true but false wrote:
Why do track/xc meets get to charge money for No services provided? Bold print or not, what other businesses can say "pay in full first, then we might give you what you paid for"?
There is no way actual processing costs exceed $50.
If you enter the USATF meet, and have not met the entry standard, they will accept your entry and your fee. If, at the deadline for achieving/submitting entry marks, you have still not qualified, you will likely learn that you are not accepted onto the participation list, and you will not get your entry fee back. (This being USATF, it is completely possible that all rules about this process may be ignored in particular situations.)
If you enter and don't declare for events at all sorts of meets, or if you enter and don't show up, it is almost universally true that you cannot get your entry fee refunded. This meet is relatively generous, in the sense that its deadline for standard entry (which, again, is $45 per event, not $90+) is only 10 days before the meet starts - you have a reasonably good idea of whether you will be qualified, fit to participate, and able to attend. There are marathons all over the country where the only way to get in at all is to enter months ahead of time, and in many cases if you find you will not be able to compete, that money is gone.
I still fail to see how this is so unjust - how many people entered this meet after the deadline without meeting the entry guidelines? The person who started this thread, and his friend, might literally be the only people in the country who fall into that category. No one who meets the published guidelines gets rejected - if you understand what you are paying for as "the right to compete, if you meet the standards" then every single entrant got what they paid for. The people who paid for that right, and didn't meet the standards, were engaging in very uninformed wishful thinking. If you are looking at specific past instances of people being accepted into an event without meeting the guidelines, you should be aware that it is very likely they contacted meet management prior to entry to verify how the entry would be treated. Just hoping things would turn out ok for you is not a plan.
The guidelines were clear. What qualifies as meeting the guidelines using various qualifying events (or what does not qualify - it explicitly rules out cross country times) is spelled out in minute detail. The fact that your entry fee will be accepted, and will not be refunded if you are not allowed to run because you don't meet the entry guidelines, could not be more clear. They are trying very hard NOT to take money from people who will not be allowed to compete. The fact that someone in that position insists on throwing money at them anyway is not primarily the fault of NSAF.