I will be honest and say that I was a bit turned off with the registration process for Anime Expo 2015.

I didn’t have a problem with Anime Expo using Eventbrite to process registration/ticketing, but what I did feel iffy towards was how they asked registrants for their date of birth.

I don’t understand why Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA) made it mandatory for registrants to divulge their date of births in order to purchase a ticket(s) to Anime Expo. Was it really necessary? If you need to know my age, just ask for my age. If you just need to know if I’m older than 18 (or 21), just ask me a yes or no question. I don’t need Eventbrite and/or whatever companies to know too much about me. Who knows what companies these days do with customers’ additional information. (FYI: If you aren’t already aware, an example would be the ugly possibility of said company selling customers’ DOB and so on. The risk is there and it’s somewhat exploitative if you ask me.)

In addition to one’s date of birth, registrants were required to identify their gender. Do you really need to know if someone is male or female? If you want my honest opinion, the date of birth and gender part of the registration form should have been made optional.

Since I wanted to see if this was some standard, I chose to check out Comic Con‘s registration page. Guess what? Comic Con’s registration page did not require registrants’ date of births nor did they require registrants to identify their gender. This was the case, despite the fact that they also were using Eventbrite to process registrants.

Another thing that turned me off slightly was how there was a period of time where people were not made aware of beforehand that there would be some processing fee on top of the registration fee. For example, if you registered prior to July 1st, the fee was $39 with an additional processing fee, which led to a total cost of $42 (estimated). FYI: This was the amount I paid for a one day ticket. Apparently, this was a concern one registrant voiced to AX over twitter and since I encountered this twitter remark before purchasing, I fortunately learned that there would be an additional processing fee that I’d have to pay by the time I decided to purchase my ticket. Interestingly enough, by the time I actually purchased my ticket, AX had already fixed their website (or their Eventbrite account) so that prospective registrants would be aware of the processing fee as well as the cost of the processing fee. I suppose I at least give them props for that.

I don’t expect people to agree with me on how I felt with the registration process to Anime Expo 2015, but I think it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to encounter registrants who felt the same way when registering or now sort of feel the same way after reading this post of mine.