Fee for Attending York

 Old train farts getting wrestled to the ground by "arms", security or metal, its all the same if its not on the honor system.

 

Is a line avoided? I read yes, by mailing badges if ordered ahead of time.

Badges still must be made and handled. 

Cost of payment method seems pretty close.

Every choice has its consequences

I want to see a discount for cash and a wait Oh look, a buck fiddy.

  

 Separate prices for cash, and higher ones for check, credit, and fees for use, were once the norm, rather than the exception. 

You should feel lucky that changed for a long while.

IMO "money" done online will have a monetary cost each time eventually.

Not all sales pitches last forever.

 Free card and check use, was a sales gimmick, and then credit/bank industries took the idea, and ran with it. We all pay for it somehow. 

Remember cheap cable with community access, free guides, and no commercials?

 

 

"I've got the crystal ball" he said, as he held it to the light.  

 

 Oh, come on smile! Here's one. "All this over a buck fiddy bottle of whine?"

 

Hey, I learned things here about York. Its not an empty thread for the ignorant who are curious 

Reminds me of gas stations. 

 

While I am currently lucky in my home area where cash or credit is (for the most part, as far as I can tell) the same, one time when I was on business travel over the last few years, I stumbled into one where it was not.  It had been so long since I'd needed to worry about that at home, I actually ended up going in to see the clerk to find out why I was not charged what was on the sign out front (it was the cash price, and I'm sure annotated as such).

 

Imagine the nerve of that "backwards and ridiculous" gas station wanting more money to pay for the credit card processing!

 

-Dave

just curious whether TCA has a definition for "Spouse/ sig. other"(?)

AFAIK, the definition is up to you.  

 

Just don't try to get a free badge for your spouse AND your girlfriend - it won't end well. 

Seinfeld & company made a fortune on a series "about nothing". ��

AT THE DOOR...

 

PRE-REGISTRATION...

 

Jerry

(Yes I know I'm a little late with this one.)

If you're active in the O gauge segment of the hobby, or considering O gauge as your hobby, you owe it to yourself to visit the York Meet at least one time no matter what the cost (which is entirely reasonable by any realistic measure). There is no other toy train gathering like it in the entire world, so make the pilgrimage to York one time and judge for yourself.

MAIL? As in SNAIL MAIL? Why? There should be no need for anything to be snail mailed in this day and age. It can be automated and ALL done on-line. Much less admin overhead that way. That's why it should be cheaper to do it on line. Email a PDF of the badges and let the members print it themselves. That's how this should be done.

---

 

 

CW, they are paying credit cards fees on EVERY entry, snail mail, phone or on line. That's not part of the problem or the answer.

 

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If an on-line registration program is set up properly, there is almost zero administrative overhead. There are no envelopes to open, nothing to write down by hand, no envelopes to buy, no stamps to apply to an outgoing piece of mail, no special paper to buy for the badges, no badges to print, no ink for the printer to buy, etc. Automating this process would be a huge time and money saver for the Eastern Division and make the process go much smoother.

 

As an example, all of the tickets we sold for excursions for NKP 765 this summer (almost 10,000 tickets sold for all the trips combined) were sold on-line. Fort Wayne did not print a single ticket. They sent no snail mail to anyone. All the tickets were printed by the passengers themselves. All Fort Wayne had to do was print a report every couple of days to see how many tickets were sold for which excursion.

 

The York registration process could be just as simple for the TCA, if they could learn a little more about how to use the technology available to them.

Rich, I get what you are saying but what about the fact that every York the badges are a different color? How could this be accomplished with folks printing out the badges by themselves?

quote:

CW, they are paying credit cards fees on EVERY entry, snail mail, phone or on line. That's not part of the problem or the answer.

 

I pay by check, and assume that most people who mail their registration do the same.

I don't see the need to share my credit card information with the Eastern Division.

 

 

quote:

Rich, I get what you are saying but what about the fact that every York the badges are a different color? How could this be accomplished with folks printing out the badges by themselves?

 

LOL, I recently visited the Biltmore in Asheville, NC. Visitors had the print their own tickets, which had bar codes that were scanned when we got there.

Can you imagine how this board would light up if the Eastern Division started doing something similar?

Email a PDF of the badges and let the members print it themselves. That's how this should be done.

Rich, I get what you are saying but what about the fact that every York the badges are a different color? How could this be accomplished with folks printing out the badges by themselves?

Hudson J1e has a good point.  

The colored paper is used to prevent people from reusing prior meet badges.  The colors also allow the security guards to spot incorrect ones at 10 paces.  

Let's say that the Eastern Division redesigned the badges to include the show dates in a huge font to overcome the need for colors. That still wouldn't stop a single guy from using a badge PDF to print a few extra badges for his friends.  In other words, the hall captains who might know that Rich Melvin is Rich Melvin (because they know certain guys in the hobby by sight), but the security guards who admit people don't.  Anyone could enter the buildings easily with the duplicate badges, particularly if the faux badge holders went to different doors at different times.

