Hopefully by now you know that new this year, San Diego Comic-Con will be mailing badges for the first time. Badges will be sent about four weeks prior to the convention, in June. Which seems easy enough, right? But there are some questions still lingering.
As Comic-Con International has explained several times, badges will be mailed to the address that the buyer (in either Preregistration and/or Open Registration) entered during checkout, so long as it’s a US address. That means that if a buyer purchased for three individuals, all three badges will be mailed to the buyer only, and it is then up to the buyer to distribute them out to each attendee. If your buyer doesn’t mail you your badge, well, Comic-Con International isn’t going to intervene.
In the event that the address entered during checkout is international, attendees will pick-up their badge onsite instead.
But one question that’s been harder to get an answer to is: What happens in the event that you have multiple buyers? Let’s look at a scenario: Buyer 1 purchased Attendee A’s badges for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Preregistration — but then Buyer 2 purchases Sunday for Attendee A in Open Registration. In that case, there’s two buyers, and two mailing addresses. What happens then?
Although Comic-Con International’s site states that “if you purchase all four daily badges (Thursday through Sunday) they will be automatically converted to a 4-Day badge. You cannot opt-out of consolidation,” we have confirmed with CCI that in the event that two different buyers purchased you different day-badges for the convention, this usual practice of consolidation won’t take place.
David Glanzer, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for Comic-Con International, said, “Based on data provided to us from EPIC Registration, less than 1% of our total number of attendees fell under the ‘multiple buyer’ situation in 2015. This very small number of attendees will be sent single day badges. If they would like to consolidate their badges when they arrive onsite, they can visit the Attendee Badge Solutions Desk.”
Which means that in the scenario above, Buyer 1 will be sent your Thursday, Friday, and Saturday day-badges, and Buyer 2 will be sent your Sunday badge. The badge won’t be consolidated into a single four-day badge.
Considering that the biggest benefit to badge consolidation was that you could pick up your badge just once, rather than having to queue multiple days — with badges being mailed out, it may not be a big hurdle to have four (or five) day-badges, rather than a single consolidated badge. You’ll just need to coordinate with both buyers.
If you haven’t already, read through CCI’s FAQ on shipping.
Comic-Con International’s 1% statistic should probably also be a sobering expectations check to anyone looking to add on dates that they missed during Preregistration. Although it’s entirely possible that the overall percentage of folks who are able to add on dates in the second sale is higher (since the statistic itself refers only to the case of two different buyers), it probably isn’t that much higher.
As we say every year, Open Registration is a whole lot harder to score a badge in than Preregistration. Good luck to everyone on Saturday.
