Overbooking
I don’t much care for overbooking. Airlines do it, even with the possibility of having to deny boarding to some passengers if everybody actually shows up. They do it simply because people’s plans change — they get sick, they change jobs (or lose jobs), meetings get canceled, etc. A small percentage of people who make airline reservations simply don’t show up, and the airlines would lose money if they didn’t overbook.
I have experienced much the same phenomenon with my new-applicant CHL classes. I have had 3 classes in a row where I had to turn people away because my class was “full”, only to have 3 or 4 people not show up on the class date with no prior notice. That hurts. The loss of income doesn’t bother me nearly as much as having to turn away students, then finding that I didn’t really have to. I spoke with some other instructors, and they reported a similar problem. One of them now requires a $20 non-refundable deposit to enroll in his class.
I asked some of my students about their opinion on course deposits, and they were generally in favor of requiring a deposit. However, that approach is not problem-free, either. First of all, even though people will say they would be willing to put up a non-refundable deposit, sometimes people will say one thing, and decide another. It’s human nature. Plus, handling and tracking deposits is an additional layer of hassle for everyone concerned, and it’s a barrier to entry that I would prefer not to put on my students. I want the signup process to be simple and hassle-free. Right now, all that is required is an email — one of these days, when I get a “round toit”, I will put up a sign-up form on my website to automate the process and remove the need for the step of sending the email.
I had a discussion with the range owner, and came up with the plan of ‘overbooking’, with one major difference from airline overbooking, namely, you won’t get bumped. The 14-student limit is because that’s all the room available in the range. There are actually 8 lanes, so technically, I could have 16 students in there at a time, but I have found that 14 is pretty crowded, and any more than that would be a safety problem. The classroom will seat 18, however, so I will register up to 18 in my class. The last four to sign up (and any volunteers who would rather shoot in a smaller group) will qualify after the rest of the class has finished and left — if more than 14 students show up.
To recap:
- If only 14 or fewer students show up, class proceeds as normal, and nobody has to stay late.
- If more than 14 students show up, the ones that registered last will have a supper break while I qualify the first group, and then will stay after the regular class to do the range qualification. The classroom will be closed and locked during the range qualifications.
- If you are a late enrollee, you won’t know for sure if you have to stay late until you actually get there, and I do a headcount.
- If there are more than 14 students, any of the early students may opt to join the 2nd group for the range qualification.
So far, the reaction to this proposal has been favorable. People don’t appear to mind the possibility of having to spend an extra hour in class as long as they know about it in advance. It means that I may have to put in an extra hour, but if it solves the problem, I’m willing to do that. I will give it a try for a couple of months to see how it works out.
The overbooking policy does not apply to the Sunday-morning renewal classes. My Sunday schedule is simply too tight to allow it, and I haven’t been having a no-show problem with my renewal students. So, the renewal class limit will stay at 14.
Long-term, the real solution may be to offer classes more often. Unfortunately, because of my work schedule (I don’t do CHL for a living, but that could change if I lose my day job) and my participation in my Lions club (I’m the incoming president for 2008-2009), it is difficult right now to arrange more than one Saturday a month for CHL.