From: Dr. Bob Klein (drbob@troop111.org)
Date: Mon Oct 29 2001 - 14:06:42 CST
Ed, I hate to be discouraging but an 11:15 waiting list slot will
probably put you between 400 and 500 on the official Waiting List. You
will be told what the actual number is when you get your letter.
Waiting Lists are funny. Last summer, they went to #700 or so, but that
was considered an aberration because it was a Jambo year. Frances and
Betty have indicated (to me) on several occasions that they do not
expect this years' W.L. to get past 100 slots. Of course, that was
before 9/11, and fear of flying is certainly going to have an impact on
signups this year - though who knows how much.
On the funny telephone glitches, you are experiencing the flaws of the
800 system. Most calls to 800 numbers get killed at YOUR local access
point, not at the Philmont Registration Bureau's point. First you have
to make it through YOUR point, then to the local 800 switching system
that serves the 962-4000 exchange, then you have to be lucky that an
operator logs back on just as you hit. It was mentioned that over a
million calls were made last year. This is both correct and incorrect.
It is an accurate reflection of the number of calls that made it to the
local 1-800-962- exchange; it is not the total number of calls made -
that is a far higher number, nearly all of which were killed at the
local 800 exchange. Make your own guess; mine is 25 million calls. I
know my Troop alone made about 25,000 phone calls last year, and we can
all do that math.
Anyway, with all the switching that going on, some calls end up in the
twilight zone. Also, some times the caller does the hang up/pick up
routine just a hair too quickly, and the redial function will then try
to connect to a dying busy signal, which then gives you the classic "If
you'd like to make a call...."
If you make it off the waiting list, you usually have some choice of
dates, but not "whatever you want." The Ranch wants a certain number of
Crews arriving per day, and will direct Waiting List Crews to the days
that got deficient through dropouts. They will usually give you a few
days to make up your mind, but their patience isn't unlimited.
Hope this helps.
- Dr. Bob
----------
Ed Reitemeier Troop 304 Kansas City, KS, wrote:
Would like to hear about your experience. We got through at 11:15 and
on wait list. Read on previous posts
about others getting a spot at 10:40 and getting on waitlist at 10:54.
Any more results in that 10:40 to 10:54 time?
I also got some strange results from repeated dialing. On several
instances, I got a recorded message "your call
cannot be completed, hang up & dial again". I also reached Excel long
distance service operators twice. All this
from dialing the same 800 number with auto redial feature. Either the
system was getting overloaded from all
the calls or my redial button was overheating. Anyone else experience
this?
I understand our position on the wait list will come in the mail later.
Any comments or experience as to how far
down the waitlist you can be and still have a chance at going? When,
typically, do they start drawing from the
wait list and how does it work? I assume that they give you an open
date and basically say "take it or leave it"
because beggars can't be choosers. Is it an on the spot answer you need
to give or do you have an amount of
time to respond back?
Great to have this forum back. Thanks to the organizers!!!
Ed Reitemeier Troop 304 Kansas City, KS
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