Dear Summerside City Council and CUP organizers,
Imagine my excited for a minute when I realized that I had finally cracked the complicated CUP ticket website and scored four tickets to Elton John…..Go ahead, imagine for a minute…I’ll wait. Can you feel the excitement? The anticipation? The lyrics to “Rocket Man” being sung because of the joy!!! Are you imagining??
Good, because now you can start to imagine what it felt like to login to the Credit Union Place ticket website the next day to find an error on my account and that MY tickets were sold to another customer. Funny right? That‘s what it said…”Selected seats have all been sold to another customer.” But don’t worry, because I have a confirmation number so it must be wrong. No big deal right? Wait…maybe I should look up confirmation in the dictionary just to make sure I’m not misunderstanding what that word means….give me a second….
Ok, here goes….”Confirmed: to acknowledge with DEFINITE assurance”, well that’s perfect because I do have a confirmation number so it’s all ok!! But wait…maybe I do not fully understand what DEFINITE means, hold on again please…
I’m back again….”Definite: clearly stated or decided, not vague or doubtful”….well thank goodness!! Now I understand what confirmation AND definite both mean so I should be totally good now! It is DEFINITE that I am going to see Elton John because I have a CONFIRMATION number!! Yippeee!!!!
Now, like most people I have a very cynical mother. “Wendy, we really should call the CUP to make sure the tickets are alright”, but I tell her, “Ah, don’t be so foolish!! You’re so silly Mom, they would DEFINITELY call us if there was a system error and they actually sold our tickets to someone else!. This is the city of Summerside after all…they run EVERYTHING so smoothly that this couldn’t possibly be true.”
But, like the good daughter I am, I wanted to appease my mother so I rang up the Credit Union Place. Such a waste though, because I know if there was a screw up that bad, like double selling tickets, they would call me to explain, or at the very least they would contact me via email.
This is were it gets confusion, the nice lady on the phone told me that my mother was right, we did NOT have tickets???!? Weird…I’m sure she’s just tired and confused from all the chaos of selling all those amazing Elton John tickets!! Plus, she’s not in charge so maybe she just misunderstood the situation. She mentioned something about a glitch in the system. Please forgive me again while I confirm that I understand the word “glitch”. I would hate to get angry at this lady for something I don’t understand.
Wait…maybe I should look up confirmation in the dictionary just to make sure I’m not misunderstanding what that word means….give me a second….
Let’s see….”Glitch: a short-lived fault in a system”. See, I knew she was wrong! A “glitch” is short lived and I knew they had similar problems the first round of ticket sales so she must be confused. A “glitch” is something that gets fixed before the second round of ticket sales right?? RIGHT?????! Surely, the great city of Summerside would NEVER subject their residents to the same mistakes twice!
Turns out that it was ME that was wrong! As confirmed by the lady, MY tickets were given away to someone else. Section U, row E, seats 1,2,3,4.…sold to someone else AFTER I bought them. What?! WHAT?!?! WHAT?!?!?!?!? What would have happened if I didn’t log back on the next day? Would CUP have called me? There’s still no phone call on my caller ID. Would they have contacted the Journal Pioneer or Charlottetown Guardian and send in a news release to explain? I read the online version everyday and I haven’t see anything yet?? Would they make an announcement on the radio so people could verify themselves if they had tickets?? I never heard anything there either. Nope, nada, none of that….not even an apology. You know what I got….”It happened to a lot of people but don’t worry we’ll refund your credit card”.
It seems that the CUP front desk clerk can’t help me, so I ask of you….what are YOU going to do to make it ok for me? Are you going to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Are YOU going to announce to the residents of PEI that you made an arrangement with the promoters to sell the tickets yourself so you could make an extra $0.50 per ticket?? Are YOU going to admit that this was an EPIC FAILURE? And what about that extra money?? What are YOU going to do with that?? Fix your ticketing system?? I sure hope so…
I’m sure you’ve all experienced the same ordeal, as some or most of you must have also wanted Elton John tickets. He IS an amazing musician so why wouldn’t you want tickets right!! So you must have also had to deal with this because there’s no way you’d have access to promo tickets right?! There would be no promo tickets available to senior staff and council because that would just be wrong! RIGHT! I hope you all verify your confirmation numbers…I know I’ll never trust your system again, but maybe you have more faith than I do. I’m really worried that Mr. Stewart and gang may also be ripped off too. Maybe you should show me your confirmation numbers so I can put my mind at ease. Maybe you are also Section U, Row E, seats 1,2,3 and 4...and maybe we could come up with a fair arrangements??
Bitter Regards,
Wendy Harding
P.S. If you happen to have 4 extra tickets I’d love to buy them off of you! Don’t bother telling me to check Kijiji, prices are too high from the EIGHT tickets limit that you allowed for the scalpers!Selected seats have all been sold to another customer.” But don’t worry, because I have a confirmation number so it must be wrong. No big deal right?
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