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Post by Reesor on Mar 19, 2014 9:16:28 GMT -4
Not so much about attendance, but about Ticket Atlantic. Took them years to develop the "pick your own seat" option where you can pick out the exact seats you want. Couldn't wait to use it in the playoffs when I couldn't get vouchers through DND. Now it's playoff time, and I went to get seven tickets on Ticket Atlantic, and they don't have the "Pick your own seat" option anymore. Stupid! We got half decent seats, but we would've divided them up 4 in one row and 3 in the next row instead of 7 together if we could've. Wish I knew why they removed that option for the playoffs. No where close to a sell-out yet for either game this weekend. It`s crazy they haven`t implemented a good system that works. Smaller venues like the Cohn and I think even Citadel High`s theatre have clear diagrams of seats available and sold. Like you say, makes it much more appealing as a large group to be able to pick a bunch of seats over a couple of rows, than 7 seats in row M, section 34. They probably lose a lot of customers who are forced to take what is given and don`t like the seats, so don`t buy them. I`m sure there are many cases where even 2 seats are 1 in front of the other in a good spot, vs. 2 seats together somewhere far away. That's the stupid part. It did work perfectly in the regular season. I picked my seats for one game and it worked great. Made me care less about the $1.75 surcharge per ticket and the $2.00 order fee. But now that option has disappeared for the playoffs... right when we need it.
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Post by maplemoose on Mar 20, 2014 16:28:43 GMT -4
I questioned them on the system switch both at the box office (where I had to go after giving up on the online purchase) and by email. They claim they can't handle the traffic. So this is either BS or they have a crappy system. To prove what BS this is I tried other events where there was no high demand and they also use the best available approach. I would encourage everyone to complain to ticketing@tcins.com. Good point about them losing customers for the non-sellout games. It should be driven home to them in your complaints! Dollars is the language they speak.
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Post by Smiley on Mar 20, 2014 18:48:51 GMT -4
I questioned them on the system switch both at the box office (where I had to go after giving up on the online purchase) and by email. They claim they can't handle the traffic. So this is either BS or they have a crappy system. To prove what BS this is I tried other events where there was no high demand and they also use the best available approach. I would encourage everyone to complain to ticketing@tcins.com. Good point about them losing customers for the non-sellout games. It should be driven home to them in your complaints! Dollars is the language they speak. I believe that it's load related, pick your seat is intensive and can go wrong. Doesn't mean they have a crappy system, just that they don't build their infrastructure up to handle peak loads with an intensive process and they have a configurable way to shutdown a high intensive process (which is actually a good thing). It sucks they turn it off but do they build up infrastructure and pay for the extra capacity for something that happens rarely (when they can shut it down) - it's a risk reward. What is worse - Not allowing you to pick your seat or having the whole fucking site crash not allowing anyone to buy online? Yes it sucks, but I understand where they are coming from and being able to shut that option off is actually pretty smart - something tells me they probably learned the hard way.
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Post by Reesor on Mar 20, 2014 18:52:49 GMT -4
I questioned them on the system switch both at the box office (where I had to go after giving up on the online purchase) and by email. They claim they can't handle the traffic. So this is either BS or they have a crappy system. To prove what BS this is I tried other events where there was no high demand and they also use the best available approach. I would encourage everyone to complain to ticketing@tcins.com. Good point about them losing customers for the non-sellout games. It should be driven home to them in your complaints! Dollars is the language they speak. I believe that it's load related, pick your seat is intensive and can go wrong. Doesn't mean they have a crappy system, just that they don't build their infrastructure up to handle peak loads with an intensive process and they have a configurable way to shutdown a high intensive process (which is actually a good thing). It sucks they turn it off but do they build up infrastructure and pay for the extra capacity for something that happens rarely (when they can shut it down) - it's a risk reward. What is worse - Not allowing you to pick your seat or having the whole fucking site crash not allowing anyone to buy online? Yes it sucks, but I understand where they are coming from and being able to shut that option off is actually pretty smart - something tells me they probably learned the hard way. I'd like to know the workings behind it. Last year they only allowed a certain number of people on Ticket Atlantic, and then put people in a holding queue. It was a piss-off, but as you said, the whole site going down would also be a piss-off. I guess having the "pick your seat" option puts more of a load on the website. Things usually make sense when they're explained. It was just odd timing. I hear you can pick your exact seat for the Backstreet Boys tomorrow. Heard it from a friend of course.
