[Albion] Carabao Cup Fourth Round: Charlton - 3rd allocation of tickets

[Bozza]

It’s the same as the stewarding fiasco after the Palace home match last year. Statement made with no apology in and basically said nothing. It’s what the club does these days. Never apologises or admits they were wrong/made a mistake. Like Bozza says it would be nice if they said sorry. It’s not like anyone is going to sue them for having to queue so there’s no liability at stake.

As I said last night, it's possible to use the word "sorry" without admitting fault or blame.

When a friend loses a relative, we say "sorry", but we're not 'fessing up that we had something to do with the death.

It's just simple and polite courtesy - it's not a sign of weakness.

 

[RandyWanger]

No accountability, always someone else to blame. Typical of modern management. Just hold your hand up and say you were too late to post them, give us more points as an apology and move on.
Mine were posted on the 13th, and arrived yesterday after I had left the house so had to cancel and queue for over an hour. I'm sure they went on sale in November.

 

[BNthree]

Also add in the tickets could and should have gone on sale a week earlier. Of all the 3rd round matches our tickets were the last on sale.

 

[BNthree]

As I said last night, it's possible to use the word "sorry" without admitting fault or blame.

When a friend loses a relative, we say "sorry", but we're not 'fessing up that we had something to do with the death.

It's just simple and polite courtesy - it's not a sign of weakness.

I’m in total agreement with you

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

No accountability, always someone else to blame. Typical of modern management. Just hold your hand up and say you were too late to post them, give us more points as an apology and move on.
Mine were posted on the 13th, and arrived yesterday after I had left the house so had to cancel and queue for over an hour. I'm sure they went on sale in November.

You want more priority over other fans as an apology ? WTF. The world has gone mad. How about just a sincerely worded apology ? Or isn’t there enough in that for you ?

 

[Grassman]

I have a lovely little story. I was at work yesterday and couldn’t get home before 4pm. I said to the good lady wife, let me know if a letter that looks like it contains tickets arrives. I hear nothing by 3.30pm and she goes out.
I email the ticket office and say my tickets haven’t arrived. They cancel the originals. I rush home and see the tickets on the table with “Surprise!” lovingly written on a bit of paper next to them.
I frantically email again and of course the reply is “sorry, already cancelled, please go to the ticket office to pick up new ones”. I arrive at 6.40pm. I get in at 8.10pm.
It’s just as well I love her.

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

That is a very clumsily-written statement. It doesn't read as though it was written by whoever normally puts this kind of thing together, nor does it seem to have been proof-read.

My other observation is that the word "sorry" is very obviously missing from that statement.

It's possible to use the word "sorry" without admitting any kind of blame, and it helps placate those who are upset by the events that led to the statement being published in the first place.

It's possible to express sorrow that a large number of supporters were inconvenienced tonight through no fault of their own. It's also possible to be sorry that some supporters missed the start of the game tonight. It's just a nice thing to say, isn't it?

Agree with this 100%

For his faults (and one of them is never admitting he / the club is in the wrong) Barber is a great CEO - and Paul C does a great job on the media side but I'm not sure who wrote this statement - as you say very clumsily written (rushed maybe?)

As you say, the word sorry is missing from it - a business can be sorry for events it didn't have control over (whether they did have control is another question)

Poor.

 

[RandyWanger]

You want more priority over other fans as an apology ? WTF. The world has gone mad. How about just a sincerely worded apology ? Or isn’t there enough in that for you ?

Guess you weren't in the queue and missed kick off then?

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Guess you weren't in the queue and missed kick off then?

No, I wasn’t. I have suffered inconvenience in life before though and not expected to be given something. Modern world, eh.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Also add in the tickets could and should have gone on sale a week earlier. Of all the 3rd round matches our tickets were the last on sale.

This is issue number one.

Issue number two is a simple lack of planning. The club were clearly trying to reduce the number of duplicates by hanging on till the day of the game to reorder them, but that meant many copies were still being printed, necessitating what was in effect a third queue of Brighton fans. And two hours isn't even enough to clear the nearly 1000 duplicates anyway. Club should have allowed duplicates to be ordered from Tuesday morning and allowed prints to be picked up at any time on game day from the main Charlton ticket office. This would have split the peak even if there were more overall tickets to hand out. I would have been quite happy to have left early, gone straight to Charlton, grabbed the ticket and walked to North Greenwich for pub and food (instead, my dinner consisted of a sausage roll and over priced Fosters and I was one of the lucky ones). This would have reduced the surge for people who could not get there until later, either due to work or coach arrival time.

