Hello...

I just wanted to take a quick moment to give everyone the current status on Registrations.

We have already received hundreds of forms in a very short period of time and we appreciate everyone's patience as I know some had to wait for quite awhile to get their fax to go through. Please use a trusted fax service as while their can be a back up on our end, some services have issues with their transmission as well.

That said, we do understand that there are some challenges that people face in getting your form to us and please note that we have listened to all the feedback that has been offered up. We will continue to explore options to make both this years, and the coming years, Registration process as easy as possible given the ever growing number of people who wish to attend BotCon or order the non-attending set.

Thank you again for your patience and we look forward to seeing you at BotCon 2009!

With all due respect, one must ask why this particular method is still in use?

He knows. This is a dead horse about a thousand times over.


Pete, thanks for the note. I know it means coming out into the lion's den, but just being able to read that much is itself very important.

Hooray, some faxes aren't even going through! Now I get to spend the next 48 business hours (a week and a day!) worrying about whether there was an issue with my FaxZero transmission. I can't resend my form because I'll get double-billed, I can't e-mail them a PDF because that would be rational, and I can't call them because, as with the lines for souvenir toys, they apparently have only one person handling this. Huzzah!

They don't know if a transmission has or hasn't come in, at least not from anything they can tell on their end. This is a response to if someone says "I sent it" but they don't have it. But there are a WORLD of reasons that could be happening that aren't FP's fault at all.

Whine, whine, whine. This has really gotten out of hand.

FP doesn't take faxes this year. It sucks. We all know it sucks. But DEAL WITH IT!

E-mailing credit card info in the clear is a bad idea. If FP solicited that sort of submission, they could be held partially liable for any identity theft.

Uploading a PDF containing your credit card info to an unsecured third-party website such as FaxZero is an equally bad idea. But since FP isn't asking or encouraging you to use such a service, they can't reasonably be held accountable for identity theft. Fortunately, I have a habit of checking my credit card online often, so I'll catch any fraudulant charges quickly.

Ironically, a few years ago, I mailed my registration form to FP. It apparently got misdirected and my credit card incurred charges at a Denny's and some websites.

I'm afraid I don't know a whole lot about faxes, living as I do in the crazy future year of 2009. I may not have run the mimeograph machine right, or bore down sufficiently on the carbon paper, or used a properly accredited pigeon. When they make a comment like this, it leads me to believe that they have had some bad transmissions come through. And as far as them not knowing whether a transmission has come in, how hard can it be to take down the names on forms that have arrived? If they're going to insist on 20th century technology, they need to bring in enough people to compensate.


You're correct when you say that this has gotten out of hand. But I think you're in error when you say they know it sucks, because they have refused to actually change anything.

I mean, I can't even re-send my form, because if I call it a new application I'll be double-billed and if I call it an update I'll be shoved to the bottom of the pile, because this fax thing is somehow MY fault. That's unreasonable.

I didn't say they know it. I said we know it. My only statement about FP's knowledge in the original was that they (or, more properly, Pete, given the context) know we don't like faxes. Just because they know we don't like them doesn't necessarily mean they have to change them.

I just want to know if there are still extra bagged sets left.

You're trying to get to something... but I'm not understand what it is. If they take down names, that tells them who they got faxes from. How are they supposed to know who they DON'T have successful faxes from yet, that has tried to send one?

Obviously they can't, but if I could call or e-mail them and they knew who they HAD received faxes from, we could work this out very quickly. That's the major component of this that's terrible. I can deal with the faxes, but it's the complete information hole we're asked to dump them into (for a week and a day!) that's a problem.

The good news is, they seem to be pretty on the ball about emailing confirmation of fax receipt. My fax finally went through around 7AM, and I got the email confirmation around 8:30AM.

While the fax situation is pretty inexcusable, at least they're keeping track and letting us know what's come in on their end.

We've been explicitly asked NOT to do this for very good reason.

That's why Chip said IF he could call them. He knows he's not allowed to call them.

He is merely elaborating on how FRIGGIN' ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS it is, and the complete helplessness of his situation.

Caught me in mid-edit.

"For good reason" does not change anything.

A man should not have to fax $400 blindly into the ether and not be able to communicate with the other side in any way other than methods that involve forfeiting his original attempt, especially when the items for purchase are so limited. It doesn't freaking matter whether there's "good reason" behind why we're put through this demeaning and humiliating process, through which we're blindfolded and left in the dark at their leisure. It's still demeaning and humiliating, and it's Chip's right to demand a change to the status quo that Fun Pub clings to like its favorite blankie.

QFT, Walky. QFT.

You know, I agree that the system's bad. I've come to accept it, at least enough to deal with the system and get my registration in.

I'm frankly MUCH more sick of the fans than I am of FP at this stage.

