Ballet Cop on the Beat – NYCB ticket marketing = the new Time Warner Cable service

If you appreciate and respect Time Warner Cable's fill in your own expletive "customer service" with its unparalleled attention to honesty and providing you with the best possible, most professional assistance, then you'll LOVE, LOVE ME DO the new ticket selling strategy at NYCB.

The mantra seems to be "everything's sold out but these crappy seats so take 'em or leave 'em" when IN FACT much better seats are available but are being held back while they try to push the crappy seats down your throat.

Exhibit A:

If one wanted to purchase 4 seats for September 22nd, one could sit in great seats in Row E of the Fourth Ring @ $89 ea.  However, if one wanted to purchase just a single ticket, one is shoved up to the top to Row M or Row O @ $89 ea.

 
Exhibit B:

If one then deleted those 4 seats in Row E from the shopping cart, thus making those seats immediately available for a single ticket purchase, NYCB still shoves the single ticket purchaser up in Row O.

Meanwhile, the humans at the theater's box office are telling people that certain tickets are sold out when the truth is that they have not been released for sale or are only available to certain profiles such as the multi-ticket buyer.  If you don't meet the right profile, then they shove you to the back. 

If you want to purchase tickets by phone for September 22, you must leave a voice message at the Special Events office telling them who you are and how many tickets you want and they'll assess, and get back to you in 24 hours - maybe.  Slippery slope here, folks.  Charging and seating customers according to their profiles; refusing to sell certain seats based on a customer profile.

It looks like NYCB's Katherine Brown thinks she's earning her hefty half million dollar paycheck by trying to micro-manage each ticket purchase while the pissed off ticket buyers are walking out the door. 

FYI – the Met Opera is selling lots of $25 tickets.  Joyce Theater – $19.

 

Comments

[Angelica Smith]

Dear Haglund, Thank goodness you're there to blow the whistle on this, although in my interactions with the administration at ABT, it seems that money talks there as well, especially with their new so-called "dynamic pricing." You would think that these ballet companies that are not filling the seats would make every effort to recruit new audience members. ABT does this with its special pricing for people under 30. How about special pricing for seniors? The concentration of wealth in this country is taking its toll everywhere.

[Haglund]

Hi, Angelica. The NYCB online ticket mechanism is working a little more fairly tonight. There are tickets in rows F & H of the fourth ring for single ticket buyers if you just continually add single purchases to the shopping cart after the system deals you a seat or two in Row O. You can hold up to 14 tickets in the shopping cart at one time. Who knows what tomorrow will bring - probably more idiocy. LOL.

I'll agree that these companies are really missing the boat by not reaching out to seniors with special ticket offers.