Prepayment or not for IPSC Matches, split from Omens thread

[flinter]

Um yeah I've run matches, done receiving for multiple events and organizations. Its pretty simple. We use payment with registration for level II and III's. People don't phone and ask if we received anything, the mail service is pretty decent in Canada. If people don't show up, they don't get a refund. Again simple. And in the end you have to take their money at some point. So the work is still there, doing it ahead of the time means you don't have to do it on the match day. One less hassle to worry about, and it might help you with no shows.

This has worked well in Alberta
Our Squad lists are usually posted on our Web page before the match
A paper squad list is posted at the match outside the Stat Shack
This covers any changes, and for those that left home before they could check the web page(not all of us travel with a lap top)
Morning of the Match
Check your work or shooting assignment
Start the Match (usually on time)

 

[relliott]

I like the idea of Visa, (FRAUD ALERT) or EMT, but HATE the idea of inflicting cheques and money orders on anyone. Just a lot of extra work for the MD on top of everything else and frankly, I hate even dealing with them myself.

But I know that not everyone has access to one of these new-fangled computer-thingys.

Would there be any mileage in requiring no-shows to pay their outstanding match fees at the next match they wish to attend held at that venue? Or would that be too difficult to admin? I would see that as reasonable.

 

[redbirddog]

Adding pre-payment to the match will add another layer of responsiblity to the MD way before its needed in the time line for a level I and II's. But with that said, I have been so frustrated when competitors sign up months in advance and drop out hours before the event with not explaination. I now have a list of who is naughty and who is nice ( two and a half years worth ) and they can be easily dropped from the list the week before.

I can see my matches moving to a two tiered system in two respects.

1. shooters that Historically show up and are prefered get an A status. Drop out kings get B status.

2. pre-payment may be charged a bit more in advance ( like a plane ticket or a show ) but they get the A time slots and preffered squading. B's get the race day seconds, If there are any.

I still have the winter to think about it, but Im watching closely to see what develops on here.

 

[relliott]

I suppose I should also mention:
While I can live with electronic means of payment, I have to say the idea of being able to pay cash at sign-up is a big bonus for me. That way, it's off the books money that I just don't have to explain....if you know what I mean.

Accordingly, I hereby promise not to miss any pre-booked matches without a doctor's note!

 

[Quigley]

I can see my matches moving to a two tiered system in two respects.

1. shooters that Historically show up and are prefered get an A status. Drop out kings get B status.

2. pre-payment may be charged a bit more in advance ( like a plane ticket or a show ) but they get the A time slots and preffered squading. B's get the race day seconds, If there are any.

I still have the winter to think about it, but Im watching closely to see what develops on here.

Guys...you can't do this. You're within your right to require prepayment...you can even require prepayment from only certain individuals...but not allowing someone to attend the match, (or defaulting them to a waiting while you sell slots to your "preferred shooters") for whatever reason...is in direct conflict of International Rules.

You don't want to solve one problem by creating two more...

We're keeping lists now??...what's next

 

[StoneHorse]

Payment with registration and cut-off a few days before the match is the way to go. No match day registration.

1) Payment & registration has been made prior to match day. Less work match day.
2) It will cut down on no-shows. If you don't show up, thank you for the donation.
3) Squad & work schedule completed & posted before match day. Again, less work match day. (Minor tweaking for no-shows. Thanks for the payment).

Payment with a personal cheque should not be a problem for most people. Anyone with a bank or Credit Union chequing account gets a book of cheques with the account.
EMT with on-line registration would be best.
NO refunds unless you have a very good excuse like dead or dieing.

Like Slavex has said, the MD needs to deal with payment, registration and squadding at some point. May as well get it done before match day and at the same time cut down on the number of no-shows.

IMHO.

 

[euxx]

Payment with registration and cut-off a few days before the match is the way to go. No match day registration.

I think that will be a very bad idea. The late registration never been a problem and in my experience MDs are usually welcome walk-in shooters and do their best to accommodate them to the match. The problem is no-show, i.e. people who register in advance and drop out at very last moment.

3) Squad & work schedule completed & posted before match day. Again, less work match day. (Minor tweaking for no-shows. Thanks for the payment).

With omen's system this is already not an issue. Because shooters do the squadding themselves.

Payment with a personal cheque should not be a problem for most people. Anyone with a bank or Credit Union chequing account gets a book of cheques with the account.

Unfortunately most of us have those accounts long enough, so the book you got is already gone... I don't know about others, but I don't really need cheques to pay my bills, so no need to pay bank extra money to buy another book of paper.

EMT with on-line registration would be best.
NO refunds unless you have a very good excuse like dead or dieing.

