West Ham’s entirely unnecessary new ticketing arrangements – if that justifies that word – continued yesterday with complaints to the Claretandhugh Facebook forum over the failure of promised e mails arriving.The club had promised that e tickets would be sent to e mail addresses yesterday morning but follower Barry Rutherford revealed: ” I waited for an E-ticket to my mobile all week but NOTHING!
They said there would be a second batch sent on the morning of the match (just like West Ham leaving it late) and I end up going there one hour before kick off and getting a paper one from the ticket office.”
And another fan – Michael Haynes – added: “What I don’t get is what’s the issue in just using the normal plastic card season tickets…. the club seem to like create issues and processes when they are not needed.”
We wonder how many others were affected as it is impossible to believe that Barry was alone in not receiving an e mail and it’s more than possible that the crowd figure was affected as a result as people decided to stay away in the absence of the promised e mail.
West Ham have also failed to let supporters know what system will be introduced for the season proper consistently claiming they are waiting on Premier League protocols ( posh word for recommendations) .
It takes little working out, however, that with only a couple of weeks to go before our first home fixture we are going to face these sort of issues from here on in – the traditional season ticket is a thing of the past. The admission as such is being kicked down the road in our opinion.
What the board and ticketing department need to understand is the incredible inconvenience this will cause to elderly, infirm, non tekkie folk and vulnerable it will almost certainly affect gates as people decide the new set up simply isn’t worth the bother of travelling miles to go through what can be problematical procedures.
And we would bet it will certainly affect season ticket sales next season as it would have done this year had we known what was planned before forking out our hard earned dough.
Sorry to hear it was a fiasco for some fans, for me although I would prefer to have a permanent season ticket, it was very easy, I received the email and scanned the barcode without any problems.