Please

Please

The Master is Out

2 June 2006
Filed under Business, Technology, Text, The Interweb

Living in my geeky little niche of the web, where geniuses put their minds to creating online applications that serve my every whim, it’s easy to forget how abominably some companies use this platform.

I’m thinking specifically of Ticketmaster, and also, to a lesser extent, of RealEstate.com, two online services that I have had the misfortune of using frequently over the last year.

Of the two, Ticketmaster is infinitely more hateable. It would have been easier to use the internet for watering my garden yesterday than it was to use it for reserving tickets for this weekend’s footy game; at 9am, summer cricket tickets went on sale and for the 25 hours since, Ticketmaster’s site has been unusable. And here’s why: Ticketmaster can’t cope with the considerable web traffic that four trillion clamouring cricket fans generates, but rather than trying to manage the load by instituting some kind of queue, it makes things worse by encouraging people to refresh their browsers over and over again. I spoke to a friend yesterday who was booking tickets for three test matches, all through different booking agents. He had four or five browser windows open for each agent and was cycling through them, hitting refresh roughly every five seconds. From the point of view of the Ticketmaster server, he was like ten guys trying to push to the front of the queue, and I know for certain that he wasn’t the only one doing it.

Given that Ticketmaster charges a fee that’s anywhere between $2 and $7.50 per ticket, one could reasonably expect them to provide a close-to-flawless booking experience (or at least one that keeps their incompetence off the front page of the newspaper), but they don’t. Why not? There’s a general dearth of good, modern web application development coming out of Australia, but I can’t decide if that’s because there aren’t many good web developers here, or because businesses like Ticketmaster are content to provide substandard service. And if that’s the case, then what can we do about it? And why is it happening? Gah. Too many unanswered questions.

Views from the Floor

Peter says:

Here, here.

What shits me is that it's no secret that the Ticketmaster site is going to have to satisfy this type of demand. But every time there's a big onsale, they don't have the infrastructure to deal with it. What are the ticket sellers paying them for? I know that if I was U2 or whoever, I would be pissed off that the company I paid to sell my tickets couldn't sell my tickets.

Sigh.

Steve Hubbard says:

If only there were legislation that would allow us to sue them for providing an inaccessible website.

kate says:

It still doesn't shit me quite as much as not being able to get through when I ring the phone company, but they are both awful.

Matt says:

What do you hate about Realestate.com.au?

Virginia says:

Oooh, that's fodder for a whole other post. I was going to write about it in this one, but I realised I hated Ticketmaster so much more. In a nutshell, I hate that it's got a heap of money behind it, and yet pays so little attention to the user experience. It hasn't changed for YEARS. I'll write about it sometime...

Jake says:

I don't think the problem is with the lack of good or even great developers, I think Australian business always has no understanding of the Internet and the need for proper care and always try to do things on the cheap with no budget for proper planning and no concept of useability testing.

A company I've done some web work for for a number of years recently branched out into the US market and suddenly they are worried about customer complaints about the site (as they should be) because the US consumers won't put up with the crap that aussies will.

Which I suppose means it's actually the consumers fault ;)

Virginia says:

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing, as much as I hate that phrase: consumers will only complain if they're used to a higher standard of service, and they won't ever get used to a higher standard of service if it's not given to them. But it's really up to the market to lead the consumer, and in a country where 512k download is still considered 'broadband', I can't see it happening any time soon. Bah.

kate says:

It certainly doesn't help that creative types don't necessarily have very high standards either. There are some really good arts websites, but there are some shockers too - from people who are really fussy about real world signage, printing and art.

Virginia says:

I agree that there are a lot of shoddy arts websites, but given that those organisations are usually paying somewhere in the region of 1% of what Ticketmaster could afford to pay for theirs, I'm not that worried by it. It annoys me, but it doesn't anger me, if you know what I mean.

Travo says:

Ticketmaster huh? - Were you trying to get tickets for the Boxing Day test online too. What a debarcle! On the other hand - Basecamp is my saviour. Cheers,

Francis Xavier Holden says:

I agree that Ticketmaster is wrong but I get a shiver of schadenfrued to note it happened with a sport. Now if it was to stuff up with a music concert ...

And you are wrong about 512 being considered BB in oz - it's 256.

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