If I was CEO and wanted to change the way people went about their business, I'd try to encourage people to change with an incentive rather than put a problem in place...
So, the club should have kept the price of match tickets the same as last year, but made it £1 less to buy online/download to smartphone or whatever. That way, they could gauge what the take up is/see whether there was a market for it.
Exactly, carrot not stick but Katrien and Cahones don't understand customer service
So many cheap ways to drive ticketing on-line.
Buy on-line and you're entered into a monthy draw to win a signed bal/seat on the sofa/tour of the training ground etc etc
...a seat on the bench. Half an hour up front at a home game. Four games in goal. The captaincy...
Why not just have self-service kiosks? A short-term expense but removes need to have more than one member of staff manning the area. It's what train stations and cinemas do nowadays and it seems to work. Kind of.
The problem is that the cost has to be recovered over 23-25 periods of two hours each year, rather than 365 periods of 18.
For those who didn't already know .. I have just ordered a Bury ticket and a Cobblers home ticket over the phone .. the charge is £2.50 per call and not per ticket as I feared .. i.e. £1.25 per ticket .. not TOOOOO bad ((:>)
Why not just have self-service kiosks? A short-term expense but removes need to have more than one member of staff manning the area. It's what train stations and cinemas do nowadays and it seems to work. Kind of.
The problem is that the cost has to be recovered over 23-25 periods of two hours each year, rather than 365 periods of 18.
Why not just have self-service kiosks? A short-term expense but removes need to have more than one member of staff manning the area. It's what train stations and cinemas do nowadays and it seems to work. Kind of.
The problem is that the cost has to be recovered over 23-25 periods of two hours each year, rather than 365 periods of 18.
These are their problems though. They're not ours so don't punish us for it. The fact that they haven't found a solution is a good example of their incompetence in the role.
For those who didn't already know .. I have just ordered a Bury ticket and a Cobblers home ticket over the phone .. the charge is £2.50 per call and not per ticket as I feared .. i.e. £1.25 per ticket .. not TOOOOO bad ((:>)
Would like to know how Bury feel about the club dissuading people from buying tickets like this.
For those who didn't already know .. I have just ordered a Bury ticket and a Cobblers home ticket over the phone .. the charge is £2.50 per call and not per ticket as I feared .. i.e. £1.25 per ticket .. not TOOOOO bad ((:>)
Would like to know how Bury feel about the club dissuading people from buying tickets like this.
good point .. I qualify for the over 65 price, for Bury that's £12 .. the near 21% surcharge would definitely put a lot off (it's a smaller %age of course for full price payers) .. as I wrote on here earlier, Bury charge £1 admin for all phoned in orders that are sent out by post
How are the club communicating with those fans who do not go to the O/S or social media platforms? I personally think they should suspend this surcharge for the first couple of home games, and hand out a flyer to those buying tickets on the day explaining that in future charges will apply and point out the alternative methods of purchasing tickets so as not to incur the surcharge, this would be proactive, instead people are going to turn up at the first game unaware of the surcharge, which may put them off coming again, but then communications are not this regime strongest attribute. As we are told this is not about revenue then why not, after all a dad turning up with a couple of kids for the first game of the season is hardly going to tell the club to stuff the surcharge after promising his kids that he is taking them to a game, but may think twice about it in future, unless the club inform him of the alternatives.
As I said earlier, this practice is not actually uncommon amongst League One clubs. Difference is at a time when attendances are falling thanks to the following factors:
a) bad ownership leading to boycott b) natural drop in attendance due to relegation c) declining quality of football thanks to poor head coach recruitment & off-loading of best players at bargain basement prices to bring in ageing journeymen and unknowns from the network
The club needs to retain as many bums on seats as possible. All this is going to do is put off those fans (including myself) who often don't make their decision to go watch Charlton until matchday.
I can understand why they do it (i.e. to avoid big queues on matchdays, cut down cost of hiring kiosk staff for matchdays, encourage fans to use their vaunted online system) but as others have said, they should have gone with the carrot instead of the stick e.g. offered a prize draw for online ticket buyers or some kind of online loyalty scheme (buy 9 tickets, get 1 free?). This tactic simply does not go hand in hand with the Target 20K initiative nor is it well timed considered the 3 factors already mentioned. No other League One club has all 3 of these problems so they are at liberty to introduce such a charge.
