Complaints for housing

[bsan89]

LOL @ selling room.

Ya I was on straight on 10am, but webbie and phone was down/busy.
Waitlist for hilton and marriot. I been hearing people selling room for $500-$700. Happens every year.

I hope they stick with the orginal plan next time.

[Glitch]

If someone is selling rooms, report them since that is scalping. No should be profiting from this situation in that manner.

[Admiral Donuts]

If someone is selling rooms, report them since that is scalping. No should be profiting from this situation in that manner.

Seriously.

I don't know if there's a perfect solution, but they should limit single registration to a single room and group registrations on a group size basis. Like, one room for every three people.

Hopefully next year they stick to pre-reg members, or even implement some kind of lottery.

[Kahluah]

If someone is selling rooms, report them since that is scalping. No should be profiting from this situation in that manner.

Seriously.

I don't know if there's a perfect solution, but they should limit single registration to a single room and group registrations on a group size basis. Like, one room for every three people.

Hopefully next year they stick to pre-reg members, or even implement some kind of lottery.

Exactly right about the room limit. I am on the waitlist for Hilton and Marriott and I was stress ranting to my dad today and I brought up that idea. Room hoarders are just horrible people that mess the system up much more than it already is.

Also the anyone can book a room this year probably cause many more server crashes and room hoarding than there would have been if they did it the usual way.

[InsaneChan]

The site was crazy this year. I was fortunate to be able to book through the site, but it took furious refreshing and typing. However, I am constantly sickened by the people who boast about having booked 3-10 rooms for their own agenda's. Hoarders not only scalp rooms later on, but use them as a "business" and rent them out at various prices to minors and others. I saw some guy advertising this exact service on cosplay.com in past years. He said he got all of the rooms because he had a "source" working in one of the joining hotels who would book all the rooms for him every year. I think he said he had 15?

TLDR; room limits should be implemented and strictly enforced. Maximum of one-two rooms under a name at a time. If you have a large group, assign various people to book the rooms. I feel as though this should especially be used since the convention is growing larger every year.

[Purelovely]

This Fanime housing situation gets worse every year. I have a room but it's a waitlist situation. I come all the way from Indiana and it's kind of scary for me because if I don't get a room then I'm sorta homeless. I wish some people who live close to the hotel would save their money and stay home during the time they aren't at con.

I understand that people want to stay at the con and have a room so they can enjoy the con more but please think about the people who travel from out of state.

[Dracil]

The problem is it's a 24 hour con.  People who live "close" still can't get home at 3AM at night since all public transportation is closed by then even if they were willing to take that.

Also, LOL at requiring badges to get housing + lottery idea.  Buy a badge, lose at lottery, have no housing.  LOL.

Anyway, like most things in life, it helps to have friends.  A bunch of friends all hitting the server at the same time allows you a better chance to get a couple good rooms which you can then all share with each other after the whole server chaos.

[Dracil]

Sadly I don't think either plan works! Remember we have new staff and new rulings! The conventin is getting bigger and bigger that there are two conventions one for clockworks alchemy and one for fanime. With that being said, I don't think any plan would work for fanime's housing because there are some people who pre-registered during the convention and did not receive their confirmation notices.

of course i could be wrong O_o!
just be glad it wasn't like last yea (front door closed, back door open!)

Then cut out clockwork.  That really should be its separate thing that shouldn't be using up resources from Fanime on the same weekend.

I wouldn't think it uses that many more resources to run since its technically a completely different con. Plus, I think the same it opened housing also starting using the Raddison and Holiday Inn, so that created more rooms, enough I think to make up for the new con plus more.

Hopefully what they say is true and they do have a solid plan for next year. I agree with some that this years plan could've worked but wasn't executed right so it just flopped. I kinda hope next year they stick with having to buy your badge first before you can book a room AND the two room limit, that alone will help with warding off room hoarders.

Fanime has obviously grown big enough that it can fill all that extra opened up housing without Clockwork there, in fact the housing is not really keeping up with the demand.

[Kahluah]

The problem is it's a 24 hour con.  People who live "close" still can't get home at 3AM at night since all public transportation is closed by then even if they were willing to take that.

