Hi everybody, I know that this issue has been adressed before…but I am completely pi$$ed. Just signed up for this race with active.com. Yes I tried to find a mail in form, but none exists. I even called the race organization but online registration is the only option.
Well, besides the $2 additional because I’m not an active member I also got charged with $11.88 “Processing Fee”. How can you charge $11.88 processing fee if the race entry is $175. It kills me…that is 6.8%!!! for entering my own information. What the F$#k??? You now multiply $11.88 by lets say the max 900athletes and you get $10’692 (or $12’492 including the $2 active membership fee)…wow someone really found a market to make fast&easy $$. Congrats to them for this econ sound business plan, but please don’t rip triathletes off. PLEASE!
Maybe I make it a bigger deal than it ctually is but I’m a poor student and how can you afford an interesting tri season if people rip you of like that?
My suggestion: Somone should start a new online registration system/website that is affordable. Maybe something by triathletes for the triathles. Not by rich-business-getting-richer against us. I mean really! Why doesn’t USA Triathlon offer such a system. They could make it manditory for every US sanctioned race and offer it to any other race as well. Maybe charge $2 or something like that. The “earned” $$ could be invested in Youth development or other *productive *things.
did I mention that I just lost $11.88 for entering my own information?
I think that the last time we discussed this, we determined that active.com is owned, at least in part, by Ticketmaster(more colloquially known as “those bloodsucking, moneygrubbing, price-gouging wastes of skin”. Their latest scam, a $3.00 ticket-printing fee, whereby they charge you $3.00 to print your tickets on your computer printer instead of having them mail to tickets to you.)
As such, if you were to start a business that competed with them, they would promptly have you killed, along with your family, friends, pets, schoolmates, training buddies, favorite sports teams, ex-girlfriends(no, scratch that! They’d let them live just to spite you), your bike parts guy, your swim coach, everyone on your AIM Buddy List, and all of the members of Slowtwitch that have failed to stand up for TM’s right to reach into your pocket and collect an arbitrarily usurious fee every time you buy entry to anything from a rock concert to your local 5K.
Seriously, I think that there are alternatives(most web hosting companies provide fairly inexpensive transaction processing services), but they probably require far more work on the part of the race organizers and would, I’m sure, cut into profits somewhat.
Don’t know if/how much of active.com is owned by ticketmaster, but I believe that many of the same parties of active.com and another tri-related venture are the same folks. BTW–I agree about the rip-off fee, especially when one is locked into only using active.com.
Oops, formatting didn’t stick. From the California Secretary of State’s Business Portal, Corporations:
THE ACTIVE NETWORK, INC.
**Number: **C2206933
**Date Filed: **12/28/1999
**Status: **active
**Jurisdiction: **DELAWARE
Mailing Address 1020 PROSPECT ST STE 250 LA JOLLA, CA 92037
Agent for Service of Process NATIONAL REGIST ERED AGENTS, IN C. 2030 MAIN STREET STE 1030 IRVINE, CA 92614
Does anyone know if the fee is proportional to the entry fee? ie higher entry higher processing fee.
I remember when the processing fee was $5. bend over, lube up, and have fun
Anyone get charged for an “active advantage” membership? I was glancing through my credit card charges for this month and noticed a fee of $49, or something like that, for an Active. com Advantage membership. Thing is, I don’t ever recall giving Active.com permission to charge me for this service that I don’t want. I emailed them for an explanation of when and where I gave them permission, and all I got back was a message stating that they would reverse the charge.
As Dan pointed out the last time this went around, wouldn’t you feel better if the race fee was $190, end of story, no mention of additional fees? The way active is set up now ensures that some portion of the population (including you and I) will get infuriated by the appearance of being nickel and dimed (many of each) by active. Although I still contend that the service is mostly provided to the RD rather than the athlete, since the RD is passing costs along, we pay either way. I’m still waiting for the slowtwitch.com race registration site to come online…
Trick question. It is, and is not proportional. I have paid $7.00(7%) for races with $100 entry fees, and $16(4%) for races with $400 entry fees. And I have paid $2.75(~17%) for a race with a $20 entry fee. So it definitely goes up as the entry fee increases, but the percentage decreases. I do recall someone a while ago saying that they were charged $12+ for a race with a $150 entry fee.
ChiTri:
I think that there is a box that says “Sign me up!” when you register for a race, and if you aren’t careful, you can unintentionally opt in.
Yeah, I think that I signed up for the membership, but then somehow their database got screwed up and I never got the “member discount” for subsequent race registrations. And their customer support never helped. Total ripoff.
Anyone get charged for an “active advantage” membership? I was glancing through my credit card charges for this month and noticed a fee of $49, or something like that, for an Active. com Advantage membership. Thing is, I don’t ever recall giving Active.com permission to charge me for this service that I don’t want. I emailed them for an explanation of when and where I gave them permission, and all I got back was a message stating that they would reverse the charge.
Has anyone had similar experiences?
thanks for that…I’ll pay extra attention to my credit card statement at the end of this month.
As for Active advantage, IIRC, it is a check box that’s easily missed if you skim through the sign-up too much.
If an RD doesn’t want to put together a paper entry form, they should at least have a form you can print out and mail back in available for download from their web site. None of the races I do sells out terribly quick, and I’d rather pay by check for a race than by credit card.
It’s funny you mention this today, because I spent most of the afternoon writing my own version of an online race entry system. I’m holding my first race in July, the Musselman (which I will be writing articles about here on slowtwitch), and I couldn’t bring myself to use active. In developing my own system, I have to pay the credit card processors a certain percentage of each transaction, but it’s WAY below the 6-7% charged by active.com.
If any of you race directors out there promise to use my system, I will continue development of this project for other races and guarantee not to gouge you on hidden entry costs. And if you enter the Musselman (www.musselmantri.com) in about a week or so, you can try the system out for yourself.
Let’s make this an open source project. Send me your ideas for a better system and I will create it. Then, let’s use it and put the money back into the sport.
What happened was ya’ didn’t read the fine print while looking at it’s reflections in a mirror…plus, you didn’t wrap your legs around the rafters and hang upside down as you read the instructions… Had you done those simple acrobatic maneuvers, you would have known that you were buying an annual membership. Gees what were you thinking?..
I agree the wording is misleading… but, luckly I didn’t make the same mistake. I didn’t assume they were trying to be direct and honest.
Race Director’s choice on this. He is who you need to complain to. There ARE other choices, we use Afficient (SignMeUpSports) which is a 5 percent rate but NO membership fee.
I agree with you, the Active.com processing fees on high cost races are especially outrageous. “Hey - Active.com, why don’t you significantly reduce the percentage of processing fees charged the higher the cost of the event.”
I also agree with those who say, just include the “processing fee” in with the basic registration fee. After all - Active.com and the like are convenient, you’re paying for the convenience. For those of us who want to take the time, RD’s can (some do it already) offer a discount for clubs, paper entries, etc. When entry fees become too high, the consumer will stop participating - right? Right.
For those of you who suddenly discover you have a annual fee on your credit card bill - a lot of businesses do this, it’s a “good” money making idea. For example, once in a while Active.com (or the like) will run a promotion and in the fine print it clearly says that it will automatically bill your credit card unless you cancel the service within X number of days. I have a friend who went to a fitness gym one time and then was automatically bill hundreds of dollars every year for five years - just never canceled it.