Well, this sucks.

I was all set to go to the Madrona Fiber Arts festival for the first time.

It’s pricey, but after several of my friends/students went last year and took a “Tailored Knitting” class with Jean Wong, they all said, “You need to take this class!”  Lots of math, lots of persnickety finishing and fitting.  Beautifully fitting garments.  Sounds right up my alley.

The catch is, Jean’s classes fill up almost instantly.  So, on Monday morning, I was in front of the computer at 8:00 sharp, armed with my class list and a cup of tea, and ready to plunk down my $500+ for 4 days of classes.

At about 8:06, the registration button appeared.  I clicked, entered my email address, clicked, entered my personal info, clicked once more and - wonder of wonders - Jean’s classes had little check boxes in front of them!  They were still open!

I clicked on my three choices.  It showed a total of $527.  I hit the ’submit’ button.

And I got an error message saying that the RegOnline people were “aware of the issue” and to please use the ‘back’ button and try again.

Oh, no.

I went back and tried again.  More wonder of wonders - there were still check boxes in front of my classes!  I clicked them all again, and hit ’submit’ -

Yup.  Same error message again.

I went back a third time, and of course, the third time was the charm.  Now the check boxes for two of the three classes I wanted were gone.

I finished out the registration process for the one class I had left.  My receipt says I was registered by 8:12.

I emailed the Madrona people, then called.  I was assured that the classes were “not really full” and that multiple attempts by the same people had caused the classes to appear full.  They had shut down the registration link and at that time, were not sure how they were going to proceed.  I was told that they would be sending out an email to the mailing list with further info.  When it came, the email said,

“WE ARE WORKING THROUGH ALL THE EMAILS WE RECEIVED IN ORDER TO HELP PEOPLE GET THEIR REGISTRATIONS THROUGH…  We will try to get all of you who tried to register through the system before we open registration again. I will send you a link to register again.”

OK.  I understand glitches.  No problem.  I’ll wait my turn.  After all, if it were true that multiple attempts by the same person “filled” up the class, then surely there were at least two slots left while I was trying to register, and they would have my name on them, no?

No.

The “fix” they decided on was to mail out the direct text link to the registration site to “everyone who emailed”.  This was around 11:30.  Unfortunately, I did not have all day to sit in front of my computer, so by the time I saw this message, it was about 1:00.

(And of course, I’m certain that no one who received that link emailed it out to any of their friends, or anything.)

So I tried re-registering, and of course, no Jean Wong classes.  I emailed, got a response that didn’t match my questions - though it included the phrase “I want to get you in to classes you want”.  I emailed once more to try to clarify, and got no reply.

Then at about 3:00 they reopened registration to all and sundry.  So, I guess that’s that.  I sent one final email, explaining my situation and expressing my disappointment, and no one has bothered to reply, let alone explain.

I wouldn’t complain if this situation were of my own making:  say, I had gotten up late and missed the opening of registration.  But to have been on the ball, and able to actually select the classes, TWICE, and then get shut out due to their computer issues (they say the “recalculation” button was at fault) - well, that’s a pisser.  And when they are charging a $45 fee just to register - well, I’d expect things to go a little better than this.

So, I’m not going to Madrona after all.  It’s too expensive for me to go up to Tacoma to just sit and knit for 4 days.  (The shopping is good, I hear, but the last thing I need is more yarn.  The hutch in the studio is packed, with yarn even stuffed between the top of the hutch and the ceiling.  I’ve got 2 birthdays’ worth of backlog sitting in the hutch right now, for sheep’s sake.)

It seems to me that they panicked, although since the event itself is over 3 months away, I frankly can’t imagine why.  Wouldn’t it have been simpler and a lot more fair to shut everything down, fix the problems, throw out everything from the first attempt, give everyone 48 hours notice, and just start again from scratch, say, on Weds - under the same conditions as the original registration process?

And as far as that goes - I don’t know why on earth they don’t do something more reasonable to begin with, instead of restaging the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889.  Say, for example, they let you send in your class selections ahead of time (1st, 2nd, 3rd choices), give you a number according to when you made your choices, then choose a random number to start taking registrations at.  This method works pretty well for concert tickets, after all.

I don’t have a lot of hope for change in the future, though - out of curiosity, I googled “madrona registration” to see what anyone else experienced, and I found a person who’s been trying for 5 years to get classes at Madrona!  Maybe she and I can get together in February instead.