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| | Thursday, 19 December, 2002, 09:40 GMT Villa tickets fiasco - were you there?  Aston Villa have apologised for the tickets fiasco which left thousands of fans outside the ground while kick-off was delayed for 80 minutes. Were you affected? Send us your tales. Aston Villa's Worthington Cup tie with Liverpool kicked off 80 minutes late on Wednesday night, after thousands of fans had to queue to pick up tickets. Concerned about tickets getting delayed in the Christmas post, the club asked fans to pick them up in person. But the box office was unable to cope with demand, and thousands of fans were left to queue in the freezing cold for well over an hour. And many Liverpool fans may have missed the Reds' last-minute winner - as they rushed off to catch trains home. If you were kept waiting at Villa Park, share your story here. This debate is now closed. A selection of your e-mails appear below. Why didn't Ticketmaster open their offices at midday on the day of the game? I would have got my tickets earlier in the day if they had been open. Surely as the booking agent they must have realised that there would be problems due to the sheer quantity of tickets left uncollected. I will never use Ticketmaster again and don't appreciate being told a pack of lies on the phone after waiting half an hour listening to the best of the Beatles!!! They also charged �1.50 'service charge' and �1.25 booking fee.
I do believe that ticketmaster have failed to provide adequate service, so I believe they should refund the service charge for all 17,000 tickets, simply because they haven't provided any service at all.
This is just the latest in a long list of bungles by the Villa 'management'. Mr Ellis and the other board members have again shown their total reluctance to do the decent thing and give up their positions to more capable people. The best the long-suffering Villa fan can do is continue to support the team, and hope that when the current regime eventually does retire we can get back to the successes we achieved in 1981-82. So many of you are slagging Ticketmaster off, but I have never had any problems with Ticketmaster purcahsing tickets through them for every England home game over the past three years. Whoever made the decision not to mail the tickets should be sacked as the folly of the idea that the tickets would not arrive at their destination because of the Christmas post was absolute nonsense. How can Ticketmaster and Aston Villa blame the Christmas post for their organisational failings? This excuse is up there with "the cheque is in the post" - pathetic.
I was one of thousands of England supporters left queuing for hours outside St James before the Albania game. I ordered tickets through Ticketmaster and missed the kick-off along with many others. It's about time that Ticketmaster did what it is paid for. What excuse can they use at another time of year. The Albania game was not on in December! I hope the FA fine Villa and Ticketmaster and that the money is not put in the FA coffers but given in compensation to those people who had to leave early to catch trains etc. The internet is great and being able to buy tickets for games on sites like Ticketmaster is superb but picking up tickets at the ground is not an option. They should have sent the tickets out and duplicates to the ground if they do not arrive. The executive management of Aston Villa is entirely to blame for this fiasco and the buck should stop at the top. Frankly, it is no more or less than has come to be expected from the bungle of amateurs and sycophants who purport to run the club. In the real world a business which treats its customers in this way would have gone to the wall long ago. I'm a Villa fan living in the USA and saw the fiasco on cable TV last night. What a joke. I have had numerous experiences of dealing with Ticketmaster trying to buy Villa tickets when back in the UK. I've had issues with duplicate tickets, tickets not arriving in the post etc.
As for Christmas post, why not have fans getting email confirmations as tickets( anyone ever heard of e-tickets on airlines?) or maybe use an overnight carrier to get the tickets out. As usual, we claim to be a big club, with the business mentality of a Sunday league pub team. Problem is, fans are loyal and whatever happens we'll always follow the Villa even when treated like dirt. Claret and Blue. Why issue tickets at all? If I buy seats at the cinema I turn up, put my credit card in a machine and the tickets are issued immediately. If I fly or travel by coach I can print the ticket voucher on my PC printer. The technology is there to prevent this sort of problem. Now if only they could come up with a solution to getting out of the car park in less than an hour... I was there from 6.30 trying to get my tickets for the match. There were no stewards guarding the front of the queues and no organisation to try and get people served till after 8pm. Aston Villa are to blame, they should have put more staff on and more stewards. It was a complete disgrace. I am a Liverpool supporter and on Monday I phoned LFC (NOT Ticketmaster) to buy a ticket for last night's game. The admin charge was 90p, which I believe is less then that charged by Ticketmaster, and no mention was made of any ridiculous delays in the post. It arrived the following morning.
