ePlaya

Finally got my Ticketfly order today and....bummer!
The order was for 2 tickets only, no vehicle pass. I received ONE ticket and (surprise!) a vehicle pass. There was a cardboard receipt also that showed the correct order number, correct amount paid ($760), correct name, etc.

Created an account on the tickets page and submitted my case. I really hope they can resolve this quickly. And without me having to go to will-call - I ordered a physical ticket, I would like a physical ticket. Please.

Anyone else with this problem?

Will keep you all posted.

Dang, moonwatcher! What an awkward situation! Stopping at will-call can be time consuming and frustrating. (though, you never know who you'll meet there... ) I hope they mail you your other ticket!
I'll be looking forward to hearing how it turns out...

Whaaaaaaaaaaat?

That's not good news!!!

I really, REALLY hope this gets solved easily for you.

Ok, we are now beyond the "within 48 hours" for Ticket Support to get back to me.

And seeing all the people asking where their tickets are, I am starting to think there are issues with ticket distribution.

It is easy to see how a case like mine can domino rapidly into a big mess. I got the order meant for someone else, my tickets were sent to someone else (who is wondering what happened to their vehicle pass), and so on. If the process of stuffing contents (tickets and passes) into envelopes gets fouled up without anyone noticing soon enough, you might conceivably have hundreds of erroneous orders. The person putting the stuff in my envelope obviously did not individually check my order.

Let's hope I am wrong and that everything will get resolved quickly.

The ticket people are undoubtedly slammed right now, with preppping orders for shipping. That could be why you haven't heard. I hope that's what's going on.

If indeed someone else got your order, I'd imagine they'd be too busy having a WooHooo moment over the additional Ticket to worry about a missing VP.

I still really, REALLY hope this gets addressed (and fixed) soon by the ticketing department. I know what a worry it is for you...

Hopefully it'll be fixed by the time you get here next weekend. Had to throw that in to make Patch jealous

Hmmm... Delle, it worked. I'm jealous. (Though, Neata and I had an awesome Indian meal at Habib with moonwatcher in Mtl last month, so you can be jealous too! Sibling rivalry at its best! )

Moonwatcher, we're all rooting for you to get this ticket mess fixed up!

Hang tight and work with the ticket team. Aside from high volume, I imagine the weekend affected your response time.

Here's the way I imagine it happening and surprised that it doesn't happen more. (Understand I have no first hand knowledge other than my imagination)

I don't know how many people are stuffing envelopes, but each person will be doing a large number of orders. If this were me, I can easily see how this quickly becomes a boring, monotonous task that I'd probably start doing without paying much attention while doing it after about the first 100 or so envelopes. I'd also guess that a lot of orders are for one ticket, one pass, and the stuffer just routinely grabbed that combination without paying due attention to the actual order.

But, I'm more sure that they will get it fixed for you. (I do have some personal experience with a ticket snafu in a past year, and everything was handled properly to get it fixed--but it took a bit of time.)

I heard that the ticket stuffing task has been outsourced to Nigeria.

trilobyte wrote:Hang tight and work with the ticket team. Aside from high volume, I imagine the weekend affected your response time.

Thanks, Trilo. And thank you, jkisha, for your words of support.

According to their acknowledgement email, they are processing support issues seven days a week.
From their email: "Our Ticket Support hours are M-Sat 7AM-6PM and Sunday 10AM-6PM Pacific Time"

That makes my case a more than 4 days old case now, as of this writing (5 days old tomorrow morning). Again, according to their email, they were supposed to get back to me "within 48 hours." They are seriously backlogged.

They are obviously processing a high volume of cases. I can only hope most of those cases are of "have you mailed my ticket yet?" type. But I suspect that they are having more order fulfillment issues that is being publicly acknowledged right now.

But, yes, in the end, I am fairly confidant things will get resolved and fixed. But it is still frustrating to be left hanging for so long.

Update:

Tuesday, July 15, I finally received an email from Ticket Support. They wanted a photo of the ticket and vehicle pass I received. This photo was sent to them within the hour.
They said they were looking into my situation and would update me with a resolution as soon as they had one.
No word since.

I see that my case has been transferred to another agent.

I guess things are moving along. I will sleep better when this is all behind me. Without going into all the details, one of the tickets was meant as a gift to someone. Now, I am not sure what to do with the ticket I have: are they going to ask me to return it? gift it now and hope for a resolution for mine? etc...

Being patient. )'(

There's an update!

Yesterday, I decided to call Tickeckfly's phone support line.
It took a while to talk to someone but it was worth it. The person who took my call was super nice. She took the time to look into my case and came back with just the right answers for me.
My missing ticket would ship in about a week. In the shipment, there would be an envelope for me to return the un-ordered vehicle pass. And the one ticket I did receive was still good and could be used.

Exactly what I needed to hear.

And there is another update!
Today, I get a call from Ticketfly. It is the same person that I talked to yesterday (coincidence or not, I have no way of knowing). They are getting my stuff ready to ship. She needed to check the serial number. I had already sent a photo of the ticket 10 days ago, which she found using my case number - she had everything she needs. We are good to go!

