Compass Sport Cup Fees

[LostAgain]

Hi,

I've just returned from the opening round of the CSC (Northern Navigators) at which there was huge differences in the fees charged.

If you pre-entered for the CSC, which you had to through your Club, then you were charged £7 adult and £2 junior.
If you EOD as a BOF member then you were charged £4 and £1!!

This does not seem right to me. I raised this with the event team, one of whom said they subsidise the EOD entry fee with the CSC fee, which seems a little unfare. After some discussion there was no real consesus as to why this was being done.

I also noted that £7 seems a high fee for what is effectively a colour coded event. Normal fees around us are £4 - £5. This was countered by saying "that I was receiving a Badge Event (Regional) standard". I would counter this and say there appeared to be nothing different in this event to a normal Colour Coded and the courses seemed very similar for the CC. Not one of my family members did the course they would normally do at either a badge or CC event and no one would receive ranking points, so what excuse is there for charging such a high fee?.

Are we being ripped off when we enter the Compass Sport Cup event?
It would certainly have been significantly cheaper for us to have EOD on the colour coded. Something we will bare in mind next time as some of our family members are highly unlikely to count for the club, so we are just wasting our money!!

[greywolf]

It seems clear that you were overcharged when entering through your club. The Fixture list page on the BOF website says:

"The senior/adult fees published in this list are the full fees. British Orienteering National senior/adult member's fees will be discounted by £2.00 on production of a valid membership card. For Local British Orienteering senior/adult members the fee will be discounted by £2.00 on production of a valid membership card at Regional and District events held within the region stated on the membership card. Junior fees are as shown in the event information, they are not subject to any levy changes and discount is not available."

and for this event it says "£7.00/£2.00 sudents at junior rate. EPS-SI. Yellow to blue. Dogs allowed on lead in parking area. Colour coded fees - £4.00/£2.00. CSC competitors on pre-entry through clubs only."

The quoted adult entry of £7 for this event thus includes the £2 which should have been discounted for all adult BOF members. Your club should claim a refund!

On the other hand, any adult BOF members who were EODs were also overcharged, as the quoted CC fees should also include the £2 to be discounted

Unless I suppose that BOF in their infinite wisdom really mean that you have to physically produce your membership card at time of entry, (i.e. sending it in with your entry form when doing paper pre-entries, god only knows for online...) rather than quoting your BOF number. That however would be mind-bogglingly stupid....

[IanD]

It seems clear that you were overcharged when entering through your club.

But on the competition web site http://www.pgopage.btinternet.co.uk/id19.htm it says:

5. There has been a query about event entry fees and the issue of Local BOF members competing
outside their home Region. There should only be one fee.
The £2.00 discount for Local members within their own Region only applies to regular District and Regional Events.

6. At Compass Sport Cup matches, the Harvester, and the JK Relays, where the competitor
who wants to run for their club has no choice but to compete outside their Region, then Local and
National members all pay the same fee.

[greywolf]

5. There has been a query about event entry fees and the issue of Local BOF members competing
outside their home Region. There should only be one fee.
The £2.00 discount for Local members within their own Region only applies to regular District and Regional Events.

6. At Compass Sport Cup matches, the Harvester, and the JK Relays, where the competitor
who wants to run for their club has no choice but to compete outside their Region, then Local and
National members all pay the same fee.

No, I think this means that every BOF member, whether local or national, gets the £2 discount for CSC matches (& Harvester etc), regardless of whether the match is in their region or not.

The BOF site is pretty explicit, as quoted previously. If the intention was for adults to pay £7 then the fees should be quoted as £9. (not saying I think it's sensible, that's just the way it is...)

[bedders]

Obviously as a bloody student (quoting the charmingly polite man at registration) I only paid £2 to enter the non-CSC Blue course. I suppose the reason we were charged less is that we didn't exactly get a full range of courses. I'll just recount the conversation for you:

Me- "We know we're not CSC, but it would it be at all possible to run the brown?"
Lovely Man- "Certainly not."
Me- "Oh. Are you sure there aren't any spare maps? The start list wasn't full on the website."
Lovely Man- "Look, you can't do it because entries are closed."
Me- "We don't want to be competitive, we'd just like a nice run out."
Lovely Man- "NO! Those are the RULES! And you haven't even filled out your SI Card number." (I really would have done, if it hadn't said EMIT No: For registration use only)

So I walk off slightly miffed, and he mumbled (quite audibly) 'bloody students'. So the mystery is solved. You pay more to enter CSC because you didn't have to deal with this bloke on registration. And you get a full range of courses, albeit ones you wouldn't actually choose to run at a normal colour-coded event.

[PG]

NN seem to be getting a knocking here. From my perspective a small club did really well to put on a professional enjoyable event.

Hamsterley Forest normally charges a £3 toll per car http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-6VYG9A. This toll was included in the entry fee. So if there were two students in a car, they would have effectively paid 50p each for their run.

What about the fees paid at the other rounds? Apart from BAOC (£6) the fees were either £7 (3 events) or £8 (3 events). Was a BOF discount applied to those events? Was parking extra?

