MU BOWL TICKETS

HOW NOT TO SELL TEXAS BOWL TICKETS

Saturday morning I met with Ken Pike to discuss a road trip to Houston for the Missouri's Texas Bowl football game against Navy. Before coffee with the Pikester, I went online to get the phone number for the ticket office. When I called I received a recording that went something like this: "Thank you for calling the Mizzou Athletic Ticket Office. Our hours are from 8 to 5, Monday through Friday. To order tickets for events you may go to our website."

Since I had called about 8:30, I waited until after 9 a.m. and tried 1-800-CAT PAWS again and received the same message. Then I went to the site for online ticketing. This is what I found a simple order form that contained the following information:

Number of tickets; three ticket prices available in three areas of Reliant Stadium (no diagram of the stadium); prices ranging from $65 to $25; and a disclaimer that seats would be assigned by Tiger Scholarship Fund and other department parameters. (Basically, you were going to get what they sent you.)

After following the link for a while, I wrote the following e-mail to the ticket office:

"I find it difficult to believe no one is in the ticket office on a Saturday morning before a home basketball game and while the Tigers are allegedly trying to sell tickets to the Texas Bowl. Maybe it's just too early for you folks.

Has it occurred to you that some people work 9-5 during the week and find it difficult to contact you during "regular" business hours? Or that some people do not have computers to order online? Or that some people do not have credit cards to order online?

C'mon, Man! Time for the Athletic Department to start making things a little more fan friendly. Maybe you would get a few more souls into the seats and then you could stop whining about lack of fan support.

My boss and I work out of town during the week and are meeting for coffee this morning to discuss our plans for a trip to Houston. We were then going to head over to Mizzou Arena (or is it the Hearnes?) to pick up tix for the bowl and for the Fairleigh-Dickinson game. Guess not.

Right now I am pretty disgusted and am thinking of forwarding this e-mail to the local news outlets unless you have a pretty damn good explanation of why I can't just walk up to a window and buy a ticket for the Texas Bowl."

At coffee with Pike, we went online, selected 3 tickets for $25 and continued ordering, following the links and found the price for three tickets was $99 that included a $3/ticket fee and a $15 delivery fee. We followed the link to the payment form which asked for credit card information. Pike was somewhat dismayed to learn of the additional charges and said he would buy the tickets at the 7 p.m. basketball game against Fairleigh-Dickinson. At that point I sent the above e-mail. Later yesterday I received the following reply from the ticket office:

"Thank you for your e-mail. Our office is open Monday – Friday 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM. We will open 2 hours prior to tonight's men's basketball game. I'm sorry that our hours are not convenient for you. Thank you for your support of Missouri Tiger Athletics."

That sure made me feel a lot better.

Today I went back to the ticket site to refresh my memory of the procedure to order tickets. First, the link was broken. A few minutes later it was back up and I was on the site again; however a trip through the process now includes a step that requires new online customers to "register" prior to ordering tickets. Obviously, my e-mail had an immediate effect on the ticket-ordering process.

Now it is even more difficult to get a ticket to the Texas Bowl!

Don Steele

December 13, 2009