Having just moved house I've spent a lot of time talking to call centres to arrange new services or update contact details with old ones. I booked tickets for Pearl Jam at Hyde Park in June a few weeks' ago and the tickets don't arrive until nearer the event, so I had to tell TicketMaster about our move.
The update process was fairly simple - phone a number (once you've finally tracked it down) then tell your new address to someone. The guy on the phone said that he was happy to make the change, but that he had to warn me that the delivery address had to match my card's billing address. If it didn't TicketMaster would cancel the booking without informing me.
On the face of it, it's reasonable for TicketMaster to require the two addresses to match as part of fraud prevention. But not informing you when they cancel the order? Imagine looking forward to seeing your favourite band play, and having shelled out money on travel and hotel for the event, for the tickets to just fail to arrive without a note of warning.
Having been annoyed by the TM website before calling I decided to push the guy on the phone about this policy.
Me: "Why don't you inform me when the order is cancelled?"
Him: "It's our policy?"
Me: "I understand it's your policy, but why?"
Him: "We inform the customer before they buy the tickets that this is our policy."
Me: "I understand. But you have my phone number, email address and presumably 2 different postal addresses. You can contact me to tell me the order is being cancelled and give me a chance to fix it."
Him: "That's our policy..."
This kind of thing leaves me pretty irate. TicketMaster are clearly not interested in events or customer care; they just want money. It continues to frustrate me every time I want to buy tickets for something and get sent to their site.
