Re: [Debconf-team] Cancellation policy
>> While writing this paragraph, I thought of a good number of possible
>> situations where refunding an attendance payment would be OK, and
>> others where it would not. And of course, some that would be
>> border-line. Until we get a flow of cancellations big enough to worry
>> (and I trust we won't!), I'd say the best policy is not to have one.
> +1 I also think this should be handled on a case by case basis unless we
> get too many requests for this to be feasible. If people think that we
> can't fairly non-refund people without a explicit policy I'm in favor of
> a very simple policy like: "Payments to DebConf are not refundable.
> Refunds may be granted in exceptional cases by the DebConf team at it's
> own discretion."
I don't mind whether people use the words I suggested in earlier emails,
or the words from Holger's email which really says the same thing.
But on the issue of whether we have no policy: I just think that is a
bad idea. It is better to tell people the worst case scenario before
they pay any money, then if something goes wrong, they will not feel angry.
> On the travel insurance issue raised by Daniel:
> I would not make the refund conditional on any travel insurance. Not
> every participant is Swiss where we tend to have insurance for
> everything and anything. While we should help people to get a refund
> from their insurance if they happen to have one I don't think it's
> DebConfs business to tell people if they should have insurance or not.
Certainly, on school trips, people are told to buy travel insurance.
DebConf is obviously dealing with adults and doesn't need to give people
orders, but it is good to give people some helpful information on the
same web page as the cancellation policy. This can give people more
confidence to pay money early (which is good for planning and keeping
costs low).
Some common tips that we can share:
- some personal travel insurance doesn't cover conferences
- some insurance (e.g. the travel insurance bundled with credit cards)
only covers health problems and not the DebConf fees
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