Lottery vs. See

[completejohn]

I'll try to be objective and fair here.  I'll TRY!

COST:
Lottery:  No service charges
See:  No service charge SHOWN.  Yeah, See did this out of their goodness of their hearts.  They didn't charge PB one cent to do this so PB didn't have to raise the price a penny.  Yep.

TIMING:
Lottery:  you had a number of days to enter
See:  you have one hour to get on line.  Oh, and if you have to be at work on a weekday at 8 or 9 am, sorry.  Maybe you can take your coffee break as soon as you walk in.  Have a regular client meeting that day?  I'm sure they'll understand if you have better things to do.  (on a personal note, nearly everyone in my camp has the unfortunate situation where they need to be employed.  I know - I need richer friends!)

INTERNATIONAL TIMING:
Lottery:  no problem, it IS the WORLD WIDE Web
See:  We do this all at once.  You can sleep some other time.

EASE OF PROCEDURE:
Lottery:  Same as every year, but if you don't understand something, you have time to get answers from PB or the Festivarians
See:  confused once you're at the ticketing area?  Don't know what to do if you get an error message (like "not enough tickets to satisfy your order")?  Don't know the difference between "Go Back" and "Go To Event"?  Tough luck.  Guess wrong and you may need to start over or get back in line

ACCEPTANCE / REJECTION
Lottery:  Pins and needles for a number of days.
See:  You know immediately!

SCALPERS:
Lottery:  Yep, there were a few, but not many.
See:  We shall see.  However, the lack of any digital method of determining who is a scalper or bot made it pretty open to people who had never even heard of Town Park.  We shall see...

INTERNATIONAL SALES
Lottery:  no problem
See:  Nope.  Sorry we forgot to tell you that, Leslie.  Why did you think an international ticket agency could handle something so difficult?

WORKLOAD AT THE PLANET:
Lottery:  Yep a REAL pain in the butt.  I'm sure it took a bunch of time by many people who have lots of other things to keep them busy.  But we REALLY appreciated all that work, and proved that by selling out the festival year after year after year...
See:  Had to research lots of ticketing options to hopefully find the one that works for PB AND its loyal Festivarians. Then had to work with the winning company to make it the best it could be. (I told you I would be fair!)

CONCLUSION:
I'd like to hear YOUR thoughts, but I'm not a big fan of the new system.  I'm particularly worried about scalping because this is something that we Festivarians worked WITH Planet to minimize over the years. 

It's obvious that we are extremely loyal to this festival.  The digitalization of our world has many consequences, some positive, some negative.  I'm hoping that the long-time traditional Town Park and Warner Field camps don't find themselves losing enthusiasm due to the new system.

And yes, I'm looking at this selfishly because i have to let 17 of the 28 people who were in my camp last year that they can't join us in 2020.  So I'm hoping YOU had better luck and perhaps a better experience with See Tickets cuz I highly doubt that we'll be going back to what John Hartford calls "The Goodle Days".

[greg_from_aa]

"I highly doubt that we'll be going back to what John Hartford calls "The Goodle Days".

Maybe Chris Thile can write a new song: "The Google Days"

[Maple Al]

Vince Herman just wrote a new song called Brand New Good Old Days check it out on YouTube.
I think that you nailed it John.

[MaddieRose]

I agree with pretty much all of this. This was not a smooth or user friendly process.

I doubt we will ever go back the Planet doing it all in house, but I hope the Planet can work with SeeTickets to make this process smoother in the future.

[aztoma]

I got this email from See Tickets this morning 24 hours after I unsuccessfully tried for Town Park tickets yesterday. Of course the links in the email did not work
:
Telluride Bluegrass 2020
Jun 18, 2020-Jun 21, 2020
 
We noticed you were in the process of purchasing your tickets for Telluride Bluegrass 2020. We have good news, they're still available!

Click here to go back and complete your purchase.

Already have tickets? See you there!