I think this is very subjective. For instance, I've got a call from work that I have to work 48 hours on weekend a night before the match. Is that a good excuse or not?

 

[StoneHorse]

Everything I suggested is up to the individual match directors. Do whatever works for you and what you think is fair. I'm not saying anything should be carved in stone. BTW, you missed commenting on the EMT with on-line registration suggestion.


"I think this is very subjective. For instance, I've got a call from work that I have to work 48 hours on weekend a night before the match. Is that a good excuse or not?"

Getting called into work IS a good excuse not to show up (Sorry, no refund). Not showing up because you have a hangnail does not qualify (Still no refund).

"With omen's system this is already not an issue. Because shooters do the squadding themselves."

I have no idea what "omen's system" is. I have not seen it.

"Unfortunately most of us have those accounts long enough, so the book you got is already gone... I don't know about others, but I don't really need cheques to pay my bills, so no need to pay bank extra money to buy another book of paper."

What? Cheques come with a chequing account. If you are paying extra for cheques, you are getting hosed.

 

[stormbringer]

That's not the answer john...nor is it a place we want to go...
Prepayment (preferably by EMT) is the most plausible solution. Anything else (lists and "fines") is really just planning for failure. The idea is to get them to show up...not what to do with them if they don;t

Who is this "we" you refer to?

Or do you have a hamster in your pocket?

 

[Kindly Old Coach]

I think this is very subjective. For instance, I've got a call from work that I have to work 48 hours on weekend a night before the match. Is that a good excuse or not?

It's not.

You gave your name to hold a timeslot for your hobby, knowing full well that you'd be on call, or subject to call-out, whatever, for work during that timeslot? And knowing full well that you wouldn't tell work to go fukc itself? It's simple: (1) Thank you for letting us know. (2) Work is important and we don't need you getting fired and ending up homeless over a sport. (3) You forfeit your match fees.

It's just like in hotels and air travel. I'd cut you an awful lot of slack if you told me that you had to drive a family member to the hospital, or if you lived 60km away and got snowed-in, or if Liberals declared the bridge between your house and the match venue unsafe due to some bad words in some graffiti, of even if your babysitter phoned in at the last minute to say she'd gotten chlamydia from you. But not for the reason you hypothesise. And I say this as a former match organiser, official, and director.

Why, you ask? Simply because someone else prolly wanted that time slot. Someone else prolly got inconvenienced because they couldn't get that time slot. Maybe somebody else stayed away because Saturday 0830, or whatever squad it was that you filled to capacity and then just declined to show up for, was the only squad they could manage, what with the wife's Australian Rules Greco-Roman wrestling practice, the boy's' Ouija tutoring and his little sister's harpooning class, and the wheelchair-bound mother-in-law's regular ride to the liquor store for her case of Balvenie.

So. Unless we can fill your spot with someone who's been standing there waiting for a cancellation, armed-up and ready to fill your boots when your squad walks out to the first stage, you forfeit your match fees.

But yeah; that's all very subjective.

 

[PeterPan]

It's not.

So. Unless we can fill your spot with someone who's been standing there waiting for a cancellation, armed-up and ready to fill your boots when your squad walks out to the first stage, you forfeit your match fees.

But yeah; that's all very subjective.

This is very good point and I agree. IMO opinion problem with no shows is minor but exist. I like the idea of a shooter paying two match fees for the match if he decided to no show last time. If he was on squad A at match in S city and it was 30CDN, he should incur both fees for last match and present match.
I think the cut off for cancelling matches should be 24 hours. If we know that for some reason we can not make the match, why holding the spot?

 

[hungrybeagle]

Perhaps the perspective is a bit different out west, where as a condition of match entry, shooters work the match, either as RO's or as tapers/steel setters for half the day.

Imagine how fun it is for a match director to suddenly find out that one range has no RO's because they chose to no-show for the day, or to find out that 3 out of 5 workers aren't where they are supposed to be.

The last thing a match director wants to do on the morning of a match is start shuffling RO work assignments around to accommodate someone that doesn't show.

 

[ckc123]

Guys...you can't do this. You're within your right to require prepayment...you can even require prepayment from only certain individuals...but not allowing someone to attend the match, (or defaulting them to a waiting while you sell slots to your "preferred shooters") for whatever reason...is in direct conflict of International Rules.

You don't want to solve one problem by creating two more...

We're keeping lists now??...what's next

Just require those shooter to prepay, and everyone else can pay as they show up.. it would get rid of a lot of those no shows who don't want to send the money out ahead of time..

let them book any time up to 2 weeks before the match, and if payment is not received, then remove them from the 14 days - 0 days...

