I apologize for the rant up front, but have to get it off my chest. Everyone badmouths IM and say if you don’t like it, do an independent race instead. I started to sign up for one and found out they charge almost $20 to do on line registration, with no mail in option, on top of their entry fee. I understand the entry fee cost and everything the RD needs to cover (police, permits, etc) and have no problem paying those fees.
I can understand IM using Active and Active charging a fee doing this, as they are an outside company in the business to take the burden off the RD. But this one appears to be part the race company - not a separate company they have contracted with for support . Why don’t they just increase their race entry to cover this “cost”? Or offer a mail in entry option. Of course, it’s their business and they can do as they please. I guess they just want to advertise a certain price point.
Just because they appear to be processing it internally does not mean there are not side costs you don’t see.
Have you ever processed a credit card payment online?
Even if these organizations are doing the processing themselves, the likely are paying someone who processes their credit card billing which has expenses resulting to it such as fixed fees, transactional fees, etc. Event charges also a lot of times have a high rate of credit card disputes since there are not a tangible good. $20 seems high, but I can easily see where the credit card processing fees, especially if they have charge back-protection, can easily run close to $5 or more by the time you get done with percentage, fixed, gateway and other fees
If there is no other option than to use their online registration then the cost of the sign up should be included. As a participant I don’t care that they have to pay someone else to process the fees, I just care how much I have to pay. If they don’t include the price it seems like they are trying to pull a “bait and switch”.
I think he is saying that it is annoying to see the advertised price only to find out that it is in fact way higher. If the advertised price was a possibility that would be fine and paying extra for convenience would be okay. Kinda like the $99 flights you see advertised that end up costing $400 after “fees.”
To the OP. Yeah, it is pretty much to be able to advertise as they know people will get angry but just pay the fees anyway once they get to the end of registration. We use such a service locally. It is handy, and it is only $3, but it does add up. And they only tell you the fee at the very end right when you are putting your credit card info in. That sort of info needs to be precalculated into the cost, like stores do with merchandise and credit card transactions. They don’t tell you it will be an extra $4 to buy with credit card instead of cash.
I can understand IM using Active and Active charging a fee doing this, as they are an outside company in the business to take the burden off the RD.
Rev3 uses Active. The extra charge to sign up was 7.2%. So that was $11.93 on top of the $165 for an Olympic distance Race. So if you look at it that way, then $20 on top of a $600 entry fee is only a 3.3% sign up fee. Many local races around here (NC/SC) are around a 6% signup fee.
But it is an iron-distance race (don’t want to get WTC upset with me). My point is if there is no other way to register, then the cost should be rolled into the entry fee and the total charge seamless. I would like the option to mail in an entry and a check (the race doesn’t fill) to save the fee, but they have no provision to do so. I got to the last screen to register and they spring that on me. There’s no option other than suck it up and pay, but it seems a bit unprofessional.
And I believe they run their own registration, so this is just their way of doing business.
On-line because they are also wrapping in the “Waiver” process. They will still likely have you sign stuff in check in, but part of this is having you do the data entry and all of that other jazz.
Second, part of it is a credit card processing fee. Many banks have fees on checks as well as if you pay by check, they still have to make a deposit, wait for it to clear, if checks bounce they have to go back and take care of that as well, etc.
Processing fees are a part of life, and while you would like your cost all rolled into one, there are costs associated with these services. While it may appear to be themselves that are doing the processing, this does not mean that there are not costs that are associated with it. I used to write payment gateways to add online sales to websites, and while it may have all the same “look and feel” more often than not the actual processing is done by a third party, and especially with credit card processing which is generally close to 2% plus a fixed transaction cost, for Iron Distance, it looks like that sounds about right.