There's valid criticism, and there's bitching.

It's Chip right to ask for changes. But if FP says "no" he has two choices. 1) Deal with it, and go anyway under their terms. 2) Not go, and hope that by voting with his wallet, they make changes.

He isn't demanding changes from FP by posting his (or your) gripes here ad nauseum. We "got it" a LONG time ago.

I faxed it yesterday, took me one try, and got my email confirmation this morning. I feel better about faxing than emailing anyway.

There is NO such thing as the perfect way to do this. If its by email then someone would whine about worrying if their email gets spammed. Nothing is perfect and with every form of submission there is a flaw. They don't want to be barraged by a hundred calls of "did you get my fax/email?" If it were me I'd do the same thing because having to stop and check these calls would take up more time. Just deal with the situation the way it is. Last year it took a few days for my form to get a confirmation and I was AOK with that. That's business. If you don't like it, don't be a part of it. If you REALLY have something useful other than "FP sucks!" to say, then contribute it so maybe an improved method can be found. But if all you have is "FP sucks" or "I hate this way, do something else!" then don't bother posting because that doesn't help anyone.

Oh, and for those who did use a fax, all you need to do is watch the little screen that shows the progress. If you get a message that resembles "TRANSMIT OK" or "TRANS COMPLETE" then you are in good shape. You can even print out a little paper that shows a report of recent faxes and if they went through or not. Ususally if it doesn't go through the machine will beep, print out a no-transmit report or something else.

Here's my running theory as to why what the fans want re: Registration won't ever happen:

BotCon can't scale up. It simply cannot expand to accept the sheer mass of fans who will happily hand them $400.

The reasons are numerous, so I'll start with this argument, and then get to how it pertains to registration:

- FP would have to pay a disproportionately higher amount of money at any venue, be it Pasadena, Providence, Lexington, or a fallow cornfield in the midst of Iowa, if they were to run an event optimized for twice the current running headcount.

- FP would also, as a result, have to book enough rooms in multiple hotels to accomodate all of these guests.

- To run a bigger convention, FP will also need to set up a larger dealer room with *more tables* to accomodate enough vendors to pay for the very space in which the guests might fit.

- To keep this many guests engaged, you would have to add even more overlap of events and panels. In bigger rooms.

Fundamentally, we probably can't GET this convention at $295 per head if we had to deal with twice the supply for boxed sets. We know that the demand outpaces the supply, just look at the people who miss the cutoff. There are not sufficient boxed sets to go around, ever, with the exception of the Descent Into Evil set.

Now, Takara Tomy will happily run a larger order for FP, if they spent the money.

It is trivial to run a fax server with 24 lines, auto-acknowledgement, and PDF scanning into a database, if they spent the money.

It is even less trivial to run some shopping cart software and accept thousands of orders per minute, if they spent the money. (I do both of these for a decent sized company, so I'm not talking about setting up a rinky-dink Yahoo store, here.)

It is also trivial to just *run some phone lines* and *pay people to take orders,* if they spent the money.

Now, why won't FP just spend the money, you may ask?

Well, this is very simple: You only spend money when it helps you make money. FP will saturate the convention that they can afford at the price points that they have set, using little more than the Pony Express to deliver these forms from your home/office/Kinko's to that one fax machine in Brian Savage's windowed office in his house. (Which, as a result of being a business operated only part-time out of his residence, subjects him to certain tax advantages over running a separate office.)

As a result of FP's profit optimization, there simply isn't a valid justification for updating the Registration system, no matter how quickly they can cast their remaining projections. To do so would require a significant re-evaluation of their entire scheme from the ground up, including which venues they pick, how many days the convention will run, and how many toys are produced.

Of course, I'm saying this as I wait, and wait, and wait for my fax machine to stop dialing into a busy signal, so of course, I'm just as furious as Walky and Chip. However, while I post and redial in fury, there is a whole line of people like GB who are getting through, based on nothing more than Absolute Dumb Luck.

That's enough for FP, and so it has to be enough for us.

Leaving aside your comment about me, you have used your fury far more constructively than others, at least with this post. I have no problem at all with people being upset. Frankly, we all SHOULD be. "Furious," even. It's a matter of what's done with it. Folks like xZAOx, for example, are trying (to little avail) to go point-by-point why FP should change their ways, and while frustration is clearly evident (and I don't blame him at all), he's stayed pretty civil.

The webmaster of TFU.info did just that two years ago. He even kept his confirmation printout. FP *still* claimed that they never got it. I trust nothing until I have a confirmation *and* a tracking number that can be held to a certain level of accountability.

(For the record, I just sent mine, I have my confirmation sheet, and I'm still going to be waiting nervously for my email.)

