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Richmond residents unable to register online for city’s winter programs

The City of Richmond’s winter program registration gave some residents a headache when the online system failed to properly load or process payments Tuesday night.
Registration
Image: Pixabay

The City of Richmond’s winter program registration gave some residents a headache when the online system failed to properly load or process payments Tuesday night.

Online registration, utilizing a new system which launched that same night, began at 8 p.m. Tuesday for aquatics and 10 p.m. for all other programs, including spring break activities and camps. 

According to social media, some residents were unable to log in to the system or were stuck with the web page loading for nearly an hour.

For others, the webpage failed to load entirely and crashed. Some also experienced delays when the system tried to process payment and were unable to complete their registration. 

“We processed over 10,000 registrations for winter programs in the first 12 hours, a 30 per cent increase compared to last year,” said city spokesperson Clay Adams.

Many of the issues arose late in the evening, said Adams, once the general registration opened at 10 p.m. Registration for aquatics programs went without issue.

According to Adams, city staff worked into the early morning to help residents register for their programs. For example, city staff were troubleshooting on Richmond’s Twitter account and manually registering people over the phone.

The city said it does not know how many actual customers experienced issues, as some were repeat situations.

The cause of the issue is unknown, and the city said it is currently working with the product vendor to determine what happened.

As of Wednesday morning, the system was functioning well and space in winter programs was still available, according to Adams.