We had a guy called David Colgan who was all over the ticketing software (which wasn’t great), until Meire and Duchatelet decided to buy a system that other clubs had warned them off. David then left, or was pushed out, and before long the club had to replace the software again at the fans’ expense (£1.50 booking fee). The woman who oversaw the ST fiasco took over. She didn’t last long. David, who was a Palace fan but a highly conscientious and decent guy, sadly died.
I know who is in charge of the ticket office now and they are good people. My question is, who is doing David’s technical, geeky role and managing the software supplier now. Is anyone?
Lovely guy David, as you say geeky but very good at what he did, sad he is no longer with us RIP.
Just want to post a positive friendly message to all those who don't yet have tickets for home leg. Am confident most, if not all, of you will get what you need when those STs are released tomorrow.
Keep the faith. All will be well.
I hope you’re right but as said by others, not everyone is in jobs where they can become available to spend time online at 11am. Teachers can’t just leave classroom’s, train and bus drivers can’t just pull over for half hour etc
Hope every proper fan gets sorted. I know ST holders who have still not got tickets due to system issues
Today’s exercise children is navigating the Charlton Athletic ticket website to get me my season ticket seat, plus a couple of others for mates. A* grade for whoever succeeds 😉
We had a guy called David Colgan who was all over the ticketing software (which wasn’t great), until Meire and Duchatelet decided to buy a system that other clubs had warned them off. David then left, or was pushed out, and before long the club had to replace the software again at the fans’ expense (£1.50 booking fee). The woman who oversaw the ST fiasco took over. She didn’t last long. David, who was a Palace fan but a highly conscientious and decent guy, sadly died.
I know who is in charge of the ticket office now and they are good people. My question is, who is doing David’s technical, geeky role and managing the software supplier now. Is anyone?
I wouldn’t put it down to being just the need for a “ technical, geeky role”. Reordering of lists as you make changes is a system problem and should be reported to the supplier. Whatever a Customer to Customer relationship is I can’t understand what it’s doing in a ticketing system. It looks like a lack of customisation which could be a supplier on in-house change …. If you know how. The problems reported yesterday and today are a mixture of user and system errors. All in all it is a bit of a mess and needs to be investigated. What’s the point of a system that makes work for users and staff alike ? But is there anyone in-house capable, is there a support contract with the supplier and what is the origin of the system ? Was it designed as a ticketing system ?
It reminds me of when I took my dad to the outpatient's at Darent Valley. Over several years the check-in computer time, printed on the slip of paper it produced, was always about 40mins wrong. Either nobody knew how to correct it or nobody cared or both.
I think they thought the system was robust enough to take the demand. Experience has taught me to expect it to go wrong - and to tell people that so you manage expectations. I have trained groups to set up things like new computers. You can tell people not to press anything until told to do so - but they will because they know better because it worked when setting up their own computer. It will then go wrong. That experience tells me that the instructions you give out have to be clear and exact step by step. Preferably with screen prints for each step. I would not expect all to follow them until it all goes wrong for them. At least they have instructions to fall back on. If they had better guidance most issues would not have occurred and the demand on the telephone and email from those with issues would not have been so great. I would have also split help issues so it was either phone or email so priority issues are resolved quickly.
When things did go wrong, why were updates not put on the website quicker? How many emails were sent in and replied too to say that ticket emails would be delayed before the official note was sent out for instance? Charlton Life offered more support than the website. That is not what should happen.
Do you know, there is ONE, very positive thing that we Lifers should take from the challenges we've faced over the past 3 days.
We all somehow, sometime, managed to find the best possible forum in, well, the south east to join and call ourselves members.
Serendipity may have played its part for some ; invitation , curiosity , even boredom .
But however we took the plunge, thought long & hard about an unusual pen name and dived in, we are part of something very unique.
In the way that our gaffer moulded a group of individual players, we too have become a TEAM.
A team that helps one another, picks up those bruised Lifers in need of some TLC, encourages those finding life /relationships/work/health difficult ...ALL FOR ONE & ONE FOR ALL , our motto.<3
Now, against all the odds, despite being SO close to giving up at times & having to resort to reaching for alcohol far too early in the day, our team saw us through the pain of the Play Off ticket drama as it unfolded.
