The drama of getting Red Sox tickets...

Every year I try to get Red Sox tickets and every year I get stuck in the virtual waiting room. For hours on end I wait looking at the screen. Watching the countdown as it refreshes every 30 seconds. Then the moment will occur where I break through the virtual waiting room and am about to to purchase tickets but find out that it's just a tease. Two seats together don't exist anywhere in the ballpark for the game I randomly selected to attend. I'm talking about no where -- even the expensive seats! So you go back and try a different game and wait again in the virtual waiting room and the vicious cycle continues...

Same story every year, several times a year in fact because the Red Sox release tickets in batches. Yesterday the Sox PAX and select single game tickets went on sale for the pre-holiday rush. My husband wasted most of the day looking at the virtual waiting room with no luck. After four hours I told him to give up because I knew it would turn out like most years. Two hours after that he decided to give up. Another year without visiting Fenway... But wait! The Red Sox decided to spread a little more holiday cheer this afternoon and made available some additional single game tickets and I pounced on it. I got picked from the virtual waiting room in less than an hour. There was hope of getting two tickets together, but no. The pathetic online ordering system that the Red Sox use failed me again. The little verification code box wasn't displaying the strange number/letter combo for me to type in and without it you are now where, so back to the virtual waiting room...

Wait! New idea. Let's use the phone. Couple of dozen tries and I get through. The automated voice takes all of your information prior to letting you find tickets, but I'm yet again hopeful. Credit card number. Check! Month of expiration. Check! Two digit year of expiration... Crap. Apparently the Red Sox phone ticket ordering system doesn't believe that you can have a credit card that expires in 2011 and there is no way to go back and change the credit card number you had already entered, so I'm back to square one. I love the Red Sox. Nothing is better than watching a game in Fenway Park on a nice sunny day with an overpriced beer, but this is really starting to piss me off!

I'm back to the phone while keeping an eye on two laptops that are each in a virtual waiting room. After 1/2 dozen tries I'm back through on the phone system. Successfully make it through the credit card information and mailing address parts now it's on to the game selection. After trying four different categories of seats, I was victorious! Come September 10th, 2008 I will be attending in person probably my only Red Sox game of the 2008 season.

From a customer experience perspective, the Red Sox ticket ordering system has major, major flaws. It desperately needs to be replaced, but then again, regardless of how bad it is, folks like me (and a couple of others that may stumble across this post), will put up with it in order to have the chance of getting tickets...

Ok, now back to my paper....