MAC II Speaks Out About Hugo PIN Problems

The MidAmeriCon II, which announced on February 7 that all online Hugo voting PINS had been sent, gave a status report on Twitter and Facebook today about a problem that will require some to be sent again:

Our Hugo team have identified an issue with our Hugo Pin mailing software which prevented some people from receiving their pins.

We are working to resolve the problem and will be resending pins to everyone as soon as possible.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience and delay this has caused.

[Thanks to ULTRAGOTHA for the story.]

31 thoughts on “MAC II Speaks Out About Hugo PIN Problems

  1. They were very prompt when I emailed them about my missing PIN number. I imagine this has been a headache for them, but they have been very good about personally fixing each case quickly.

  2. I’ve heard a valid-sounding hypothesis that spam-traps caught a lot of the PINs because they were mass-mailed to too many people at once. I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds plausible, given the thousands of PINs they had to send.

  3. Apparently I don’t exist – they can’t find my Sasquan membership records. My membership number isn’t associated with me anymore.

    Something somewhere has got pretty badly screwed, which is a shame – I’m sure it’s no fun to be on the admin side.

  4. Originally they had said to email them if you hadn’t gotten your PIN by Feb 5. I emailed them Saturday evening (Feb 6) and received my PIN minutes later. I was really impressed as I didn’t expect to hear anything until at least Monday morning.

  5. Have any Sasquan supporting members received their PINs yet? Nary a word from Midamericon.

  6. I was a supporting Sasquan member… and I’ve gotten my PIN three times now. (I did not email for a PIN; all three emails came organically.)

    Sorry to torpedo a convincing hypothesis….

  7. I was an attending Sasquan member and will be attending again this year.

    I was sent a PIN on the ninth, after I e-mailed them to ask where mine was (it wasn’t in my spam filter). That PIN didn’t work (which I discovered this weekend when I went to nominate some books.

    I e-mailed them for help, and received a response almost immediately:

    We appear to have a duplicate PIN for you which is why you can’t log in. I’m escalating this to an Admin. Sorry for the delay!

  8. I suspect at this point it’s safe to assume that if you don’t have a pin yet, you should ask for one in e-mail. As everybody else here, I received an answer very promptly. The e-mail had my first and last name switched, while the actual login had them in the correct order, so make sure to try both combinations.

    Making Light has an article conveniently summarizing the e-mail addresses and URLs involved.

  9. Have any Sasquan supporting members received their PINs yet? Nary a word from Midamericon.

    I got mine a week ago. On the 5th, as it happens.
    I haven’t tried it yet, though.

  10. I was a supporting Sasquan member, but then I’m also a supporting member of MACII and also of Worldcon 75, so I’m not sure whether I’m a good data point. I got my PIN in the second or third day of the initial mailing period, and I was able to log in using the link and info from the email, with no problems.

  11. Linda McA – I was one of those who had to ask for a PIN and then got it right away, and I was a supporting Sasquan member. If you were too and haven’t gotten yours, by all means ask.

  12. I too was a supporting member of Sasquan. I emailed them on the 8th and got a working PIN within an hour from an actual human.

  13. @David Goldfarb I was a supporting Sasquan member, but then Iā€™m also a supporting member of MACII and also of Worldcon 75

    I match you in data points. I had to send email to get my pin and I’m now in the duplicate pin group.

    I think the only points we can extrapolate is there are a number of different situations:
    1. Got pin worked as stated
    2. Got multiple emails with working pin
    3. Got pin and had to do something to make it work (reverse names, S/A to pin)
    4. Had to email & got a working pin
    5. Had to email & had to do something to make it work (#4)
    6. Got pin and it is a duplicate
    7. Had to email & its a duplicate
    8. Things I don’t know/remember…

    From the various places I’ve seen discussion I’ve seen people who were a member of just one con and members of multiple cons fit into the above.

    The computer glitch doesn’t seem to care which cons you were or weren’t a supporting/attending member of. Some of the problem is likely spam traps.

    The duplicate PIN number is taking time to solve which I’d expect. We shouldn’t take it personally. Thank goodness we have the ability to keep a list of things we intend to nominate somewhere until the problem is solved.

  14. @Lin McAllister,

    I was a Sasquan Supporting Member who had to email to get my PIN (in my case it was an overnight response which is unsurprising given my timezone). In my case, I’m #4 in Tasha Turner’s list of possibilities: PIN works.

    @Tasha, just wanted to note that there is only one “5”…

    [In the year 9649, Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie…]

  15. @Soon Lee
    I knew I was getting something wrong. Should have 5 5s. But I couldn’t come up with 10 items. But 5s don’t need real content do they? šŸ˜‰

  16. I’m a Sasquan supporting and Helsinkii attending member and promptly got my PIN (which works) after emailing the good folks at MidAmeriCon.

    However, they seem unable to locate my Mom, who’s a Helsinkii attending member, on their list, probably because I registered us both via my e-mail address and credit card. Last I heard they were contacting the Helsinkii people about that.

    Meanwhile, here in the year 5868 AD, we get our Hugo PINs uploaded right into our brains.

  17. e-mailed request at 01:38 monday morning, got reply at 02:09. Service at that time of day may not be as good in the USA as it was in UK.

  18. Data point: Sasquan supporting member; got a PIN by email on 2/6; haven’t tried it yet to see whether it works.

  19. Finally got it to work – I’ll give MidAmericon credit for rapid response, demerits for usability (no feedback on what one types into the password field, could not cut and paste password from email, had to type it in).

    Now to go read some more…

  20. The rough part for me is that the login page contains a “link” to a mail-in ballot so you don’t have to log in. That link is non-functional.

    The link to the mail-in ballot from the front page works just fine, however.

  21. Both I and “Friend of Terry Hunt” (name and email revised to those of the actual person concerned only last week) are attending members of Helsinki, but not of anything else. A few weeks ago Helsinki emailed “Friend of . . .” (via me) to say they were sending her/our details to MidAmericon, but neither of us have yet received anything from the latter.

    This is conveyed as a datum point rather than a plaint, as “Friend” will almost certainly not want to nominate anything, and I probably won’t, because keeping up with the currently eligible literature fits neither of our reading habits. (We’re both currently reading Hal Clement’s Close to Critical and Neal Asher’s The Skinner.) Also, we haven’t yet had Membership numbers from Helsinki, and I don’t want to badger MidAmericon with yet another enquiry lacking probably necessary information.

    Terry Hunt

    (ETA – I’ll followup Microtheriom’s Making Light link later tonight (post-pub). Thanks for that

    TH

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  23. I emailed at about 9:30 pm on February 7 (a Sunday, please note!) to inquire about my PIN and got a response with a PIN within an hour.

    The reply also included a note letting me know that I had managed to register for MidAmeriCon without giving an email address – which certainly explains why I did not get my PIN before asking for it. If memory serves, I think I sent in our memberships by snail-mail with a check instead of doing the online thing, and I probably just overlooked the email address field out of absentmindedness.

    As it happens, I went to the con’s website earlier today to record my nominations, was able to log in quite easily, and had no difficulty navigating through the fields once logged in. So once you get a working (and non-duplicated) PIN, it does seem to play nicely with the site.

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