Run By Amateurs?

[BCFC_Dan]

The other question is was this done over a secure connection? Its unlikely that they use signed SSL certificates for a test system.

It wasn't a test system, though.

The whole issue is that they accidentally used the live system when they were meant to be testing. Therefore it ought to have been secure.

[Kewy88]

The club lied in the apology that Adam b put up, they said customer service would ring everyone in the morning, its now 18:42 and I still haven't heard from them! Appalling service by the club.

I've printed my tickets, the money has come out, I'm turning up and sitting in the seats as I don't believe city will ring me to sort it out.

[Davros]

The club lied in the apology that Adam b put up, they said customer service would ring everyone in the morning, its now 18:42 and I still haven't heard from them! Appalling service by the club.

I've printed my tickets, the money has come out, I'm turning up and sitting in the seats as I don't believe city will ring me to sort it out.

I expect if you printed them and the money has come out then they won't call you cus your not effected

[OneManMob]

One of the main rules of customer service is to stick to your promises. Especially when you make them public.

All data from these 'purchases' are safe and secure. The small number of those affected will be contacted by our Supporter Services team in the morning.

[kelly]

The club lied in the apology that Adam b put up, they said customer service would ring everyone in the morning, its now 18:42 and I still haven't heard from them! Appalling service by the club.

I've printed my tickets, the money has come out, I'm turning up and sitting in the seats as I don't believe city will ring me to sort it out.

[kelly]

How much did you pay for your ticket?

[Pickle Rick]

ametuerish-the club has been shambolic organisation wise for donkeys.seems those trusted with responsibility arnt being lead properly and are failing to communicate with others on a similar level..there is an obvious conclusion.

Call the police and get the entire board arrested?

Ram raid the ticket office?

Bitch on a forum like there's no tomorrow?

IMHAHO the conclusion is not obvious unless you have a crystal ball.

Just sayin, like.

[Kewy88]

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Paid 20 quid for 2 tickets when they accidentally put the live system up, I don't mind if they don't call but I could have booked someone's season ticket seats

[phantom]

Paid 20 quid for 2 tickets when they accidentally put the live system up, I don't mind if they don't call but I could have booked someone's season ticket seats

£15 EACH ???

[Ray White]

I don't think its just Kevin Smith to blame. Charlie Lincoln should foot the blame too as he is the person responsible for this. To quote his linkedin profile:

'Responsible for the growth of commerical revenue across Bristol City FC's three core income streams - Ticketing, Corportate Sales and Retail.

Also resonsible for the implementation and development of the club's CRM system.'

Clearly does not have a fckin clue what he is doing and appears to have only ever worked for us which again would point to the fact that like Lansdown jr has just been given a job because he knows someone rather than earning it.

[Nibor]

I don't think its just Kevin Smith to blame. Charlie Lincoln should foot the blame too as he is the person responsible for this. To quote his linkedin profile:

'Responsible for the growth of commerical revenue across Bristol City FC's three core income streams - Ticketing, Corportate Sales and Retail.

Also resonsible for the implementation and development of the club's CRM system.'

Clearly does not have a fckin clue what he is doing and appears to have only ever worked for us which again would point to the fact that like Lansdown jr has just been given a job because he knows someone rather than earning it.

This is the fundamental problem. Someone with zero experience of IT (and to be frank little experience of anything else) running a complex IT project for a multi million pound business.

Implementing and developing a CRM system has almost nothing to do with CRM. Your telesales time is not going to help you with this.

[bearded_red]

Unlike one or two on this forum I don't actually take any pleasure in having to criticise the club, but the ticketing situation has been an utter shambles.

At the Reading game the queues were ridiculous bearing in mind the crowd was around two thousand. Fortunately I had bought my tickets beforehand as I had predicted buying a ticket would be a farce after a couple of last year's friendlies, but even the queue to pick up tickets meant I only just made it in the ground in time for kick off.

When the Coventry tickets were finally put on sale (I doubt the delay was in any way City's fault in fairness) for two days it offered you the opportunity to buy them online, but the system didn't work. Then for a couple of days it said on the website that this option was 'temporarily unavailable' and then without any explanation the option was just taken offline.

As others have already posted when you went online to try and buy tickets for the Palace game it came up that your season ticket seat was unavailable. Fine, they've reserved my seat which is obviously the correct thing to, but how do I go about buying it? I then stumbled upon a part of the site which enabled me to buy my seat for the game, but unsurprisingly it didn't work and I had to ring up. (I still await those tickets reaching my house).

Last week I bought Mk Dons tickets and asked for them to be sent out. A week later with no sign of them I ring up the club and oh look, they had put them down to be collected from the shop.

Now none of my issues are anywhere near as serious as people having to miss large parts of the opening game, this numerous mistakes made in the delivery of season tickets and the nonsense that was people being allowed to buy things that weren't on sale the other night and in isolation none of them are big deals at all. But how can it be acceptable that every time you buy a ticket it becomes a challenge as to how you're able to buy it and whether you will receive it.

People make mistakes and technology lets you down, but how can so many mistakes be made and how can the technology let you down so much? The last few seasons we have had a system that, for me anyway, was fine. It took 2 minutes to buy an away ticket online and almost without fail would be with you within two days. Why do we seem to have replaced it with something that is not only worse, but we have failed to even get working?