Yeah, I live sort of close to the convention, and  the first year when I didn't have a hotel room was a mess. Public transportation is also not very reliable at times. I think services stops running after around 8 or 9 as well.Everything just flows so much more smoothly when you have a hotel room.

[renalcul]

And if you decide to drive, good luck finding parking.

It's a no-win situation, it's too large to be functionally convenient for everyone.

[heeroyuy135]

Did anyone notice that the $88 Hilton wasn't available when Housing opened up Monday?

[phr34kish]

Did anyone notice that the $88 Hilton wasn't available when Housing opened up Monday?

They admitted on their Facebook that the $88.00 room was a typo in their initial announcement - there weren't actually any rooms at the Hilton for that price.

[Admiral Donuts]

Also, LOL at requiring badges to get housing + lottery idea.  Buy a badge, lose at lottery, have no housing.  LOL.

Buy a badge, lose wi-fi connection, have no housing
Buy a badge, have to work, have no housing
Buy a badge, server crash, have no housing
Buy a badge, be unlucky, have no housing
Buy a badge, have even the slightest of inconveniences that delays you from getting on the housing website at 10:00:00.1, have no housing

[Sivartius]

Really, the only solution seems to be if the hotels expanded.  Of course that would make it even worse for the year while their are remodeling.

[Emma Iveli]

Really, the only solution seems to be if the hotels expanded.  Of course that would make it even worse for the year while their are remodeling.

I think if they were able to add Hotel De Anza it would also help big time...

[Dracil]

Also, LOL at requiring badges to get housing + lottery idea.  Buy a badge, lose at lottery, have no housing.  LOL.

Buy a badge, lose wi-fi connection, have no housing
Buy a badge, have to work, have no housing
Buy a badge, server crash, have no housing
Buy a badge, be unlucky, have no housing
Buy a badge, have even the slightest of inconveniences that delays you from getting on the housing website at 10:00:00.1, have no housing

Unlucky is the same as losing at lottery.  And we actually dealt with all the other ones except for losing wi-fi connection (this is what backup lines like phone data plans are for) this year and still succeeded in getting housing.

But the point I was trying to make is that if they're tying housing to badges AND they are literally the ones in control of deciding LOL YOU LOSE at housing (as opposed to your own personal circumstances), then they need to be willing to start offering refunds if people can't get housing after buying their badges.  This is why the lottery idea is just completely stupid.

If you really want a lottery system, then the process needs to be reversed.  Open up housing *first* and individual badge sales later, and make it a requirement that if you reserve a room you also put down a non-refundable badge deposit.  But this also means no more at-con next-year badge registrations unless they put those people through a different system and let them bypass the lottery.

But I don't think fanime staff is organized/efficient enough to even start doing that kind of thing without massive problems occurring just based on how registration has been handled in the past few years and other things I've heard.

[Admiral Donuts]

But the point I was trying to make is that if they're tying housing to badges AND they are literally the ones in control of deciding LOL YOU LOSE at housing (as opposed to your own personal circumstances), then they need to be willing to start offering refunds if people can't get housing after buying their badges.  This is why the lottery idea is just completely stupid.

Yes it is completely stupid to try and give everyone who wants to attend Fanime a fair chance to get a room.

[Barnes]

Really, the only solution seems to be if the hotels expanded.  Of course that would make it even worse for the year while their are remodeling.

I think if they were able to add Hotel De Anza it would also help big time...

I asked about the De Anza and Hotel Montgomery one year, and the con chair told me:

"We only talk to hotels that want to negotiate with us."

So I don't know if Fanime will ever get the De Anza anytime soon :(

[Admiral Donuts]

Well, people can still book it on their own...

I just checked and the De Anza and they have a couple of rooms left. Not much, and pretty expensive. I'm guessing it's Fanime attendees taking up most of the space. There's not a lot of motivation for a hotel to negotiate with con housing if they're going to sell out anyways.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

It is unreasonable to expect the website will be stable with the amount of traffic it has in the first hours. They do not have the resources to obtain anything which could take a larger load without cutting elsewhere.

It should also be noted that there are only so many rooms avaliable, so really the unstablitlty does not effect much considering that the rooms would have sold out within minutes otherwise.