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Post by Smiley on Mar 20, 2014 18:53:43 GMT -4
I questioned them on the system switch both at the box office (where I had to go after giving up on the online purchase) and by email. They claim they can't handle the traffic. So this is either BS or they have a crappy system. To prove what BS this is I tried other events where there was no high demand and they also use the best available approach. I would encourage everyone to complain to ticketing@tcins.com. Good point about them losing customers for the non-sellout games. It should be driven home to them in your complaints! Dollars is the language they speak. I believe that it's load related, pick your seat is intensive and can go wrong. Doesn't mean they have a crappy system, just that they don't build their infrastructure up to handle peak loads with an intensive process and they have a configurable way to shutdown a high intensive process (which is actually a good thing). It sucks they turn it off but do they build up infrastructure and pay for the extra capacity for something that happens rarely (when they can shut it down) - it's a risk reward. What is worse - Not allowing you to pick your seat or having the whole fucking site crash not allowing anyone to buy online? Yes it sucks, but I understand where they are coming from and being able to shut that option off is actually pretty smart - something tells me they probably learned the hard way.
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Post by grobs on Mar 20, 2014 20:42:46 GMT -4
I questioned them on the system switch both at the box office (where I had to go after giving up on the online purchase) and by email. They claim they can't handle the traffic. So this is either BS or they have a crappy system. To prove what BS this is I tried other events where there was no high demand and they also use the best available approach. I would encourage everyone to complain to ticketing@tcins.com. Good point about them losing customers for the non-sellout games. It should be driven home to them in your complaints! Dollars is the language they speak. Even ticketmaster turns off their personal seat selection at high demand times. But hey, I guess their ticketing system sucks too. And I'm pretty sure if you had access to selecting your seat and weren't able to get anything because those seats would be gone by the time they were displayed and you selecting them, you would be bitching about that even more. Just maybe they know what they are doing when it comes high demand times. I would like to see it turned back on after the on sale day, I'm not sure why that isn't done. But as far as the on sale day, forget about it, it would be impossible to have it work at all. As far as other events... The ticketing system operator, Paciolian in this case I believe with ticket atlantic, have to program the entire event for Internet selection, on an event by event basis, which is a very time consuming process when it comes to concerts since every concert has a different setup. Ticketmaster will look after ticket sales for 95% of an entire tour versus an agency like Capital tickets in Ottawa or Ticket Atlantic here which would look after just one show of the tour. It just dosen't make sense to do that kind of undertaking for a single show, unless you want the $20 service fees like Ticketmaster now charges. That's why you see the seat selection on the buildings main events, Mooseheads regular season and the NS Tattoo. Both multi-day events with the same setup and lots of lead time to set up the event online. Know your BS before you spew it ignorantly.
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Post by maplemoose on Mar 20, 2014 23:15:39 GMT -4
I questioned them on the system switch both at the box office (where I had to go after giving up on the online purchase) and by email. They claim they can't handle the traffic. So this is either BS or they have a crappy system. To prove what BS this is I tried other events where there was no high demand and they also use the best available approach. I would encourage everyone to complain to ticketing@tcins.com. Good point about them losing customers for the non-sellout games. It should be driven home to them in your complaints! Dollars is the language they speak. Even ticketmaster turns off their personal seat selection at high demand times. But hey, I guess their ticketing system sucks too. And I'm pretty sure if you had access to selecting your seat and weren't able to get anything because those seats would be gone by the time they were displayed and you selecting them, you would be bitching about that even more. Just maybe they know what they are doing when it comes high demand times. I would like to see it turned back on after the on sale day, I'm not sure why that isn't done. But as far as the on sale day, forget about it, it would be impossible to have it work at all. As far as other events... The ticketing system operator, Paciolian in this case I believe with ticket atlantic, have to program the entire event for Internet selection, on an event by event basis, which is a very time consuming process when it comes to concerts since every concert has a different setup. Ticketmaster will look after ticket sales for 95% of an entire tour versus an agency like Capital tickets in Ottawa or Ticket Atlantic here which would look after just one show of the tour. It just dosen't make sense to do that kind of undertaking for a single show, unless you want the $20 service fees like Ticketmaster now charges. That's why you see the seat selection on the buildings main events, Mooseheads regular season and the NS Tattoo. Both multi-day events with the same setup and lots of lead time to set up the event online. Know your BS before you spew it ignorantly.
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Post by maplemoose on Mar 20, 2014 23:37:18 GMT -4
I worked in IT for 20 years and know saving a seat selection can be done as fast as saving a "best available" . Once it is saved then it can't be selected so what's the problem? There will always be stress during high demand days. That is what the queue is for. I would rather wait 20 minutes and get 2 single seats in the same lower bowl section than be assigned a pair of seats in the top half of the upper bowl looking straight into the back of the sky boxes which were inconveniently built after the rest of the MC. So why not get 2 best available single seats in separate transactions? What are the chances you will be offered both seats anywhere near each other? Not to mention additional service charges. How about 4 or 8 seats? I won't take the low road and call you ignorant as you did me, I just think you are wrong!