"City commercial director Kevin Smith said:"This is a massive development for this football club. We have conducted a full review of how we communicate with fans and it was clear that a strong supporter relationship management and ticketing system were at the very heart."

Green 4 Director Peter Oliver said: “We’re absolutely delighted to announce a partnership with Bristol City Football Club focused on the delivery of a truly ‘joined up’ fan experience, beginning in the 2013/14 season.

“Green 4’s approach is to provide clubs with a single platform stadium solution that enables them to improve all aspects of the fan experience."

I can't help but feel that the above quote looks slightly stupid at the present time?

I would also ask why it seems that the loyalty scheme that has been in place has been scrapped and as far as I can see anyway not replaced by anything else? It is very much the least of my concerns as we're a long way away from being good enough on the pitch that we require any loyalty scheme, but just on the off chance that we do, I would be slightly peeved to miss out on a big away game having been to every away game for a couple of seasons when in previous years the loyalty points I had gained would have given me the security that I would be able to get a ticket.

[TRL]

Unlike one or two on this forum I don't actually take any pleasure in having to criticise the club, but the ticketing situation has been an utter shambles.

At the Reading game the queues were ridiculous bearing in mind the crowd was around two thousand. Fortunately I had bought my tickets beforehand as I had predicted buying a ticket would be a farce after a couple of last year's friendlies, but even the queue to pick up tickets meant I only just made it in the ground in time for kick off.

When the Coventry tickets were finally put on sale (I doubt the delay was in any way City's fault in fairness) for two days it offered you the opportunity to buy them online, but the system didn't work. Then for a couple of days it said on the website that this option was 'temporarily unavailable' and then without any explanation the option was just taken offline.

As others have already posted when you went online to try and buy tickets for the Palace game it came up that your season ticket seat was unavailable. Fine, they've reserved my seat which is obviously the correct thing to, but how do I go about buying it? I then stumbled upon a part of the site which enabled me to buy my seat for the game, but unsurprisingly it didn't work and I had to ring up. (I still await those tickets reaching my house).

Last week I bought Mk Dons tickets and asked for them to be sent out. A week later with no sign of them I ring up the club and oh look, they had put them down to be collected from the shop.

Now none of my issues are anywhere near as serious as people having to miss large parts of the opening game, this numerous mistakes made in the delivery of season tickets and the nonsense that was people being allowed to buy things that weren't on sale the other night and in isolation none of them are big deals at all. But how can it be acceptable that every time you buy a ticket it becomes a challenge as to how you're able to buy it and whether you will receive it.

People make mistakes and technology lets you down, but how can so many mistakes be made and how can the technology let you down so much? The last few seasons we have had a system that, for me anyway, was fine. It took 2 minutes to buy an away ticket online and almost without fail would be with you within two days. Why do we seem to have replaced it with something that is not only worse, but we have failed to even get working?

"City commercial director Kevin Smith said:"This is a massive development for this football club. We have conducted a full review of how we communicate with fans and it was clear that a strong supporter relationship management and ticketing system were at the very heart."

Green 4 Director Peter Oliver said: “We’re absolutely delighted to announce a partnership with Bristol City Football Club focused on the delivery of a truly ‘joined up’ fan experience, beginning in the 2013/14 season.

“Green 4’s approach is to provide clubs with a single platform stadium solution that enables them to improve all aspects of the fan experience."

I can't help but feel that the above quote looks slightly stupid at the present time?

I would also ask why it seems that the loyalty scheme that has been in place has been scrapped and as far as I can see anyway not replaced by anything else? It is very much the least of my concerns as we're a long way away from being good enough on the pitch that we require any loyalty scheme, but just on the off chance that we do, I would be slightly peeved to miss out on a big away game having been to every away game for a couple of seasons when in previous years the loyalty points I had gained would have given me the security that I would be able to get a ticket.

Technology doesn't let you down it is always people, the technology is just run by 0's and 1's the problem is the carbon unit stitching all together. of course the technology can break, but that is what High availability systems are ther for, to kick in when the technilogical hardware leaves this world in a puff of smoke.

So again it is the companies and human choice to skimp on getting the infrastructure right.

Technology will work if you get the right people and the right timeframe to implement it. and that often means runnong things in unison! Not rocket science

[dezgimed]

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

[StGeorge]

We’re absolutely delighted to announce a partnership with Bristol City Football Club focused on the delivery of a truly ‘joined up’ fan experience

I think he's right there, never seen such agreement between fans on here................................you're system is shite

[tiz]

Joined up is that PR talk for queueing

[BCFChris]

Technology doesn't let you down it is always people, the technology is just run by 0's and 1's the problem is the carbon unit stitching all together. of course the technology can break, but that is what High availability systems are ther for, to kick in when the technilogical hardware leaves this world in a puff of smoke.

So again it is the companies and human choice to skimp on getting the infrastructure right.

Technology will work if you get the right people and the right timeframe to implement it. and that often means runnong things in unison! Not rocket science

"the problem is the carbon unit stitching all together" made me chuckle. Do you work in IT by any chance?

In respect to the ongoing ticket issues, I suspect that the club were probably paying in the region of 10% of each sale to ticketmaster, so they looked for a bespoke in house/cloud alternative that would save them money. The problem lies in the fact that the application doesn't actually work! My feeling is that this will not be resolved any time soon.