When you see the levels of intelligence on here, even on average now we have lost Colin.. it stick's a smile on my face to know how safe the Club would be if we were fan owned ala Portsmouth, some unbelievable characters on here alone let alone the wider Charlton community who would run this Club as one of the most well run Club's out there. Instead we have this shower who genuinely mess up everything without fail.
Whatever the reason for all this malarkey, it isn't to improve attendances.
It is clearly an attempt to push people who plan on regular attendance to buy a ST.
And with the 2 hour "rule", to push people into drinking in one of the club bars, purchasing a programme to read & browsing through the squillion wonderful items for sale in the "Superstore".
TF: The new admin fee on ticket sale doesn't make sense. A lot think it is £2.50 + £3. The website needs to make it clearer. KM: This is part of strategy to get people online and therefore can be communicated with by email, extending the database. At the moment Charlton’s database is around 40,000 while a club like Birmingham City has hundreds of thousands of people on their database. In order for us to grow as a club we need to increase the size and effectiveness of our database. All purchases at ticket office will incur the admin fee. JP: It is driving people away. CL: It would be better to offer a discount if you buy online. It is not being presented that way. DJ: There is nothing in the Football League rules preventing this. We also have one of cheapest season tickets and match day tickets in league. The fee is per order not per ticket. JB: If you are doing this then the system must be efficient. Post meeting note: After conversation and consultation including the Fans’ Forum, on fan emails and fan communication with our ticket office, the feedback was that there are still a lot of fans who traditionally purchase in-person who don’t have the facilities and/or knowledge to purchase online. The Club remove walk-up ticket administration charge following fan feedback. Next meeting - 20 October
Whatever the reason for all this malarkey, it isn't to improve attendances.
It is clearly an attempt to push people who plan on regular attendance to buy a ST.
And with the 2 hour "rule", to push people into drinking in one of the club bars, purchasing a programme to read & browsing through the squillion wonderful items for sale in the "Superstore".
Or it could just encourage us to turn up nice and early for the pre-match protests...
I thought most clubs charged more at the gate than buying in advance.
Some do, usually £2. We always avoided it because 1) it complicates the marketing message and 2) it is likely to act as a deterrent to the casual fan, which is exactly who you want to attract.
I don't think they really understand the mentality of football fans.
Clearly the club would like all ticket purchases made online so it can cut the ticketing staffing to an absolute minimum and offer no personal service at all. However, the site isn't really fit for purpose - for example they have never bothered to set up coach booking, which means you have to call the club. Yet that was available for years.
Interesting to know if they will surcharge every coach booking as punishment for their own inadequate system.
Very true re tonight, I have no idea if the surcharge is on or off, but its one of the reasons I'm going to Hamlet and not The Valley.
Never really understood the mentality of the marketing to "customers" either at the Valley or most football clubs, so many opportunities lost IMHO (No offence) , but it has got to the state with KM that it is so bleedingly obvious that no one understands marketing in the Club and customer management. And yes we are customers and in marketing you treat customers how they wish to be treated and call them fans in football and understand that they are different from cinema goers and restaurant customers and manage them accordingly.
Whatever the reason for all this malarkey, it isn't to improve attendances.
I'm not sure that KM would necessarily believe that in her warped commercial mind! Someone has told her that if you increase per ticket price and football fans are loyal, then we'll get an increase in revenue!!
For those who didn't already know .. I have just ordered a Bury ticket and a Cobblers home ticket over the phone .. the charge is £2.50 per call and not per ticket as I feared .. i.e. £1.25 per ticket .. not TOOOOO bad ((:>)
So is this where you tell us you rang up only wanting a ticket for Bury and when yet they said there will be an extra charge of £2.50 you said 'cobblers' and got lumbered with a home game against Northampton as well by mistake ?
The club are also running an offer for season ticket holders, which enables them to buy up to two tickets for both fixtures at £10 each. These tickets can purchased in any of the home areas inside The Valley.
I think the club should adopt a triage system for people queueing, where they take you behind the curtain to find out if you really want tickets. Works well for the NHS apparently.
