It is amazing to me to see the Mets treat their most loyal fans so poorly.  I have stated this in many case studies, marketing examples and other contexts that it is often the way you treat the fans that have the seats in the nosebleeds or the partial plan holders that truly defines your customer service strategy for the entire organization. 

In Seattle, I owned Sonics’ season tickets.  At the time, I was maybe 25 years old and I didn’t have the cheapest seats but I also didn’t have the most expensive seats either.  But the team treated me like gold.  Every chance they had an opportunity to wow me, they did.  Every time they had a chance to offer something unique to their fans, they did.  And, I think that set the tone for the way the organization was seen in the community.  Obviously, this is a bad example since Claymate Bennett came to town and stole the Sonics.  But Howard Schulz knew how to treat the fans. 

So it is sad to see the Mets revert into boiler plate and inflexibility when it comes to their fans.

Exactly why—after 12 years—I elected to forgo any Mets ticket plans and go game-by-game.  Now, I do not have tickets to games I would never purchase but are part of a plan and when I do go to games I can select the exactgame and seat locations maximizing my seat location and actually cutting costs in the end.  The Mets have never been friendly to their ticket-buying constituency and I don;t think they ever will.  Now, I can wait and se if this fraud of a team can actually deliver on it’s potential and actually compete for a title—but I do have my doubts.

thats a tough pill to swallow… I have worked in ticketing for 2 teams (one MLB and one AAA) and what he is telling you (in theory) is true.  We were always told to not leave single seats… But you are doing so to accomodate a “may sell as a single game seat” at the expense of a season or partial plan holder

I understand that the algorithm will do this - I have seen it happen with concerts on Ticketmaster - but like you said, wallybackman, they put priority on a ticket they MIGHT sell over a ticket they WILL sell.

I would go game by game but the convenience fees make it worth the plan purchase. I just need to stop expecting anything.

If anyone wants to go to Mets’ games and doesn’t want to buy a package, let me know. 

I get lots of tickets or people looking to get rid of their Mets’ tickets.

I almost had to stop reading this as I was becoming so infuriated with their consistent incompetence and lack of any idea how to generate goodwill with the fans.

Amazin.  And not in a good way.  I would feel the same way but that was what p’d me off with my season ticket upgrade.  I knew I wanted better seats and I find out now that had I “held out” I would have gotten my first preference anyway.  In any case, what *I* would have loved to hear from the Bob’s ass is “Sure Ms Grrl, we’d love to keep you in comparable seats in the promenade.  How about Row X in Section Y, which is closer to home plate?”  What’s wrong with that?  You and TBF = happy, no complain letters to the Mets.  A win-win for everyone.

PS Did they bother to explain why *you* (lowly fan/ticket holder) could distinct two seats in that same section, but they, with the Mets powerful circa 1990’s technology, could not??

You can’t get much closer to HP than we are. Which is part of the problem. But they’re doing everything via computer and not using anything resembling a brain.

I think what happened is that the seats that we saw disappeared between Saturday and today. But if you try to pull two tickets for a Friday plan, it will show you two of the three seats in that section.

They don’t do what you suggest for the same reason they don’t have Old Timer’s Day: too much work, can’t be bothered.

I’m sure the Pirates, Royals, Marlins, Nationals (shall I go on and on) would love to have their ticket office telephones ring half as much as the office in Flushing, and I’m sure those teams would have the “proper technology” a/k/a common sense to make 2 into 3 work.

my brother and I just bought our friday night package yesterday…and I spoke to “John” in the ticket office and he was helpful but not quite as enthusiastic as you might expect about a “new client”. (we did not buy a package last year..went game by game) I sure hope your experience is not going to happen to us….I will be checking daily to make sure a lower row does not pop up as available. As it is I asked him several times if he was certain a lower row was not available and to make sure promenade box holders could enter the promenade club….“Absolutly yes..no problem..changed for 2010” If this changes..I will be a pissed off customer…your comments make me uncertain..I hope to get a chance to say hello this year…as I always enjoy your blog!

I wonder if you got the tickets we saw on Saturday! 

I would not ever give the Mets too much credit when it comes to customers. Ask, ask again, and then ask one more time.

I am surprised that you were able to pull up a pair on-line in front of you, then when you called the TO some time later, they were N/A.  The only logical explanation is that there was a larger block in front of you that got fragmented between the time the inventory was accessed on-line and the time you phoned the TO….

But getting to the issue of “Why didn’t they offer these to us?” I need to ask the question, “Did you ask when you paid your invoice?”

In the past, any time I’ve needed to upgrade, add seats, move, etc. I’ve called the TO, or wrote a note on my invoice to let them know before the deadline.  They’ve always come through.  This season, I was able to scoot over to aisle seats, and added some seats.  In years past, new plan holders beamed into the row in front of mine.  I am certain I could have gotten those seats, but I never wanted to move up a row (Wanted to stay protected from the weather in the Mezz.)

