Empty Seats

This is something that the Supporter Experience Working Group should be all over. And The Cherries Trust.
 
I was a poorly boy yesterday and at about 3pm I decided it was going to be better if I stayed at home.

Phoned the ticket office and was on hold for 20 minutes, with my place being "number 5" the whole time. WTF????

So I emailed to let them know my seat was going spare, got a prompt reply telling me they'll get back to me in 2 working days.

That's good.


Grrrr.....................

I emailed the TO a week ago to say my 2STs are available for resell for the QPR game. No reply. Called the TO 2 hours before the game and got the "TO is now closed" message.

Why can't they just provide a resale site ?
Twickets wasn't perfect but at least it worked.
 
E-mail the club about a month before you are travelling and ask if you can be put on the list for International supporters wanting to see a game. I did this and got two tickets to watch us play Arsenal. Lost 1-2

Who did you email? I've emailed the ticket office twice and am still awaiting a reply over a week later, despite their autoreply saying they would answer within 48 hours. Cheers.
 
I was a poorly boy yesterday and at about 3pm I decided it was going to be better if I stayed at home.

Phoned the ticket office and was on hold for 20 minutes, with my place being "number 5" the whole time. WTF????

So I emailed to let them know my seat was going spare, got a prompt reply telling me they'll get back to me in 2 working days.

That's good.


Grrrr.....................
Fu@king brilliant.....:ROFLMAO:
 
You reckon that the TO is immune from any shortages caused by the Pandemic? That could be one reason.

Might not be, but don't assume!
I think if you were being decent enough to inform the ticket office that you were unable to attend the game, you could at least expect somebody to answer the bloody phone in a reasonably prompt manner.

If the line is being clogged with general ticketing enquiries ( as I suspect it is ) then maybe they could set up a specific number for the exclusive purpose of registering your non-attendance. I can understand people who are doing the decent thing eventually getting bored with endlessly waiting and simply hanging up, as in this case.

Unfortunately emails tend to be handled on a "when we get around to it" basis, so for time critical instances such as registering the sudden availability of your ticket, an exclusive hotline for this purpose could be useful.

Better still and low on human resources would be to set up some kind of online registration for ticket holders to inform the club that they cannot attend and that their seat has become available. The tickets registered there can go straight to general sale.
 
To be fair, having just watched the highlights, almost the entire block (MS/SS corner) was empty... So this isn't just empty seats from people not turning up surely... An entire block?!?!?!
Yes agree, just played the game back on TV, there is an astonishing amount of empty seats in those areas, wow! No way it's just no shows given the positions in the ground.
 
Friend of mine was a Man City ST holder. There were some conditions about attending. Forget exact details but you couldn't just not turn up game after game.
 
Happily give back my ST seat ticket if can’t get to games or my wife’s ticket (she isn’t very well at present). Just need a simple process that doesn’t involve a lot of hassle.

Not that bothered about getting money back given I paid for the ST up front.

I don’t think it’s right to penalise ST for not going regularly if there are circumstances that prevent attendance especially for exiles. ST have shown loyalty to the club so works both ways

Note that I have advised my seats would be free for games before and often they weren’t sold on despite having a sell out
 
They could do a lot worse than employ a market research team to get involved to establish what is and what isn't known, when it comes to process... Actually, if money is an issue, it would literally take the TO one afternoon to knock up a simple survey in google forms (or any number of survey design tools) and send it to every one of the 1000s of fans on their database... I think someone said the club had over 100k names on the database so working on the usual 10% return from such things... that is a sizeable amount of user data to work on...

I work in user research and understand the power of user/customer feedback/interaction... It's amazing what assumptions are made by companies about their customer(fan) base, and they have no idea they are making these assumptions...

I'd imagine the club would be surprised to discover that the fan base don't just emerge from the turf at Kings Park with knowledge of every discussion that happened in the ticket office.
 
Note that I have advised my seats would be free for games before and often they weren’t sold on despite having a sell out

.. and this is why everyone is moaning about the the current process... Seats available but for whatever reason, not being sold...

Now there are many factors that could have resulted in seats not being sold on, late notice etc. but as has been mentioned above, you'll only do it once and get fed up with waiting on the phone or a stock email to say you'll be dealt with in 48 hrs, before you just don't bother...

The portal needs to offer a slick, easy process for ST holders to be able to offer their ST back to the club with one click and a confirmation. It's astonishing that after so long and 5 yrs of PL football we still have a shocking ticketing set up...

The ticketing portal seems to have advanced in some areas (being able to see views from DC seats now) but gone very much downhill and looking sh*t in other areas...

Is it me or have they completely removed the ability to see when away games are going on sale and to what points levels, and all info on number of seats available etc...? Seems there is only an info page on home games now... You just get an error message when you click on something you can't access...
 
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Difficult for anyone to suggest that the ticketing situation is working 100%.