Could it be that somebody somewhere just wanted to save the cost of 17,000 first class stamps, so they could make an extra �7290 profit at the expense of all those who had to stand around for hours in the freezing cold? Ticketdisaster are a waste of time. As an England member I have had to put up with their sub-standard service for too long. Tickets turning up after the game has been played (Greece at Manchester), having to pick up tickets at the ground at away matches (Germany and Holland), queueing up for hours to pick up tickets at home games (Albania at Newcastle) and to top it all, useless telephone staff who don't know a thing. I've heard of people trying to buy tickets for the Slovakia away game, who, when they phoned up had to give their membership number and date of birth to prove it was them, only to be told that they had given the wrong date of birth?! Please tell me how you can give the wrong date of your own birth? And this happened to a quite a few people and was not an isolated incident. I actually work on the turnstiles at Villa Park, and every game you can be assured that the majority of fans will arrive within the last 30 mins before kick-off. Bearing in mind that Ticketmaster had not issued tickets through the post due to Christmas delays, fans should have made sure that they arrived with plenty of time to pick up tickets and take their seat within the ground for the original start time of 7.45. It shows a lack of foresight from the fans that they expected to turn up as usual and not expect any difficulties. However, I feel that the Villa could have assisted matters better by informing the crowd of the difficulties over the tannoy system as we had gone a full hour of delay without explanation until we were told that kick off would happen at 9.05!
I was one of the freezing people last night and I nearly lost a toe through frostbite. Villa clearly underestimated demand for the game and tickets didn't go on sale early enough. It would have been very useful if the media could have been employed to circulate the message. This has happened before with Ticketmaster, I took no chances this time and went to the ticket office to get my tickets. It didn't affect the game, if anything it made me even more nervous than I was already. Liverpool were lucky yet again. How many staff did Villa have on duty last night and how many of them were selling tickets - I'll bet more were involved in Corporate Hospitality and the Directors' Box. In most businesses, an obvious crisis needs crisis management - Ellis, Stride, Ansell (the "directors") should have been directing and sent out a large number of extra staff to help out. All hands to the pumps should have been the motto. We were in on time, having bought our tickets last week, but ended up having to buy some supper at midnight as all the takeaways were closed by the time we got out of the ground. Even at 6.45pm, the ticket office must have realised how many tickets were still to be collected and been prepared for the inevitable. A midweek game always brings late arrivals, especially with reduced prices and we all know that the organisation on ticketing at Villa Park is a shambles, but the most annoying part was the lack of any information from the announcer between 8pm and 8.45pm, when an announcement was made following the start of booing and slow handclaps. Ironically, Mr Ellis owns a brewery and it's pretty obvious he couldn't organise a jolly good party in one!
Ticketmaster have never caused me a problem. I have had to pick up tickets from venues before, but have been able to pick them up before the event itself. I have done this for other sports events. I understand Villa would not release them before the evening of the game. This shows crass stupidity. Everyone knows most people have to get home from work, and then get to the game. They knew how many tickets were due to be picked up. My 10-year-old daughter could have worked out how long it would have taken to issue the tickets. In this case I feel the responsibility must lie with Villa. Most fans did turn up in good time. Fans were told earlier in the day they could not collect tickets before 6pm. From 6pm there were already 2000 people queuing. It was clear even at that point that not all customers would be served in time, yet no action was taken for another two hours. The queue was very well ordered despite no management from any stewards or police. It was only when stewards made a late intervention to break it into four smaller queues that problems occurred, as three of these queues then had to remerge and people at the front of the queue were then behind people who had arrived up to one hour later. Ticketmaster and the stewards at Villa were a shambles. The police and the staff in the Villa ticket office on the night did the best they could. Thankfully the game was worth the long cold wait. Phil Melpham's statement doesn't go far enough - whose decision was it not to put the tickets in the post? When was it made? Why weren't fans informed?
