11/8/2011 9:11 PM
Kevin,
Feel free to stir it up - you asked good questions. We passed them on to our registration team, and here's how the changes developed. The changes were made in response to continuing feedback from members who asked for the ability to combine their conference and tournament registrations into one transaction.
Unfortunately, due to limitations in the registration system, we were faced with either combining the two events (and not offering online tournament registration), or leaving it as two separate transactions. Because the majority of tournament participants also go to the conference, we made the change to serve the greater number of members.
That said, based on your feedback, we also took a look at the verbiage within the registration system and the pages leading up to it, and we don't think they do an adequate job of explaining the tournament-only process. The language on the first page of the system has already been modified, and we plan to update the other pages tomorrow.
We're sorry for the frustration, and I hope that helps explain the intent behind the changes. We do hope we can offer this option in the future.
For Mel, barring the security concern, if you submit your registration form by either fax or email, we'll use a printout to process your registration. In terms of paper usage, they'd come out even.
Thanks again for writing. Please let us know if you have any additional questions.
- Sharmion