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Ticketing and organisational issues

Reading through all the comments regarding our ticketing operation and the issues outlined by @micra during his Saturday visitation, are we;-

1) Just short of staff and if so why?
Or
2) Is it that we have taken our eye off the ball here?

If 1) is the case and it is down to the fact that we cannot afford to employ more staff, then I am sure that a number of us on the Gasroom would offer their services on a voluntary basis.

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Comments

  • Pretty sure they were hiring some people for this a month or two back, there were posts about it on Twitter. But it takes time to find the right people and train them in the right way.

  • Yes but it's not only that. The online ticket website won't let me log on to buy tickets, it says my password is wrong then it says my email address is wrong. When I explain this to the ticket office they don't have an answer. So I buy them over the phone. My mate goes to pick them up yesterday and all the staff have gone to the match. So a wasted journey for him. Surely they could have put this on the website. The club wNt more fans to go to games but getting tickets is a shambles.

  • Looks like the club have already issued an email apologising and saying if you paid for tier 2 but ended up in tier 3 fill a form out and get a credit to your account.

    I'd suggest for what was possibly £2.50 difference with rock bottom prices, no one will do so, but good on the club for offering.

  • If WWFC really want to grow our fanbase to 7000-8000 home fans per game and take large away followings, you simply have to make access to tickets as easy as possible.

    WWFC need to accept all payment methods, provide tickets either through post, email, phone wallet and collection. They need to be clear when they cannot hold up there end of the bargain e.g. posting tickets out. They need to allow people to buy a ticket and remain anonymous.

    The club shop is woefully understocked with people willing to spend cash.

    The food is way too expensive in the ground - things like bovril and chips are the stable requirement at every club up and down the land but we have opted out of both, one is back, let's hope the chips return to.

    Tickets are really expensive (adult and teenage child is £45 in the Frank Adams) and equally difficult to just buy anonymously for the casual fan.

    The club has done a lot of things right and have certainly improved in a lot of areas but at the end of the day the foundations of a successful football business is selling tickets, merchandise and food on a matchday at a reasonable price and making them readily accessible. At this stage they are way behind on that front.

    I really hope they can deliver before the casual fans, fairweather supporters etc just give up!

  • Yes good on Rob for getting a response out there quickly. Maybe we should give Rob and the team time to bed in the new applications and processes as he points out. I am sure everything he and his team are trying to do for us is in good faith and it is good that he responds to feedback in such a positive manner.

    Come on you Chairboys!!!

  • @Blue_since_1990 said:
    Reading through all the comments regarding our ticketing operation and the issues outlined by @micra during his Saturday visitation, are we;-

    1) Just short of staff and if so why?
    Or
    2) Is it that we have taken our eye off the ball here?

    If 1) is the case and it is down to the fact that we cannot afford to employ more staff, then I am sure that a number of us on the Gasroom would offer their services on a voluntary basis.

    Every small to medium sized business is currently short of staff. Every business owner i know is struggling to find, then train, then keep employees.
    We're also currently operating without a club secretary, so there's a least one missing link in the chain of command. I don't know what exactly a club secs roles would have been last night, but the absence of one can't be helping.

  • I see they've not given a post option for Shrewsbury.
    Probably a good call!

  • Re: staff shortages; yes, lots of shortages everywhere. However, the club are not being proactive in recruiting - I, and at least one other person I know of, have sent in job applications for the various roles and not received even an acknowledgment of receipt of said application, let alone an interview, rejection or job offer. If the club won't even respond to people wanting to work for them, then blaming staff shortages is quite frankly ridiculous.

  • I love chips. But they are not a stable (staple?) requirement at a football ground.

    There were none last night at the Etihad and they seem to be disappearing from grounds all over the country. I suspect having vats of flammable fat causes all sorts of issues with untrained staff and it’s becoming seen as not worth the hassle.

    Agree that the club shop (especially online) is a bit thin on stock but I suspect all will change if / when the O’Neills contract ends.

    I do think we need to remember that our club, behind the scenes, has been under-invested in for years, and fixing absolutely everything is going to take a while.

