Signed up for Louisville late Aug…not sure I will make it (Injury…chronic)…is there a refund policy in place>.
There is a refund policy, It goes as follows: You dont show up, they keep all your money.
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Got my answer…smart a$$
No there is no transfer policy. All withdrawal requests must be
submitted in writing to the race office. Your letter of withdrawal must
be received on/or before July 21, 2007 to be eligible for a partial
refund of $150.00 (USD). Without exception, no refunds will be issued
for requests made after July 21, 2007. Please send your letter to WTC,
43309 US Highway 19 N, Tarpon Springs, FL 34689, attn: Mella.
what i can’t figure out is that when somebody turns in an IM slot how come IM won’t sell the spot again. They would get double the money. (slot already bought and then sold to another person). I asked IM if I could by a spot that somebody turned in already and they said no. I asked why and they said it is our policy
This has become pretty common. The dropout rate is relatively constant at such large races. So they sell more slots than they really want to have people racing, knowing some people won’t show. This makes their job much easier than selling an exact number of slots, then reallocating each slot as somone drops out. Essentially, it is a pain to keep a chronological standby list, contact each standby if someone drops out, find out if they really want the now open slot, if no then contact the next person on the list, etc.
Paul
IF everyone who showed up signed up, they’d be in trouble.
Yep, I had to cancel Imcda, and got my 150 back. Better than nothing.
Dave
Essentially, it is a pain to keep a chronological standby list, contact each standby if someone drops out, find out if they really want the now open slot, if no then contact the next person on the list, etc.
Paul
It’s surely a pain to do it manually, but with the assistance of these newfangled computer thingies and the free flow of information and transactions through the sophisticated tubes of the internets, one could relatively easily come up with a beauteous and robust scheme whereby people who didn’t make the initial start list (which could still be somewhat larger than the desired starting field) would put a token amount of money in to become part of an automagic waitlist.
They could use the aforementioned internets to monitor their position on the waitlist (“items I’m watching in myActive”). They could pull out of the waitlist at any time sacrificing only the small fee. Athletes in the race could pull out at any time up to, say, a month out, losing only a similarly small fee. As athletes pull out, those at the top of the waitlist are notified through the magic of computers and given a window in which to invoke their priority and enter. If they miss their window, they can remain on the waitlist in the top position for a new slot to open, but meanwhile someone else gets a chance.
If the waitlist is ever empty or nobody ever jumps on the spot you are forfeiting in a timely manner, and it’s inside the old “$150 back” window, you are out of luck, no refund. If it’s outside of the old window you can take the $150 bucks right then, or hang in there hoping someone will step into your spot.
You can’t scalp your spot since you don’t know who is going to get it, so nobody gets ripped off. You know how big the waitlist is before you decide to get on it, so you can assess the risk of losing your small fee.
When it gets to, say, one month out from the race, game over. At that point, no refunds and no transfers. Assign the bib numbers, buy the t-shirts, order the bananas. Maybe having been waitlisted and not gotten in gives you priority for next year’s race (but you still lose the small fee).
I’d bet you could adjust the “small fee”, the timing of the final deadline, and the number you let in to the race to begin with (taking into account some final month attrition) so that there is enough friction to keep people from gaming the system by signing up for bunches of races, and yet everyone is pretty happy and the RD makes as much money as now if not more. Maybe there are heuristics to keep people from abusing it as far as how many races you are signed up for at one time or how close two races are. Once you figure out the right parameters for a given market, such as Ironman races, it’s all bits and bytes.
I’m sure there are holes in this, but I suspect there is a way for the RD to make out just fine in good times (sellouts) and bad (non sellouts, in which case no full refunds) while keeping everyone happy.
Why would they want to go to all that trouble? As things stand now, they know the average attrition rate is 10-12%, so they can have a sellout race by overselling it and giving partial refunds to those who drop out.
I think by going to all that trouble (once…computers, remember?) they might actually make more money even in the short term, and might have a more sustainable product in the long term, in part by being perceived as less mercenary by their customers (even though they make more). I could be wrong, and maybe they’ve run the numbers enough to decide that, but I don’t think they have bothered, since in the very short term, keeping it simple and bumming a few people out when you have a monopoly is even easier than figuring out a better way, and as you point out it’s not UN-profitable now, just maybe not as profitable or sustainable as it could be. I guess I’m just saying it looks to me like it would be worth it, but I’m biased because I am cursed with degrees in both economics and computer science and vainly tend to think that there are un-implemented clever solutions to lots of things that probably aren’t really that important.
They do it because they factor in a certain percentage of dropouts…if they allowed transfers they would then have to reduce the initial number of athletes allowed to sign up.
