(Concluson: If the online link had actually gone live when it was supposed to, it is quite possible that literally only the FIRST person in the queue at AP would have got a ticket. Luckily there was some sort of technical error, saving the embarrassment of a sell out before anyone even appeared at the ticket window!)
I find it strange that it took until the final sales had been made before the Club admits that a error in the 1 ticket only sale for Stage 1& 2 was not corrected at the time that the correction was made to the "EFL report" which stated that Share members could buy 2 tickets on the Thursday. It took two further days for the "error " to be corrected. Today's performance seems another unreal situation.
@AttitudeEra , that's an interesting post there. How on earth did you view some of the parts you mention?
How did you see someone get hung up on for instance? Are you an insider? As surely you wouldn't have been allowed in the "nerve centre" where such call was handled?
473 tickets in 15mins sounds a high turn over..were there really 473 available do we think? Or was that claimed as it's closeto 500, so they could state that they had already "forecast" that?
The idea someone mid purchase was told it was off, or to have a ticket taken back out of your hand is truly incredible scenes. I'm amazed that wouldn't lead to a ferocious argument!
I don't mind the amateurish bit. That's almost traditional. It's the cover up elements that gall with me.
Some of the process was sensible, some ok, some a little stupid and some totally indefensible.
Window 1 - Sensible - but stupidly long
Window 2 - Ok ish but probably unnecessary and could have been done in window 1
Window 3 (As planned/originally stated) Ok (There is a debate about whether 2 tickets per ST holder is fair, but for an allocation more than our regular attendance I think its justifiable)
Window 3 (As was) - Totally indefensible. No-one who bought a ticket in 1 or 2 expected to be able to get more and probably halved the number of tickets available in Window 4, which makes
Window 4 - Even more indefensible. Having a published statement (charter) that gives priority to those with a purchase history there is no excuse for not trying to fulfill this. Allowing 4 per person added salt to the wounds.
Window 4 (Selling) A little stupid. Everyone should have known that online would sell out quickly - if it worked. Would have made sense - as pointed out above - to have split so many tickets to in person, online, phone.
Apart from that all went pretty smoothly.
(And sorry - just needed to get that off my chest for closure)
@AttitudeEra Completely agree, 3 lines of sale was ridiculous, especially with one of them being online. Also, they saw the queue outside, why not limit it to 2 per person to try and spread them out. I think the objective was simply to shift the remaining tickets as quickly as possible, so....job done!
@Malone sorry I must say that the phone call part was hearsay, although hearsay about 10 seconds after seeing the person being allegedly hung up on. I simply asked the person what had happened and it was around this time that all the complaints started coming in through the various social media channels.
Amateurish is fine but just say, 'we're gonna stick one poor dude at a ticket window, it's going to open at 10am, and he'll have half the tickets in a pile. The other half will go online at 10am and will be sold out before the first guy in the queue has even got his cash out'.
That's still amateurish, but people would have known where they stood. I do feel for the people in the queue who felt (possibly quite rightly) that they had MORE of a chance of getting a ticket if they turned up at 7am in the cold. Pensioners who've clearly been season ticket holders in the past, who I've seen sitting freezing at Carlisle and at Yeovil. The ones who seem to be there even on a Tuesday evening in December when some idiot has scheduled us away to Accrington and the trains aren't running but they've somehow got themselves there with their blanket and their memory of what the score was in the same fixture in 1992 and in what minute the winning goal was scored. People who still go to all the games but maybe can't afford a season ticket anymore or the commitment as there's not always a bus, or they don't drive anymore.
In fact they had LESS of a chance than I would have had lying in bed at 10am with two of three devices refreshing. To add further insult, someone forgot to set the limit to 4 online, as a guy at AP on an iPhone this morning showed me 20 tickets in his basket. He quite rightly removed them and bought the 2 he wanted but it just goes to show.
Fascinating posts by @AttitudeEra there. To me the whole point of having ownership by the fans is to get people with real relevant expertise from the outside world to get onto the board and start contributing their knowledge for free to the club they're passionate about. A true democratically-run club with open, transparent elections hoovering up the talent among the fan base could really see WWFC motor ahead. I do hope we won't see the same closed-shop candidates at the next elections but instead a proper search through the fan base to bring some real competition in the elections and consequently some fresh skills and ideas to the club. That's how we make sure we don't end up in a similar situation to this once again.
And as a side note, have London Welsh never had an issue with oversubscribed matches? What's the point of trumpeting the appointment of a general manager with a background at a prestigious sporting club if the first big decision he oversees ends up like this?!