Next year, if you plan to renew, and want to move up a row, let them know AHEAD of time what you’d like, not at the witching hour. 

Cheers!
-Doug

Guess what, Doug - we did. We were told that the lowest row available to our plan was one row below ours, and that if we wanted to move, we would have to leave our section.  And, as a matter of fact, MOST people who called about moving sections (even people who wanted to move from a Saturday plan to a Friday plan, for instance) were told when they called to renew that they should pay the invoice and then the Mets would call them later.

We asked before we renewed. We asked again later. We asked RIGHT NOW because WE SAW THE TICKETS, not because WE JUST REALIZED WE WANTED TO MOVE.

I’m not sure how one writes on an invoice when one pays it online, but perhaps you have access to technology that I do not.

But hey, thanks for the smugger-than-thou condescension, Doug! That’s always welcome here.

Do you work for the ticketing office, perhaps?

Cheers!

Looks who’s calling the kettle black.

When you get a bill from the Mets in the mail, you know, the duplicate form, with the top copy being white and the under copy being yellow, there is a lot of space on there where you can write in your upgrade request, just below your seat location and above the place where you plunk down your credit card information.  Yes, the Ticket Office told me I can write on that form and mail it in.  Or, you can phone the ticket office and pay over the phone, and when they take your payment, they will annotate your account with your upgrade request.  (I’ve submitted upgrade requests both ways).

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, when they phoned you for your potential upgrade, that yes, you’d have to leave your section if you wanted to move down a row…  You declined to move.  They considered your upgrade request closed.  Then, the next hour, or day - does it really matter -, the ticket office worked down their list of upgrade requests, and phoned someone else who just happened to be located in the row in front of you, and they decided to move down to Prom Box or to some other seating location.  They get moved.  Or maybe, just maybe, their check / credit card bounced, resulting in a cancellation (I doubt that, though - I firmly believe they’ll dry to get blood from a stone).  Now there is inventory in front of you.  But unfortunately, since your upgrade request was already handled, and you declined, you wouldn’t be offered those seats.  You are ‘out of the queue, so to speak.

I am certain the ticket office goes through the list of upgrade requests once.  They don’t perform bubble sorts and keep going back to the top of the list.  They’d simply run out of time.  This whole process is just like sending in playoff invoices used to be in the past.  There was no rhyme or reason to how they assigned their plan holders seats for the playoffs.  At the end of the day, I believe that all the envelopes ended up in one big pile, and they just started plucking envelopes from the pile.  You could have sent in your envelope first, but it ended up at the bottom of the pile.  With upgrade requests, they simply worked through a list, and filled requests in that order.  Maybe you would have had better luck if you were at the end of the list.  Who knows?

And no, I don’t work for the ticket office.  However, I am always willing to offer logical explanations in response to rants.

Cheers!
-Doug

I find your presence here suspicious after the 12 visits from nymets.com to this very article yesterday. You just happen to know how the sorting works.

I know perfectly well what an invoice is. I just never wait for my invoice. I pay for my ticket plan online as soon as it’s available. The Mets actively encourage everyone to do that. I realize some people wait and send in a check but I’ve only done that once.

So you can again attempt to treat me like an imbecile but your pedantic hammering on what an invoice is just makes you look bad, and really did give you away.

You don’t work for the ticketing office but you definitely work for the Mets. That much is clear.

You missed the point of my rant. The point of my rant is not that they didn’t call me when the tickets became available. The point is that when I noticed that better tickets became available - I have zero expectations at their ability to actually upgrade folks for the sake of upgrading them, why would they even bother to offer that level of customer service, it’s too much work - that they gave me a lame line about not being able to break up three tickets. They value the potential single ticket sale more than my continued patronage. The attitude during the call was the usual “we could care less” bullshit.

But again, you are here as damage control and to try to diminish my complaint by trying to discredit me and make me look bad. For all I say the Mets have no one working on PR, they certainly do here.

Cheers!

The Mets never can get it right.  Every other Major League Franchise offers a significant discount to season and plan ticket holders who are basically ‘pre purchasing’ their tickets in advance.  Other teams strive to find the best possible seating location for their most loyal fans. 

In the Mets case, it certainly apears that they are more comfortable with filling all sections with ‘some’ ticket holders, as opposed to havign the entire Prom in LF empty.  This is absurd of course.  Offering your season ticket and plan holders the true BEST AVAILABLE seating wil ensure that they are happy, your repeat customers who will plunk down more than a single game ticket fan over the course of a season.

The Mets ticketing scheme has been tone deaf for years now.  And they just end up looking silly in not offering their fans more.  A nice discount off ‘game day’ prices would be a terrific start.