We are all wearily familiar with Computer Says No scenarios – you know, those incredibly frustrating situations when you’re looking to get something done or have some class of problem resolved, only to find every single approach ends with you hitting a brick wall of bureaucratic intransigence because supposedly intelligent systems are not built for anything that deviates even slightly from the norm.
A reader by the name of Cathal contacted us last week with a doozy of a Computer Says No story, having spent months trying to get what should have been a relatively simple issue dealt with by Ticketmaster.
Cathal runs a successful corporate booking agency and has done so for the guts of 20 years. He is winding it down later this summer as his business partner is retiring, and he has decided it’s time to move into a different sphere.
His business started out small, but now offers a “full event-sourcing and booking, bedroom bookings, payment services and a concierge service for many top Irish companies”.
RM Block
Cathal is, he says, very proud of his small family business, as well he might be.
“As part of our concierge service, our clients would ask us to make bespoke, one-off purchases, ranging from flowers for their colleagues, to restaurant bookings, train and flight tickets, champagne, car hire, hampers and vouchers,” he says.
All of this, however, is a preamble to the meat of his story.
A client recently asked Cathal to get a rake of Westlife tickets they could give to their staff as performance awards.
“With a limit of eight tickets per account, one of our booking agents bought eight tickets on her personal Ticketmaster account, using one of our company credit cards to pay,” he explains. “She then went on to set up two further Ticketmaster accounts, using two company email addresses, my father’s credit card and my sister’s card, so all paid for by us.”
So far, so straightforward.
But the wheels are about to come off.
“The tickets purchased on our colleague’s personal Ticketmaster account have been transferred to our client,” Cathal writes. “The second batch of eight tickets were also transferred to a person within the client company, which left a final eight tickets on the final work email address.”
Now this is “where it gets interesting”, Cathal says.
“There is,” he says “a mobile phone number attached to this account which is a personal phone number of one of our ex-employees. This employee is refusing to give us the access code from Ticketmaster to allow us to transfer the tickets to the clients, which is their choice,” Cathal says.
So, looking for a workaround and a way to get the tickets he had paid for, he contacted Ticketmaster and explained the situation.
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“This is where the stupidity and Computer Says No responses come into play,” he says. “I have explained and proved that this is a corporate email address, the tickets were bought using our own credit cards, but that the colleague has now left the company and is not giving us the one-time code that Ticketmaster sends to allow a transfer to take place,” he writes.
‘We will have no choice but to purchase new tickets for our clients, which means we are stuck with eight tickets that we cannot access and have had to stump up another €800 of our own money again’
— Cathal, frustrated reader
“The issue is that Ticketmaster are refusing to transfer the tickets, paid for by us, to our clients, and the only solution offered by Ticketmaster is for us to give our clients a letter of authority to the people attending the concert, that they can bring with them to the customer service desk on the night,” he continues.
He rightly points out that this “is not acceptable, as there is no guarantee that the staff on the desk at that time will know how to deal with this or will allow it, so the client could have their staff refused entry. The concert is in September and we are closing our doors on July 31st, so the client will not accept this option – and I don’t blame them.”
Cathal first made contact with Ticketmaster on April 24th, and by early June was still no closer to getting those eight tickets, worth more than €800.
“We will have no choice but to purchase new tickets for our clients, which means we are stuck with eight tickets that we cannot access and have had to stump up another €800 of our own money again,” he says. “I have asked repeatedly how a person who has lost their old phone and has a new number, changes this information on their Ticketmaster account, which is effectively what is happening here. They have not answered my question or provided a solution. I cannot change the old phone number to a new one, allowing me to transfer the tickets to our client, but it raises an issue as to what happens when someone is in this situation and cannot access their tickets. The whole process has been the most frustrating I have ever come across.”
He says the customer service he has experienced “is shocking, stressful and most of all, seems to show little to no regard for their customers. They have our money, they have our tickets, and they have the ability to resolve this issue, but I’m talking to a screen who will not help. Each reply takes three days – so you can imagine my stress levels.”
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He stresses that from a business point of view, “we are winding down on a voluntary basis after a fabulous 20 years, but our reputation with this particular client is being damaged, as they feel we are holding back or refusing to give them the last eight tickets. I am hoping you can help with this issue, which could be resolved by Ticketmaster in seconds if they got their IT whizzkid to change the phone number. It doesn’t need to drag on, but more importantly, they are holding over €800 worth of tickets that we have paid for. I have asked that they refund us for the tickets and cancel the order, but they will not refund them as they say the concert has not been cancelled. It’s just so frustrating.”
We contacted Ticketmaster last Tuesday afternoon – and by Wednesday morning it seemed as if the problem had been resolved and the tickets were in Cathal’s possession. Ticketmaster then confirmed it had taken steps to ensure Cathal had his tickets.