Would you be interested @AttitudeEra in acting in an advisory role in the event that a similar situation arose in future - like next week perhaps? Or is such advice superfluous following the huge debate on this thread culminating, somewhat belatedly, in your very interesting comments and suggestions based on your own business experience?
@bookertease a good summary I think. Particularly your first point about the cover up. One thing I hoped would disappear when we became supporter owned was the Club treating us as if we were stupid and should be grateful for anything. Unfortunately this episode suggeats otherwise.
I would like to make a positive point about the people on the phones who were helpful and patient during what must have been a stressful week.
Let's enjoy Saturday and calmly suggest improvements for the replay/5th round allocation
@AttitudeEra one of the most seNibley posts ever to hit the gasroom. Anyone here xmould of work out that just 470 tickets would sell within minutes if sold via 3 options...they should of scrapped online when so few were left to respect everyone and give the less tech save generation a realistic chance. Phone and queue would of given everyone and equal chance. To have a large queue and sell via online was always going to lead to tears......imagine queuing in tesco for a super cheap tv....seeing 470 sat there and them wheeling them all away for an online order....theread would be a riot.
Ps there were never 470 odd tickets, was it @DublinChairboy who said when he purchased the previous day they had said less than 450 were left at the point?
They should have just put 1/3 of the tickets aside for each sale option, removing the online would punish the young generation just as including it does the old
Of course I am willing to offer any expertise as and when, although let's be honest, this sort of situation is a once in a blue moon kind of thing, and is mainly rooted in the limitations our limited staffing infrastructure imposes, and secondly, the lack of any tangible form of membership scheme akin to the 'Blues Card', which, although pointless on the whole, at least offered a basic level of CRM knowledge.
Pointless more in that there was no real benefit to having one for 99% of the year, and the general fan base resented having to answer 100 questions in order to buy a ticket.
When the Trust took over the club, and started taking on board suggestions from the wider base of supporters, one cost which was obviously scrapped was the (at the time very detailed) CRM infrastructure. For the first time in ages supporters were able to buy tickets in cash at a window on the day of the match without an address/postcode etc. A good thing for the convenience of those supporters, but not so good when they're trying to work out who's been to which match etc.
The same goes for the current online system. Buying tickets on it is actually very easy, it's reasonably customer friendly (I do resent the 'automatic' £1 donation to the club, I'll donate as and when I choose to thank you very much!). But I don't think it's linked in any way to our database of supporters, so someone would have to manually go through and link email addresses to accounts on the club database.
So while the club MAY have liked to have said, window 4, anyone who's attended 3 or more games this season, it's very possible that they wouldn't have had a clue if you actually had or not.
In the days of tickets being 'loaded' onto your Blues Card, yes, they would. But now, if I had bought one ticket for Luton for myself and my partner online, she had bought us two tickets for Morecambe at home in cash on the day of the game, and we had each separately purchased a ticket in advance in person for the Col U game, how many Spurs tickets would we have been entitled to? And how long would they have had to spend working it out?
So failing that you obviously just go with a 33/33/33 or 50/50 split across online/physical/phone, and be done with it.
Obviously one each for season ticket holders and investors.
then you could
a) if there is one, announce that anyone that attends the next home game (in this case Luton) is priority B (hand a voucher at turnstile to non STH)
or
b) at random matches in say Sept, Oct and November, hand a voucher to home supporters, allocate first to those with all three, then two etc.
Wont be entirely fair as they may happen to be the one game a season you didn't get to but better than general sale as now.
@StrongestTeam It was fear of that scenario that tipped the balance for me between buying last week or leaving it to this and trying to get upper tier tickets. I wanted to leave plenty of time for the tickets to arrive in the mail.
I don't live near Wycombe and collection from Adams Park this week would not have been an option. After turning up to collect tickets at Villa Park last year and being told they didn't have any with my name on I didn't want to risk it: at Villa I was able to buy more, but clearly no option for that at White Hart Lane.
Comments
(Concluson: If the online link had actually gone live when it was supposed to, it is quite possible that literally only the FIRST person in the queue at AP would have got a ticket. Luckily there was some sort of technical error, saving the embarrassment of a sell out before anyone even appeared at the ticket window!)
I find it strange that it took until the final sales had been made before the Club admits that a error in the 1 ticket only sale for Stage 1& 2 was not corrected at the time that the correction was made to the "EFL report" which stated that Share members could buy 2 tickets on the Thursday. It took two further days for the "error " to be corrected. Today's performance seems another unreal situation.
