Thursday, March 5, 2009

Mr. Curious

Mr. Curious doesn't have anything to contribute to the UCP post--he's trying very hard to be a paintballer (lazy slacker)--but he does have an interesting question.
Do players who compete in more than one series that use the APPA system have to pay for multiple I.D. cards? And, if so, why?

And I'm trying to be a paintballer too--so I'm gonna rely on Mr. APPA supplying the 411.

6 comments:

raehl said...

Depends if the leagues the player is competing in have player registration fees or not (some do, some don't), and depends if the league accepts ID cards issued by other leagues (some do, some don't).

BobCat said...

I do and I assume it is because everyone has a little Timmy and he needs to eat. Paying $20 twice is no big deal to me. Little more then a case of paint, I will deal with it since it "protects me" from sandbagging to some extent and gives me a cool ID card for two leagues. Three cause I had to pay IDpro also.
Your question leads me to the biggest problem in paintball for rookie teams. We do this for fun but some people namely promoters, store owners, field owners do this for a living. Every $10 counts to someone. I am always preaching about waist and being respectful for the help we get from these folks.
Yet "why should I buy two ID cards?" is something we had to discuss last month with the kids.

raehl said...

One note on the multiple ID card fees is one reason for them is each league usually has to acquire their own ID production setup, which is an up-front $2,000 cost. That setup is necessary to issue cards on-site.

Baca Loco said...

Bobcat
I don't necessarily disagree but have you ever noticed that everything that is supposed to be good for Paintball is decided by somebody else and you end up paying for it? Just an observation.

Raehl
That sounds very much like the rationale for toll roads--including the ones built 30 and 40 years ago. There's always a "good" reason but the paying never ends. :)

Tim Cerruti said...

I thought bobcat was making a reference to me lol. Im broke as shit, had practice today and spent the last $30 i had for the next week on paint and brought cold day old pizza and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich mmmmm. Paying $60 for registration and ID cards per league I play in kills me, on top of all of the other little expenses i have to make. Drivers Licenses cost $4 in my state and that includes shipping. How does a piece of plastic cost $40? In SD last year i was eating cups of noodles and protein bars because i couldn't afford to go out and eat there.

raehl said...

It's got nothing to do with ID cards.

The truth is, it's all NPPL's fault. Back in the day, you had a player's league and a group of promoters. The promoters funded themselves on entry fees. The league needed to fund itself - some money as sanctioning fees from the vendors, but the other income stream that supported the player's league was annual player membership dues. The membership card was proof that you'd paid the membership fee. Since the league was also supposed to track player participation, it made sense that the membership card should double as an ID card.

But, since you pay your money and get a card, everyone thinks of it as paying for an ID card. And once NPPL started charging annual player fees, then other tournament promoters started thinking they could charge membership dues too.

Keep in mind that membership dues were charged long before APPA came around. The only thing APPA changed is you actually get something for your money.