I believe my frustrations have been misinterpreted. I'm a supporter of the class. I plan on taking it again one way or the other. My wife has shown interest in riding, and I've made known that I expect her to attend one as well. My frustration is at the total lack of organization on the MSF's part. I made up my mind to buy a motorcycle a little while back, so I dug through my stuff and found my old wallet. I found part of the card but not enough to get me on the program. So I jumped online and went directly to the MSF's website. You click the Contact us button which leads you to another page where the first question is "How do I get a replacement card" click that and it takes you down a bit and tells you that they don't keep records and that you need to contact the state or military branch representative.
I called the state representative, (Louisiana DOT) who was an amiable enough person who basically told me that the LaDot took over the from the department of education a couple of years ago, and they have no records prior to that. I contacted the AF representative (hey congress this guy a waste of oxygen, sequester maybe?) he told me that he couldn't do anything and I had to talk to the original ridercoach at the school I took it at. I call the school I went to, only to be told they don't teach it anymore, that I should call the base. I call the Barksdale AFB Wing Safety office and they politely suggest I'm S.O.L. I even went so far as to call the new school in hopes that they maybe use the same guy was teaching there, not so much though.
I understand that the MSF is a not for profit organization. I also understand that somehow they've managed to set up over 2700 sites, which translates to 27,000 motorcycles for training. They charge $200-300 a person for a two day course of training. I would say that they have the resources available to easily maintain, at the very least, a central records database of their training. They have a pretty decent sized website, to include a trainer site that is already password protected (
https://www.retsorg.org/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f). Adding a database collection point to this site for the actual trainers to input their class rosters wouldn't be a far fetched idea. I understand that printing and mailing replacement cards would probably be kind of time/labor/postage intensive, so I wouldn't disagree to a reasonable nominal handling fee. The problem is they don't have a system in place for any of it. I'm obviously not the first person to have tried to get a replacement card in the past, seeing as they have been asked enough that they put it at the top of the page for contact info. That is my frustration.