  • Typing too quickly - staple, indeed! Agree that buying merchandise, chips, bovril etc is not the be all and end all. Most people will do with out. Tickets though is the most fundamental thing going.

    The funny thing is the ticketing didn't really need fixing did it? I cannot really remember ever having issues with getting tickets posted to you?

    I do remember issues collecting at the ground but that was when the tickets were stuck in traffic but they were all printed out and enveloped up already. So when they did arrive, they were distributed quickly and everyone got in quickly.

    If all WWFC staff were at the ground to watch the game, then it would have been nice if they perhaps came round and helped? There were enough tweets and facebook posts that would have alerted them, perhaps they offered and City refused?

  • @arnos_grove said:
    I love chips. But they are not a stable (staple?) requirement at a football ground.

    There were none last night at the Etihad and they seem to be disappearing from grounds all over the country. I suspect having vats of flammable fat causes all sorts of issues with untrained staff and it’s becoming seen as not worth the hassle.

    Agree that the club shop (especially online) is a bit thin on stock but I suspect all will change if / when the O’Neills contract ends.

    I do think we need to remember that our club, behind the scenes, has been under-invested in for years, and fixing absolutely everything is going to take a while.

    Lots of the food stalls around the perimeter bit of the stadium were serving chips, and very nice they were too

  • You could get chips from the food trucks at Adams Park on Saturday too.

  • @arnos_grove , bigger clubs don't seem to do chips. I think it's more the cooking time and facilities needed seem to make them cost inefficient.
    Doesn't explain how little vans outside seem to make it work, but probably just a numbers game, as imagine trying to do chips to 1,000s of people at half time etc

    Hadn't realised the Etihad was cashless. No problem, but hadn't remembered reading that when the club are usually great mentioning where and when such things occur.

    Shrewsbury for instance strictly a cash only job!

  • @drcongo said:
    You could get chips from the food trucks at Adams Park on Saturday too.

    Or eat chips at home around 1pm to line your stomach for the Real Ale you cannot get for all the queues...

  • edited September 2021

    The club shop is still a work in progress, but credit to them for finally stocking baseball caps which fit gigantic heads (so I'm told... ?).

  • The sale of tickets are the core of the business. I paid £1.50 for my Man City tickets to be posted but they obviously never were. Spent most of my time at the Charlton game trying to make sense with what was happening. No other away tickets on sale then the turnstile blocked my season ticket. Given I had guests with me it was totally unsatisfactory.

    Rob Couhig has sent round a very nice apologetic letter today but these problems must not be repeated. Selling & distributing 3,000 tickets for an away game collapsed the system. Imagine we draw Arsenal or Man United away in the FA Cup 3rd Round? We could claim an allocation up to 9,000 tickets.

    I think there is a deeper malaise here. It runs throughout British industry currently. It’s an obsession with everything being digital and run by computer systems. Being in sales you cannot put a price on building personal relationships. The first thing I’d have done when the City game was drawn out of the hat would have been to nip up to Manchester for the day, inspect the ground layout and work out how best to distribute the tickets. In my view, tier 1 should have been a singing section with tier 2 for those who preferred to sit down (extending to tier 3 should there be enough demand).

    Wycombe must start selling tickets far in advance of what happens now. To give an example, when Oxford United were in the Conference they targeted the home game with Woking on Boxing Day as a special “sell out the ground” game. Tickets went on sale & the game was promoted from the start of the season. Guess what? They ended up with a 12,500 sell-out. Why don’t WW do that with the Cambridge game on Boxing Day BEFORE people start making other arrangements that day. Make Adams Park THE place to be on Boxing Day.

    Finally, we are now excluding a significant number of older supporters who don’t have the internet & are not tech-savvy. Talking to a couple of recent retirees at cricket in August they were bemoaning the fact that the BFP doesn’t cover sport other than WW anymore. How can they find out what’s going on when they don’t have the internet? It’s an important issue as WW want to be as inclusive a club as possible but are pushing some people away.

