The date for refunds has passed. Badge resales are imminent. If you are still looking for a badge, get yourself ready. We’re here to help.

The official Comic-Con 2013 Badge Purchase page still states all passes for this year are sold out; however as we speculated earlier in the year, there should be a limited quantity of all badge types – both  single and 4-Day – available in CCI’s annual badge resale.

CCI has been steady in its stance that a badge resale for this year is not guaranteed, however we are hearing that news should come as early as next week. We’ll update everyone with the details and date when the official announcement is finally made public.

In the meantime, here’s what you’ll need to do now in order to get ready for the badge resale:

• Sign up for a Member ID. If you don’t have a Member ID, you can’t purchase badges. CCI states that “Member ID registration will temporarily close without notice prior to badge sales, so be sure to sign up well in advance.” Those are words to live by for SDCC attendees, and we echo that advice. Plus signing up for a Member ID also gets you on CCI’s mailing list, so you get notified via email for important events like badge sales and hotel reservations.
• Check your junk/spam folder. It’s also a good check to ensure any CCI emails aren’t being sent to your junk folder. Once you’ve signed up for a Member ID, make sure any emails from CCI are sent directly to your Inbox to avoid missing the information.
• Use multiple browsers. We all know the issues experienced earlier this year and the browser-specific problems people were reporting, so better to increase your chances by using different browsers on multiple computers. Also, as we saw with the parking pass sales, some were having success with using mobile browsers on their smartphones over PCs, so better your chances by dual-wielding your tech.
• Go wired over wifi. Sometimes, you don’t have a choice, but to ensure the best network signal and avoid any problems with your internet connection, go wired instead of wireless. Also reboot your home router the night before, to ensure you have an optimal connection.
• Make sure you have the link ready. If you’ve signed up for a member ID, you’ll most likely be sent the link via email. Have it bookmarked ahead of time in all of the browsers you are using, so you’re just one click away from the starting gate.
• Sync up your clocks. Sometimes computers can be out of sync with official time – we’ve even seen this on the server end as well. That means, go with the official US time clock and start to load the badge purchase page a few minutes earlier from the official start.
• Use a browser extension. In the world of SDCC, seconds count. To shave some valuable time off your data entry, we suggest you use Last Pass, a password manager which also includes the functionality auto-populate your information into web forms. Check out this Lifehacker article on how to set this up for you.
• Exercise your F5 finger. We said start a few minutes earlier and we meant it, but your F5 timing can be the difference between you going to San Diego in July and watching from home. Start early, hit F5 often.

CCI hasn’t indicated if the process for the badge resale would be the same as what everyone went through in February, so we can’t tell you exactly how the waiting room will work and when you should – and shouldn’t – refresh your page. We expect the official announcement will contain these details, and we’ll update this post when they are made available.

Good luck everyone, and let us know in the comments if you have any questions!