I ordered mine by phone on Tuesday of last week. I called Ticketmaster asking where they were yesterday and was told that duplicates would be printed for me to collect. That was a lie, because when I eventually got to the front I received my original tickets in an addressed envelope. A bloke next to me had been told on Tuesday that the tickets had not even been printed then. This is appalling. The situation was eminently avoidable. How dare one of your other correspondents try to blame the fans. Unless the Villa gave Ticketmaster an edict not to send out any tickets, it is wholly Ticketmaster's fault. How much money did they make out of this fiasco? We paid �1.50 service charge per ticket plus �1.25 handling fee per transaction (whatever that means) to endure being crushed in a melee for an hour and losing an hour and a half's sleep. The BBC should investigate this properly, and get some answers from Ticketmaster. I read about the ticket problems at Villa Park last night and felt very sorry for all the fans who had to wait in the freezing cold for tickets and for those who had to leave early to catch transportation home back to their relative cities. The FA should stand up and be counted it is their responsibility to provide a trustworthy method of provisioning tickets to both sets of fans. Tickets sold over the internet should have been sent by express mail to the purchaser of the tickets. ASK the people what they would prefer to do; stand in the cold for hours, or spend a little more on having the tickets expressed mailed. Come on FA, use some common sense. It wasn't that long ago we had a disaster at Hillsborough because of a similar situation.
Yes, Ticketmaster must assume some of the responsibility for this, but the ultimate blame lies with Villa. In some way it benefited me as I was almost 45 minutes late for the game due to forgetting to pick my friend up! However, speaking to others inside the ground, I am aware of the strength of feeling on this one. I don't understand why Villa use an agency in the first place. We are season ticket-holders, but as it was a cup game ordered the tickets via the net. We had to ring on the day of the game as the tickets hadn't arrived - we were then told to pick up the tickets at the Trinity ticket office. Our tickets were for the Holte, so why couldn't they have put our tickets at the Holte ticket office - this would have decreased the queues at Trinity. There were no queues at the Holte. We finally got down to the last 300 or so people and they police / stewards then directed us into the TRINITY end, along with 300 more people, including some Liverpool fans. We at this stage still had NO tickets, and they just let us in without even showing proof - so how many other people got in without even having tickets? We were told to find a seat, but as people had been waiting for two hours, a lot had gone for burgers, so we sat and then were moved on by the people who rightfully had those seats.
Finally, we refused to move and stood in the aisles - the seated supporters then complained to police and we were moved from the TRINITY, through the NORTH STAND (through the Liverpool fans) and found seats on he corner of the DOUG ELLIS - so we ended up being in three sides of the ground during the game! Yet, the only place we never got to was where our seats were booked for - the Holte End row LL. One good thing to come out of this was the fact that I'm at the back of the queue and appeared on the back page of nearly every paper today - UP THE VILLA. I am ashamed because I could only watch the first half because of the trains. I am very annoyed because I missed some very good goals. I want to know what I be given back, eg, free match ticket to whatever game I want to go to. I'm from Ireland and I've lived in the USA. for about four years. I have seen first-hand the problems caused by what is termed 'will call' pick up. I've gone to games at RFK Stadium in Washington DC where there will be literally thousands of people waiting outside for tickets - many don't get in till after half time -and this is a crowd which would be less that that at Villa Park last night. From the other responses that I've read today the problem seems to be the same at home. All I can say is that if Ticketmaster continue to be involved - get used to it!! It wasn't just the Villa or Liverpool supporters outside the ground who where annoyed about lack of tickets. There was also twenty thousand people or more in the crowd inside the ground who were not informed of anything that was going on.
The only announcement made was that there was going to be an 8.15pm kick off and nothing else was said until around 8.40pm! The only way I knew what was going on was that my bluenose mate phoned me to let me know as he was watching in the comfort of his living room. Villa where obviously giving out more information to the people who were sitting at home than the poor people who COULD be bothered to turn up and watch the Villa. Typical Villa, typical Ellis!! I can't comment on the ticket fiasco at Vila Park, but many seem to blaming Ticketmaster. I have used them to get tickets for games at Upton Park and have had no problems with them. May be the blame should be aimed at Aston Villa and the fans who did not allow enough time to collect the tickets before the game. Once again fans are treated to another fiasco. There should be an investigation and fans compensated. The powers-that-be should get their own house in order before preaching to fans! Liverpool for the Cup! YNWA!! I am not one bit pleased with Aston Villa. I had to leave the game yesterday at 11pm, as the last train went at 11.15pm. I left with eight minutes to go and Liverpool leading 3-2, look what I missed as I had to race to Birmingham train station!! This has happened before, at the start of last season for Villa's Intertoto campaign. I booked my ticket through Ticketmaster and was told to pick up the tickets from the ground on the day.