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Post by grobs on Mar 21, 2014 6:37:18 GMT -4
I worked with the EXACT ticketing system for two years in Victoria up until then end of 2011. But if you say I'm wrong, then I guess your 20 years of IT trumps my actual experience with Paciolan.
Just because it is something you want dosen't make it logistically possible. Don't forget while you are sitting in that queue for 20 min to get your single tickets where you want them, there are transactions at 30 other points of sale. While the demand was not there for the first round this season, come the 2nd round you will be looking on kijiji for tickets because anything will be gone after 15 min.
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Post by Smiley on Mar 21, 2014 9:53:07 GMT -4
I worked in IT for 20 years and know saving a seat selection can be done as fast as saving a "best available" . Once it is saved then it can't be selected so what's the problem? Many things are the problem. There are many things that can go wrong. It all depends on the enterprise layer that is implemented to support real-time inventory. The web, ticket booth, sobeys, and call center are all hitting the same inventory of seats. Pick my seats needs me to make a real-time call back to the inventory, then the person picks the seat and another call needs to be made to check if the seat is still available, then you have to "reserve" the seat. In that basic example you have 3 calls made to the system. But in reality there are more and this only looks at a single basic Use Case. The questions you ask are: - How strong is my enterprise layer - How much load can the full system take. You could in theory bring down their own system if it overloads (not just online) - Most importantly - what is the value vs the Risk. *Are they losing business over this? For peak events they are not. If you want to see the Moose play in the playoffs, this option is not going to turn enough people away to provide an ROI for the extra work they have to do. I love the "20 years IT" comment, that doesn't mean much without context. Just because someone works in IT doesn't mean they can speak to different areas of technology. That's like saying "I am a school bus driver so I can drive a train." They both are vehicles and move people around. If that means anything to us who have actually designed or implemented a ticketing system and a commerce platform. I'd ask you how you factor in, distributed caching, performance, load fail-over, how many interfaces are there, Bus Messaging, real-time inventory, inventory setup -how are they setting up their seats and formations for events, etc Is ticketatlantic's a perfect solution - no. There are many things that can be improved, for example the fact select a seat is still off means that it's probably an IT configuration and not a business configuration. Not sure how this is diverting into a system Discovery session - but the moral of the story is "Is it that big a deal that they turn off select a seat to protect all the other channels?"
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Post by grobs on Mar 21, 2014 10:25:43 GMT -4
I agree that after the initial peak rush of the on sale day it would be great to see the option back on with Ticket Atlantic. Back to the attendance topic. It looks like it will be a similar scenerio as last season with the St. John series. Around 8000 for the first 2 games then buckle up for any additional games or the next series. And if it's Quebec, demand with be through the roof. BTW - Reesor, I hope you got your Backstreet Boys tickets since I understand the floor and lower bowl were gone in 5 minutes today.
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Post by Conky on Mar 21, 2014 11:16:07 GMT -4
this discussion is going nowhere folks. zzz
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Post by Reesor on Mar 21, 2014 12:24:51 GMT -4
I agree that after the initial peak rush of the on sale day it would be great to see the option back on with Ticket Atlantic. Back to the attendance topic. It looks like it will be a similar scenerio as last season with the St. John series. Around 8000 for the first 2 games then buckle up for any additional games or the next series. And if it's Quebec, demand with be through the roof. BTW - Reesor, I hope you got your Backstreet Boys tickets since I understand the floor and lower bowl were gone in 5 minutes today. I helped the GF get them yesterday with the pre-sale. And I was wrong, there was no pick your seat option. I've been in IT for 9 years, and the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know dick all.
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Post by nibs on Mar 21, 2014 14:20:18 GMT -4
My business relies on IT expertise for marketing delivery. After 10 years of paying my IT folks I have only learned one thing: either they or I know dick all! Must be me - they are still on the payroll- and keep getting annual raises while my sales go in the opposite direction.
These past two years have screamed the point home loud and clear - season tickets!
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Post by Reesor on Apr 3, 2014 6:31:27 GMT -4
So the "Pick your own seat" option is back on ticket atlantic this morning. I guess that strengthens the "too much of a load on the site" argument. Wait until the initial rush passes and then activate that option again.
Still plenty of seats left for both games this weekend.
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