Least the bitching is cathartic.

Why waste *your* time "going point-by-point" with FP when it makes no difference?

Hope springs eternal.

And, honestly, we HAVE seen changes in the past five years. Not as many as we'd have liked, but some. Enough that I'm still around.

I am guessing, but is this the General Feeling around here?

... Comment about you? Um, you were lucky. I was not. Walky was not. Chip was not. If we all walked away from FP because of this, there would be enough lucky people (like you) who would still sign up and maintain demand. It says nothing about your personality, your posts, or your demeanor, and everything about how you were just a few milliseconds ahead of some other registrant when you hit "Send."

Believe me, if I felt that bullying people via the Internet were effective or warranted, I would just attack you. As far as my post and my point were concerned, you were just on a different part of the bell curve.

For clarification, here are my five segments of the curve:

1) People who give up and BAN BOTCON FOREVAR. (FOREVAR is a time period ranging from one year to infinity.)
2) People who don't care.
3) People who dial through the busy signal, are quite upset, but are unhealthily addicted to this stuff.
4) People who got through quickly, but can see the problems in the system.
5) People who got through on the first try, and/or are blind to any flaws in the system.

You're in group 4, I'm in group 3.

Awesome. I guess that confirms that mine DIDN'T go through.



You know, I had made precisely one post in this thread before you started attacking me, so maybe you should [edited for tact]

If one reply makes you nauseous about the situation, maybe getting off your duff and fixing it owuld be a better approach.

Outside of some of the toys being shown before registration I can't think of much. Maybe there have been more but I can't recall them.

We still complain about the faxes and odds are are going to complain about the souvenir line again even though there have been complaints and suggestions to fix both since '05.

Thanks for noticing. When I'm "face-to-face" with people, I generally manage to keep my cool. It's been extremely tiring trying to do so though in that thread.

However, Brian finally threw in the towel and said we're just going to have to agree to disagree...which is fine, if we were talking about something based on opinions. But, seeing as it was pretty much like talking to a brick wall, I've stopped. At least for now.

I'm somewhere between those two. Took about 40 tries to get through starting arround 8 last night. Got a confirmation email. So I'm good... except I just realised I forgot to circle "Discover" card. *curses*

I agree with Chip, Walky, and the rest: this set up is wonky. Except for this the last time I remember using a fax for anything was a few times in college. Nearly a decade ago. Some form of online registration (gee like the Transformers club store) would make this easier. PlusI could have seen a little error messege reminding me to select my credit card type.

Admittedly forgetting to circle one thing is my fault. But after having to hand print the rest of it (my normal writing method is script, it takes me like 3 minutes to remember how to print) my rational mind was veering towards irrational.

I wasn't trying to make an issue of it. I just don't think that the fact that I'm pretty well networked (more than most, I expect) and therefore was alerted immediately about the forms should be dismissed simply as "luck."

That's not to say that I wasn't "lucky" in any way. But I'm in a position to take advantage of things through my own actions, too. I didn't care for the dismissive nature of the statement. I still don't. But getting into details beyond this is really kind of pointless.

I appreciate that I'm at least acknowledged as being able to see the problems in the system. To judge from some responses, I wonder if I'm sometimes given even that much credit....

"In this thread" is more significant that you seem to make it out to be. It's not like you haven't been complaining elsewhere.

Anyway, as much as anything else, your post was just the straw that broke the camel's back. There were a lot of other posts (by other people) yesterday that nearly got a similar response, but I was able to hold back then.

And, just what do you suppose I could "get off my duff" to do that I'm apparently not already doing?

I had just learned that the half hour I spent pounding fax buttons at Kinko's and the subsequent time I spent setting up FaxZero had been completely wasted. If you're looking for me to apologize for expressing my concern, your wait will be a long one.

Pete, thanks for the information - thanks to this thread, I now know that I need to try again. And thank you for your always reasonable tone.

Last year, I took my registration form to a local copy place to fax it the day after the forms went up. Naturally, after several tries, nothing but busy signals. The copy place kept it in their computer and kept trying it. Eventually, the next day, it went through, and they called me to inform me.

A couple of days later, when FP was sending out their confirmation e-mails, I didn't get one. I verified with them that they had not received my form. So I took it to Kinko's and faxed it again. They got it that time and all was well, several days after the forms went up. I was out the $5 or whatever ridiculous amount Kinko's charges for a fax, but that's all. I don't know why it didn't go through the first time. Human error or technology error.

That's when I learned not to worry about it. It'll get through eventually, as long as I keep trying. Getting angry doesn't change the situation.

I've never asked for nor expected an apology. In fact, I expected pretty much what I got: anger that someone would dare suggest that ranting was unproductive and unwanted (by me if no one else).

