Some West Ham supporters have asked if things have improved under West Ham’s new partner Ticketmaster as the new ticketing system faced its biggest test yet as tickets for the friendly against Juventus went on sale to Claret members and priority list members.
One West Ham supporter, Darren Kristiansen told Claret and Hugh “32 minutes on a mobile + membership fee + booking fee + being a fan fee and whatever else :/(“
Calls cost up to 58p per minute from mobiles to the West Ham ticket line so Darren’s call could have cost him around £17.40 He paid an increased booking fee of £1.95 and paid £40 to become a Claret member to get the chance to buy Juventus tickets.
When ClaretandHugh tested the 0871 premium rate number at 3pm on Monday we were told we were number 34 in the queue with a 31 minute hold time.
At the time of the 30% increase for telephone booking fees ClaretandHugh were told “Unfortunately this was a tough decision but in taking the fans view on the problems encountered with the box office, time spent waiting on the phone due to the size of the See Tickets call centre and their set up. Ticketmaster offer a better service but for this a slightly higher charge applies to their transactions and actions hence this difference, we have battled hard to keep the online the same and this is where biggest improvement in terms of demand and also usage will be seen”
Supporters who used the new Eticketing website from Ticketmaster also complained of numerous technical problems selecting tickets, the site crashing or queue messages being displayed just like the old ticketing site.
Very disappointing, but not a surprise, given the promises by Sullivan, Gold and Brady that Ticketmaster would be a significant improvement over SEE360 for both call centre and online box office. Fans deserve better from the club.
I used the ticketmaster site and purchased my tickets in less than a minute for Juve game . It was a breeze to be honest.
Lucky you! That’s my screen grab from the Facebook post I did… Took me 2 hrs to get the tickets from 1145am onwards! With LOTS of problems!
Didnt go on sale to members until 2pm? Got mine no problem, in and out
Claret members was from 12pm onwards
It doesn’t matter what the club do – there will always be somebody moaning. West Ham knew that they couldn’t cope and outsourced ticket sales to arguably the biggest and best ticket agency around. I think most people know that there will be a queue and do not use a mobile. Why would you use a mobile then moan about costs?
Well that biggest and best ticket agency didn’t work for me for 2 hrs the queue kept resetting and kicking me out from the eticket site!
The phone line was beyond a joke today, nearly two hours in a queue being told constantly the q was 5-10 minutes long, when i got through they could not find my memberships numbers even though i had both cards in my hands, this took another 15 minutes to sort. A complete joke and I will writing to the club to complain.