Origins...they could be doing better
- Thread starter Crothian
- Start date
shaylon
First Post
Jaws said:You can sign up for "Welcome to Ptolus" RPG events:
http://www.ptolus.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mpress_Origins06_sched
Peace and smiles
j.
This is amusing. I DID sign up for this event, and bought three tickets to it, and they only sold me one of them! Sign up but don't buy multiple tickets!
shaylon
First Post
I have to agree with Crothian on this one. We are talking about money here. In my situation, they let me buy too many tickets to events; apparently there is a limit on some games.
For example, my whole group was interested in playing Thieve's World at Origins and since none of us (save one) have played the system I booked 5 tickets so that we could play together. They only sold me two tickets after they decided that I shoudln't have five tickets. They still have charged me for 5, but I only will be getting 2. It took me logging into the site to find this out, I wasn't notified, I wasn't refunded my money, and there was no indication by the response I got that notification or refund would have come if I hadn't said anything.
This also happened with an introductory Ptolus adventure they are putting on, I bought 3 tickets and only received one.
The real issue for me is that they did this to us last year. My friend bought me a ticket to play the Monte Cook "Play with a Creator" game. When we got there they didn't have him as buying 2 tickets. Monte let me play with a written note from one of the Origins staff even though they oversold the game and we had 7 instead of 6. (BTW, if you are reading this Monte, thanks again. It was a good time!)
So, I guess with all of the technology you see on websites and the capability of web programming languages I have a hard time believing that you can't limit the number of tickets to begin with instead of making all of this difficulty after you take my money. I also have a hard time believing that they can't at least flag accounts and contact the account holder and explain the situation before there are only 2 weeks left and now that registration is closed. It would have been nice to know about this a while ago and either select games that we could play together or work some other arrangement out.
Sorry about the lengthy post, I wanted to clarify what was going on for some people. If you have signed up for events at Origins you would do well to check to make sure that they weren't changed around on you.
-Shay
For example, my whole group was interested in playing Thieve's World at Origins and since none of us (save one) have played the system I booked 5 tickets so that we could play together. They only sold me two tickets after they decided that I shoudln't have five tickets. They still have charged me for 5, but I only will be getting 2. It took me logging into the site to find this out, I wasn't notified, I wasn't refunded my money, and there was no indication by the response I got that notification or refund would have come if I hadn't said anything.
This also happened with an introductory Ptolus adventure they are putting on, I bought 3 tickets and only received one.
The real issue for me is that they did this to us last year. My friend bought me a ticket to play the Monte Cook "Play with a Creator" game. When we got there they didn't have him as buying 2 tickets. Monte let me play with a written note from one of the Origins staff even though they oversold the game and we had 7 instead of 6. (BTW, if you are reading this Monte, thanks again. It was a good time!)
So, I guess with all of the technology you see on websites and the capability of web programming languages I have a hard time believing that you can't limit the number of tickets to begin with instead of making all of this difficulty after you take my money. I also have a hard time believing that they can't at least flag accounts and contact the account holder and explain the situation before there are only 2 weeks left and now that registration is closed. It would have been nice to know about this a while ago and either select games that we could play together or work some other arrangement out.
Sorry about the lengthy post, I wanted to clarify what was going on for some people. If you have signed up for events at Origins you would do well to check to make sure that they weren't changed around on you.
-Shay
RodneyThompson
Explorer
Eh, I was a little disappointed in the selection of games overall this year, and for some reason I missed out on getting in to some events that I wanted to get into (like Ptolus). Last year I had a full plate of games, this year I didn't find anything that lit my fire. Pickup games ftw.
Taren Seeker
First Post
One of my friends bought multiple badges for us so he could do all the ordering at one shot. I think he only got half the stuff he was ordering even though he was charged for all of it, including half the badges. However after a couple of emails it is mostly fixed, but again, he had to check himself.
Another friend got a bit of a surprise in his shopping cart. Rather than losing tickets, he got 1 of almost everything. He had over $1000 worth of tickets sitting in his cart and he couldn't get them out. It took a couple of weeks but he got that fixed as well, although he wasn't able to get everything he originally signed up for.
All that being said, I just hope that when we get there this year all of the tickets we ordered are waiting for us, as opposed to last year when we got less than half, and the rest had to be hand written since they couldn't confirm any orders. As an RPGA player something like that can ruin your whole con. I believe that most of the Arcanis special events ened up being oversold which caused some drama.
Another friend got a bit of a surprise in his shopping cart. Rather than losing tickets, he got 1 of almost everything. He had over $1000 worth of tickets sitting in his cart and he couldn't get them out. It took a couple of weeks but he got that fixed as well, although he wasn't able to get everything he originally signed up for.
All that being said, I just hope that when we get there this year all of the tickets we ordered are waiting for us, as opposed to last year when we got less than half, and the rest had to be hand written since they couldn't confirm any orders. As an RPGA player something like that can ruin your whole con. I believe that most of the Arcanis special events ened up being oversold which caused some drama.
Ok gang, here's the response I got from my friend Matt who's working at Origins:
"A cancelled event will result in issuing a generic ticket to the attendee unless they specifically request a refund. This year’s generics are going to be custom printed poker chips! They will be printed in 6 different colors, collect them all!"
I hope that this helps, but no specific response on your event.
Personally, I can't imagine what it must be like to try to plan, execute, and continuously improve a four-day event for 10,000 people. I'm very happy for everything they've done to make this a great gaming event.
If you're looking for some fun D&D gaming, check out the Amorphous Blob games at Origins. Always fun!
"A cancelled event will result in issuing a generic ticket to the attendee unless they specifically request a refund. This year’s generics are going to be custom printed poker chips! They will be printed in 6 different colors, collect them all!"
I hope that this helps, but no specific response on your event.
Personally, I can't imagine what it must be like to try to plan, execute, and continuously improve a four-day event for 10,000 people. I'm very happy for everything they've done to make this a great gaming event.
If you're looking for some fun D&D gaming, check out the Amorphous Blob games at Origins. Always fun!
Crothian said:
I agree whole heartedly. I've heard of a number of registration foul ups do too soft ware. Events being oversold, multiple purchase of the same event. I've only been to Origins one time before and I'm hoping to make it a regular thing since that's where the biggest Living Arcanis events are now. There were troubles last year with over selling of events that led to some last minute GM snabbing to get the extra 7 (!) ticket holders a table. I guess I don't understand enough about how online transactions work to know why both Origins and GenCon have so many problems with pregistration. It's got to be worth it to make prereg as easy and flawless as possible, cutting down on having pay a person to do some mindless job instead of turning that money into making my con experience even better.
I hope that by this time yo have had all your troubles resolved.
Respectfully,
Edward Kopp
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