Maybe CompassSport Cup should relabel the courses more like a regional event:
Course 1 M21, M35, M40
Course 2 W21, W35, W40
Course 3 M20, M45, M50, M55
Course 4 W20, W45, W50, W55
Course 5, M60, M65, M70
etc.

This would reduce the problem of people picking up "the wrong green course" map as well as changing the view on value for money; such relabelling would make it more comparable to a regional event, where there is an expectation that entry-on-the-day colour-coded courses are priced differently from the age-category courses.

[PorkyFatBoy]

You pay more to enter CSC because you didn't have to deal with this bloke on registration.

Money well spent, by the sounds of it!

On a similar note, the NOR/SUFFOC Single Dumpling/Punch is saying:

Fees : Single Day - Seniors £8.00, Juniors £3.00
COLOUR CODED - Seniors £5.00, Juniors £2.00
Non BOF members please add £2 Senior /£1 Junior.
Entry on the day +£1.50 Seniors +50p Juniors.

Whereas BOF Website wrote:

Junior fees are as shown in the event information, they are not subject to any levy changes and discount is not available.

There is also (according to the website) no White course available, so Little Miss PFB, (or as she is now known after last weekend, Little Miss Punch) will have to enter JW1 at extra cost. Thankfully , they are covered by the family membership, so any attempts to rip us off by charging a junior surcharge will be foiled.

[NeilC]

What about the fees paid at the other rounds? Apart from BAOC (£6) the fees were either £7 (3 events) or £8 (3 events). Was a BOF discount applied to those events? Was parking extra?

DFOK charged £8/£2 but with a discount so really only £6/£2 for pre-entry - parking was £1 pay and display. It was a level 3 event with a newly extended and remapped area and pre-printed waterproof maps. Excellent value for money.

[LostAgain]

The parking fee for entering Hamsterley Forest is £3/Car. Including it as a flat rate within the entry fee does nothing to encourage sharing transport and in effect the comnpetitors in full cars (6 in ours) subsidise those who travel alone.

Getting back to the point, are CSC competitors being ripped off?
The CSC is supposed to encourage all club members to participate as a team. Even if they have no hope of actually contributing to the team total. Charging excessive fees for what is a colour coded event, in which many competitors are encouraged to run different courses for the team, seems unfare.

In my opinion, the host club is profiteering by overcharging a captive audience (monopolistic). NN are not the only ones, most clubs are guilty of this. Any difference in the fee Vs a normal CC event is excessive.

[GML]

Part of the problem is that this is a level 3 event - never mind that the courses are colour coded. In consequence we not only have to pay level 3 event levies to BOF but we also have to pay level 3 event fees to Forest Enterprise for access (at least we do in East Anglia).

[Mrs H]

NGOC charged £5/£2 with no car parking which seemed entirely reasonable on the face of it. Mind you there were not enough toilets and that coupled with the fact that we were told it was actually 1.2k to the start not 1.5 as stated in the details (it actually was a lot further/took a lot longer than it should of) resulted in me (and several others) being late off for a timed start, there were rumblings about the lack of circle breaking on the map and there are still no resuls available due to dodgy SI units (according to results on the day Hocolite won the ladies green by virtue of the fact that she was the only competitor to do under 700 minutes and young Neviile did the same on the Men's blue )

so perhaps you get what you pay for

the point about some people having to run courses they don't want to is well made.

[NeilC]

In my opinion, the host club is profiteering by overcharging a captive audience (monopolistic). NN are not the only ones, most clubs are guilty of this. Any difference in the fee Vs a normal CC event is excessive.

It's far from a captive audience. I can usually rely on getting about 70 of my club members out for the CSC preliminary round of which only about 35 will influence the result. If it were a 'normal' regional event then I would expect over a hundred to enter. Because the CSC rounds are held on the same day then there will be conflict with neighbouring associations, also resulting in lower attendance than usual. Like several other major events (schools champs, PP) the CSC is not a particularly profitable event to put on.

Having level 3 status in theory ensures a better quality event - look at guidelines A and B and see what a club could get away with if it were level 4. The difference isn't just ranking points.

[PorkyFatBoy]

From a quick look, it would seem that the only extra above a C4 that we had in EA was the blank maps in the start lane (and hopefully the First Aid - I personally didn't notice it). That was for £7 (inc discount). The distinction (at least in EA) is simply the age courses and the levies, in all other aspects (or at least meaningful ones) are the same between C4 and C3.

[seabird]

Hasn't providing blank maps in the start lanes also become standard practice at C4s these days?. It's been a while since I've been to a C4 where the first chance I've had to see the map has been as I'm picking it up to run.

[DM]

Bedders,

You appear to have been victimised, one of your Uni colleagues managed to get a run on Brown.

And why weren't you at Frodsham to help your "old" club? You would have had your entry paid by the club and the pleasure of sliding down muddy banks in the rain. DEE put on a good event in what turned out to be a very tight qualifier, around 110 points between 1st and 4th.