This is the first blog post for a while. Primarily because I was organising SSUK in what would have been any free time that I had.
And this is going to be a bit of a rant. An indulgence of having a blog, and something to do since I can’t get to sleep.
I’d say most things at SSUK went pretty well. People at the event were happy and that was the main thing. But, I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth. In the interests of being fair, I thought we should just refund anyone who wanted to cancel. I always thought it was unfair that events kept your money even when you didn’t turn up and use any services.
So, in the final briefing email, I offered full refunds for cancellations. And when I opened that door an inch, a herd of elephants came through. I spent almost an entire day refunding people. All of my contingency in the budget was gone and still the cancellations kept coming. Eventually, I stopped answering them. I made the decision that the many people who were still coming deserved my time more than the few who backed out at the last minute. There was plenty still to do, so I got on with that and I would deal with cancellations afterwards.
Post-event, lots of people were kind enough to say thank you for our efforts in organising and running the event. But the cancellation emails kept coming:
I’ve noy yet recieved the refund that was promised, yet a few mates who also had to cancel have recieved theirs. I’m sure its just an admin glitch, but could I kindly ask you to look into it.
I hate to break this to you, my friend, but SSUK is run at no profit to the organisers. I took a week off work in the run-up to deal with the event, and now I need to work to pay the mortgage. Having just finished 3 days of working 14 hours for £65/day, you’re not top of my list of priorities. Just because you expect next-day service when you order your shiny parts from Wiggle, doesn’t mean you’ll get it from a race being run on the cheap.
Should I put my hand in my pocket, deepening the losses on the race? It pains me to be “unfair” to people. But the alternative is to pay for the privilege of hosting the race by racking up bank charges on an overdraft. The costs were largely unaffected by late cancellations: I’d already paid for services to deal with the full complement of racers. But, I set an expectation of full refunds.
Two lessons learned, then:
- Don’t offer refunds
- If you give people your time, a certain percentage of them will take the piss with it
I had a similar experience with a local 24 I ran. As the race day approached, the number of cancellations was exceeding the number of new entries and the budget was tight (charity fund raiser) so in the end I had to amend the refund policy to state that refunds would not be given one week out from the event. Soooo glad I made that move, it probably saved the event and people could understand the reasoning and I didn’t have any fights on my hands (thank goodness).
Its rough when your a volunteer organizer for this sort of shin dig. Hold your chin up, focus on the positive stuff and the stoke that riders got from a successful event and go ride your bike – that will make you smile
Hands up I was someone who cancelled – I totally agree with everything you say above though. I was gutted not to come but change at work left me no choice. I did e-mail and you said no refunds – which TBH I didn’t expect anyway.
I admire you for running it!
Hi Matt,
Yes, I did start saying no after I’d paid out more than £600 in refunds.
I do understand that people have real reasons for not being able to come along. But it wound me up that some people (not you) were sending me rude emails demanding refunds on the Friday when I was actually on the site sorting out the race. Even by the over-generous offer that I made, that was too late.
Put an idiot behind a keyboard and what you get is an idiot who thinks they have a license to be as rude and demanding as they like. Give them a smart phone and they’ll expect the rest of the world to drop everything and reply the very second they send an email.
To be harsh, in retrospect your offer was possibly a little silly. But you certainly don’t deserve to end up being out of pocket for that. I’ve always accepted that if I don’t make it to a race I’ve pre-entered then that’s my loss. If I can give (or possibly even sell) my space to a suitable victim or stooge and the organiser will accept the swap then I’m happy. If I can’t find anyone, then I accept that I’m out of pocket. C’est la vie.
Refunds for singlespeed race?! Whatever next!
It was naive to think that only a small number of people would cancel, I guess. In the end more than 10% of the entries were refunded and that’s much higher than I would have guessed before the fact.
If I were to do it again, I would still be idealistic about transferring entries: do it for free. But I think I would only do refunds up to 6 months out – hopefully that would allow enough time for others to come in and buy the places.
[…] culture, singlespeed Looks like Aidan Harding, the organiser of the excellent SSUK 2011, has been a little silly. If you can’t be bothered to read he offered a full refund to those who cancelled, the […]
That’s a shame, I really wanted to race as I live nearby but it was sold out when I went to register. I presumed that I wouldn’t get an entry because of a no refund policy!….sorry this doesn’t help does it?
Never mind, eh?