For those who didn't already know .. I have just ordered a Bury ticket and a Cobblers home ticket over the phone .. the charge is £2.50 per call and not per ticket as I feared .. i.e. £1.25 per ticket .. not TOOOOO bad ((:>)
Would like to know how Bury feel about the club dissuading people from buying tickets like this.
good point .. I qualify for the over 65 price, for Bury that's £12 .. the near 21% surcharge would definitely put a lot off (it's a smaller %age of course for full price payers) .. as I wrote on here earlier, Bury charge £1 admin for all phoned in orders that are sent out by post
To be fair Lincs they do have to post them out. I appreciate what you say about the percentage of ticket price but the postage is a fixed cost. I'm also sure that Bury would much sooner have all the tickets sold to adults to maximise revenue but they reduce them, presumably, to maximise sales.
For those who didn't already know .. I have just ordered a Bury ticket and a Cobblers home ticket over the phone .. the charge is £2.50 per call and not per ticket as I feared .. i.e. £1.25 per ticket .. not TOOOOO bad ((:>)
Would like to know how Bury feel about the club dissuading people from buying tickets like this.
good point .. I qualify for the over 65 price, for Bury that's £12 .. the near 21% surcharge would definitely put a lot off (it's a smaller %age of course for full price payers) .. as I wrote on here earlier, Bury charge £1 admin for all phoned in orders that are sent out by post
To be fair Lincs they do have to post them out. I appreciate what you say about the percentage of ticket price but the postage is a fixed cost. I'm also sure that Bury would much sooner have all the tickets sold to adults to maximise revenue but they reduce them, presumably, to maximise sales.
Agreed and I have no problem paying some overhead .. however .. the year before last the charge was £1.50, last year £2, this year £2.50 .. postage is a pretty fixed price, a lot of what I am paying is profit .. if Bury can do it for £1 .. ??
Whatever the reason for all this malarkey, it isn't to improve attendances.
It is clearly an attempt to push people who plan on regular attendance to buy a ST.
Or, maybe, to buy the tickets in advance, online, to as to reduce staff costs.
Out of interest had the club just made all the tickets £3 more and then applied a £3 discount if you purchased them a clear two hours before kick off would that have been seen as great marketing, or would that have been seen a bad practice? And if the latter would the current price with a £3 discount be seen as an incentive or a punishment?
I only ask because £3 is not, really, a lot of money, and in the grand scheme of things it sounds like many people are refusing to go on principle, which is, obviously, fine. However, I would consider it cutting off my nose to spite my face if I stopped doing something I love to teach someone a lesson over £3. If the money is that important it is possible to avoid paying it by purchasing the tickets online the day before so it's not even just about £3.
I suspect that most fans buy online from Amazon etc, to save money from high street shops.
I fully get the idea that some casual visitors will be put off by having to pay a surcharge, all be it that I, personally, suspect that will be a small number but for someone that is a committed fan and comes on here on average more than once a day it is hardly a chore to buy the ticket the day before and it's hardly going to break the bank to pay £3.
Not only that but if you do pay on the day and many others don't (to avoid the £3) you might even get served quicker and I would be more than happy to pay £3 extra to save queuing.
For those who didn't already know .. I have just ordered a Bury ticket and a Cobblers home ticket over the phone .. the charge is £2.50 per call and not per ticket as I feared .. i.e. £1.25 per ticket .. not TOOOOO bad ((:>)
Would like to know how Bury feel about the club dissuading people from buying tickets like this.
good point .. I qualify for the over 65 price, for Bury that's £12 .. the near 21% surcharge would definitely put a lot off (it's a smaller %age of course for full price payers) .. as I wrote on here earlier, Bury charge £1 admin for all phoned in orders that are sent out by post
To be fair Lincs they do have to post them out. I appreciate what you say about the percentage of ticket price but the postage is a fixed cost. I'm also sure that Bury would much sooner have all the tickets sold to adults to maximise revenue but they reduce them, presumably, to maximise sales.
Agreed and I have no problem paying some overhead .. however .. the year before last the charge was £1.50, last year £2, this year £2.50 .. postage is a pretty fixed price, a lot of what I am paying is profit .. if Bury can do it for £1 .. ??
I agree we are charging more which would be unreasonable if our staff that answer the phone and put the tickets in the envelope earn the same as those in Bury. I don't have that information but two and a half times more does seem high.