 
For questions regarding your ticket order, call us at 323-908-0607 (8AM - 7PM PT, Mon through Sat) or email our Help Desk at help@seetickets.us and we'll get back to you within 24 hours.
 
Get Tickets
 

[Pirate Looks at --]

"I highly doubt that we'll be going back to what John Hartford calls "The Goodle Days".

Maybe Chris Thile can write a new song: "The Google Days"

Great and very fair in your evaluation of the process. I hope somehow PB can look at this mess, and scrap the experiment early!

[barrywcarry]

Totally agree ... hit the key themes and a not-overly biased assessment.

Since I struck out in the "new lottery" and have only won a handful of the last 20 "old lottery"s, it's hard to truly understand the impact of the change. 

I don't want to be Polly Positive about everything (crazy, I just googled "opposite of Negative Nancy") but...
One of the benefits of outsourcing the ticketing process is the ability for the client (PB) to hold the provider (SeeTickets) accountable to defined contractual agreements and ideally the client's standards/values.  Otherwise the provider loses the business.  I'd imagine it's much easier to change your ticketing provider, than to invest capital in rolling your own process and technology with continual improvement investments.  Here's hoping:
1. the scalping concerns will end up not being as big as they seem now, e.g. everyone dedicated enough will be able to get their TBF/TP tix (at face, of course)
2. there wasn't a long term contract signed, so PB can try a new provider if SeeTickets is unable to improve the queue process concerns and demonstrably/reliably keep scalping at or below historical rates

[Pass Port]

Totally agree ... hit the key themes and a not-overly biased assessment.

Since I struck out in the "new lottery" and have only won a handful of the last 20 "old lottery"s, it's hard to truly understand the impact of the change. 

I don't want to be Polly Positive about everything (crazy, I just googled "opposite of Negative Nancy") but...
One of the benefits of outsourcing the ticketing process is the ability for the client (PB) to hold the provider (SeeTickets) accountable to defined contractual agreements and ideally the client's standards/values.  Otherwise the provider loses the business.  I'd imagine it's much easier to change your ticketing provider, than to invest capital in rolling your own process and technology with continual improvement investments.  Here's hoping:
1. the scalping concerns will end up not being as big as they seem now, e.g. everyone dedicated enough will be able to get their TBF/TP tix (at face, of course)
2. there wasn't a long term contract signed, so PB can try a new provider if SeeTickets is unable to improve the queue process concerns and demonstrably/reliably keep scalping at or below historical rates

I like your attitude Kevin. I also hope that this new system is updated. Many of us can't handle another year like this. I agree with you in that all of us who are in search of TP tickets at face value will find them.  However, we need to remember to look after each other, help one another. That's the attractant of TP!

Hug your local festivarian! 

[Australian fan]

I got this email from See Tickets this morning 24 hours after I unsuccessfully tried for Town Park tickets yesterday. Of course the links in the email did not work
:
Telluride Bluegrass 2020
Jun 18, 2020-Jun 21, 2020
 
We noticed you were in the process of purchasing your tickets for Telluride Bluegrass 2020. We have good news, they're still available!

Click here to go back and complete your purchase.

Already have tickets? See you there!

 
For questions regarding your ticket order, call us at 323-908-0607 (8AM - 7PM PT, Mon through Sat) or email our Help Desk at help@seetickets.us and we'll get back to you within 24 hours.
 
Get Tickets
 

I got that message too. I got excited for a minute but I talked via bot to them and my tickets weren’t there and the Help Desk couldn’t help. It was just an automated message sadly.

[laht0007]

Shouldn't we all should be worrying about the tarp line by now.

 Listening to: The Ginstrings

[culasthewiz]

Shouldn't we all should be worrying about the tarp line by now.

Don't forget to bring your laptops to get in the virtual queue to get your tarp line number each morning!

