Anyone who has had the recent misfortune to have to contact the NUFC box office may feel the frustration I am currently going through whilst laying on a sun-bed on holiday burning my ginger skin.
Due to bad planning (or rather good planning so I didn’t miss Milan away and got myself back in my good lady’s good books for going to Italy without her) I booked a holiday which clashed with the Man City cup game and Burnley Premier League match.
After signing up to the cup schemes I was left in the position where I had to transfer both tickets.
I went online for Man City game and followed the instruction, and to be honest the process was surprisingly easy – that’s where the positivity ends though.
Upon speaking to family and arranging someone to take my Burnley ticket I logged in and started the process again.
Error after error came up including “unknown error”, “event no longer for sale”, “unauthorised access”, and “please confirm you are over 18 to enter Pornhub”.
Maybe that last one wasn’t the club’s fault.
So began the process of contacting the Box Office whilst in the airport waiting for my flight.
One hour on the phone, where there is no longer a queue number, just some pleasant bloke thanking you for your patience asking you to hold and telling you about match-day tours.
Then they decided to just cut my call off.
A quick search on Twitter (I refuse to call it X as some kind of dirty protest), and I discovered there were quite a few people in the same boat. Pensioners having to go up to the club as they just couldn’t get through, people getting cut off days in a row.
So today I woke up and was determined to get this resolved.
1hr 35 mins into this call and I am writing this. All I can hope for is my minutes are included in my mobile phone contract, and the telecommunication gods look upon my plight favourably and let this call be answered.
Let’s be honest lying in the sun relaxing and longing to jump in the pool whilst on hold listening to the bloke talking about tours probably mitigates the frustration somewhat – but what about people working who want to contact the Box Office to sort stuff out?
I would imagine it isn’t the ticket office staff’s fault – I mean they have tasks like writing names on away tickets in pen which will keep them busy.
How come in every walk of life making something digital is generally a step forward but at Newcastle United it is a massive jump backwards?
Why is the club so painfully unprepared?
Why could they not draft in temporary staff until the problems are resolved?
All I know is the current system to contact the club isn’t working. People ask why there were empty seats against Brentford at SJP? For me the answer is explained in my experience which is repeated thousands of times over – people probably can’t be arsed to sort it out as the club make it nigh on impossible to resolve such small issues.
Premier League club, Champions League ambitions and Conference League ticketing facilities.
It is simply not good enough.
Edit: The end to this tale is a happy one – after 1hr 57 minutes my call was answered and the kind gentleman in the box office completed the transfer for me.
As to why this happened, he had no idea as the Man City one worked, so should this one have too.
Will it happen again – definitely not as I’m not going on holiday again
Gavin Peterson – @gavpeterson316