    I like the Couhigs and am very grateful for what they’re doing for WW. But we must be careful not to drive away as many existing supporters as we work hard to encourage new fans. Organisation, accessibility and efficiency are key. We had major problems with the pre-season friendly with Leicester & now with Man City. I’d be very happy to help the club if required but we cannot allow these problems to be repeated.

  • My experience for what it's worth.

    3 of us going, I decided to collect my ticket, the other two decided post was the way to go.
    Monday collected mine. Asked if I could collect my pal's as they had not arrived. Told nope they were in the post not to worry. Tuesday no tickets. So told pick them up South Stand ticket office. Cool
    Arrived early one window open. Big queue. Waited about 45 minutes as 2 other windows opened. No tickets. So got given 2 new ones to replace the 'missing 2'. These were in L3 now, I was in L1. Queued again to swap my L1 to an L3.
    All in all about 70 minutes. Not seated where we paid to sit. Tickets have still not arrived today. Were they ever sent?

    All in all a pretty poor show by Wycombe and Man City.

  • At least we can pay on the night at Shrews!

  • @LX1 said:
    At least we can pay on the night at Shrews!

    Cash only though...which feels very old school!

  • Ah yes noted. Nearly came a cropper in a taxi last night before he decided he did have a card machine after all!

  • @LX1 said:
    Ah yes noted. Nearly came a cropper in a taxi last night before he decided he did have a card machine after all!

    Yes I was waving a tenner around before before realising!

  • Wonder what has happened to all the missing tickets? Can’t believe the club simply didn’t send them and pocket the postage charge so where did they go? Last night was chaos at the ticket pick up point.
    The ‘just stand and shake my head’ moment for me was the City man in a suit seeing a problem was unfolding and deciding to sort it out by adding barriers to wind the queue around and hide the problem. If he’d have been part of a team I managed he’d be looking for a new job this morning.

  • Re the chips at Adams Park: I understand all the cooking is being done centrally now and they ferry the food to the various outlets inside the ground. That's why you don't see anyone cooking in the kiosks. Chips don't transfer well...

  • But what a profit opportunity, especially if they get the spuds in themselves.

    A 25kg sack of potatoes is about £15 and could probably generate £300 in revenue.

    Let each outlet have a small fryer and deliver them with the centrally ‘cooked’ burgers.

    My daughter used to get chips and a choccie bar every game and enjoyed going with the cash, working out the change etc. Total spent by her so far this year? Zero.

  • Didn't say it was a good idea, just how they're doing it. Can see how such a rationalisation of resources might make sense in the current environment where getting hold of suitable staff is apparently so difficult.

  • Seems very odd. Every takeaway restaurant that does chips manage to do mobile chips, I shall be driving mine home with a nice bit of battered cod tomorrow night. Maybe somehow they know to travel better if the customer is carrying them rather than just being moved between outlets

  • edited September 2021

    If you're not in the digital age by now, then you're probably next to value-less to a company anyway, so not worth chasing.

    As has been mentioned by others on the post, every other industry has gone almost fully paperless outside of buying or picking up tickets from a venue- I can't remember the last time I ordered tickets for anything online and then had the option to ask for them to be posted- that just seems a ridiculous waste of time, paper and money to me- as well as a glaringly obvious chance of things going wrong.

    I suspect the posting of the tickets is the biggest problem and should just be stopped. You either buy a virtual ticket online, or buy a physical ticket at the ground in person- either way the small barcode/QR code is the only thing that matters.

  • edited September 2021

    I was quite surprised to receive a physical ticket for a gig today. Paperless causes a lot less stress as it's one less thing to remember (much harder to forget your phone than a piece of paper / your wallet). Our system isn't up to scratch and needs improving, but there's no way we're going to go back now - and nor should we.

  • Bring back the little hot drinks trolleys that used to roll up and down concourses at half time in the good old days.

  • Can you get a ticket on the day at MK? Can’t get to Adams Park to pick up and don’t want to take a chance with WWFC forwarded on to MK etc.

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