There has been a fair amount of discussion lately here and other places about extended deadlines. In many cases they are an indication of a lack of applications or a problem with the promoter, but not always.
In addition to being a glass artist I have some web skills and manage the web site for one of the Chicago area promoters. She began using a new application system this year that I was not familiar with. Somewhere between my implementation and testing and her site going live something got messed up with her payment button and while people could apply to the show, they could not submit their payment. I did this work for her last November and her deadline was yesterday. We first got wind that there was a payment problem less than a week ago when one artist emailed her to say that the payment button was broken and what should she do.
For the record she had taken LOTS of applications over the course of several months but the payment part comes in after the application has made it into the database, so she wasn't aware of the problem. Due to family commitments I had limited time to investigate and finally got this fixed last night, just hours before the deadline. The promoter has decided to extend the deadline one week in order to let the folks who didn't pay get their payment in (she will be sending those folks emails). Due to the way this system works it keeps her applications open to everyone so she has announced an extended deadline. Luckily her jury was scheduled such that this extension could be accommodated.
My question to all of you is - what would you have done if you had confirmation number for your app but knew that you had not submitted a jury fee? Obviously the best case here would have been if the site had worked correctly all along. However, we live in an imperfect world - so in my mind the second best case is that the first artist who applied and realized that their payment couldn't be processed emails/calls and lets the promoter know their site is broken.
I'm quite disappointed that I missed this in the first place, but almost equally disappointed at how many artists just stood by and waited to see what would happen.
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Just curious, did she announce why she extended the deadlines? I don't mind if there is a reasonable explanation given, but extended deadlines without a reason drive me nuts and make me wonder what games are being played.
I also wonder why it wasn't noticed earlier, surely the director has a way of knowing if fees are hitting her bank account, that seems pretty obvious. Sorry, but a pet peeve of mine is all these different shows who decide to build their own online app site and at least half of the shows that have their own online tool (not ZAPP or EntryThingy, etc.) seem to have problems. I'm still waiting for a response from a show with a broken PayPal link who I emailed 3 weeks ago and they haven't even read the email yet.
Hey Amy, Thanks for putting this perspective out. Last week I was in the process of applying to four different shows-3 via the internet and one show was a paper app (!) I had problems with all three internet apps. I contacted each show to let them know I was having problems. Each producer responded personally to help me overcome whatever tic it was that caused my apps to become hung up. The next day I was able to successfully complete the three apps. My experience totally humanized the application process and gave me an opportunity to have a dialogue with real humans vs. trying to communicate via 100 characters or less. My frustrating experience with two different computers was completely turned around by my interaction with 3 real human beings.