I'm with Jim and Dex, very smooth to use. If the event registration is this easy, the $8 fee is well worth it in my book.
Honestly, I'm happy to see that the refund process is painless and doesn't require manual intervention. Would rather not revisit my PTSD from last year.
Since most purchases are going to be charged, why not just build that into the price? It truly is a price of doing business after all. Just curious as it was just a bit of a surprise. I'll be there with bells on regardless, it is just a bit out of the ordinary for me to see add on fees. Still, I don't begrudge the con covering its fees... Now let's get ready to roll some dice!
I'm not the convention owner, so I can't comment on the reasoning there. I suspect it's an issue with optics: Not wanting to raise the price of badges to cover the costs -- I'm betting more explanation would have gone into increasing the price than a more transparent "Here are the costs involved with going with this more painless system". But, once again, I'm not the official commentator on that. But I know the guy who is, and he's mostly concerned with making sure you have a good time at the convention.
Email notification is immediate, Jon. If you didn't receive one, can you go to your account on TTE and confirm that the purchase went through and you've got an invoice number in there? If you've got an order listed, and you know you paid your monies, I'd do the standard "i didn't get my email" dance: Check your spam folder, etc. If you've got an invoice number, go ahead and send me a message about it, and if there's anything I can do to get you that receipt otherwise, I'll look into it.
Down to 10 Gold BTW - You know the Refund Date is set in the past? Is that an indirect way of changing the policy to "no refunds", or is the date wrong? (This badge cannot be refunded after July 14, 2016 @ 9:11 PM UTC.)
Thanks, someone mentioned that earlier, but I'd forgotten to update that field. It appears to be an informational field only, and hasn't impacted the ability to refund a badge.
So, regarding the number of existing badges available, will there be more available at a later date like last year or is what we see now the actual limits for those higher badges? Meaning, I logged into the new system at 12:45pm and the gold badges were already gone. When I looked last night, (not seeing the badges didn't start sale until noon saturday initially), there were only 150 gold badges available and I believe last year there were 300 done in two sets of 150, one during Gencon and one after.
I sort of doubt we'll offer more Gold Badges. The only way I could see that happening is if we had a run on submitted events and registered players, and we needed to "increase the economy" on the top end, prior to event registration. That's a sort of pie-in-the-sky, my-diamond-shoes-are-too-tight, problem to have. Last year we had 2 groups of 75 badges, not two groups of 150.
I'm curious if the coming Gary Con is planned to be the same size attendance as the last or is any expansion anticipated?
Marketing folks may know more than I do. I suspect we'll gain some moderate numbers. Luke and I are planning some social media blitzes and advertising efforts, as well as some more traditional media. Look for us in the next few months on an episode of Dragon Talk (the official podcast from Wizards of the Coast).
