Importing multiple event registrations for same contact

[holmesg]

We have a client who held an event. They used a different tool (not CiviCRM) to handle event registration, so now we are trying to import data from that tool into a sort of "dummy" event in their CiviCRM.

They way their registration worked, there were cases of multiple registrations being made with the same name and email address (e.g. a parent registered everyone in the family, or someone registered everyone in a group, using their own data). And that is OK - our client wants to know that John Doe registered and paid for five people, even if we don't know who they are.

But ... in trying to import the data into the dummy CiviCRM event, only one record is getting imported (or perhaps only one is surviving? perhaps each is getting overwritten?).

After seeing this - https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-7692 - I added online registration to the "dummy" event, even though we obviously did not need it, solely so that I could have "register multiple participants" OFF & "allow multiple registrations" ON. Then I deleted the registration records and tried the import again. But it had the same result - each contact ended up with only one event registration record.

How do I get this to work the way the client wants (import all the registration records for each contact)?

[petednz]

hope someone else has some other advice. The way we have done this 'online' is to use a price set, so we can then enter the number of participants person X pays for, and hence that gives us the total required.
I doubt you can do this through the UI as an import.
Depending on how many multiples you have, one option would be to import those multi-paying Contacts, then add the id in to the front end url and complete the rego that way. Not sure if I am explaining that sufficiently but happy to explain more re the Price Set if it sounds helpful