@AttitudeEra , that's an interesting post there. How on earth did you view some of the parts you mention?
How did you see someone get hung up on for instance? Are you an insider? As surely you wouldn't have been allowed in the "nerve centre" where such call was handled?
473 tickets in 15mins sounds a high turn over..were there really 473 available do we think? Or was that claimed as it's closeto 500, so they could state that they had already "forecast" that?
The idea someone mid purchase was told it was off, or to have a ticket taken back out of your hand is truly incredible scenes. I'm amazed that wouldn't lead to a ferocious argument!
I don't mind the amateurish bit. That's almost traditional. It's the cover up elements that gall with me.
Some of the process was sensible, some ok, some a little stupid and some totally indefensible.
Window 1 - Sensible - but stupidly long
Window 2 - Ok ish but probably unnecessary and could have been done in window 1
Window 3 (As planned/originally stated) Ok (There is a debate about whether 2 tickets per ST holder is fair, but for an allocation more than our regular attendance I think its justifiable)
Window 3 (As was) - Totally indefensible. No-one who bought a ticket in 1 or 2 expected to be able to get more and probably halved the number of tickets available in Window 4, which makes
Window 4 - Even more indefensible. Having a published statement (charter) that gives priority to those with a purchase history there is no excuse for not trying to fulfill this. Allowing 4 per person added salt to the wounds.
Window 4 (Selling) A little stupid. Everyone should have known that online would sell out quickly - if it worked. Would have made sense - as pointed out above - to have split so many tickets to in person, online, phone.
Apart from that all went pretty smoothly.
(And sorry - just needed to get that off my chest for closure)
What a shambles by the administration and booking office team....our team are in league 2 however our booking team are stuck in the dark ages.
@AttitudeEra Completely agree, 3 lines of sale was ridiculous, especially with one of them being online. Also, they saw the queue outside, why not limit it to 2 per person to try and spread them out. I think the objective was simply to shift the remaining tickets as quickly as possible, so....job done!
@Malone sorry I must say that the phone call part was hearsay, although hearsay about 10 seconds after seeing the person being allegedly hung up on. I simply asked the person what had happened and it was around this time that all the complaints started coming in through the various social media channels.
Amateurish is fine but just say, 'we're gonna stick one poor dude at a ticket window, it's going to open at 10am, and he'll have half the tickets in a pile. The other half will go online at 10am and will be sold out before the first guy in the queue has even got his cash out'.
That's still amateurish, but people would have known where they stood. I do feel for the people in the queue who felt (possibly quite rightly) that they had MORE of a chance of getting a ticket if they turned up at 7am in the cold. Pensioners who've clearly been season ticket holders in the past, who I've seen sitting freezing at Carlisle and at Yeovil. The ones who seem to be there even on a Tuesday evening in December when some idiot has scheduled us away to Accrington and the trains aren't running but they've somehow got themselves there with their blanket and their memory of what the score was in the same fixture in 1992 and in what minute the winning goal was scored. People who still go to all the games but maybe can't afford a season ticket anymore or the commitment as there's not always a bus, or they don't drive anymore.
In fact they had LESS of a chance than I would have had lying in bed at 10am with two of three devices refreshing. To add further insult, someone forgot to set the limit to 4 online, as a guy at AP on an iPhone this morning showed me 20 tickets in his basket. He quite rightly removed them and bought the 2 he wanted but it just goes to show.
@Doob yeah, even just phone and in person. Everyone has a chance that way. Online killed it.
@AttitudeEra Video killed the radio star, although I should add it wasn't that cold at Yeovil this season.
No but that's the first time I've ever been there in daylight!
Fascinating posts by @AttitudeEra there. To me the whole point of having ownership by the fans is to get people with real relevant expertise from the outside world to get onto the board and start contributing their knowledge for free to the club they're passionate about. A true democratically-run club with open, transparent elections hoovering up the talent among the fan base could really see WWFC motor ahead. I do hope we won't see the same closed-shop candidates at the next elections but instead a proper search through the fan base to bring some real competition in the elections and consequently some fresh skills and ideas to the club. That's how we make sure we don't end up in a similar situation to this once again.
And as a side note, have London Welsh never had an issue with oversubscribed matches? What's the point of trumpeting the appointment of a general manager with a background at a prestigious sporting club if the first big decision he oversees ends up like this?!
Would you be interested @AttitudeEra in acting in an advisory role in the event that a similar situation arose in future - like next week perhaps? Or is such advice superfluous following the huge debate on this thread culminating, somewhat belatedly, in your very interesting comments and suggestions based on your own business experience?
