“Again, this may not make you feel better, but hopefully you have a better understanding of why we do it.”
i understand all of that and it makes perfect sense. still, while you were on the board you were involved in both your business, as a race registration engine owner, and you also represented the interests of USAT as a board member. now, i would imagine that you might say, no, i did not represent USAT’s interests, i represented the interests of my constituents. but over the past 20 years i have really not found that to be the case when i interact with USAT’s board members. when somebody sits on that board, that person always exudes a posture of representing and protecting the health of the organization. what we now have, today - what we’re talking about in this thread - is a process whereby both of the interests in which you were involved while you were on the board were benefited by this policy now in place that we’re discussing.
when you talk about the race directors being the “middlemen” collecting USAT’s money, a LOT of race directors LIKED being the middlemen, because they collected all those 1-day fees, then they culled their registration lists of all the 1-day insurance payers who did not show for the race, kept that 1-day money, and magically everybody who registered for the race showed for the race. with this policy here, now in place, it’s a way for registration engines and USAT to make sure that whatever money gets paid gets paid to them, not to the RD.
really, money unused - insurance money not used to offset any risk - should be returned to the person paying the insurance. and that’s not the RD. it’s not USAT. it’s the individual participant. if i register for an ironman today for a race that will take place next November, and if my annual license renews in September, then today i’m paying ironman $X, active.com $Y, and USAT $Z. as i have written before, it’s a travesty clobbering our industry that we have no decent, sportwide system of equity retention in that “thing” we pay for when we pay way in advance for a race registration. but at least we ought not to be held responsible for insurance money we pay way in advance.
so, i’m willing to stipulate to all the points you made, if you’ll stipulate that we should be able to rewind these transactions if things go wrong. if i make this purchase of another annual membership 8 or 9 months in advance, and something happens, and i find myself in a position where i won’t need that license, can i unwind that transaction prior to my annual renewal? can i unrenew prior to my renewal anniversary? if so, fine, we’ll have it your way. if not, then this just seems to me a coercive tactic where USAT and race registration engines collude to siphon money out of the pockets of its customers.