ASA Certification Seal Problem



Northern Breezes Sailing School Certification Seal Problems

	November 3, 2006 Dear Graduates: Certification Seals have been delayed. Please see the accompanying email sent from American Sailing Association headquarters in California to all of the affiliated schools. Northern Breezes is one of several hundred schools nationwide which have experienced problems. We believe that ASA owed our graduates at least 300 certification seals as of mid-October 2006. We apologize for the delays which are out of our hands but which we recognize are frustrating. ASA is on the path to fixing the problem with an infusion of temporary help. We still want to hear from you regarding certifications which have not arrived. I can assure you that Alexis and I have personally reviewed every submission from our end in an effort to speed up the process and prevent administrative errors. Thanks for your patience! Captain Thom Burns President, Northern Breezes	Latest Update - Certification Seals Revisited April 24, 2008 We at Northern Breezes have identified a number of Certification Seal problems. We believe they are related to the database transfer referenced in the email below. Specifically, the hiring of temporary staff to input thousands of certifications into the new system. While the new system is a vast improvement over the old, paper one. Numerous oversights, bad addresses, incomplete seals awarded, etc. have been entered for our graduates. We catch some of these and are reminded of others by graduates. Please do a couple of things if you haven't received one or more seals: 1) Bear with us a little, we have several thousand graduates; and, 2) Keep talking to us via email or phone until it is resolved. We really want satisfied graduates and we don't want this seal issue to be a frustration for you. We can't help you if you do not bring this to our attention! Have a great sailing season! Captain Thom Burns President, Northern Breezes From: Evelyn De Chantillon Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2006 3:53 PM To: All Affiliated ASA Schools Subject: ASA Cert Request Delays Dear Affiliate: As you may be aware, ASA has experienced delays in processing a number of your student certification requests from the last few months. On behalf of our entire staff, I wish to apologize for this situation. ASA is in the middle of transitioning to a completely new, online-based certification request system that will eliminate any such delays in the future. This has caused our system to become somewhat overwhelmed. Although I realize that this explanation offers little consolation to you, your students and your instructors, we have taken steps to eliminate this backlog completely. As of last week, we have tripled the number of staff working in this department so as to correct this within the next 2 – 3 weeks. This is not a reflection of our new system, which will allow much faster processing of all electronically submitted requests in the future. But unfortunately replacing the old system that has been in place over twenty years has not been without its challenges. Thank you for your patience until the first or second week of November when we should have the situation under control. Subsequent turnaround time for certification requests will be considerably faster. Fair winds, Charlie Nobles Executive Director