Alas, we get to the ground and there's thousands of other fans waiting for their tickets. It got to a point that the game had kicked off and they actually just let people in without tickets! It was madness. I wasn't there last night but a friend was and he told me that it was absolutely chaotic! But can you blame Villa, surely Ticketmaster have the intelligence to know that thousands of people had bought tickets and that they should either issue a public statement asking people to get there early or to collect them before the day of the game! Once more Doug Ellis is trying to re-write history to his own advantage. To claim that 17,000 people turned up at twenty to eight is a complete fabrication. The queues were building up long before that. This is not a case of fans getting it wrong, but of gross incompetence. It must have been brutally clear to the ticket agents as well as to Aston Villa FC that this problem was going to occur, and it could have been alleviated by taking a few simple steps such as; 1: Radio / local paper warning supporters that it was likely to be busy and to turn up even earlier than usual. I'm afraid this is simply another example of gross incompetence from Aston Villa. It is a tragedy that once more we can say that "The Lions" are led by donkeys.
I was there last night and it was a mess, nothing was organised and when I arrived at 7:45 I had to stand behind a two thousand-strong queue, only then an hour later to be told to go in without any tickets and not sit in our allocated seats. The organisation is better than my local club Telford than it was at Aston Villa last night. It was terrible. Doug Ellis and all of the ticket office should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Me and my young lad, who's only seven years old, had to wait outisde in the freezing cold for more than an hour. And it was his first ever game. He was in tears because he was so cold and he thought he was going to miss the game, which he had been looking forward to going to more than anything in his young life so far. Thankfully once we finally got into the ground and the match started he had the time of his life, loving every minute of it, despite the fact that we lost. Unfortunately though, my lad's memories of his first ever match are now going to be scarred by queuing up in the freezing cold for what seemed like an eternity. Cheers Doug. Whey do the FA need to demand an explanation? They cannot continue to be blind to the problems it has caused. Once again Ticketmaster, who are next to useless, have got it wrong.
Of course the Villa staff were never going to cope with distributing 6000 tickets just before kick-off - surely this is just common sense. Anyone who has travelled away to England matches will be fully aware of how bad Ticketmaster really are. We have had to put up with their terrible service for far too long but the FA themselves continue to insist that all England tickets are handled (badly) by Ticketmaster When England beat Germany 5-1 I went to the game and Ticketmaster said they would not send the tickets out and we would have to collect them at the ground. I got to the ground and they had no record of my ticket. Fortunately the German staff (who were excellent) managed to find a ticket so I did see the game (but it was not cheap). When I returned home what did I find on the doormat? A letter from Ticketmaster. I thought this might be some sort of an apology but I was horrified to open the letter and find enclosed a loverly crisp Germany-England ticket! I think that Villa need to re-think their policy on ticket sales. For instance, for the game against Man Utd in March, tickets for Villa areas of the ground went on general sale through Ticketmaster and have been purchased by Man Utd fans. Surely a recipe for disaster? The fans are also to blame; why turn up at 7.30 when they know they need to collect tickets? After sitting in the cold for two hours the interest in the game started to fade. I do think it should have been cancelled because trains were not running after the game and local residents must have been disturbed.
My mate had to leave at half-time because he travels from London for each Villa game and would have missed the last train. And after all that we lost in injury time. I arrived at Villa Park last night at 6:30pm to pick up my tickets from the Trinty Road Ticket Office. Upon arrrival I was faced with a giant queue containing people who didn't seem to know what was going on! The stewarding presence was anonymous with no-one telling us why there was a problem, which queue to get in, or even if/when kick-off would be delayed until. Eventually a few police came along (mainly because the queue was by now blocking up the whole west end of Villa Park) but still there was very little information coming - most came from people ringing up those in the ground or with radios! I eventually picked up my tickets at 8:30pm but left many more still queuing with now a few ineffectual stewards. However, what annoys me is that this seems to have been a problem created by Ticketmaster (again!) without any consultation with the club over ticket distribution. If a message had been put out through the media earlier in the week telling people of expected delays and asking them to turn up earlier, then kick-off may have only have been delayed by 30 mins instead of 80!! Do not accept the story about the Christmas post being the problem. Games have been played at short notice before Christmas for years without this type of incident. There were problems issuing tickets a week before the game and people who turned up the day before the game to collect their tickets were told to come back later. There should have been advice publicised to fans about the problem before the day of the game. The fans on the night were brilliant but Villa should be fined. | | See also:  19 Dec 02 | Aston Villa Top Sports Talk stories now: Links to more Sports Talk stories are at the foot of the page. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Whoever made the decision not to mail the tickets should be sacked