PSA - No Shows at Offlines

I thought it might be useful to remind folks that no-shows at off-lines often have a financial impact to the remaining group, or even worse, the coordinator. Please be sure to let the coordinator know ahead of time. The cumulative financial impact of several no-shows can be significant on the coordinator.

Cheers
Barry

One way to deal with this is to require payment upfront, ahead of time. If someone doesn’t pay by the deadline they’re bumped and someone on a waiting list is added with payment due right away. Obviously, there are times when this isn’t appropriate, but in general it’s workable.

What if someone pays and can’t make it? Treat the seats just like event tickets. If they want to sell their ‘ticket’ to someone on the waiting list, fine. If it’s a last minute thing (sudden flu, family emergency, etc) then it’s the same loss as if they’d bought a ticket to the symphony or ball game.

Good PSA, Barry, thanks.

It’s NOT that difficult to reach out with regrets that you won’t be showing up, and particularly needed when the event has financial basis, such as a restaurant where the food needs to be prepaid.

It’s fairly easy to set up through eventbrite and the ilk. There is a fee involved however.

Pingg is an evite-like service that lets you collect paypal payment upfront. Be aware of the fees and add them to the amount due. Evite might do this too. Or, simply setup a Paypal account and have people send money to that directly. If you want to deal with checks, just set a date by which they need to be in your hands.

Obviously, this isn’t a big deal if it adds $5 to everyone’s bill… but if it adds $20 or more? Yeah, that’s not really OK.

$20 or more isn’t likely unless the tickets are really expensive. Most of the solutions charge $1 per ticket + a % to cover credit card processing fees.

A $120 ticket would be $7-$8 in fees. Assuming you prepaid a restaurant for a pre-fix menu and corkage. Here in Portland most of the places we work with aren’t charging anything in advance, but it’s not uncommon for a restaurant to ask for $500 or more up front and a guarantee of a certain total bill at the end of the night. We even had a place rent glasses for us and didn’t charge us a thing in advance. Now that’s trust.

Oh sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant that if someone drops out and it adds $5 or so to the offline bill, meh not something to worry about. If it adds $20 or more to the amount everyone else has to pay, then I’d ask for upfront payment. So, if there are fixed expenses and people are expecting $100 per person, there’s 10 spots and one person drops… it’s now $111/person. Annoying but manageable. But if 3 people drop that’s now $142/person.

Honestly, if I were doing an open offline (say via WB vs with a group of friends) and there were fixed expenses (reserving a private room, buying wines for the offline, I’d require payment ahead. If it’s not needed because everyone shows, yay, but that way there’s no stress.

It isn’t so much the extra it costs participants - it was the stress and potential addtional out of pocket on the coordinator.

Prepayment works but is additional work for the coordinator.

“it was the stress and potential addtional out of pocket on the coordinator.”

Well 1) the coordinator shouldn’t be on the hook for overruns and 2) if they are (everyone’s promised that the event will cost $X) then prepaying eliminates that.

I agree 100% when a fixed cost for a private room or a certain minimum needs to be hit. In the case of many restaurants, however, having 1 person out of 10 (10%) miss the event shouldn’t otherwise make much of a difference.

Putting aside the question of whether there’s a financial impact, it’s just simple etiquette and courtesy. For our dinner on Friday, 34 people signed up; only 29 showed up. If you know you can’t attend a dinner for which you signed up, you post in the thread ASAP AND send a message directly to the organizer. Otherwise, the people at the restaurant don’t know whether you’re delayed, when to start the meal, etc.

Really, this part isn’t rocket science, is it?

Bruce

When I’ve done these type of events on Flyertalk, I always add a reminder that everyone may have to kick-in additional $$$ in the event of no-shows. It was a real pain to collect $3 from 41 people. The worst part was carrying all those dollar bills.

For those that use Paypal, you can ‘gift’ the money without charge. If you don’t use paypal, just mail me a check.

Good reminder Barry. One problem we see in LA is people rushing to sign up before they have bothered to even check their schedules. They do not check back, possible forget they even signed up and then no show. This is really irresponsible as it prevents others that may be on a waitlist from attending, not to mention the burden on the coordinator and attendees. Some folks are very gracious and genuinely feel bad about their actions, then there are the occasional assholes that try and keep the spotlight off themselves and place blame elsewhere.

Here’s a thought. If you have a Google account, use a form in Docs. Something like this: Offline Signup List

Everything is required so they HAVE to provide an email. Then, just email them all to confirm. Not perfect, but…

If you’re not charging eventbrite works well because its free for no charge events. http://eventbrite.com

I am so very sorry for signing up and then no - showing.
I put my name on the list back when Brad said he was coming out - and I’ve honestly not been on the boards very much at all since then.
I did not know the arrangements, and when Barry contacted me a few days before, it was the first I had thought about it since the sign up.
I also did not know that my not showing would impact anyone else. As often as not, offlines are simply “divide up the check and pay your share” affairs - I was not aware that this one was any different.

Still, what is right is right, and I as I did sign up, I would like to pay my share.
Please PM me if you had to kick in any dough on my behalf, tell me how much, and promise I will make it right.

Again, my apologies.

Yeah, WTF is up with that?

What about the flip side of that coin? Those who show whom you wish they wouldn’t have?!?

I want my money back

Where is Larry H Parker when we need him