Problems were solved with advice from fellow Lifers, encouragement was given until the faint " hurrah" could be heard when success was achieved, suggestions were given and it was heart warming to know that we were in this together.
And we should feel sorry for those desperate Addicks that had to face those challenges alone and who may have given up the fight for those tickets they desperately wanted to buy.
WE are indeed the fortunate ones. Long may our numbers increase as others seeking the light follow our path....
Onwards & upwards with Charlton Life ( and AFKA !) !
I took this picture during the Crawley game in December. We've come a long way on and off the pitch since then.
I can see my season ticket seats. Empty!
Attending as I always do with the boy, the Home Leg is our/his first midweek game on a school night - we can't wait! I'm sure there'll be loads of other youngsters doing their first 'school night' game next week.
I've got to say, our support has definitely got better over the years which is bizarre, as it has mostly been misery watching us.
From 2017-19 I lived in Nottingham. I managed to get away tickets for games like Pompey, Shrewsbury play offs away, Doncaster play offs away, Doncaster at home.
My only loyalty points were from away tickets and a dozen home games or so over that 1 and a half season period. I'd never have managed to get play off tickets and the Pompey game now under those circumstances I don't think?
Suppose it shows we can fill the ground if the club has a bit of excitement.
Also shows how important it is to get out of this league and that there's never a bad time to get promoted.
I couldn't make the Doncaster playoff at the Valley but the 98 one lives long in the memory. The atmosphere around the place prior, during and after was like nothing I'd experienced at the Valley before. Here's hoping!
It reminds me of when I took my dad to the outpatient's at Darent Valley. Over several years the check-in computer time, printed on the slip of paper it produced, was always about 40mins wrong. Either nobody knew how to correct it or nobody cared or both.
I take it that it was 40 mins earlier so as to account for the horrific wait to queue up to park most times you go there
I took this picture during the Crawley game in December. We've come a long way on and off the pitch since then.
I can see my season ticket seats. Empty!
Attending as I always do with the boy, the Home Leg is our/his first midweek game on a school night - we can't wait! I'm sure there'll be loads of other youngsters doing their first 'school night' game next week.
You know things must be bad if you can only afford to use half the pitch too!
Feels to me a main issue is that we didn’t have a long enough gap between season ticket holders and general sale to smooth out the number of users on the system and user understanding. We then had away tickets on sale at the same time too.
This coupled with the initial ST holders being less familiar with navigating the platform (they potentially only do it once to get a ST given our limited cup runs) resulted in misplaced purchases - not aided by the wording of instructions.
The right call seems to be the 24 hr delay adopted.
In my experience as a project manager sad to say never under estimate user behaviour - they always do what you don’t anticipate!
The suggestion of more technical glitches of various browser compatibility issues may or may not prove to be a red herring and not clear if they will be able to confirm that post the event given some conflicting experiences.
I'm in the bottom photo ... and I can see myself, my nephew and brother quite easily: back row of the top deck to the right of the white South East London banner. My grandaughter must have been hiding further along the row out of shot!
Seeing these photos of the Crawley attendance I think there were fewer people there then compared to who'd stayed behind after Saturday's game for the POTY presentations and NJ's speech.
Do you know, there is ONE, very positive thing that we Lifers should take from the challenges we've faced over the past 3 days.
We all somehow, sometime, managed to find the best possible forum in, well, the south east to join and call ourselves members.
Serendipity may have played its part for some ; invitation , curiosity , even boredom .
But however we took the plunge, thought long & hard about an unusual pen name and dived in, we are part of something very unique.
In the way that our gaffer moulded a group of individual players, we too have become a TEAM.
A team that helps one another, picks up those bruised Lifers in need of some TLC, encourages those finding life /relationships/work/health difficult ...ALL FOR ONE & ONE FOR ALL , our motto.<3
Now, against all the odds, despite being SO close to giving up at times & having to resort to reaching for alcohol far too early in the day, our team saw us through the pain of the Play Off ticket drama as it unfolded.
Problems were solved with advice from fellow Lifers, encouragement was given until the faint " hurrah" could be heard when success was achieved, suggestions were given and it was heart warming to know that we were in this together.
And we should feel sorry for those desperate Addicks that had to face those challenges alone and who may have given up the fight for those tickets they desperately wanted to buy.
