: Tue Feb 24, 2009 6:55 pm
Here's the full story, or at least the edited highlights.
Back in November the club were ready to submit their regular order to kalamazoo for the season ticket books. This just happened to be mentioned in passing at a weekly meeting with LSV.
LSV told LC that there was no need to order these, as the ticket system they were going to use would do all the season tickets etc.
As has been well documented, the ticket system installation did not go smoothly or according to plan.
LSV then made the decision to go down the swipe card route with season tickets, and from then on in, we were plagued with problems. Firstly the seating plan fiasco which went on forever, and I'm not 100% certain has been fully reconciled.
This lead to the decision of unreserved seating which the vast majority of fans who wanted seating requested.
Then it transpired that the "ticket package" aspect of the software had not been included in the package purchased by LSV. The club picked up the tab for this (around £1,000), which also cost us a good couple of weeks.
Then we learned that because the decision to go down the swipe card route had been taken, the existing ticket printers could not be adapted to print on cards, and thus a dedicated set of ticket prnters would be needed, at a cost of circa £7,000.
Club hadn't budgeted for this, and LSV wouldn't pay either, so the cards have to be printed off site, by the ticket system providers. They assured us that we would be up and running by Whitehaven game. They then told us late on Friday afternoon that this wouldn't be possible, and that leads us to yesterday and today, whereby we have put together the mailshot.
All information that has been passed to supporters about season tickets, has been done so in good faith (ie. second week in January, due in in a fortnight etc.)
Now for those amongst us who feel the need to aportion blame, not that it's at all helpful or constructive, from my perspective, here are the main errors.
Error 1 - Club - November 2008, the club listened to LSV, and did not submit the order to kalamazoo.
Error 2 - LSV - Having told the club that the ticket system would do everything, they did not include the "ticket package" software aspect in their purchase.
Error 3 - LSV - Decision was made to go down swipe card route without thought to the costings of hardware etc.
Error 4 - Ticket service provider - Twice gave us a date that we would be up and running, and failed to meet it.