[beowulf]

I just discovered the hard way that BBO doesn't check for sufficient funds when signing up for a second tournament after signing up successfully for one tournament. These days, we need to do that sometimes simply to ensure that we get a seat. The result is that, when the tournament starts, the "offending" pair doesn't get seated.

Apart from the annoyance and aggravation suffered by the pair (and, especially by the partner who did nothing "wrong"), this seems like a very unsound business practice. Since that pair can't be replaced by another pair, the tournament will start without the full complement of tables. BBO loses not only the $1.25 (for an ACBL speedball--more for one of the club games) for the player with insufficient funds but also the fee from the partner.

There seem to be many possible solutions to this problem:

• Do what any bank would do and simply debit the player's account (especially if the player is a long-standing member who's paid thousands of $ to BBO)
  
• Check for credit every time a tournament is entered (without relying on the result from 1 minute earlier)
  
• Send a communication, via pop-up, in-mail, or email, to the effect that the credit hasn't been checked by the system

I know I can have BBO automatically top up my account but that's only available for credit card, not PayPal which is my preferred way of doing it.