WE are indeed the fortunate ones. Long may our numbers increase as others seeking the light follow our path....
Onwards & upwards with Charlton Life ( and AFKA !) !
I’m definitely taking FF in with me for my next performance review! 🤣
I thought it would be a good idea to get ready for this.
I was logged in on Opera on my desktop. I figured I should log into Safari on my laptop to, just in case. But apparently my email address is incorrect. I checked on my desktop and email/ password were both correct. But I can't log in on any other browser or device.
So I thought, okay, I will stay by this desktop all morning and try through this. But now I have been force logged out of Opera on desktop, and cannot log in on any browser at all.
Comments
"So I said to the bloke next to me, I said 'Ooooiiiii!' "
It reminds me of when I took my dad to the outpatient's at Darent Valley. Over several years the check-in computer time, printed on the slip of paper it produced, was always about 40mins wrong. Either nobody knew how to correct it or nobody cared or both.
Experience has taught me to expect it to go wrong - and to tell people that so you manage expectations.
I have trained groups to set up things like new computers. You can tell people not to press anything until told to do so - but they will because they know better because it worked when setting up their own computer. It will then go wrong.
That experience tells me that the instructions you give out have to be clear and exact step by step. Preferably with screen prints for each step.
I would not expect all to follow them until it all goes wrong for them. At least they have instructions to fall back on.
If they had better guidance most issues would not have occurred and the demand on the telephone and email from those with issues would not have been so great.
I would have also split help issues so it was either phone or email so priority issues are resolved quickly.
Charlton Life offered more support than the website. That is not what should happen.
We all somehow, sometime, managed to find the best possible forum in, well, the south east to join and call ourselves members.
Serendipity may have played its part for some ; invitation , curiosity , even boredom .
But however we took the plunge, thought long & hard about an unusual pen name and dived in, we are part of something very unique.
In the way that our gaffer moulded a group of individual players, we too have become a TEAM.
A team that helps one another, picks up those bruised Lifers in need of some TLC, encourages those finding life /relationships/work/health difficult ...ALL FOR ONE & ONE FOR ALL , our motto.<3
Now, against all the odds, despite being SO close to giving up at times & having to resort to reaching for alcohol far too early in the day, our team saw us through the pain of the Play Off ticket drama as it unfolded.
Problems were solved with advice from fellow Lifers, encouragement was given until the faint " hurrah" could be heard when success was achieved, suggestions were given and it was heart warming to know that we were in this together.
And we should feel sorry for those desperate Addicks that had to face those challenges alone and who may have given up the fight for those tickets they desperately wanted to buy.
WE are indeed the fortunate ones. Long may our numbers increase as others seeking the light follow our path....
Onwards & upwards with Charlton Life ( and AFKA !) !
Attending as I always do with the boy, the Home Leg is our/his first midweek game on a school night - we can't wait! I'm sure there'll be loads of other youngsters doing their first 'school night' game next week.
From 2017-19 I lived in Nottingham. I managed to get away tickets for games like Pompey, Shrewsbury play offs away, Doncaster play offs away, Doncaster at home.
My only loyalty points were from away tickets and a dozen home games or so over that 1 and a half season period. I'd never have managed to get play off tickets and the Pompey game now under those circumstances I don't think?
Suppose it shows we can fill the ground if the club has a bit of excitement.
Also shows how important it is to get out of this league and that there's never a bad time to get promoted.
The atmosphere around the place prior, during and after was like nothing I'd experienced at the Valley before.
Here's hoping!
Edit - was reversed
between season ticket holders and general sale to smooth out the number of users on the system and user understanding. We then had away tickets on sale at the same time too.
The suggestion of more technical glitches of various browser compatibility issues may or may not prove to be a red herring and not clear if they will be able to confirm that post the event given some conflicting experiences.
Seeing these photos of the Crawley attendance I think there were fewer people there then compared to who'd stayed behind after Saturday's game for the POTY presentations and NJ's speech.
I was logged in on Opera on my desktop. I figured I should log into Safari on my laptop to, just in case. But apparently my email address is incorrect. I checked on my desktop and email/ password were both correct. But I can't log in on any other browser or device.
So I thought, okay, I will stay by this desktop all morning and try through this. But now I have been force logged out of Opera on desktop, and cannot log in on any browser at all.