I draw the following conclusions:
- from my conversation with her, I think they are getting close to shipping everything
- they are *actively* working on fixing the troublesome orders
- the person I dealt with was super nice, understanding and very helpful. She deserves a very public accolade - but it is probably better than her name remain off this board.

Of course, I do not have my missing ticket yet. I will update you all as soon as I have new info.

But, bottom line, patience my friends.
I think Ticketfly and its people are working their butts off to get things right.

Finally, I will add that I still wish some sort of email update had been sent out. Radio silence probably made things worse.

That's awesome news, Moonwatcher.

Any chance your time in Mtl is long enough to ensure delivery of the second ticket in AZ before you have to go back? (presuming you brought our Angel's ticket to leave, should things work out so well)


SO happy for you both today!!! That's a huge load about to be removed.

I'm glad to hear things appear to have been resolved.

Regarding radio silence, it's a catch-22. When the number of orders that are experiencing issues is a small minority, sending out a general can cause more panic than it prevents. And when it comes to personal non-update updates, that often takes away bandwidth that could be otherwise used to help dig through the backlog (and during this time of year, that can be considerable). Then speaking personally, I find automated status updates to be about as useful, helpful, and reassuring as those "your call is very important to us" loops when you're on hold with the cable company or some other big company's support line. I'm very glad to hear they're on the case, and look forward to reading your post about having received everything. Cheers!

Well....unfortunately, still no ticket...

I was told July 24th that my (missing) ticket would ship in the next 24 hours. Nothing.
They did change my case to 'Resolved'.

On Thursday, July 31, told again that it would ship tomorrow (!). Still nothing: no tracking email, no ticket.

Just called Ticketfly (30 mins on hold) and they seem very confused about what is going on. The guy said he needed time to investigate and would call me back.

I am co-lead on a camp, early arrival, build crew and all. Leaving for the playa in less than 11 days.
Yeah, major suckage!!!!

As Trilo suggested (viewtopic.php?f=367&t=70287), I wrote an email to [email protected] but that just created a new case under my account on ticketsupport.burningman.com...

I had already re-opened the original case - which dates back to July 10!!

I made the Ticketfly guy kinda promise he would call me back today, but I am not holding my breath.
I will call them back tomorrow, and everyday, until I get some sort of resolution.

The address to write is [email protected], not tickets@

Well...great news!

Today, I got my 2nd ticket in the mail !!

It looks like the last round of calling and emailing finally worked. And, yes, I did get an email with tracking info a couple days ago - fingers were crossed the entire time since.
They included an envelope for me to return the un-ordered vehicle pass (prepaid, which is, well, nice). This will be dropped off at the post office next time I go out.

I think what caused the delay was that my case had been marked as "Resolved" too early. Somehow this caused the fulfillment/shipping side to not see the case and not send the ticket. The last agent I talked to left it open as "Pending" and I think that enabled shipping to see the case as needing attention. CRMs can be tricky that way.

Now, time to focus 100% on playa prep: camp supplies, personal supplies, tools and generators... Time to Burn!

PS: Apologies to Trilo for giving out the wrong email address in my previous post. I *did* use the ticketsupport@ address (just checked again).

YAY!!!!

Did they make it clear which one to send back? It would suck if they cancelled one and that was the one you kept...

As a little post-mortem of my case, I will say this:

I am surprised by the scale of the fulfillment screw-up that evidently occurred with this round of Burning Man ticketing.
One would think that Ticketfly had sufficient experience and trained employees to handle this size of a ticket sale. But maybe not.
And I am sure they could not foresee the intensity of the attachment of us Burners with our so-needed tickets. We sure LOVE this event.

But, obviously, something went very wrong on the fulfillment side. The sale-side went relatively well, IMHO.

From the moment I opened my first support case (July 10) to the moment I opened a second one (Aug 5), more than 8K other cases had been opened. Even if you discount a good percentage of that for repeat cases like mine, this number suggests a very high number of fulfillment/shipping errors. And this is only for those who needed to complain because something was missing. As we saw both here and on FB, some folks got "free" tickets. The Burners did something about it, but it is a safe bet that some did not.

I am sure that, in the end, Ticketfly and its people worked the butts off trying to make everything right. I hope they succeed 100%.

See you all in the dust... )'(

FossaFerox wrote:Did they make it clear which one to send back? It would suck if they cancelled one and that was the one you kept...

I had not ordered a vehicle pass. Because I come in with a trailer full of camp supplies, I got a vehicle pass through the camp (in a different order).
So, it is easy: I just return the pass I received in the incorrect order. I already sent a photo of it to Ticketfly. Never had any intention to use it or "re-cycle" it to other burners.

moonwatcher wrote:I am surprised by the scale of the fulfillment screw-up that evidently occurred with this round of Burning Man ticketing.
One would think that Ticketfly had sufficient experience and trained employees to handle this size of a ticket sale. But maybe not.

So, they should go back to the previous vendors?

theCryptofishist wrote: So, they should go back to the previous vendors?

Noooo...that is not what I am saying.
But, hopefully, lessons can be learned to make next year's experience better for everyone.

Congrats Moonwatcher on seeing this through correctly, and now that it's been resolved I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread down.