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Ticketmaster never ceases to amaze me. I bought tix to Frank Caliendo’s show in Birmingham and it was cancelled. On Friday, I received this email from Ticketmaster:
Hello, this is Ticketmaster Customer Service with an important alert for your upcoming event. Frank Caliendo, scheduled at BJCC Concert Hall on Friday, October 24, 2008, at 8:00PM, has been cancelled.
Your credit card will automatically be credited the ticket price and convenience charges, and should post to your account within 7 to 10 business days. Please note, the $3.20 per order processing fee and any ticketFast or UPS delivery charges are non-refundable.
If you have any questions, please contact us online at:
http://www.ticketmaster.com/h/asktm.html
Thank you for using Ticketmaster. We appreciate your business!
I love the last line: We appreciate your business! What service did they provide me? In my opinion, they just stole $3.20 from me and provided no service at all. Glad to see I’ll get my money back so quickly as well (note the sarcasm).
I know this isn’t news to many of you and I’m sorry you have to put up with it. There is something you can do about it. Stop going to events where Ticketmaster is the ticketing vendor and encourage your favorite venues, promoters, and artists to sign up with the Biscuit.
We’re back from the Southeastern Museums Conference today. SEMC is an annual event that pulls together museum directors and operators from the region and gives them the opportunity to share best practices and ideas with each other. They were a great crowd, and we had a very successful time introducing the Biscuit to them. A special shout out to Bob, Rachel, and Kimbelee from Sloss Furnaces - it’s always nice to see familiar faces at those events.
Today I read a great post by Shariar Amin on Subliminal Marketing. This got me thinking: isn’t it a bit ironic that we find it okay to splash product placements all over movies but the practice of flashing an image for 1/3000th of a second is outlawed? (By the way, Shariar’s post is not entirely factually accurate – for the full story on subliminal advertising check out snopes)
I remember earlier this year KFC got into hot waterwith one of their commercials promoting a new sandwich. At one point in the commercial a message flashed on the screen that said you could get the sandwich for free if you mentioned a secret code word while you were ordering. The ironic thing is, you would have had to have TiVo or some sort of DVR to rewind and find the hidden message. They did another spot where they hid a dollar bill in the lettuce on a sandwich. Of course, the mere word of mouth made the campaign wildy successful.
Maybe that’s the take away- by trying to be subliminal and getting busted, everyone will talk about your ad, and you’ll get the exposure you crave. We’re always looking for new and cool ways to spread the word about the Biscuit- so what do you think? Should we dabble into the subliminal?
Maybe we should be more subliminal than this....
I’ve gotta admit, I was a big fan of MMA before but since the launch of BattlePass my fandom has gone almost to the nuclear scale. So it was with great anticipation that I awaited this last weekend’s matchup between seasoned veteran Ken Shamrockand Internet phenom Kimbo Slice.
Only the fight didn’t happen. Hours before the fight Shamrock apparently suffered a cut and was not allowed to fight. his last minute replacement was a previously relatively unknown fighter named Seth Petruzelli.
Petruzeilli knocked him out in 14 seconds. Kimbo was supposed to be the best thing for MMA since, well, (forgive the pun here) sliced bread, but he suffered an embarrassing beatdown at the hands of a no-name. And now, there are allegations that the fight was supposed to be fixed. But before I get there, why don’t you watch the fight in it’s entirety? Seriously, it will only take 14 seconds. Go ahead.
Okay so Seth delivers a beatdown. But Seth isn’t used to the limelight. So naturally, when everyone and their mother wants to talk to the guy who beat Kimbo, our boy Seth tells too much:
“They didn’t want me to take him down, let’s just put it that way. It was worth my while to try to stand up and punch with him.”
Ouch. You can read the whole article here if you are interested, but this could be big trouble for ProElite. We’ll keep you posted. One of the great things about MMA is that to this point it has been about combat, performance, preparation, skill. this kind of shenanigan would put a black eye on the sport, but it would be nothing new. I mean, there have been empires (*cough cough WWE*) built on this type of tom-foolery. The BattlePass team will actually get to meet ProElite head of Operations Jeremy Lappen at Fight Promoter University V in November, so I’m anxious to get his take on this whole matter (away from what says to the media).
On a side note, I am now a HUGE fan of Gina Carano. Wowza.
*swoon*
The Biscuit Team (or at least a couple of us) are packing up and heading to Colorado Springs, CO this week for the Association of Railway Museums (ARM) Conference, where we will be hosting a seminar on automated ticketing and mingling with the hardcore railfans. We’ll be blogging from the event AND we’ve got some special news in store for later this week, so stay tuned.
- Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs
It’s been a while since we talked about BattlePass, our first product line extension in the history of the company. BattlePass is doing extremely well, with new MMA Promoter clients being added daily. We launched a myspace page shortly after we released the product, and quickly made “friends” with Dana White (head of UFC), Chuck Liddell, and many other icons of the sport.
Check out our myspace page by clicking here
Speaking of Liddell, did anyone see the fight this weekend?
ouch.
Next Up- Convenience Fees for Airlines?
March 3, 2009 in Commentary, Musings, ticketing news | Tags: airlines, convenience fees, paradigm shift, self service, spirit, ticketing, ticketmaster | by ehoush | Leave a comment
A colleague forwarded me this article today – apparently Spirit Airline is considering making customers pay for the privilege of booking tickets anywhere other than their ticket counters in airports.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604492886515417.html
Wow. Spirit must have some Ticketmaster folks on its board.
This is effing hilarious, and a good example of why the air travel industry is in such dire straits. I assume that Spirit Airlines either has paid up front costs for their reservation system or pays an annual licensing fee, but I doubt the cost ties directly to usage volume. I further suppose that the costs incurred by having ticket counter agents and space at airports exceeds the costs of the online reservation system.
So the airline is, in effect, penalizing consumers for utilizing a more efficient means of transaction. WTF? I can follow (but not necessarily agree with) the thinking behind charging fees for checked baggage or in flight refreshments. These things drive up costs. But not online booking.
What if other industries followed suit? Fees for online banking? For booking hotels online? For using the drive thru at restaurants? For pumping your own gas?
The parallels to live entertainment are obvious. I have often wondered why so few promoters and venues choose to flip the common fee arrangement on its head. That is, charge fees for a box office (ticket counter) sale but offer incentives (no fees) to purchase online. We have a couple of clients who do business this way, and their online sales represent over 90% of their total ticket sales. Self Service is more efficient.
If customers and computers are doing the work, it frees up your resources to grow the business. Our system is one of the few ticketing systems out there with the flexibility to allow venues and promoters to set the fee structure that their customers see (completely independent of the per ticket fees we charge for providing ticketing services). In essence, it empowers businesses to encourage the self service option.
It’s time for more businesses to embrace a shifting paradigm. Encourage the efficient transaction and grow your business the right way, instead of taking the easy route and squeezing your customers who self serve.
Oh, and Spirit, if you guys want to REALLY grow revenues, you should try an online check-in fee, a boarding fee, or even a “seat bottom cushion flotation device” fee.
Geez.