Upgrading Season Tickets on a match by match basis....

[ShanklySeagull]

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere but I'm disappointed with the clubs new stance on upgrading seats.

I have three season tickets in the East Upper as I've always taken my daughter and son along. At the start of this season my son got a Saturday job which meant he couldn't always get to the games so I'd use the opportunity of the spare seat to upgrade the U18/Student rate of my sons seat and pay the remaining £17 and upgrade it to an adult seat to bring friends along for the day.

When I did this for the Birmingham game last week I was informed by the ticket office that upgrades are now capped to a maximum of 6 per season and I'd now used three of these. The stance from the ticket office was basically "if your son can't really get to games you ought to be buying the seat as an adult season ticket and then you won't have this problem".

I have no intention of doing this - for starters when he gets messed about with his shifts he can make a few of the games - at which point I'd be having to pay full rate for him as a student, and in a years time he could be off to University and then he may not be able to get back for matches so for the short term things will stay as they are but this policy is mad.

Once I reach the sixth upgrade the seat will just sit unused on a Saturday (my younger daughters friends aren't really interested in football like her) so the club gets no benefit from upgrade fees on the seat or a share of the food and drink revenue that visitor would spend with the club on match day.

I just can't see the sense in this policy - why would the club not want the extra revenue, plus the opportunity to encourage occasional visitors to become future fans in their own right? I know the club supposedly scrutinise their commercial ticketing policy closely but PB needs to review this one as its plain daft

 

[Beach Hut]

I am going to have this problem next season with youngest going to Uni and therefore becomes an U21 but will be away quite a lot of the time.

May think this through and perhaps just upgrade to adult so someone else can use it.

 

[WATFORD zero]

There was quite a large thread on this some time ago and i think the result was that the club didn't want people effectively 'reserving' a seat on a child/student/oap rate and then only paying full price on the matches they go to. ie going to 17 of the 23 home matches, upgrading each time and therefor saving themselves over 100 quid on the full price of the season ticket.

 

[Bozza]

There was a thread on this a few weeks ago here. It's clearly a new policy.

I would imagine the club have analysed how often upgrades happen and found that, in some cases, it happens a lot.

I would then assume the reckoning is that 6 is a reasonable number of upgrades to happen, being a quarter of a season and that by capping this, then some people will then be forced into buying a full priced ticket. There will clearly be some exceptions where some people won't or can't pay full price. If the upgrade route is blocked then they won't come at all, and the club loses that incremental income.

I have some sympathy with the club. My daughter doesn't live with me so whether she can use her season ticket depends on how fixtures fall with when she is with me. I have a friend who will often be interested in her ticket if not being used, as is the case today. He then gets entry to the WSU for c£15 (I don't on charge him anything for what I've already paid) which is less than half what it would cost him to buy a WSU ticket from the club.

If this cap was in place last season he simply wouldn't have bothered. I suspect this season, when the cap is reached, he will be more inclined to pay full price.

The club have clearly decided imposing the cap is going to be revenue positive, despite cases such as your own.

 

[spongy]

Is there a limit on downgrading?

So have an adult ticket and downgrade when he can make a game?

 

[Beach Hut]

Is it stated very clearly when they announce renewals this rule or buried in the small print as I am inclined to just get an adult ticket as opposed to U21 ?

 

[atomised]

Wasn't sure you could downgrade, certainly don't think you'd get the rebate for doing so.

 

[Beach Hut]

Wasn't sure you could downgrade, certainly don't think you'd get the rebate for doing so.

I would agree, I cannot see for one minute you would get a refund

 

[8ace]

Don't bother upgrading then, just go thru the gate on the child's ticket.

 

[Vegas Seagull]

Stop whingeing, at your current rate it will get you to 36 games before you have an issue, will you be grumpy if you ONLY get 6 pressies for Xmas?

 

[Bozza]

Is it stated very clearly when they announce renewals this rule or buried in the small print as I am inclined to just get an adult ticket as opposed to U21 ?

It's not mentioned at all in the Club Charter, no, which is here (section 6.11): http://www.seagulls.co.uk/documents/club-charter-1516-updated229-2741740.pdf

However I recall the last time a change like this was imposed, on the cost of a replacement card I believe, it was pointed out that the change went agains the Club's Charter which was then automagically updated. As much as I applaud the club for much of what they do, I think that if a change of policy can be applied to the Club Charter retrospectively, no announcement is made to alert supporters and the document itself contains no version control then the document is really not worth very much at all.

