News from Ironman Canada?

I received this email from NA Sports (owner of Ironman Canada) on Friday evening, sent to my inbox with the subject line reading: "News from Ironman Canada"

Dear Subaru Ironman Canada Entrant,

As many of you may be aware, effective July 1, 2010 British Columbia moved to a harmonized provincial and federal sales tax at a combined rate of 12%.  This has been a controversial and confusing tax change but it is the law and therefore must be collected on all sale of goods and services.  Unfortunately when your entry to the 2011 Subaru Ironman Canada was processed through Active, HST was not collected on the entry fee.  This has recently been brought to our attention and we are obligated to collect that tax.

To that end, the credit card that you used to enter the race will be charged $69, the amount of the HST on the entry fee. We will begin processing the charges on Monday, November 29th and these will be complete by December 10th.   Should you wish to have this charge applied to a different credit card or if the one you used to enter has expired, please contact our athlete services center at admin@nasports.com or 877-377-2373.  We apologize for this error and any inconvenience it may cause.

Ironman Canada Triathlon

First off, seriously? Screw that. This error was made on their behalf, not mine, therefore, is it not my responsibility to now pay that tax. If I bought a TV several months back and the store forgot to charge the HST, they would most certainly not come hunting me down today looking for that money. NA Sports and Ironman are not "obligated" to collect that tax, they are choosing to place that cost on their athletes. Excellent customer service would be for them to man up to their mistake and pay the lost money out of their own money-filled pockets. But I guess it's no surprise that they suck at customer service.

Second, from reading forums about this issue, I learned that they are in fact charging too much since part of the 12% was already collected at registration for GST. At most the HST should be ~$40. In fact, Active now shows that it is charging $644 for this race (I paid $603.75) which you assume is now factoring in the HST... through math, they should only be charging $40.25 to athletes who have already signed up.

Third, this is not about the money (though nearly $700 for one race is absurd), it's about how they are handling it and principle. This was a planned tactic, and one that screws the athletes the most. They send the email the day after Thanksgiving - a holiday weekend when most people are traveling and away from their email. They say they are going to start charging this fee on Monday which means we had ZERO business days to return to our computers, our email and become aware of the situation. They do it at a time when most people are buying the bulk of their holiday gifts (Black Friday & Cyber Monday) in hopes that people will just overlook the charge on their credit card statement. They have the subject line read: "News from Ironman Canada" as if it's no big deal. How about adding in there somewhere about how you are going to be charging my card?! Last, they do not offer any sort of alternative options if we do not want to pay this additional fee. It's their way or what? I have a say in this too, thanks.

Fourth, um - I am pretty sure it is unlawful to retroactively charge a credit card without authorization. Do not TELL ME you will begin the charges on Monday, you ASK ME if you are allowed to charge my card.

With that said, I've written an email telling them they are not authorized to charge my credit card until a full explanation on their calculations and a refund option is provided. I've also asked them to explain to me why they thought it would be a good idea to come back to the customer for this money. Not my error, not my problem. I know it will be a lot of money for them to pay out of pocket but I guess that's the price you pay for your mistakes AND for great customer service.

I am SO over Ironman.

Now I wait on a response (as do so many other athletes) and hopefully before they take the action of charging my card because I will dispute it. I'm so fed up with them and they have no right to treat loyal athletes like they are idiots.