I drop in here occasionally when taking breaks from work, but if some people feel so strongly then there must be some who have the time to take a wander down to the TO and ask if they can volunteer to help.

When I get to the point of being newly retired in a few years, and am annoying the wife, I could not think of much better than giving back to the club by creating our own ST Vs No ticket swap shop. It might not be able to deal with last minute non attendance but, trotting into the club every say Monday with a list of ST holders who are on holiday and a list of people who have agreed to the purchase doesn't seem too hard, and if there is any complexity I am sure there are lots of clever fellow supporters that would help with setting it up. In fact, if the club enabled the resales, then there would be enough to give back some to the ST and a commission that gave beer money for someone.

In ideal world we would have a bigger stadium and all the capability in the TO to do everything we need. But nothing stopping us helping to provide the service?
 
When I retired about 6 years ago I offered my services as a volunteer. To my surprise they asked me to work on reception. I must have done about 20 different days there over about 6 months then they got 2 people job sharing and I never got asked again or in fact thanked for what I had done. I would happily help out in the ticket office, in fact that was where I thought I would be. When I asked about that again I was told in no uncertain terms that they didn’t need any help!
 
I wonder if any pf the groups that work with the club have ever asked why are so rigid with our ticketing each year... You hear so many stories of other clubs offering some really innovative solutions to keeping ST holders.

I know we dont really have an issue with selling out, but we certainly do have an issue with keeping those that bought the tickets in the ground...

  1. With the introduction of scan entry systems, there is no reason why ST holders cannot easily cancel their tickets for any game they choose, and that doesn't mean engaging in an email or phone conversation with the ticket office. It should be able to be done online with one click. Offer £10 off next year's ST for every time you give up your seat, to a maximum of £100 off next year's ST
  2. Offer 1 year breaks for ST holders. We all know it can be hard to stump up the cash for a ST, so offer people the option to pause their ST for a year. Also with it so hard to jump back in, many folk might be just keeping hold of their tickets, regardless of their intent on using it... It might be really tough one year to get to the ground by it's worth paying the £500 as they've had the ST for years... The club can then resell 1 year STs that are returned
  3. On top of the previous point, if anyone needs a second year, they can but at a £100 holding fee, for example... A lot cheaper than buying at full price and not using it, and offers said ST holder the peace of mind that they can have it back the following year again...
Just 3 simple ideas... which could go a long way to getting more people in...

These are all great ideas. Personally, I think there's an easy "tweak" which could be made in this era of e-ticketing, and it shifts the onus onto the ST holder.
Fan X buys his or her season ticket. The season ticket GUARANTEES their seat will be available for all scheduled league fixtures, BUT - a timed window opens, during which Fan X must "claim" or "activate" (if the ST is produced electronically) his/her ticket, or say "not required". If the ST holder takes no action, the seat is released for general sale. The sooner Fan X states " not required", they could be refunded a percentage of the ticket value, which decreases as time passes until the window closes. The window to make their claim could close, say 2 weeks before matchday, and the seat can then be offered in the general sale in the days remaining. I know the issue of refunds could be contentious with some, but it would incentivise the ST holder to do the decent thing and release the seat. Should be fairly simple in this day and age.
 
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So are we still using Twickets...? Seems to be set up as a portal for us, but not one ticket found for any of our games...

The problem is that you can't just lump something new out there and expect it to be a success. The TO need to work at it, market the sh*t out of it at games, social media, email, everywhere and make a real thing of it for a long time, to change people's thought process of not being bothered, and to educate fans on its benefits and uses...

... and then the question needs to be asked as to why bother introducing a 3rd party to do something that could be better served by keeping it in-house by building it into the ticketing site...

Getting fans continually through turnstiles is part of the foundations to running a successful club... So skimming on funds to do this seems ludicrous... Yes it is big money to develop Apps and good, usable websites, but in the grand scheme of things, it's pennies
 
So are we still using Twickets...? Seems to be set up as a portal for us, but not one ticket found for any of our games...

The problem is that you can't just lump something new out there and expect it to be a success. The TO need to work at it, market the sh*t out of it at games, social media, email, everywhere and make a real thing of it for a long time, to change people's thought process of not being bothered, and to educate fans on its benefits and uses...

... and then the question needs to be asked as to why bother introducing a 3rd party to do something that could be better served by keeping it in-house by building it into the ticketing site...

Getting fans continually through turnstiles is part of the foundations to running a successful club... So skimming on funds to do this seems ludicrous... Yes it is big money to develop Apps and good, usable websites, but in the grand scheme of things, it's pennies

In this era of online ticketing, e-tickets, barcodes, smartphones, apps and digital technology, there's a very strong argument that there is actually no need at all for the Ticket Office. Aside from putting printed tickets in envelopes, what do they actually do?
Answer phone calls? No
Reply to emails? No
Any idea, anyone?
 

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