Different baseball teams appear to have slightly different setups when it comes to the ticketing, such as what obscure number or word(s) need to be entered to be able to get tickets to prevent programs from accessing the system and buying lots of tickets to re-sell. I can understand this protective measure and appreciate it as someone who would rather not be paying extra to some middle man.
What irks me is that I'm paying $4 per ticket for the "convenience" of ordering online, and they cannot seem to make the interface easier to find tickets. Why do I use the quotes? Because you cannot put in a price range for what you are willing to pay. Sure, you can select "Best available" and get the $300 seats, but what if you are looking for the best available seats for $35 or less? Or what if you are looking for tickets in particular sections? Why not let people choose the sections where they would be interested in sitting? Because you cannot perform these types of searches, you end up trying different sections individually, which is where the entry of the "secret code" protective measure comes into play. when you have 15 sections in which you would be willing to sit, you could end up going through the system 15 times. Even better? When Michelle and I were looking for tickets in one section on the Brewers website and they weren't available, the search switched to "best available" to give us tickets three times the price we were willing to pay for a single game. Why not give me the best available seats in the sections that cost less than the one selected in the initial search? Can you imagine going out to dinner to find that they are out of the turkey sandwich you want, but then they try to turn around and sell you the prime rib dinner instead of offering you another sandwich?This is one area where stubhub.com does a nice job... you can filter your view to see what tickets are available in particular sections for a particular price and with a particular number of tickets grouped together. Admittedly, stubhub.com has a different business model, but with AJAX and other technology, they are able to present and change the view without reloading pages, and you do not need to enter in the security code multiple times just to see what tickets are available.
Michelle and I were looking to get tickets for multiple games last night. We went through the search to get our tickets for one game, and then began the process of searching for tickets for another game. Well, the system was not built with enough intelligence to say "this person is looking for more tickets. I need to hold on to these tickets while they search." We apparently took more than the minute and a half it would old the tickets for the first game while looking for tickets for the second game and had to go back through the process again to get the tickets for the first game. Do I want people to put tickets on hold and never buy them? No. Do I want to have a little time to browse and see what tickets are available? Absolutely. Is a minute and a half enough? Not a chance, especially when the process to find tickets is so convoluted.
So... mlb.com, tickets.com, or any ticketing company who may stumble across this post: please take the "convenience" fee you charge, and please make your system actually convenient to use. In the meantime, I will be calling or visiting the box office whenever possible for true convenience when selecting tickets.