Mmmm…yeah, I KNOW why they do it. I’m not a complete idiot. What I’m saying is there might be a better (by some measure) way to do it, without the RD having to do any extra work. More (or even just the same) money for the RD, same number of people on the starting line, and the financial pain is spread more evenly. You still have to commit early, the monopoly is not eliminated, but the end result is better.
For example:
Currently:
Let 2400 sign up @ $450
225 bail before the deadline, give back $33750 ($150 each, each person is out $300)
75 bail after the deadline, give back nothing, each is out $450
2100 on the starting line, $1,046,250 net
Maybe:
Let 2200 sign up at $450
allow 600 on to magic computerized wait list @ $100 non refundable
300 drop out before (later) deadline (to be replaced by a waitlister), give them $300 each
admit 300 waitlisters at $400 (so they pay $500 total)
(won’t necessarily be the first 300 from the ordered list, some will decline)
100 bail in last month and don’t actually start (may be original entrants or waitlisters)
2100 on the starting line, $1,080,000 net, more if any waitlisters replace other waitlisters.
Admittedly it breaks down if the waitlist is perceived as so big you don’t have a chance. So maybe you temper that by randomizing the waitlist order after a few days of signups (ala IMC lottery). You could could tweak that stuff any which way. I think that more people will pull out than currently do if they can get $300 up to a month before, which would let more waitlisters who are fit to race in. I probably have some bad assumptions in there but the idea is the more churn, the better for the RD since both the puller-outers and the latecomers are paying a premium, and yet nobody who makes a decision before 1 month out is out more than $150 except waitlist entrants who pull out, and even they are only out $200 instead of the current $300, more people who really want to race and are ready to race get to start.
Maybe that’s some sort of commie thinking, I don’t know - seems like it’s closer to invisible hand of the market than hand of morality or hand of fate though. I’m just speculatin’. I know it will never happen, just like the idea of giving repeat IMH lottery entrants additional tickets in the draw for each continuous year they apply and don’t get picked will never happen, even though that might also arguably make the RD more money and the customers happier.
It’s surely a pain to do it manually, but with the assistance of these newfangled computer thingies and the free flow of information and transactions through the sophisticated tubes of the internets, one could relatively easily come up with a beauteous and robust scheme whereby people who didn’t make the initial start list (which could still be somewhat larger than the desired starting field) would put a token amount of money in to become part of an automagic waitlist. <<
Yeah, funny how it works well for the NYC Marathon with 10x the number of entries.
Huh? there’s no wait list for normal entries for the NYC Marathon.
There used to be…
Do they still have that if you give up your entry in one year, you are automatically in for the next (you have to pay again)?
Yes, they still have that policy, but they don’t let someone else in because you deferred.
I guess I’m just saying it looks to me like it would be worth it, but I’m biased because I am cursed with degrees in both economics and computer science and vainly tend to think that there are un-implemented clever solutions to lots of things that probably aren’t really that important.
I understand where you’re coming from. I’m an officer in a professional organization that was considering sending its newsletter electronically, but was concerned about accommodating those who wanted a print newsletter. I said, “Well, just make a database with a field for “wants paper newsletter,” run a query, and do a mail merge.” They said, “But we only want to mail it to people who have paid their dues.” I said, “Then add a field for ‘dues paid.’ and add it to the query” They told me it was too complicated to make and maintain a database, and my suggestion was voted down. (I’m running for secretary the next time there are elections, and once the database is in place, I’ll make my suggestion again.)
I don’t disagree with your premise, but I suspect that RDs may not see the benefit of going to the extra hassle.
Totally different logistics and race situation. It is easy to harsh on NA Sports and WTC with simplistic comments like “Why can’t they just refund the money”, “Why can’t they just transfer my entry”. I bet if we spoke with Record10Carbon, now that he is getting his feet wet with RD a race his perspective would be different too. When a product has a high demand outstripping supply few, if any places, offer unfettered refunds/exchanges (at will). Even Walmart and EMS have recently changed thei refund/exchange policies.
But the vineman 70.3 has been giving refunds within a month for years, and they are a large race.
They then fill from the waiting list. So, if an RD wants to do it, they can.
Seems like the bottom line is NA sports models is that x% drop out. Again, if you do not like their business model,
go somewhere else. As long as things keep filling up fast, they are very smart, and I would not change a thing
if I were in their shoes.
Dave
“When a product has a high demand outstripping supply few, if any places, offer unfettered refunds/exchanges (at will)”
That’s right. When you do that there is always that certain percentage of your customer base that will walk all over you taking complete and total advantage of the situation. You then spend all of your time dealing with these people and less and less time with the larger percentage of your customers. It can be a recipe for disaster