Why does Seat Alert cost money now?
When I first made seat alert, I did not expect it to become so popular. I anticipated a couple dozen users each year. I'm super proud that so many students find it useful. Unfortunately, that means it's no longer feasible for me to personally bear the cost for the SMS provider, website hosting, and domain fees. As a result, I must charge for Seat Alert. However, I've tried to price it fairly. If you've got any questions about the change please let me know!
Pro tip: You only need to sign up for a course once! You can use the order management link to add/remove which sections you're signed up for. If you don't know what your order management link is, it is available in every email message you receive from Seat Alert, or you can reply "ORDERS" to the phone number you received Seat Alert text messages from.
Why has the price increased?
The cause of the price increases are much the same as the reasons for implementing payment in general. The cost of operating the site has unfortunately increased as I've operated it. Specifically, the SMS service has increased rates as a result of Bell/Rogers/Telus charging more for texts. Amazon has also started charging for IPv4 addresses. Email services used to be included with the domain, but now they charge a monthly fee. I've also had to start charging HST on each order.
Is Seat Alert secure? Is my payment info safe?
Seat Alert never sees, nor has any way of seeing the payment information provided. It is entirely handled by our payment provider,Stripe. The only information Seat Alert receives from them is whether the payment completed successfully. Stripe is a big payment provider that works with a lot of large companies like Amazon, Google, Shopify, etc. I've picked a trusted provider to minimize security concerns for customers on that front too.
I signed up for alerts last year but now it says my order link is invalid. Where did my order go?
Each time you sign up, your order is valid for only one instance of a course. This means one course in one term (ex. Fall 2022 CHEM 1E03 ≠ Fall 2023 CHEM 1E03). You will have to subscribe again to get alerts for each new instance of a course.