"Meanwhile, two hours before kick-off on a matchday, prices will still increase by £3 for adults, over 65s and U21s."
For the love of God, why?
They have effectively lost me as a customer as I have no intention of buying a ST whilst RD and KM are still at the club. I don't leave near enough to the Valley to justify going there before matchday, I'm not going to arrive 2 hours before the match kicks off (although this is mainly thanks to Southeastern and their crap service at weekends), and my decision to go to the Valley is usually made on the morning.
Can I print off my ticket at home? Or do I need to collect? The club's website is not helpful in this respect.
Maybe I am the one who needs to show them how to use a computer, since no one at the club seems competent enough to make this information easily accessible on their website. Absolute sack of shit this club.
Fiiish, all of your posts make you sound like an educated, intelligent chap so I assume that you go to things like concerts, plays, musicals, other sporting events and that sort of thing. Would you stroll up to the O2 on a night that a night that had a huge act on and expect to buy a ticket just before you go in? I only ask because if not (and remembering that Ticket master charge something like £10 booking fee per ticket) you must have some experience of planning your life before the day in question. Is it so black and white that for an event that is in the diary for up to ten months before it happens you cannot make a decision to go 24 hours before it starts? And if not you will refuse to ever go again if they make you pay a little extra for not booking in advance?
I know we hate those running the club but it must be very difficult to plan staff rotas when you have no idea what you are going to need. As much as many people would love Roland to lose all of his money and enjoy reducing his income it is just unrealistic for the club to spend thousands of pounds providing staff for peak periods when there is an alternative and they can financially reward those that take advantage of it.
Almost every event that i can think of has an early bird discount - including season tickets. There was outrage on here a few years ago when someone pointed out that a season ticket was not much cheaper that paying match by match. If Airman Brown had introduced the 'surcharge' or 'discount for early payment' back in the Premier League days it would have been heralded as a masterstroke. When we were charging Arsenal fans £45 when the rest of the ground was paying £30 there wasn't an uproar.
Sometimes credibility goes if one criticises absolutely everything. We need to remember that when we 'declared war' on the current regime they were hardly going to bend over and take it up the ar$e now were they?
Load of rubbish, KHA, not least because I didn't have responsibility for the ticket office in the PL and we would never have done such a thing anyway. Neither did we charge Arsenal £45 when the rest of the ground was paying £30. As it happens the board imposed £45 prices on the management team. We didn't agree with it and we failed to sell out the matches as a consequence of it, because there weren't enough verifiable Charlton fans willing to pay that price for the available home seats.
As for the rest of it, "huge acts" don't play to a stadium with 15,000 empty seats. The cost of employing the half a dozen casual ticket staff on matchdays is peanuts next to the revenue. A business that turns away extra revenue with next to no cost of sale attached isn't likely to last long.
Fair enough on the Arsenal tickets, I thought the £45 prices only applied to those behind the goals.
My point still stands about other events though. If one can arrange that in advance there is no reason as to why one can't make a decision to go to football in advance also. Just because there is no question of getting in doesn't mean that the decision to go has to be made in the morning of the game does it?
Sure, there's no reason why you can't . But the decision would nearly always be "no, can't be arsed". Thats because a widecrange of variables come into play. Such as no access to ticket buying on-line at work; not sure whether working late on a Tuesday evening; not sure whether the poxy trains would get you to The Valley by 5:45 anyway; crap weather forecast. I could go on.
Of course you could. It doesn't seem to be such a problem for the season ticket holders though does it? How did the fifteen thousand or so season ticket holders in the Premier League days manage? When we had 27,000 coming do you think they all deliberated on the weather and the train delays?
Now we're just making up reasons to fail to make a decision until the last minute. I never said that people have to plan their lives a week in advance just that it is completely possible to do so.
But that misses the main point entirely doesn't it? As much as Meire might think so, it is not our role in life to negiotiate some form of obstacle course that the SAS would fail to get through just to buy a couple of poxy tickets to watch a poxy football team. A sensibly run club would be bending over backwards to maximise sales by making the process as easy as possible. Not just for the tech savvy. But for every single potential customer. Instead it manufactures a complex charging structure, fails to explain it properly in any communications and maybe, one day, will wonder why the fickle fail to show. Or course it was no problem for me, as an erstwhile season ticket holder to pitch up to watch a quality match in a vibrant stadium. But that is so far removed from the product now on offer that it could be in a different galaxy. Chalk and cheese.