@bookertease a good summary I think. Particularly your first point about the cover up. One thing I hoped would disappear when we became supporter owned was the Club treating us as if we were stupid and should be grateful for anything. Unfortunately this episode suggeats otherwise.
I would like to make a positive point about the people on the phones who were helpful and patient during what must have been a stressful week.
Let's enjoy Saturday and calmly suggest improvements for the replay/5th round allocation
@AttitudeEra one of the most seNibley posts ever to hit the gasroom. Anyone here xmould of work out that just 470 tickets would sell within minutes if sold via 3 options...they should of scrapped online when so few were left to respect everyone and give the less tech save generation a realistic chance. Phone and queue would of given everyone and equal chance. To have a large queue and sell via online was always going to lead to tears......imagine queuing in tesco for a super cheap tv....seeing 470 sat there and them wheeling them all away for an online order....theread would be a riot.
Ps there were never 470 odd tickets, was it @DublinChairboy who said when he purchased the previous day they had said less than 450 were left at the point?
@aloysius interesting news about London Welsh this week.
They should have just put 1/3 of the tickets aside for each sale option, removing the online would punish the young generation just as including it does the old
Of course I am willing to offer any expertise as and when, although let's be honest, this sort of situation is a once in a blue moon kind of thing, and is mainly rooted in the limitations our limited staffing infrastructure imposes, and secondly, the lack of any tangible form of membership scheme akin to the 'Blues Card', which, although pointless on the whole, at least offered a basic level of CRM knowledge.
it doesn't seem too hard to simply issue points to every member....as Reading do...
Pointless more in that there was no real benefit to having one for 99% of the year, and the general fan base resented having to answer 100 questions in order to buy a ticket.
When the Trust took over the club, and started taking on board suggestions from the wider base of supporters, one cost which was obviously scrapped was the (at the time very detailed) CRM infrastructure. For the first time in ages supporters were able to buy tickets in cash at a window on the day of the match without an address/postcode etc. A good thing for the convenience of those supporters, but not so good when they're trying to work out who's been to which match etc.
The same goes for the current online system. Buying tickets on it is actually very easy, it's reasonably customer friendly (I do resent the 'automatic' £1 donation to the club, I'll donate as and when I choose to thank you very much!). But I don't think it's linked in any way to our database of supporters, so someone would have to manually go through and link email addresses to accounts on the club database.
So while the club MAY have liked to have said, window 4, anyone who's attended 3 or more games this season, it's very possible that they wouldn't have had a clue if you actually had or not.
In the days of tickets being 'loaded' onto your Blues Card, yes, they would. But now, if I had bought one ticket for Luton for myself and my partner online, she had bought us two tickets for Morecambe at home in cash on the day of the game, and we had each separately purchased a ticket in advance in person for the Col U game, how many Spurs tickets would we have been entitled to? And how long would they have had to spend working it out?
So failing that you obviously just go with a 33/33/33 or 50/50 split across online/physical/phone, and be done with it.
Obviously one each for season ticket holders and investors.
then you could
a) if there is one, announce that anyone that attends the next home game (in this case Luton) is priority B (hand a voucher at turnstile to non STH)
or
b) at random matches in say Sept, Oct and November, hand a voucher to home supporters, allocate first to those with all three, then two etc.
Wont be entirely fair as they may happen to be the one game a season you didn't get to but better than general sale as now.
There are some more (8) Box tickets on StubHub. A bit lumpy at £100 each. Just passing on the info.
Viewing only (no hospitality or food) but access to a private bar.
I wouldn't pay it but if there is some that HAS to be there.....
I have one ticket spare. If you want it you can message me on Twitter @SouthCroydon63
You would have to meet me in London for collection.
Does anyone know why the online allowance was set at 4, when everything else was 1 or 2 (or 1+1)?
The whole of general sale was 4 each, phone, online and at the ground
@StrongestTeam It was fear of that scenario that tipped the balance for me between buying last week or leaving it to this and trying to get upper tier tickets. I wanted to leave plenty of time for the tickets to arrive in the mail.
I don't live near Wycombe and collection from Adams Park this week would not have been an option. After turning up to collect tickets at Villa Park last year and being told they didn't have any with my name on I didn't want to risk it: at Villa I was able to buy more, but clearly no option for that at White Hart Lane.
Couldn't see it stuck at 699 posts any longer!
It's pleasing that the number of views of this thread is larger than the attendance will be tomorrow.
How long will the ticket fiasco thread be if we get through to the next round...?
What's 15% of the capacity of Accrington?