflow cycle). Then runners contacted us wanting more and more consideration...our "gotta ask for a transfer by x date" policy wasn't good enough they wanted to transfer right up until raceday, or they got mad because if they wanted a deferral they had to pay half price next year. It was never good enough, so we cut way back. We still offer deferrals but they're good for 1 year only, no more bib transfers. Our relay still sells out months in advance and now we get grief (3 emails this morning) because we don't let marathon entrants transfer into the relay to only run 13.1 instead of 26.2.

Last Saturday we produced a half marathon, supposed to be a low-key race...that's low-key for runners and us. Sold out in January, had runners contacting me right up through Friday night looking to transfer a number or get a refund. Our staff is 1 full-time employee, 6 part-timers, there is no way we have the bandwidth race week to manipulate the system to do everything entrants would like it to do - and still pull off a safe event. If somebody produced a system that made transfers or deferrals work in a way that is reasonable for both the entrants and the race I'd sign up tomorrow. But no matter what you put in place there are going to be entrants who either aren't aware of the rules (don't read) and decide that the rules don't apply to them because their circumstance is special.

Anyone who complains about no transfer policies, I'd invite you to start up your own race and offer transfers. You want to build the game, you can set the rules. You don't want to do that, respecting the effort RDs make to try to produce a good experience means follow the policies they set. We don't make our polices for fun or out of spite, we do so based on the things we've dealt with over the years.