[FaceOnMars]

WORKLOAD AT THE PLANET:
Lottery:  Yep a REAL pain in the butt.  I'm sure it took a bunch of time by many people who have lots of other things to keep them busy.  But we REALLY appreciated all that work, and proved that by selling out the festival year after year after year...
See:  Had to research lots of ticketing options to hopefully find the one that works for PB AND its loyal Festivarians. Then had to work with the winning company to make it the best it could be. (I told you I would be fair!)

Yes, manual ticket lotteries are likely very time consuming and require many varied resources; however, it's been carried out for how many years now?  I'm sure the number of requests HAVE steadily increased, but I'd be willing to bet it's more along the lines of an arithmetic increase vs. multiplicative.   So PB might have to spend a bit more money on personnel to "manage" requests (from intake to order fulfillment), but even at $30/hr. would it really break the bank to throw a couple more people at it for a discrete window of time?  Likewise, if the old in-house computer system was in need of a major overhaul, would spending $25k, $50k, or even $100k really be outlandish if it preserved a core tradition that underpins a significant marketing component of PB's overall "model"?

If you do the math:  a $15 increase on a 4-day pass x 10k people = $150k.  I realize this figure is in isolation of the larger economic landscape and also understand the financial appeal of not having to spend big chunks of cash when the option to outsource to a third party exists, but I can't help but wonder if not spending the $ to keep it in house was akin to shooting the goose that laid the golden egg?

I have to admit, my take on PB's former overall paternalistic approach in various respects to cultivate its traditional market is a bit more nuanced now after reading the aftermath of "horror stories".   Protectionism at the expense of egalitarianism was my primary general contention.   I still believe policies pertaining to activities within the venue/event (i.e. tarp run) ought to abide as much as possible to egalitarian principles, but I now see the utility of how having the equivalent of a moderator at the "front door" is extremely helpful in protecting the community from the natural chaos of the general market that includes speculators / scammers / etc.   It's interesting to juxtapose tickting process with how various social media platforms and message boards are moderated.   It would seem to me that it's a delicate balancing act, but a gentle yet firm hand to cull the riff raff seems to yield the best results, IMO

   

[BuckeyeDog]

After reading all those wonderful posts about why our community is so special, there is no doubt that we will all wok together to help our family through this ticket situation. This is the best community in the world, it is humbling to be part of it.
But since we know PB reads this list, i want to get back to some of the points John made in his posting. If PB wants to keep this system, there is plenty of room for improvement.So here are some suggestions, based on what has been posted in the forum.
1. Separate the TP vehicle pass from the TP ticket lottery. Many people encountered problems because they believed, erroneously, .these were available, and they were trying to keep these in our community. Having these rejected in your cart caused all sorts of problems, many people lost spots or wasted time because of this. All 30 of these were probably gone in 30 seconds.
2. Similar problem as above, but with number of TP tickets. Dont let users put something in thier cart that is not available.
3. Fix the problem with international addresses.
4. Folks must be aware that they need to be in the queue only a few minutes before the sale. If you are not logged in when they build the original queue, you are added to the end of the line.
5. Process and pay as quickly as possible. Time is important with this system, tickets disappear the longer you wait.
6. Keep the payment options. Some folks like the feature that allows them to split payments.
7. Make-clear when the actual tickets and wristbands will be shipped. Since we share these among the community, the ticket transfer system may not work for everyone in our community.
Hopefully these issues can be addressed next time.

 Listening to: Stuck in the smoke hole of my teepee

[KMurf]

Number 1 and 2 could be solved by just having it automatically adjust to the number of available tickets.  So if you put in for 4 tickets and only 2 are available, just put two in the cart along with a little red/popup message that says quantities have been adjusted.  Same if you are, for example, trying to get 2 tickets and a vehicle pass but only the tickets are available.  Just note that the vehicle pass was dropped and give the purchaser the option to continue with the purchase with just the 2 tickets.  Still have to be fast but at least won't have to back out and guess what is and isn't available.

[Debbiefromtucson]

I was 327 and did try with 3,2,1, and no vehicle pass and still struck out
Debbie