Dear Attendee,

We appreciate that currently there is some frustration for those who have registered and as yet not received a room or confirmation.  This has not reached the high level of customer service we aim for, and feel like we have let you down on this occasion.

We want to provide the following statement for clarity, and to highlight the unprecedented demand we have seen for registration for ConFuzzled 2020.

Registration Clearing and Room Allocation

Registration is a manual process.  There is a team of people handling these requests as quickly and as efficiently as possible.  Our team are volunteers and also have full time jobs to accommodate, so your patience is always appreciated.  They have done an excellent job handling the significant volume of requests that came in over a 5 minute period – the same volume of requests that, by way of comparison, took 6 months to achieve 2 years ago!  The demand has been beyond anticipation and this has lead to the need for double checking allocations to avoid error. In turn, this has caused delay in the Registration team approving registrations and responding to requests.

For clarity, Non-residential and single rooms are processed first, on a first come, first served basis. This is because we do not need to establish room shares for these attendance types. Double, Triple and Twin Room assignments are done on a first come, first served basis based on confirmed room sharers.

This has lead to confusion.  To clarify, room share pairings are processed from lowest to highest badge number pairs.  For example:

• You may see someone with a higher badge number than you being approved.  This is because they are in a room share with someone of a lower badge number than yourself.
• A potential room share might exist between badge 500 and 1000.  However, a room share may also exist between 501 and 800. As the lower confirmed room share, priority is therefore given to 501 and 800.

Please rest assured that nobody has been skipped over or missed, nor has any preferential treatment been given to anyone.  We have no current plans to re-evaluate how people are prioritised whether they are a fursuiter or a dealer or a standard attendee.  Every person is party to the same process. We understand the process takes longer for dealers, and will work to address this in the future.

This has been the system that has always been in place and historically worked for us, providing a great deal of flexibility.  However, we wholeheartedly acknowledge that this has not been very clear to you, the attendee. In previous years it has been possible to offer a second option where their first choice was unavailable, based on other rooms availability.  Regrettably, because of the demand for all room types skyrocketing, we have not been able to offer that this year.

Our team are still processing allocations and payments to confirm holdings.  Rooms may still be freed up during this process, with those on waiting lists being allocated rooms first if they become available.  Please ensure you carefully read all communications sent from our Registration team informing you of the next steps.

Improvements

We understand the above will not go far enough to satisfy those of you who are currently on waiting lists. For transparency we would like you to know that an improved process has already been planned for; unfortunately this was sidelined this year by the improvements to scale our servers for high availability at registration opening, and by the changes required as part of the integration with our new card processor – this in itself leading to the initial delay in registration opening beyond our control.

This year’s situation has highlighted to us the importance of delivering this improved process.  We feel that once implemented, it will ease pressure on attendees and deliver a fairer and enhanced registration process.   Whilst this is too late for this year, we can only offer our sincere apologies to those of you impacted by the unprecedented level of demand we have seen.  This is a growing problem for large furry conventions globally. We will always strive to innovate, and your voices are being heard and will drive these improvements.

Abuse of our Team

We know that this situation has been upsetting to many of you and we understand there is a desire to vent frustrations, but we must remind you our team are volunteers.  They offer their time and what would otherwise be expensive professional services for free. They are the heart of ConFuzzled and if they did not give up their time, the event would be unsustainable.  We are immensely proud of our team and the hard work they do to deliver ConFuzzled to you all.

Sadly our Registration team have received a number of highly abusive emails which go beyond voicing concern.   We ask politely that when you email in with your (understandable) concerns, that you remain calm and collected, and appreciate the high pressure situations they find themselves in currently.  Abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.

In closing, once again, we offer our apologies for those of you feeling frustrated.  As a reminder, please ensure you carefully read all communications from our registration team.  Thank you for your time and understanding.

Kind Regards,

Rizzorat, Crimson, Russet

ConFuzzled UK LTD Board of Directors