The tickets that you print out these days to get into baseball games are indeed printed at home, and it's a lot easier for everyone involved.  However, these tickets are later scanned by a scanning device at the stadium turnstiles to ensure that no one is printing multiple tickets as described above.  Perhaps the Eastern Division isn't willing to invest in this level of technology.  I can't say as a I blame them.

The method of using ED-printed badges on different colored paper works and isn't easily duplicated.  The labor that supports it is provided by volunteers, so it's free to the ED.  Any additional distribution costs are are paid for by the attendees in the form of SASEs.  It's all a no-cost proposition for the Eastern Division.

Given the ED's current cost structure as it relates to badges, the cost of badge printing software and turnstile scanners needs to fall considerably for home-printed badges to make sense.  Until this happens -- as we used to say in Economics class -- the Eastern Division is behaving rationally.

Steven J. Serenska

"Rich, I get what you are saying but what about the fact that every York the badges are a different color? How could this be accomplished with folks printing out the badges by themselves?"

 

Ummm...do you have a color printer attached to your computer?

It's so obvious to Rich and all the others who know everything and think ED doesn't know anything, we should move to a bar code system for a meet just to see how it works. (the previous type of tickets discussed I am sure are a "one and done" sort of showing for admission, no?)

 

Instead of the nice casual glance from one of the guards at each door to see you have your badge on you, we should all stop and get scanned every time we enter a hall.  (and let's not forget the over head for the new equipment, lets say probably 100 bar code scanners (rough guess, not calculated) to cover every door to all the halls).  There will need to be a fee to buy these 100 bar code scanners.  After maybe 2 hours, all participants may be in their first hall when the meet opens.

 

I'm starting to consider any of Rich's York posts about as valid as Dennis LaGrua's. 

 

It's time for Rich to start an OGR train meet that is open to the public in Ohio and make sure it's at a large arena (the Hara Arena where they hold the Dayton Hamvention would probably have sufficient facilities).  Lets see how many businesses and hobbyists sign up to attend the first one.

 

 

 

-Dave

Even if he does, there is no guarantee his HP Inkjet printed on matte paper, your Brother Laser printed on standard bond, or my HP laser printed on gloss would look the same.

 

 

I once tried to scan a York badge to see what would happen. It has some type of design or watermark or imprint on it that make the scanned copy look rather sketchy at best and the printed one looked even worse. Not sure how that would be overcome with home printed badges even if the color was changed. Now if you had a PDF file of a badge then yeah, multiple copies are a possibility but is the small cost to get in really worth it considering many of us will spend $100-$200-$300 or more at the meet? 

I think the only real solution is to make the meet free to get in and open it to the public, the money lost by the ED on fees can easily be taken care of by charging table holders say 10 or 15% of their gross for the event in addition to their table costs, a WIN WIN for everyone! 

Imagine the huge crowds spending more money than God has, new blood in the organization and the hobby in general and think of all the extra money that can be generated by stroller and shin guard rentals, no expense of printing badges and getting them out so that increases the bottom line even more. 

I just hope I live long enough to see it happen!

 

Jerry

For those of you following along at home, I was being facetious about a free York.

 

We're not talking bank notes, bearer bonds or even World Series tickets here. Close enough would work fine. If there has been little or no counterfeiting of mailed passes in the past, I suspect that it would be a non-issue for self-printed ones going forward.  The risks of printing a pass for a buddy and getting caught far outweigh the cost of admission, censure and getting booted out.

People come into the meet and steal trains. Do you think that they won't print spare badges?

I think a very large majority of TCA members are honest people but there will always be a small percentage who want to "get over" or get something for free.

For a short time the badges had small holograms on them. I guess the ED felt there wasn't enough forgery to continue with the added expense of the holograms.

By the way I do have a color printer. I never tried to print out a large block of one color. I don't know if it would closely resemble colored paper.

You build the ticket images with the color in the image! You print it on any old paper...the color is in the graphic image of the ticket itself.

 

Dave45681, I don't claim to know everything. And if you want to ignore my posts from now on you go right ahead. All I'm saying here is that the ED could be saving a lot of money on postage and personnel and make this registration process much easier for the members if they embraced a little modern technology.

 

We'll be at Trainfest in Milwaukee in November. The entire registration process for our company for that show was done on line in about 5 minutes.

 

York's great at any rate!

$10 $12, $15, $20, $23 whatever they charge. 

Go have fun! Buy, sell , trade trains!

 Phil....Home printing or a phone can produce a bar code.

  Reading those will take the place of colors, and could possibly stamp out any creative counterfeiting too.

 

CW, "Had to" use a home printed ticket? Or an option?(I like options)

 

  About 20% of the US still doesn't use the net. In my eyes that's too a large potential to alienate by going to strictly home printing of tickets. Not to mention spur of the moment decisions to attend can total a few grand pretty quick.    

