I don't enter many competitions but I thought I'd enter the NHC this year because I had a beer that I really thought was exceptional. I was excited to participate in the worlds largest homebrew competition and sent in two entries. Unfortunately it has been nothing but a comedy of errors. It doesn't run like this every year, does it? This has been my experience thus far...
1) Registration for two beers took 1.5 hours. A very frustrating 1.5 hours.
2) About ready to ship my beers I get an email that I have to ship them somewhere else due to 'space limitations'.
3) I ship my beers via UPS. They get from DC to NY in about 18 hours. They are refused delivery and sit for three days before being delivered.
4) Judging occurs early but no news is given. Other sites have score sheets weeks before the NY sheets are mailed.
5) First round results are announced (still with no scoresheets from NY)
6) Scoresheets finally arrive from NY!
7) But only for one beer. The other one got lost (the beer, not the scoresheet).
Both beers advance. One with the score of 40, the other with the score of 'Sorry we lost it'
9) NHC competition site commits egregious PII breach giving me access to the names, addresses, phone numbers, AHA member number and email addresses of two different entrants. My information likely ended up somewhere else.
10) When I'm able to log into my account I am able to print out my Gold CERTFICATE for the beer they did not lose. It's a certficate, not a certificate. Looks legit.
11) Now I need to enter the recipes for the beers that are going to the finals. Every other competition I've entered that uses this software allowed me to upload my recipe using BEERXML. That doesn't appear to be an option now.
12 Tedious data entry.
Janis has been fantastic when I've emailed her, but rest has been nothing short of a bad joke. This can't be typical, can it?