(On the subject of replacement cards, the Club Charter currently says "Lost or stolen cards may be replaced at a charge of £15". Didn't that get bumped up to £25 or more?)

 

[Bozza]

(On the subject of replacement cards, the Club Charter currently says "Lost or stolen cards may be replaced at a charge of £15". Didn't that get bumped up to £25 or more?)

Yep - quoted as £25 on the ticketing site:

I've lost my smartcard/season ticket card/ticket. How can I still get in to watch the match?
Contact the ticket office in advance or at the Amex and a replacement paper ticket can be purchased at the non-refundable price of £5. Replacement Smartcards can be purchased at the non-refundable price of £25.

 

[Beach Hut]

Don't bother upgrading then, just go thru the gate on the child's ticket.

Not as simple as it is colour coded and I have seen people picked up going into WSU and told to go to the ticket office to upgrade

 

[Marshy]

I do this for my 9 year old boy as I don't take
Him too evening games... And then upgrade and take a friend of my older lads.
Surely the club will just lose money ? As I won't bother taking anyone else if I'm prevented from upgrading after 6

 

[Bozza]

I'm going to add one more thing to this...

The change would suggest that the club believe, rightly or wrongly, that a lot of people are getting an Albion match day experience on the cheap. This clearly comes back to the other long-running thread on match day ticket prices, sales of match day tickets and incremental revenue. I would imagine when this was discussed at the Amex terms like "devaluing the Albion product" were used, which is probably right. If people are regularly getting a ticket for £15 or so, then they are going to be far less inclined to pay c£30, which is the level Albion have set for a one-off ticket (yes, it can rise to £42 in places).

However part of the problem around this is self-inflicted by the club. The old ticketing system used to charge far more for an upgrade. I think the charge was the difference between the prorated season ticket price and the full match day price for the seat. My daughter's season ticket works out at just over a tenner a game, and the upgrade cost was more like £20. This season it would be a bit more again. This feels like a sensible way to price these upgrades and it means the club gets full value for the seat.

For whatever reason the replacement ticketing system doesn't seem to work like that and I can only assume it can't be made to simply work like that as why on earth would the club accept a lesser price for the upgrade than they used to?

 

[bluenitsuj]

Yep - quoted as £25 on the ticketing site:

I've lost my smartcard/season ticket card/ticket. How can I still get in to watch the match?
Contact the ticket office in advance or at the Amex and a replacement paper ticket can be purchased at the non-refundable price of £5. Replacement Smartcards can be purchased at the non-refundable price of £25.

I foolishly lost my season ticket after the game last week and paid £15 for a replacement this week.

 

[Bozza]

I foolishly lost my season ticket after the game last week and paid £15 for a replacement this week.

Fair enough. It certainly had gone up to £25 previously...

https://nortr3nixy.nimpr.uk/showthread.php?262070-*RANT*-Replacement-Smartcard-cost
https://nortr3nixy.nimpr.uk/showthread.php?268297-Season-Ticket-Replacement

 

[alfredmizen]

Fair enough. It certainly had gone up to £25 previously...

https://nortr3nixy.nimpr.uk/showthread.php?262070-*RANT*-Replacement-Smartcard-cost
https://nortr3nixy.nimpr.uk/showthread.php?268297-Season-Ticket-Replacement

thats the one that would really annoy me, i dont have such an issue with the upgrading rule, but £25 or even £15 is a blatant piss take.

 

[8ace]

I would then assume the reckoning is that 6 is a reasonable number of upgrades to happen, being a quarter of a season and that by capping this, then some people will then be forced into buying a full priced ticket. There will clearly be some exceptions where some people won't or can't pay full price. If the upgrade route is blocked then they won't come at all, and the club loses that incremental income.

6 is a reasonable number when the fixtures come out, by the time they've finished dicking around rearranging games for Sky and the plethora of other stupid reasons it should be more than that. There should be an additional free upgrade for each evening game that was originally a 3pm k.o.

 

[Return of the Rev]

Don't bother upgrading then, just go thru the gate on the child's ticket.

You can't say that!