 

[omen]

I have a couple of generic comments...

a) it doesn't really matter if the reason for missing a match is "good" or not, it's like buying a ticket to a concert; if you don't show up, that seat got wasted, it's not the band's fault. You buy a ticket, you take your chances. If something comes up at the last moment, you can try to sell the ticket, but if you can't, well, too bad... So my thought is that we're spending too much time and effort on trying to accommodate people with "good" reasons for missing matches. I mean, come on - how often does that happen to each person anyway? So I think this focus on coming up with a solution which works for everyone, under every circumstance, is silly...

having said that

b) the online system we're talking about ("my" system) was designed to, among other things, maximize the chances to fill open slots, even those opened at the last moment. So, if there are people on the waiting list for the squad in question, those people will get informed and will have opportunities to fill the slot. If there is "enough" time, they'll get signed up in order of joining the waiting list, but if the cancellation happens too soon to the match date (24h, I think, is the current cut off), everyone on the waiting list gets emailed, and signs up in the first-come-first-serve approach. So, the chances of a slot being left open by a cancellation, if there are people who expressed interest in joining that squad, are pretty small. Nothing's perfect, but again, we're talking about something that happens rarely.

Wouldn't an approach which works 99% of the time for 99% of the people (or whatever numbers you want to select) be "good enough"? This isn't a statement about ipsc-matches.net, just a general one...

 

[Walter Hornby]

So.. you say's its simple, yet you only do it for level 3's.. so there is pretty much the answer right there.. it's not worth the extra work involved for smaller matches (the vast majority of matches).

unless someone comes up with a system that is quick and easy for the MD's and the shooters, then it won't be used a lot..


Slavex.. every had to collect and process 60 cheques for an organization????? I have and it's a pain in the ass.. Bank hours (for people who work out of town on regular business hours). getting continous questions like "have you got the money in the mail yet".. going to the mailbox every day (as the shooters now expect you to so they can pick thier squad as soon as possible).

now do that once a month....... as I said.. not worth the extra work.

we did it for three years when i was SC and it was a hell of a lot easier then trying to process on match morning i can tell you. of course as i said earlier most of ours was EMT but we averaged at least 60 people per match. before we started pre-registration, match day was bad when you got people handing you money for match fees, membership, targets, tape etc. i would get home from a match and reach into a pocket and go OK where did this money come from? by doing pre-registrations i didn't have to do match fees or memberships. freed up at least two pockets. i couldn't imagine running a match now without pre-registration.

 

[Slavex]

Do you expect your money back if you can't make a concert you bought tickets for? Do you expect to get your money back when you miss a plane because you slept in? Do you book spots at arenas for practice time or games and then cancel with 24hrs notice and expect to get your money back? The match fee is the smallest dollar figure involved in our sport. Paying for a spot in a match is the only thing that makes sense, every other sport out there does it. You guys obviously have issues with people not showing up, and it costs them nothing as they haven't paid for it. I would suggest that if the burden of cheques or EMTs is too great for shooters to deal with, that they harden up a little bit.

 

[euxx]

It's not.
...
But yeah; that's all very subjective.

Like I said, it is subjective. For the record, I am not on a call, and yet they called in anyways. They didn't do it for other 20 or so matches I attended to. s**t happens.

To me it is no different to when your babysitter didn't showed up. As you said, someone who wanted to take that and only that time slot couldn't go to the match and it doesn't really matter if you had the greatest excuse. More over there is no way to verify if given excuse is actually true.

So, my point is if you want to forfeit fees do it unconditionally, that would be more fair then leaving subjective decision on accepting one excuse or the other to the MD.

 

[Slavex]

you've got a good point. I like the idea of if there is enough advance notice you could give your spot to someone else (if there is a wait list or something), to recoup your money.

 

[StoneHorse]

Like I said, it is subjective. For the record, I am not on a call, and yet they called in anyways. They didn't do it for other 20 or so matches I attended to. s**t happens.

To me it is no different to when your babysitter didn't showed up. As you said, someone who wanted to take that and only that time slot couldn't go to the match and it doesn't really matter if you had the greatest excuse. More over there is no way to verify if given excuse is actually true.

So, my point is if you want to forfeit fees do it unconditionally, that would be more fair then leaving subjective decision on accepting one excuse or the other to the MD.

OK then, advance registration with payment and no refunds regardless of reason/excuse. That should cut down on your no-shows. That will only work if you allow no match day walk-in's.

 

[7.62mm]

Has anyone ever been turned away from an IPSC Match, because it was full? I have never heard of that happening! Bigger matches I could understand, but a Lvl 1 or 2?