Some Arlington residents may have hit another pitfall while registering for fall classes with the parks department.
It appears some may have been charged more than once for the same purchase, according to social media posts and receipts reviewed by ARLnow. The Arlington County Dept. of Parks and Recreation confirmed this afternoon that it has heard from registrants who have been inadvertently charged multiple times.
After registration opened last week for fall ENJOY classes, DPR said its credit card system was malfunctioning. It asked those who were attempting to register on Thursday to pay using an electronic check until the issue was resolved.
One parent reported he was charged three times for one purchase and knows others who faced similar problems.
The parks department confirmed the issue could be related to the malfunction from Thursday.
“We’ve been alerted of the issue and have staff working on diagnosing the problem,” spokesman Jerry Solomon told ARLnow. “At this moment, we are unable to identify the specific cause, but believe that it is related to the issue experienced with the third-party processor last Thursday. Staff is actively reconciling and processing the refunds for those who have been double charged.”
“We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work to resolve this issue and will continue to look for ways to improve the process moving forward,” she added.
Last week, Solomon said the snafu only affected registration on Thursday and was resolved within an hour. By 1:20 p.m., more than 3,600 people were able to successfully register for classes. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the system logged more than 8,000 total registrations, including more than 7,000 completed online.
“We will have a better sense of what occurred today once our payment processor has diagnosed the issue,” she said at the time.
Resident walk-in registration for the fall classes began on Friday. Starting this Wednesday, those who live outside the county will be able to start registering, according to the 2023 ENJOY booklet.
The parks department has been battling technical problems during the class and camp registration processes for the past few years, at least in part due to the high volume of parents trying to register their kids for classes at the same time.
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