Active.com Now Offering Race Registration Fee Insurance - But It Wouldn't Have Covered Hurricane Sandy

active.com is the biggest piece of trash on the internet and the worst thing possible to have happen to race registration.

i signed up for the cleveland marathon in may. it was $70, plus a $7 online registration fee. if i had mailed it in, it would've been a $10 fee. such BS. not too mention how they try to trick you into signing up for their shit that automatically charges you at some point.

fck them.

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bmcpool strikes back wrote:

it was $70, plus a $7 online registration fee. if i had mailed it in, it would've been a $10 fee. such BS.

So in other words they saved you $3 and a stamp & envelope?

Oh please. I read the policy.

Covered:

7. Your home being made uninhabitable by fire, flood, burglary, vandalism, or natural disasters.

Excluded:

16. The event being cancelled or delayed by the venue or promoter for any reason (including bad weather) unless as covered herein;

The policy mitigates the individual's risk, not the overall event's risk.

There are policies marketed to event organizers for the whole event being cancelled. From limited data, it seems such a whole-event policy is significantly more than $7 per entry, and still might not cover entry fee reimbursement.

This is nothing new. It's an injury/sickness insurance. Providers like 365competitors offer this at half the price.

There are so many better options than Active, e.g. Eventbrite.

What a joke. I sign up for a lot of races. 99% of cancellations are due to:

- work travel (not covered)

- mild sickness (a cold) - would run to a doctor to get the required form for that

- bad shape because lack of training

Typical insurances. Cover for that what you don't need, don't cover for anything else.

bmcpool strikes back wrote:

i signed up for the cleveland marathon in may. it was $70, plus a $7 online registration fee. if i had mailed it in, it would've been a $10 fee.

Right. Before online registration, you would mail in and there would be no fee. Then came online signup and the mail in got a fee. And now there is a fee for signing up, too.

It's the airline model, low base price, many hidden costs.

Except that races don't have a low base price anymore. Oh and other than airlines, they don't give refunds, either, if they cancel the race.

I've generally found Active to be incredibly irritating in everything they do. This past year, the New Haven Road Race announced that you could only sign up online, which meant through Active.

At the last minute, they did allow some same-day, paper registrations, but that was too late for anyone who had believed that this would be impossible. (Generally speaking, for anything but a marathon, I like to sign up as late as possible, in case something comes up. Illness, injury, family stuff, whatever, even if it means paying more.) As a result of the announced policy, I signed up online ahead of time. Even though I clicked on every "opt-out" possibility I could see, I was still flooded by spam afterwards.

Based on my limited, but frustrating nonetheless, experience with Active customer service, I'd have a very hard time believing that buying insurance from them, and then needing to use it, would result in a timely refund, especially one without a ton of arguing and aggravation.

I have opted out of several active.com mailing lists, yet still receive spam from them regularly. They justify this by adding you to any list they feel like and making you opt out of each one. As others have mentioned, they are complete scum as a company as far as I can tell.

Screw Active.com and screw everybody associated with that cesspool. I'm seriously considering getting an attorney and going after them for CAN SPAM violations/damages.

I pretty much avoid any race that forces me to use active.com. Crappy website and skyhigh fees. F them!