Earlier this week, KGW ran a story that the locally-owned Epic Oregon Relay (which Run Oregon has run and reported on a number of times) was cancelling their 2017 event, scheduled to take place in just three weeks. KGW reported that the Epic team had merged with Ragnar Relays, but that captains were frustrated because they didn’t think they could get a refund. Well, Ragnar Relays has been extremely proactive since learning of this situation – they want to be clear that Epic Oregon teams can get a refund, or they can transfer their entry to a Ragnar event that hasn’t yet reached its cap.
Here is the official statement we received from Ragnar Relays this evening:
“We are sorry about the confusion surrounding refunds for Epic Relays. To be clear, any team that does not want to transfer will be offered refunds. Ragnar is now taking the lead for gathering the information. We have sent email communication to Captains, but if anyone has any additional questions don’t hesitate to contact customerservice@ragnarrelay.com.”
As someone who has run in a number of races, including nearly all of the relays offered in Oregon, and acted as race director for five different races, I think that Ragnar’s response is spot-on, and refreshing in this day and age of “no refunds” on running events. Once they learned that Epic teams were not given complete information, they stepped in and offered what I see to be a great solution in a well-written email to team captains that offered options and not excuses. A race company stepping up like this clearly cares about their participants.
Thank you to all the Run Oregon readers that contributed to this effort and to Ragnar for being on top of things.
Note: I’d also like to point out that this is the Friday of a holiday weekend, so keep that in mind when you start the process as to how quickly the refund can be processed.
