Totally miffed about GenCon event registration [RANT]

[Quickbeam]

After more than 1,100 posts on the current Boards, here's my first RANT:

The GenCon game/event registration process has thoroughly hosed me! First, it accepted payment for a game which filled up while I was attempting to register for the final slot. Thus, they took my money, yet I was not given the spot I paid for. Now I get to correct this happy problem, which will be amusing since the entire GenCon staff appears to be in London for their ongoing event.
Then, later that same night, three friends and I tried to register for a Friday morning game. The system began experiencing problems, and did not process our payments. The good news is that our accounts showed we were registered but unpaid...and the slots were appearantly being "held" until payment was processed. The bad news was that I could NOT complete paying for the event no mater WHAT I tried! Today, the game was dropped from my list, and the final two slots were filled. So I'm left out of the only game all weekend the four of us had registered to play as a group.

I hope that someone, anyone from the GenCon event staff contacts me or replies to my emails upon their return from London. I'm sure that coordinating an event of this magnitude is very difficult, and I know they are doing their best to provide an excellent product. But IMO the event sign up should have been delayed beyond the promised April 14th date if they were not prepared to have everything run smoothly. Adding events/games to the list after the fact, or expanding games that previously showed "full" is pretty crappy. Add in problems I mentioned above -- which likely affected other people also -- and you end up with some fairly perturbed gamers.

RANT over. Thanks for letting me vent.

 

[diaglo]

ditto.

 

[RigaMortus2]

[SEMI-RANT]

You know, the more Con's I go to, the more I feel like they aren't really worth the money. You go, pay your money to register, then look for a game that interests you to sign up for. The games that interest me are usually the ones that interest other people as well. So what happens? They get filled up. So I am stuck playing in a game that I didn't particularily want to play in. Then, the game runs at least 6 hours (assuming it's an RPG) and sometimes longer. Which is fine, but then what? When the game is over it is usually too late to do something else (other games are filled or still going on). The "dealer room" usually closes early.

All in all, I end up spending about $30 for 1 day. I have to hang around for 30 min to a few hours before the game starts. Then when it is over, it is too late to do something. I could have saved that $30 and played the same game (or a better one) with my friends.

One good benefit that I see, is that I get a chance to play games that I normally don't. First time I played the LotR RPG was at a Con, and I had a blast. Of course we got done around 7PM, the dealer room was closed and all other events were either booked or cost extra money to enter.

FYI - I normally do not pre-register for a Con, or sign up for games in advance (which basically goes hand in hand with pre-reg). Reason being, I don't want to spend money and end up not going. For me, a Con is a spur of the moment kind of thing (which usually isn't worth the money I spent when it is over with). If I feel like going the day of, I'll go. If not, I don't want to waste $45 on pre-reg and not go. Oh well...

[/SEMI-RANT]

 

[Hand of Evil]

While I like the system I am so so about the service. It looks to me that events are still being added or were up to yesterday, which really bugs the hell out of me.

 

[Quickbeam]

Hand of Evil:
That's exactly what I'm talking about. If they weren't prepared to have everything up and listed at its maximum event capacity, then they should have delayed the process. Especially when you take into account the other glithces over the course of this first week of open sign up.


UPDATE:
One of the fine GenCon staff members (Jonni) sent me a reply email from London last night. I have no idea when (or if) the problems I've encountered will be rectified, but at least someone has responded to my concerns. I'll cross my fingers and wait to see what happens next.

 

[DonAdam]

registration.gencon.com isn't even loading for me.

Anyone else having any luck?

Fortunately I registered when it very first opened (and got into an AU game) but I'd like to add a couple more things.

 

[ashockney]

Devil's Advocate...

Rage on my man!

Q, you and I met at Ohio Gameday, and I hope get to play again next month. Anywhoo, that's why I checked out your rant...

A quick note from the other side of the table. Good service = $$$

The majority of conventions are run by volunteers. Therefore no $$$.

The good news (at least in my experience)...once you hit one of those people getting paid $$$ they are awesome, and willing to bend over backwards, break the rules, and get the job done to make you satisfied. (Mostly experience with Gen Con/Origins).

The convention biz has changed a bunch recently, using computers to help automate the process. Anyone have any experience with computers? Yeah, you can do the math from there. Lots of screwups. Which sucks, what can you do?

Our alternative is to pay $500 - $800 for a convention (as most business conventions are priced).

Roll with the punches until someone decides to go there...the experience can still be a great one!

My 2 cent. Back to da club.

 

[Grifter86]

You guys make excellent points. But GenCon is the only place I can get into a Cthulhu Live LARP, so I must spend the money.

Fight the man, brethren, fight the man.

 

[Cedric]

You know it's funny...I've gone to maybe 15 major cons (combination of DragonCon, Origins and GenCon).

Other then LARP's, I've never pre-registered for events...and I've never lacked for something to do. Of course, nowadays things fill up so fast, because of computer pre-registration.

And of course also, since this is their first year, they are experiencing the growing pains of making that pre-reg work correctly.

I would expect that next year it'll work more smoothly though. They'll have a long time to tweak and fix the system and a lot of lessons learned from this year. So I'm going to be patient with them.

Cedric

 

[Painfully]

I thought these were the same people that run GenCon every year. If so, I wonder if Indy will have similar problems come this July.