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Letter: 'Overloaded' Burnaby online registration site shuts out families

Parent wants city to add more resources to registration site.
we're sorry
Some Burnaby families were greeted with this message while trying to register for programs.

Editor:

I am writing to express my frustration at the City of Burnaby’s WebReg system that allows residents to register for city programs, classes and activities. Every quarter, year after year, they open up "priority" registration for Burnaby residents a day before they open it up to everyone else. And every quarter, year after year, the website is overloaded and not available for users to even browse the site. After a few hours, when the dust settles, we are finally able to access the site only to find that everything is taken up and the only options remaining are to waitlist. This morning, I tried accessing the site around 9 a.m. to sign my daughter up for swimming lessons this spring, almost an hour before registration starts, and the site was already unavailable.

It would be great if the city could allocate some resources to addressing this problem. Some potential solutions that might alleviate the issue could include upgrading their website infrastructure to handle more traffic, and releasing available classes gradually to the public so that not everyone is trying to sign on and register for classes at exactly the same time.

Joe Chang, Burnaby