Ticket systems: Worst user experience ever!
Michael Heilemann wrote a rant on Billetlugen, a Danish company that sells tickets to concerts, etc. Two weeks ago they sold 85,000 tickets to Madonna’s only concert in scandinavia, August 24 in Horsens, Denmark. I had the worst user experience ever, and Billetlugen’s systems failed to sell me the tickets.
We were on holiday in Italy but as my wife is a big Madonna fan, I called in vain to buy tickets. Here’s my experience:
- Called the number, from my cell phone, phone responded “network busy” (the busy network must have been at Billetlugen).
- Tried again as soon as possible (usually every 10 seconds for the next 3 hours).
- Eventually I got through and was presented with this menu:
- Press 1 for purchase of Madonna tickets
- Press 2 for purchase of other tickets
- Press 3 for other
- I pressed 1 and got the message “there are currently no available salespersons. Try again later”. Then, the line was disconnected! DISCONNECTED????
- I simply couldn’t believe that this was intentionally implemented in their system, so I stubbornly called up again until I got through. It happened all three times I got through to Billetlugen.
I have never heard of broken queue system this way. It’s the worst user experience I ever had. They bloody disconected just when I thought i got through the bottleneck.
I wasted over three hours this way. I join Michael Heilemann in his point that here is definately room for improvement (For a start, when people call in, try NOT to disconnect them before they have purchased tickets :) .
A few of my friends and colleagues had the exact same experience, and they also experienced website dead as a zombie. I was also told that 500,000 people had tried simultaneously to buy tickets which made the systems break down.
On Billetlugen’s homepage I found this image “Powered by iTicket and .Net”. Not the best advertisement for Microsoft .Net, that Billetlugen breaks down.
One last thing: I called in vain every 10 seconds for the first two hours. thats about 700 calls. Ironic that they could have served me in one call…
More info on Michael Heilemann’s blog: Boycot Billetlugen
PS. If anybody have two tickets to spare, please let me know!
Technorati Tags: usability, user experience, concert tickets, ticket systems, billetlugen, michael heilemann, madonna, horsens
May 13th, 2006 at 02:02 (GMT-1)
I’m not sure if this is still the case, but in Denmark (to the best of my knowledge) we have a law saying that it is illegal to have a phone-queue system where you wait for more then 20 minutes to get to an operator. If the caller has been in the queue for 20 minutes and 1 second the phone system is by law forced to disconnect the caller.
This at first seems like a very stupid law. But the reason is actually not that far fetched. If you as a caller gets disconnected after being on the phone waiting to speak to a human being for the past 20 minutes and then suddenly gets disconnected, then wouldn’t you get mad? I certainly would!
Companies hate mad customers. So the point of the law is actually to get the companies to hire more phone operators to answer the phones, this way bringing the waiting time down under the maximum 20 minutes and then keeping the customers happy :)
So I have a theory about what happens if the phone system is overloaded in a peak situation… The company knows that it is not able to answer your call after the 20 minutes maximum. The company would not want to disconnect you after 20 minutes either. So instead you get disconnected right at the beginning.
May 16th, 2006 at 22:28 (GMT-1)
Danish TV had a story about the bad service from Billetlugen. Read more here (in Danish):
They also make the program available as a (video) podcast. Probably within the next 12 hours.
May 31st, 2008 at 02:03 (GMT-1)
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May 31st, 2008 at 02:13 (GMT-1)
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June 14th, 2008 at 16:05 (GMT-1)
I have not tried Billetlugen but I have had similar problems with uk ticket agents they struggle when there is too much demand, the user should always come first !
October 14th, 2009 at 10:32 (GMT-1)
it seems that we all have faced the same problem when we gonna booked for the ticket in any concerts or events. In my opinion, the customers should come first in any kinds of business.