Today was the first member sale of the 2017-18 season. It did not go to plan….
Joining John Gibbons to talk about their experiences of trying to purchase tickets to watch Liverpool this morning were Neil Docking, Philippa Smallwood and Tim Smith. They speak about past and current frustrations with the system and how a lack communication adds to the annoyance of not being able to give a business money.
We are also very kindly joined on the telephone by Martin Fitzgerald from See Tickets who talks us through his extensive experience of selling tickets to a large number of people, what can go wrong and how putting key decisions in the hands of customers can help remove tension.
Good podcast capturing the frustrations of thousands of non season ticket loyal fans who have to go through the painstaking bi-annual process of getting membership tickets. As many discovered today, it’s impossible to be totally certain you’ll get them. I was fortunate today and my day off from work wasn’t wasted. Feel sorry for those who could hang around for most of the morning. I am not sure that the open access to get to the sale pages helped. Surely it’s time for a review of what should be a simple process. I gave up my season ticket in 1993 – we all have regrets!
Makes a nonsense of the idea not to extend the Annie Road Stand. I gave up on the idea of trying to go to matches years ago because I live in the Lakes and it’s too much hassle, best I can do is go to a League cup or UEFA cup game with the kids once a year and that it hard work
Not sure how the Annie Road stands has any effect. A couple of thousand extra tickets on general sale to members would have made no difference to a site crashing.
I’ve been on many ticket sites to buy tickets for a whole range of things – music, flights, whatever – and the site has crashed or placed me in an impossibly long queue. Its frustrating but its not unique to Liverpool.
Great pod and spot on this was my Tuesday morning hopefully some thing will finally get done.
It’s been the a shambles for years. Time for the club to suspend membership and change the sale process. How can you go from 19 to 4 to a total free for all? At times, gad to make do with single tickets last two seasons and not once for on the Kop for a league match. I, like many other match going regular Reds didn’t get one ticket in yesterday’s sale! I’m also convinced the club hold back tickets (especially Kop). How else would you explain coach loads of “tourist” fans turning up for the Utd game every season? Also, has the club ever stated what the Thomas Cook allocation actually is?
The point about the Annie road stand is there is an obvious demand for tickets and the people in the sale were those that are going to over 13 and some to all 19 so they are nearly season ticket holders an extra 4,000 seats would not create 4000 new season ticket holders but possibly 10,000 because these people on need a few so each seat could provide enough games for 2 or 3 people to have season tickets per seat and there could in some cases be as much as 10 games left over for others. It would also give the possibility for more people to sit together if it was organised correctly. It should not be that difficult to sell season tickets in pairs. It would take these people out of this particular sale and that would make a difference and a lot more regular fans would have an easier life as season ticket holders and get to watch football with at least one of their mates, dads, sons and daughters and that has to be a good thing. That’s a lot more fans happy for an extra 4,000 seats and that’s why the Annie road is important.
I went on the website this morning (Thurs 13th) at exactly 8.15am in the forlorn hope of purchasing a couple of tickets for any league match for myself and my daughter. How come I was told I would be waiting over an hour in a queue straight from the off? Who was first in the queue and how did they get there? When I queued for tickets in the 60’s around Stanley Park being nearer to Goodison than Anfield at 6am for a sale that started at 11am, at least you knew why you were so far back, the ones in front of you had got up earlier. The 8.15 system baffles me. I did have some success, I got one ticket for West Brom game, well I’ll see Tony Pulis, Yippee!! Unfortunately I couldn’t get a ticket for my daughter. Maybe the system should restrict ticket sales to 2 per person like it was in my day.