On-line entries

[damo]

the only people I could find to do online entries wanted £1 per competitor!! That's a lot extra. In the end I got the charge down to 65p, but even so its a lot. Should those entering on line pay more than those who use snail mail. Its the posatl entries that take up a huge amount of time. What do you think?

People who enter by post have to pay for stamps and envelopes so I am sure that people would not mind a '30p processing fee' if paying online to cover some of the extra costs involved.

[guest]

According to https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/websc ... es-outside
the costs are...

3.4% + 20p

Setting up a page for this should be reasonably straighforward and getting a Paypal Merchant account is easy if as was mentioned before you sell your back copies of CompassSport on ebay.

I guess there is the small matter of the Data Protection Act but that hasn't stopped SO from creating a nice solution.

Must do something similar for our next event...

Would it be reasonable to make online entries +50p compared to postal entries? You do after all save the stamp, envelope and the walk to the postbox.

[stodge]

If the paypal thing costs about 50p per entry then clubs could just as well use one of the entry services, which charge about the same, have no development costs / security risks etc..

I like the idea of charging 50p extra to enter online (just passing on the cost) as you say its going to cost min 30p for a stamp, however for a family entry of say 4 it is going to add £1.70 net....

I suppose the bottom line is would we mind paying extra to enter online - I feel a poll coming on...

[Klebe]

I am against the idea of charging for online entries, it may make no difference to an individuals entry but certainly families of four or more will be financially penalised.

Having said that, there was initial objection to the concept of toll motorways, but the public in general have accepted its the price to pay for a relatively smooth journey through the Midlands. In reality I guess I would just grin and bear the extra cost for an online entry, my preferred method of entering events.

How is the charge generated? If it is a Paypal charge, then Paypal is only handling one transaction no matter how many people are listed on the entry form consequently the charge should be per transaction rather than per person.

[Adventure Racer]

The trouble is that the Paypal charge is a percentage (plus a small fixed fee), so the more entries you put in at once, the more Paypal takes.

[stodge]

Any online entry is going to cost... Its essentially the credit card handling fee that is the main cost - the same as any merchant account you might use in the petrol station or buying a CD - This ranges from 2.5% upwards.

The advantage the agents have is they have a bigger turnover so can negotiate lower percentages.

If you are currently entering an event online or via post to an entries agent approx 50p of your entry will be going on this. At present it is just a hidden cost.

There are 3 ways the charging works I think

Fixed %
One off Price + %
or fixed price per entry

[freaky_phil]

I have read thru this thread and can't understand what all this "extra costs for on-line entries" nonsense is all about !!! Our Regional event is being handled by Fabian with on-line payment and our entry fees are £7.00/£3.00 (£8.00 and £4.00 now as closing date elapsed). Our budget was set and we will hopefully still make a small surplus. Get the budget right for the event in the first place taking into account the on-line fee and it's easy. Why extra costs for on-line entries ?? our entry fee is comparative to any other event being held in the next few weeks.
On-line entries may it easier for the orienteer and hosting club, it should not be used as an excuse to yet again hike entry fees and squeeze even more money out the reducing orienteering population that exists...Do you want anybody to turn up at your events? if it is too expensive we won't be there...think on.

[stodge]

The Entry fee is made up of many costs + any profit: Online entries become an overhead cost in the same way as land access charges or SI hire
I think some people are not aware that it costs so much for an online entry.
If you had a club member willing to do the entries manually the club would be Approx £600.00 better off with the same entry fee for 1200 entries.


You could I suppose turn it on its head and offer a discount for a postal entry (although you need a nice club member to process it !!!!!)

[Adventure Racer]

How long does it take to manually process an entry? This is the point at which you start doing the economics, and realising how much it would acutally cost to do entries had you to employ somebody to do them, rather than having somebody willing to donate their time. Of course you don't actually have to pay somebody to process entries, but then without this task your volunteers can be more gainfully employed doing more interesting (?) jobs, or even having a rest every once in a while. How much is a happy volunteer worth to you?

[guest]

I have read thru this thread and can't understand what all this "extra costs for on-line entries" nonsense is all about !!! Our Regional event is being handled by Fabian

That logic doesn't work... Either your club is earning less or the punters are being charged more.
The way to prevent your club earning less is to hike the cost of entries where there is a processing cost.
£££ are going to Fabian; they have to have come from somewhere!

[Harley]

I must admit to being a bit confused by all this. In every other business process I can think of, doing it online is cheaper. If it's more expensive when entering orienteering events then something is very wrong.
As Kitch and others have said, we as clubs are expecting individuals to donate their time for free when processing manual entries but we are quite happy to shell out for an online service.
Perhaps the sensible answer is to keep parity between online and manual entry charges and spend any 'profits' from 'cheaper' manual entries as the organising club sees fit.
Let's not provide a financial incentive to increase the workload on overstretched volunteers.

[Tatty]

Freaky Phil - no doubt your event, like ours, had FC charges, assembly field fees, bussing costs, a new map with costs etc. If we had been charged the full fee wanted by the Online entry people we would have had to charge £13 just to cover our costs. As it was without the huge party of 100+ from Sweden we would have made a loss.
Consensous seems to be charge an extra 50p to enter on line. Now I have sme idea of what people are prepared to pay. Thansk you for all your responses.

[CHS]

I've just been made aware of a company which is very sucessful in Jersey which is an online takeaway ordering service. Customers pay a 10% surcharge for ordering online which is taken by the website. The takeaway business gets their normal price. Personally I think 10% is a large cut for a website that doesn't cost a lot to run but it seems to be a hit in jersey as 30% of all takeaways are ordered via this website.

[stodge]

Just to clear up confusion.

It is the credit card payment handling by the banks that is the expensive bit of online entries not the entry itself.
When you buy something on say VISA Barclaycard at your local outdoor shop 2-4% of the purchase cost will go to the provider of the merchant’s terminal.
If you used a debit card then there is a fixed cost of something like 25p taken by the terminal provider, which is why shops prefer debit rather than credit cards.

Taking entries does not get the turnover a shop would get so the entries provider does not get such preferential rates. On top of that many banks charge more for clearing online payments because of the security.
A lot of people will not use debit cards online and will only use credit cards, because of a notion that they are more secure!

Perhaps if online entries could offer the ability to pay only by debit card, costs could be reduced?

[Godders]

Most overseas events ask you to send money direct to the organising club's bank account.

With more people having internet banking could this be a cheaper option than debit/credit cards?