Alright, I apologize for my scattered response earlier. I was in the middle of a few things and I should have just waited! So, sorry about that.
We are extending the deadlines so that people who can only pay via credit card don’t lock out their teams, and we accept that there are legitimate reasons to not renew via the secure bank transfer. Absolutely not a problem, and I appreciate that everyone in your league expressly wants to continue playing Ottoneu! That’s the most important part.
This is the part that threw me, but I get what you are getting at. What I hope first is that we will have credit card processing up in the next week. I’m in final approval with a processor and they indicated to me yesterday that everyone was ready to go, but I am still waiting for the final production information. So, we are right at the finish line and very very close to being able to take credit cards again. If we can start taking payments on Monday or Tuesday of next week, we should be able to have a 2 week window where everyone can pay for football this year before Ottoneu starts doling out prizes for this season. I think that would address this issue and make it so you don’t have to worry about handling prizes offline or anything like that.
If we have to delay further, I’ll have to think about the best way to proceed. This has been a long and drawn out process and the experience so far shows that nothing is over until it is absolutely over and we are taking credit card payments again. However, I think handling your prizes offline is probably a good play if a new lengthy delay is required.
To directly answer this question that I again hope does not actually have to be acted upon, the answers to both are yes: we’ll have to at some point take a fee for playing through the 2025 year just to help pay for our sports data feeds and hosting fees, etc. And that charge for anyone who we don’t directly handle prizes for will be $20.
Hope that helps and I hope to have a “we are taking CC payments again!” update very soon.