Comments
as I wrote on here earlier, Bury charge £1 admin for all phoned in orders that are sent out by post
a) bad ownership leading to boycott
b) natural drop in attendance due to relegation
c) declining quality of football thanks to poor head coach recruitment & off-loading of best players at bargain basement prices to bring in ageing journeymen and unknowns from the network
The club needs to retain as many bums on seats as possible. All this is going to do is put off those fans (including myself) who often don't make their decision to go watch Charlton until matchday.
I can understand why they do it (i.e. to avoid big queues on matchdays, cut down cost of hiring kiosk staff for matchdays, encourage fans to use their vaunted online system) but as others have said, they should have gone with the carrot instead of the stick e.g. offered a prize draw for online ticket buyers or some kind of online loyalty scheme (buy 9 tickets, get 1 free?). This tactic simply does not go hand in hand with the Target 20K initiative nor is it well timed considered the 3 factors already mentioned. No other League One club has all 3 of these problems so they are at liberty to introduce such a charge.
http://www.cafc.co.uk/news/article/2016-17/charlton-athletic-tickets-northampton-town-shrewsbury-3206221.aspx
And with the 2 hour "rule", to push people into drinking in one of the club bars, purchasing a programme to read & browsing through the squillion wonderful items for sale in the "Superstore".
needs to make it clearer.
KM: This is part of strategy to get people online and therefore can be communicated with by email,
extending the database. At the moment Charlton’s database is around 40,000 while a club like
Birmingham City has hundreds of thousands of people on their database. In order for us to grow as a
club we need to increase the size and effectiveness of our database. All purchases at ticket office will
incur the admin fee.
JP: It is driving people away.
CL: It would be better to offer a discount if you buy online. It is not being presented that way.
DJ: There is nothing in the Football League rules preventing this. We also have one of cheapest
season tickets and match day tickets in league. The fee is per order not per ticket.
JB: If you are doing this then the system must be efficient.
Post meeting note: After conversation and consultation including the Fans’ Forum, on fan emails
and fan communication with our ticket office, the feedback was that there are still a lot of fans
who traditionally purchase in-person who don’t have the facilities and/or knowledge to purchase
online. The Club remove walk-up ticket administration charge following fan feedback.
Next meeting - 20 October
Never really understood the mentality of the marketing to "customers" either at the Valley or most football clubs, so many opportunities lost IMHO (No offence) , but it has got to the state with KM that it is so bleedingly obvious that no one understands marketing in the Club and customer management. And yes we are customers and in marketing you treat customers how they wish to be treated and call them fans in football and understand that they are different from cinema goers and restaurant customers and manage them accordingly.
Trawl the rules Dave, look for loopholes, ignore the fans.
If only I knew a season ticket holder
Out of interest had the club just made all the tickets £3 more and then applied a £3 discount if you purchased them a clear two hours before kick off would that have been seen as great marketing, or would that have been seen a bad practice? And if the latter would the current price with a £3 discount be seen as an incentive or a punishment?
I only ask because £3 is not, really, a lot of money, and in the grand scheme of things it sounds like many people are refusing to go on principle, which is, obviously, fine. However, I would consider it cutting off my nose to spite my face if I stopped doing something I love to teach someone a lesson over £3. If the money is that important it is possible to avoid paying it by purchasing the tickets online the day before so it's not even just about £3.
I suspect that most fans buy online from Amazon etc, to save money from high street shops.
I fully get the idea that some casual visitors will be put off by having to pay a surcharge, all be it that I, personally, suspect that will be a small number but for someone that is a committed fan and comes on here on average more than once a day it is hardly a chore to buy the ticket the day before and it's hardly going to break the bank to pay £3.
Not only that but if you do pay on the day and many others don't (to avoid the £3) you might even get served quicker and I would be more than happy to pay £3 extra to save queuing.
Or course it was no problem for me, as an erstwhile season ticket holder to pitch up to watch a quality match in a vibrant stadium. But that is so far removed from the product now on offer that it could be in a different galaxy. Chalk and cheese.