 

[Guinness Boy]

No, I wasn’t. I have suffered inconvenience in life before though and not expected to be given something. Modern world, eh.

You should move to Japan. Apology slips given out for any trains that are too late to get people to work on time and if someone really cocks up they're round your house with a chocolate cake pronto.

 

[drew]

Also add in the tickets could and should have gone on sale a week earlier. Of all the 3rd round matches our tickets were the last on sale.

Does some of the delay relate to whether the match will be moved and/or televised and the fact the clubs have to agree pricing?

 

[Paulie Gualtieri]

I work in IT; please explain to me how to stop on email or attachment being forwarded. Thanks.

I’m going to put this down to quite possibility being pissed still and retract this claim. In the spirit of things I will actually apologise

In your experience are there controls that would allow for tickets to be hosted and only accessible with a paired mobile device?

 

[BNthree]

Does some of the delay relate to whether the match will be moved and/or televised and the fact the clubs have to agree pricing?

Not sure about the TV part but seems to be down to the clubs coming to an agreement on time, day, price etc. All the other matches were on sale roughly a week earlier so presumably the TV part wasn’t a factor.

 

[BNthree]

I’m going to put this down to quite possibility being pissed still and retract this claim. In the spirit of things I will actually apologise

In your experience are there controls that would allow for tickets to be hosted and only accessible with a paired mobile device?

It’s possible but to have that level of control it would probably require a custom app that would no doubt get lots of people complaining about. (I’m in networking/systems not mobile app coding)

 

[Springal]

I’m going to put this down to quite possibility being pissed still and retract this claim. In the spirit of things I will actually apologise

In your experience are there controls that would allow for tickets to be hosted and only accessible with a paired mobile device?

Basically what FIFA & UEFA use for tournaments now. You have an app, get allocated tickets but they don’t appear until you are near the gate then you get them over Bluetooth.

But wouldn’t work at scale due to the cost of the infrastructure for all 92 clubs to have it, fans wouldn’t have it etc

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

For gigs, festivals etc - historically you would get given a e-ticket with a QR code or similar. There is a huge fraud problem with people selling the same ticket multiple times, so much so a lot of sites are putting in security measures such as only releasing the tickets 24 hours before a gig or using horrible proprietary software meaning you can’t extract the code at all so the ticket cannot be passed on at all.

I guess the problem could be if Palace or Leeds sell out, QR / barcodes are shared around you get problems at the turnstiles

The gig measures you mention are as much to prevent touting as out-and-out fraud. I am aware there are fraud issues with some really big artists thought.

But print-at-home tickets exist at most clubs in the home end. I’m not aware of a “huge fraud problem with people selling the same ticket multiple times” at football.

 

[Luke93]

I’m going to put this down to quite possibility being pissed still and retract this claim. In the spirit of things I will actually apologise

In your experience are there controls that would allow for tickets to be hosted and only accessible with a paired mobile device?

I’m not an expert but I’m aware of how easy it is to use the same legitimate ticket on multiple devices owned by the same person. For example, one may own their current IPhone 13 but have older devices sitting in a draw. Same Apple ID etc. Can load the same ticket on each device that all perfectly legit.

I don’t think there’s any technology preventing this, unless you somehow get a ticket to read the device’s unique ID itself, but surely that’s too evasive and breaks laws? Also creates problems for legitimate ticket owners if they book tickets in advance and get a new device, gift a ticket as a present and so on.

You’d assume of course only the first one scanned will give access at the turnstiles. Others will then just chance their arm if a steward will let them in anyway or if the systems used at the turnstiles didn’t recognise the first ticket has already been scanned. The issue here isn’t just people trying to duplicate tickets, but also the risk of duplicates likely not working and causing crowding and aggro at the turnstiles.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

The gig measures you mention are as much to prevent touting as out-and-out fraud. I am aware there are fraud issues with some really big artists thought.

But print-at-home tickets exist at most clubs in the home end. I’m not aware of a “huge fraud problem with people selling the same ticket multiple times” at football.

Can people sell gig tickets multiple times ? I’m still trying to understand why people think football is different in some way.

 

[Crouch End Seagull]

Also add in the tickets could and should have gone on sale a week earlier. Of all the 3rd round matches our tickets were the last on sale.

Agree. Not sure if it was an issue really but surely the hierarchy system of season ticket holders, myalbion members, purchase history etc can occasionally be abandoned and tickets can just go on sale and therefore just sent out faster.