Ticket office travails

The Fulham ticket office was for years manned by Sandra whom everybody knew, loved and trusted. Whenever there was a big game and tickets were an issue it was a case of “Get onto Sandra”. She was the type to be chosen as employee of the year as she knew her business and was more than helpful in going that extra mile. She retired and though, the ticket office is still helpful, like everything these days it’s largely been replaced by the internet.

Yesterday the tickets for the play-off final at Wembley against Aston Villa went on sale.

I circularised Fulham pals with an action plan of sitting together in one block but realised soon enough it was going to be a case of each to his own. I duly called the dedicated line run by a Ticketmaster call centre and it was continually engaged. It stayed that way till 5-15.

So with some trepidation I went online. I had no idea of my password so that delayed matters and the site was hard to navigate.

For example, with an iPad, you could not activate the seat you wanted as you needed a cursor. It was very much touch and don’t go.

To my surprise I actually did succeed in getting some together in a decent section. After I did so, I received a email request for another seat. I did manage to find one in our row but had “to assign this to a member in my network”.

Totally confused, I called and eventually got through on the phone  line to purchase a single, all the ones in our section now gone. I received desperate messages possibly because I was the initiator – but certainly not the facilitator – of acquiring the tickets together to the tune of  “Hanging on for 45 minutes, what should I do?”

It was the blind leading the blind.

The Fulham ticket office had closed for the day no doubt they did not want to be at the receiving end of irate calls. Fulham have an allocation of 38,000 tickets – well in excess of our home crowd – but I’m sure there will be some angry fans complaining they have supported the club for years but can’t get a ticket.

Sandra would have been sympathetic  but you would do well to find a human voice let alone a soothing, helpful one in these internet days.