Sunday, September 18, 2011

SFS Ticket Ordering Fiasco Continues

So, last week I wrote a frustrated two-page letter to the manager of Patron Services and the manager of IT at SF Symphony, noting that I'd gotten two different stories from the box office in the course of three phone calls, several emails, and a visit to the box office. I asked which story was correct and asked that they put complete and correct information on their web site. I was trying to find out how you can pick your own seats and dates AND get the subscriber price.

The two stories I got were these:
  • You can only get subscriber prices by ordering from the Compose-Your-Own URL, which doesn't allow you to pick the exact seats and doesn't allow you to vary quantities in a single pass. (That is, you compose 2 different subscriptions if you want 2 tickets to 4 shows and 1 ticket to 15.)
  • You get the subscriber price through the single-ticket system as soon as you buy tickets to three or more concerts.
What I was told in email was that neither of these is correct. To do what I'd like to do is a two-step process: 1. Order tickets to three concerts via Compose Your Own. This would get me flagged as a subscriber in Tessitura. 2. Then I'd get subscriber prices through the single-ticket system.

Facepalm. Needless to say, this isn't explicitly stated anywhere on the SFS web site. It's not obvious at all.

If you phone them, or you go to the box office, you will of course get the subscriber price when you hit three concerts, and you won't have to worry about taking the right path on the web site. But I can't possibly be the only person who'd like to be able to do this on line.

1 comment:

D. said...

One would almost suspect that SFS wants to discourage ticket buyers...