UPDATE This issue has now been resolved satisfactorily. More information here.
Attention short story writers! Has anyone else had problems with their entries for the Fish competition this year? Or is it just me?
This is what happened to me.
I’m a pretty regular entrant for the Fish competitions. They’re pricey, but there’s potentially a fair bit of kudos to be had if you get into the winners’ enclosure. I haven’t, as it happens (and chances are I won’t in the future once this post has gone live) but I have been shortlisted for the poetry competition in 2014, the flash fiction one in 2008 and the full length short story one in 2009. Long shortlists, but close enough to make it think it might be worth carrying on entering.
On November 30th of last year, I uploaded two entries for the short story prize, noting that whereas the price for one entry was €20, the price for two was €30. I duly paid my €30 via PayPal. However, I didn’t receive any confirmation that my stories had been entered, so I went to look at my author page on their website, where it appeared that only one of the stories had actually been entered. The other one was flagged as “unpaid”.
So I wrote to Fish via their online form:
I just entered a couple of stories for the short story prize and paid €30 (order ID XXXXX). However, only the first one is showing up as being “paid”. Can you reassure me that both will be entered into the competition?
I also mentioned underneath my sign-off that my user account was JonPin. Remember this, because it will be important later.
On December 1st, I got this message back:
You have uploaded and paid for one Flash Fiction entry.
To upload more, simply repeat the entry process.
Let me know if I can help in any way.
Huh?
This is what I wrote back:
I hope not! If you take a look at my account, you’ll see that I uploaded and paid for two short stories (entry ids SS15/YYYYY and SS15/ZZZZZ). I paid €30 for this (€20 for the first one and €10 for the second one). However, only SS 15/YYYYY is marked as having status “Marked”. SS 15/ZZZZZ is marked as having status “Unpaid”. I hope this doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been entered.
I then got a generic e-mail from the “Fish Publishing Team”:
We noticed you are experiencing difficulty uploading one or more entries to the Short Story competition.
Entry lines have been extended until December 3rd at mid-night GMT, to assist you with any technical difficulties you may have encountered.
Let us know if we can help in any way.
To which I responded thus:
No problem in uploading at all. The story is there and, crucially, paid for. The problem is, as I’ve already reported to you, it’s showing up as “Unpaid”. So extending the deadline isn’t going to do me any good, I’m afraid.
Their response on December 2nd was not entirely helpful:
Your entry is showing up as paid from this end.
So I replied with this:
Sorry to be pedantic, but do you mean that BOTH of my entries are showing up as paid? Because SS15/ZZZZZ is still showing up as unpaid.
They replied with this:
Yes, with the e-mail address: [redacted 1] there is one entry. Do you have another account set up with a different e-mail address?
which at least explained some of the confusion. It turned out that I had a zombie author account (jonpinnock) at Fish containing a single one page story entry from 2013 which was tied to the e-mail address [redacted 1]. My main author account was tied to a different e-mail address, [redacted 2].
Unfortunately, the people at Fish had assumed that because I was e-mailing from [redacted 1], I was referring to the zombie account, despite (a) the fact that I’d told them I was specifically referring to the user account JonPin, (b) the only story in the jonpinnock account was one from 2013 and (c) none of the short story identifiers I’d given them matched up with the zombie account.
I thought I could clear things up by sending them, on December 3rd, a couple of screenshots from JonPin:
Please find attached two screenshots (user JonPin). The first is from my payment screen. As you can see, I’ve paid for TWO entries, the first at €20, the second at the discounted price of €10.
[screenshot showing entry ID XXXXX with two stories, YYYYY at €20 and ZZZZZ at €10]
The second screenshot is from my entries screen, where it shows the second entry as “Unpaid”.
[screenshot showing YYYYY flagged as “marked” and ZZZZZ flagged as “unpaid”]
Please can you sort this out?
There was no reply to this, so on December 7th, I e-mailed them again:
I was just wondering if you’d got any closer to resolving this. It’s still showing exactly the same – both paid for, but only one marked as such. The account name is JonPin, and I think it’s tied to account [redacted 2].
There was still no reply from Fish, so on December 17th, I e-mailed them again:
This still doesn’t seem to have been resolved. I just logged in again as user JonPin and the situation is exactly as I reported before: two entries to the short story competition paid for, but only one of them marked as such. Can you please either confirm that both have indeed been entered (and marked as such) or refund the fee for the second entry, €10.
Which seemed fair enough.
However, there was still no response from Fish and to be honest I got caught up in Christmas and other stuff and didn’t chase it any further. But then on January 25th, a stray neuron fired at Fish HQ and the following e-mail popped into my inbox:
From this end, you have uploaded one entry and paid for it and there is no sign of another entry.
What competition did you enter it to? Can you please forward a copy of your PayPal receipt?Apologies for any inconvenience.
Gritting my teeth, I responded with a screenshot of my PayPal receipt:
I entered two stories (SS15/YYYYY and SS15/ZZZZZ) into the Short Story Competition. I’m attaching my PayPal receipt which clearly shows that I paid €30, i.e.€20 for the first one and then the discounted price €10 for the second.
I hope it isn’t too late to sort this out.
There was no response to this. So yesterday (January 26th) I thought I’d nudge them along once more in case they were still confused about what I was talking about:
I’m attaching a picture of part of my author page (JonPin). As you can see, I have one entry flagged as marked and one flagged as unpaid. Can you please either (1) reassure me that the “unpaid” one (which, as we all know, has actually been paid for) has been entered and marked or (2) refund me the €10 for my second entry.
What worries me is that this suggests there is a problem with your entry system and I’m sure there must be many others in the same situation.
So far I have had no response to this at all.
Anyone else taken advantage of the €30 two-story discount? If so, have both your stories been entered? Have you checked?