[goffchris]

To be fair, FIRST has gotten a LOT better in this regard in recent years. They hired an International Teams Coordinator, Carla Proulx, who has been great. She has been very responsive to our issues, though it seems that they must not have consulted her on some of these things. For example, we used to get our KOP more than a week late (2 weeks one year!). We now get them just a couple of days after kickoff.

There are also special rules to help us. For example, we can't get the regulation pool noodles for the bumpers, but are able to get a waiver to use the UK versions (similar anyway). They provide us with batteries at the regional, since it is illegal to ship the batteries. They also pay an ungodly amount of money shipping the kit to us, and transporting our robot crate.

That said, they need to do much better, for the reasons I laid out and more. I am sure it is much easier in the UK than some other countries, so perhaps others have it even worse.