 

In theory, it should be cheaper, eventually at least.

 But the change in processes has its own initial costs too. Maybe that's why its not much lower in price? Could be they are recouping initial costs, and/or were operating the old system very efficiently?  

 

  The "kids" here (under 30) all seem to do any printing at school.

Four "kids" here, phones, games, computers, laptops, tablets,...... no printers.

I haven't had one working in almost ten years.

(I went to my dentist for some printing about 7+ years ago )

 

I guess you could show it on a phone ???.

 

 And a final note of "collector's disappointment" since it seems tech will change it eventually.

  My lifelong collection of event tickets, and badges won't look near as impressive with a bunch of loose leaf bar code papers in it

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

Rich does not have to, there already is a train show at the Hara hosted by Division 3, MCR, NMRA, Inc. and is open to anyone. I have been to it three times now and have had a great time and will be going again this year. As for "how many businesses and hobbyists sign up", if the MCR show is any indication his would be a success.

 

 

I marvel at the person who takes the time to create a home made badge to dodge a 13.50 charge and runs the risk of being caught and kicked out of TCA. 

 

Now if they were doing that for 100 badges it would certainly increase the incentive.

 

However, the risk of one of the 100 badges being detected is much higher and possibly someone might talk and reveal others involved, etc.  Unless you are a thrill seeker or a hacker why bother.

 

And I also marvel at how many other York type train shows have not popped up all over the country.  12,000 attendance is nothing to sneeze at.

 

There probably are technology enhancements that can be made and probably will be made in the future.  But in doing your comparisons, be sure to compare non-profit shows with other non-profit shows.

There are only so many colors in standard stock paper.  Pretty inexpensive to buy one sheet of each and easily create your own badge on each color.  Just show up at the meet and walk in using the same color as anyone else.  I can't believe folks actually pay every year. Yes, this is tongue in cheek but it would be soooo easy to do.  So if there is no concern now with fake badges why would there be with any other? 

-Greg

This thread might just weird out newbys.

Let's settle down guys.  Technology aside, we're only talking about a $1.50 service charge to cover mailing the badges back to us.  And the printing ink and paper to print at home isn't free either.

 

The lousy hot dogs they sell in the Orange Hall cost more than that! 

Geez, it weirds me out and I'm far from being a newby. Hard to believe how some people think...and this just about a hobby-related topic. If the York experience is too much for you--emotionally, financially, or in some other way--my advice has long been to just stay home and play with your trains in your own relaxing and comfortable surroundings.

 Riches "too much" protest has really peaked my interest. Though the cost seems trivial at first, maybe its not? Maybe I'm to quick to accept that cost as trivial 

 

  Rich and the guys at the publishing office, likely see the paper & ink cost offset, and possible elimination of having to print, as a huge factor in streamlining the business end of this. Who among us has truly better insight there

 

 Still "interesting" to hash out the fine points. Including hot dogging .

   

  

 

quote:

CW, "Had to" use a home printed ticket? Or an option?(I like options)

 

 

Visit the Biltmore site and see.

I guess there must be a way to get a ticket without a computer.

 

 

Buzz 191, don't forget the $6.00 rate for seniors.

 

Jack

Next year they are going to use PKI encryption encoded badges.  Costs will only go up $20 per badge but it's a small price to pay for authentication.  I mean we really need to know you are who you say you are. 

 

I can't believe that some of you on here are talking about fake badges. If you are that poor I will pay the fee for you, unbelievable.  

I am not a member of the TCA and didn't register for the October meet. I can join at the door for the October meet correct?

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

Wow. If you followed along, they're discussing how to avoid having people faking them if a new system were implemented, because not everyone is as honest as they should be...

 

 

OMG!  Would ya like to see my Surprised Face?

 

Chief Bob (Retired)

Yes, you can join at the door. You would have to pay the yearly dues upfront ($50) and then register for York ($23--I think) and there may be another one fee when you join up. 

 

I just checked the TCA website and it says the customary one time application fee of $25 is being waived temporarily. My advice is to join now before this deal goes away. Then just register for the meet when you get there. 

The registration for the meet at the door should only be $20 since it is not an on-line transaction involving the third party service.

 

That's a good point on the application fee that has been waived for a few years now I think. 

 

While it certainly would make sense for that to expire soon, I sort of doubt TCA would make that transition for the first time when people are paying their first dues and registering in person for the York meet.  It's possible, but not probable IMO.

 

So for this York, most likely $70 gets you in the door at the door.

 

And please don't let some of the oddities in this thread scare you off.  As in most of on-line life, for the most part, you will not experience this level of disagreement when meeting people there in person.

 

-Dave

On-Line registration through a web site should be significantly less - event paying the late fee - or adding it on - $23.00 to means I need to be more proactive and register early. Lesson learned