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February 12-28, 2010: minutes to go

November 07, 2009

Permalink 18:02 pm, Bob Mackin / Genral, 408 words  

Virtual disgrace embarrasses VANOC

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at the Saturday morning gong show in the VANOC headquarters and at Tickets.com!

The Nov. 7 online and phone sale of 100,000 tickets for the 2010 Winter Olympics in the Canadian market could have generated, by my estimate, at least $15 million in a single-day if all sold out. That's money that cash-strapped VANOC needs so it can avoid relying on a line of credit to get by.

The first signs of trouble were apparent shortly after 10 a.m. PST when not even the virtual waiting room was open. Many prospective customers got a page that said tickets would go on sale at 10 a.m. PST on June 6! That was the start of phase 2. This was supposed to be phase 3.

Anger mounted on Twitter and after an hour some people said they would give-up. The silence from VANOC and Tickets.com was deafening. It was as if they didn't know what was wrong themselves. It is clear to see that VANOC is not equipped with crisis communications skills. This was a crisis in consumer confidence.

The website cited high demand, but that wasn't what VANOC spokesman Chris Brumwell said. A man who answered the phone and said he was assistant to Tickets.com executive Tom Benson said "They're all in meetings right now looking at it."

Finally, a news release was issued at 1:14 p.m. PST in which Tickets.com CEO Larry Witherspoon apologized. The news release explained there was a configuration difficulty "between the virtual waiting room and the ticketing transaction site."

In plain English: somebody wasn't doing their job properly. The virtual waiting room seemed to work during phase 2 in June. Most complaints had to do with the long waits to get out of the waiting room and into the ticket-ordering website. But the demand-management measure didn't work on the phase 3 launch day. It was a multimillion-dollar mistake that left egg on the face of both VANOC and Tickets.com.

I wonder how many Tickets.com techies will get virtually fired?

I wonder if VANOC will swallow its pride and offer something to recognize the time spent by prospective ticket buyers on Saturday morning? A free souvenir pin to each and every one who tried logging on would be a nice gesture. (Certainly the VANOC servers should have recorded digital footprints.)

I wonder how many unhappy customers will hold their noses and try again when the ticket window reopens Nov. 14?

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Comments:

Comment from: Billy [Visitor]
I agree heads will roll! Imagine if Protest The Hero was singing about these people in their song, wow that would be virtually scary.
Permalink 07/11/2009 @ 18:11
Comment from: Vic [Visitor]

The whole VANOC ticketing process is a joke!! The common family is left out. In phase one we put in bids for 8 events and we received 1 event. After the fact, I learned that tickets were save for those that ordered the ticket packages. (This was not public knowledge - information share by insiders at VANOC)

If you did not want to drop a couple of grand you were left out. This time (phase #3) I guess I was one of the lucky ones because I was one step away from Men's Gold Hockey....then nothing. Will I get this chance again?

Seems like so many things are over the top with the Olympic spending and PR, but the regular person is left out of a reasonable buying process. I have been in favour of 2010 from the start, as I went to Calgary in ’88 and had the time of my life. I want my family to experience the fun. VANOC has sucked the FUN out of the process.

From the news release:
“We are also able to confirm a few hundred tickets were sold to customers primarily through the call centre. The equivalent number of tickets sold today for each event will be pulled from the Olympic Family contingency pool and added to the November 14 public ticket sale.”

There needs to be a major review of the whole ticketing process. If the process is so transparent how can VANOC now claim that the tickets that they did sell would be covered by the “Olympic Family Contingency Fund?”

* It is my speculation is the “Olympic Family” that they are referring to is not the Athletes’ families; it's the families of the VANOC insiders!

Vic
Permalink 08/11/2009 @ 01:01
Comment from: Ian Bell [Visitor]
Heads will NOT roll. There is no negative feedback loop. Tickets will still be sold anyway, no matter how much friction and incompetence VANOC manages to throw in consumers' way.

All of this negative backlash toward VANOC, while totally valid, is fruitless. They have zero accountability to the people who pay their salaries -- taxpayers.

They will continue driving around in their sponsored vehicles, wearing their exclusive Olympic swag, and sipping on sponsored wine while you and I slug it out in the real world, where there actually ARE consequences for our mistakes.
Permalink 09/11/2009 @ 20:35

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