But, leaving that aside, and trying to remove the "lecture" hat which I fully admit isn't the most helpful attitude to have (that's as close to an apology from me as you should expect), I'm still unclear as to how Pete's post suggests that your fax didn't go through. At worst, he opened up a question about whether or not it did. Are you convinced that it didn't because you haven't gotten the confirmation e-mail yet? If that's all, I'd say "give it another day."

Unless you get angry AND have a baseball bat, then that changes everything.

Well, I got my confirmation email an hour after my fax finally went through (which was 12 hours after I first started trying to fax it in). So my anger went away in a nice long afternoon nap.

In my opinion, Chip's best served by retrying the fax. I got a response already, and we can use this thread alone to figure out what that implies for Chip's timing.

It took me 11 hours to get anywhere with this. I have, however, now had my confirmation email, so I guess that's something.
This system isn't wonky, it's screwed.

Pete's post just got me worried about how I'd sent the fax. A subsequent message confirmed that people who sent their forms after me have already received confirmation, which is what alerted me that I had a problem.

By the by, I checked my post history just to be sure, and you were just making things up when you said I'd complained about this prior to this thread. So thanks for that.

Chip - if you still haven't had any confirmation, email Brian Savage. He was actually really helpful with helping me get this all sorted out.

Am I the only one who finds it humorous that G.B. is pointlessly complaining about pointless complaining?

And we know that Pete frequents the boards. if there are pages and pages of people who post about being frustrated, just maybe Brian will see it as a potential benefit to keep the paying customers happy.

Must have had you confused with some other folks, then. My apologies on that count. But it's certainly not like the complaints are anything new. As I've already said, it simply got to a point where I'd had enough.

They still send him $300. Often waiting several hours to do just that.

If he didn't care (which we don't know one way or the other) there's not much there to make him change beyond public perception.

Ooh, thanks! That's the kind of thing that's great to know; the 8-days-and-don't-call-us thing was what drove my terror.

I got my confirmation! ...and it looks like it was sent right before I sent my second fax. Heh. It'll get sorted out.

I'd e-mail them back to thank them, but I don't want to gum up their works any more than they're probably already gummed.

Mine just got through. Patience.

Accepted, of course. I'm sure hearing all this stuff isn't fun.

Hooray! Glad you got it sorted.

and why would upgrading their preregistration process cause the event to scale up? I think most people still attend whether they can get the 100-pin or into a customizing class... and some people even come a month later when the box sets have sold out.


Well... I think that depends... if they could run online registration securely with very little cost, there wouldn't be much reason not to. I don't KNOW what the costs are though. A few people have said they could easily set it up, but I don't know how much it would cost, and whether they would be running on servers that you could trust with 2,000 credit card numbers. (and how they work under these situations when hundreds of people try to use it at the same time) The people saying this haven't specifically said they've quoted a price or have offered to do it for free, and whether there are additional costs beyond mere labor of setting up software, like the web server. I imagine if it were 100% free, we would have a lot of reason to be angry at Brian for fighting the tide of change. Does Brian understand how much it costs, or are people offering their services giving up before they get to the price when Brian acts like he already knows and isn't interested in hearing otherwise? Has anyone ignored him and told him how much it would cost?

Random responses:

-I think it's a bit too early to complain about all the complaining. It JUST happened. It's STILL happening to some people. Let them blow off steam without making them feel like they're being petulant.

-I, too, am not wild about the fact that I basically emailed credit card information through a free third-party site. I can only hope FunPub charges me soon so I can change my account number.

-I don't know how seriously I should fear the possibility of being double-billed. I figure, if one my faxes went though without my knowing (in addition to the one that did go through), they'll send me a second confirmation, right? My friend and I were joking last night that with all the faxes the two of us attempted to send, we might have accidentally bought every available Primus package and be the only two people at the con.

-Has anyone ever had a BotCon registration returned or rejected for any reason? Anything, like, your name wasn't legible or you didn't circle the right thing. If so, were they pretty good about informing you of your mistake quickly, or do they kinda just eventually get to you after they've approved everyone else?

-I bought a Hawkman toy today and the feathers on his helmet snapped off. (I'm over the registration thing, but I still wanted to complain about something)

I expect I'm the one that most deserves this, and most needs to respond. You're not entirely wrong (and I hope that anyone who's read my posts as the day has progressed has seen a more conciliatory attitude than my posts at the top of the day).

But it's worth nothing that these complaints are NOT new just since the pre-reg forms went up. They've gone on for years, and were already reaching a new high in anticipation of the forms going up.

Still, for me, I need to also grant that, since the forms went up, there was an immediacy to the problems for those who couldn't get their forms in, and some manner of blowing off steam (which I've always granted to some degree) is okay.

I'll leave it at that for now.