Any Response From the Athletic Department on E-mails?
This is branched off the thread from yesterday about the Athletic Department changing the seating for the Big Chill game and basically screwing all us hockey season ticket holders. (http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/meh-news-student-hockey-season-ticket-holde…)
I read that some of you had emailed the athletic department about the screw job. I did too and I have not received any response yet. I was curious if anyone else got any messages back if you did send one. If you did one back, what did they say?
they do have jobs/tasks outside of "customer service"
Damn, my bad. I have never complained in an e-mail before directly to them so I am not sure how long it usually takes. Sorry I did not wait to post this thread until tomorrow or Friday.
Usually they're pretty quick in responding, but that's for specific things rather than general complaints.
I would suggest calling Marty Bodnar directly (Associate AD for Ticketing or something eimilar). I left him a voicemail regarding ticketing last year and he returned my call and we had a bit of back and forth via phone. Of course he didn't resolve my issue, but at least he took the time to call back.
He asked me to call him after he got my e-mail and helped explain what exactly went into their decision-making process for seating arrangements. Can't say I'm pleased with what I heard, but at least I got to hear some explanations.
I just received an email from Martin Bodnar reading like this:
"We are sorry that we had to change from general admission to reserved seating, but it had to be made for crowd control reasons. Please give me your student ID# and we will place you on a waiting list for three tickets so you can sit with father and grandfather. Again, we apologize and hopefully three tickets will become available. Thanks"
I'm unsure if the waitlist means that I would be given the opportunity to buy this third ticket (which I probably would not do) or would be traded for my student ticket, but meh. I tried.
I complained back in early May, when my range of Victors Club points (not mgopoints, btw) allocation for sideline seating had gotten eaten up by voracious hockey moms and dads, to the tune of 250-300 tickets per order(!). No reply as yet.
Howeva! I always write a note to the AD and include a copy with my football ticket renewal, and have been pleasantly surprised over the past couple years as my seat location improves each time out. I'm hoping for the same for the Big Chill.
That said, it seems that there was no way this was expected to blow out 100,000 seats as quickly as they did...considering the MSU and Wisconsin experiences (esp. so close geographically in EL), that it seems if a Big Chill 2 were to occur, ticketing will be managed much more like the football tickets, and less of a cluster as this seems to have become.
Due to crowd control issues, we had to go to reserved seating which meant that students would sit in their same seat that they were assigned for football. Unfortunately, the only unassigned seats in the area was section 33. We understand your disappointment, but for the a smooth game day experience for all students we needed to move away from general admission seating. Regarding MSU tickets, we followed the ticket allotments and locations that they gave us in the early 2000s when we play the Cold War in East Lansing. We used this as a basis for the "Big Chill at the Big House".He also gave me his direct number, but seeing as I work from 7:30 to 5 Monday through Friday I doubt I'd get an answer outside those hours. I've been trying to look up the seating charts from the Cold War game, but can't find any. Somehow I don't think the MSU students were put in their endzones but I don't have any proof either way. He also didn't address about half of my email, but that's kind of understandable when you reply that quickly.
He went through my e-mail basically point by point when I called him. Like I said, I didn't like what I heard (still think they didn't plan ahead well at all), but at least he took the time to give me an explanation.
honestly if they threw some metal risers on the football field far enough from the glass so others could see, that would get us out of the endzone without having to reshuffle tickets, or they could put their precious VIPs on said risers and reshuffle tickets again.
I have no idea what I'm going to do with my ticket from football now. It was supposed to be for my dad in return for helping me pay for tickets when we had to buy both at the same time (another major grievance) but I don't think he'd appreciate sitting by himself in the student section. Maybe they could somehow have that validated with your hockey season tickets so you could use it in the hockey seating?
you could maybe paraphrase some of his responses on here?
David Brandon e-mailed me and told he he goes under the name Tater on MGoBlog.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The main points of my e-mail dealt with complaining about the fact that the hockey student season-ticket holders get worse seats than the football section, how it's crappy that they only now decided to change to reserved seating and wondering why general admission is so tough to pull off.
Basically, this was the explanation:
All three issues are related. Originally when they were planning the seating and all that they didn't anticipate the demand being so great (or at least didn't know what to expect demand-wise), so they figured they could just make the student section general admission and allow people to sit wherever they wanted. The problem at graduation that led to this change still doesn't seem crystal clear to me, but the jist of it is that the "gate keepers" felt overwhelmed by everybody rushing in to get a good seat and felt like people were crowding too much in certain areas. Apparently it was such a problem that they didn't feel comfortable doing that for the hockey game, which I don't understand because this event and graduation with Obama are apples and oranges, especially considering the general admission would be for only the student section at The Big Chill rather than the entire seating area.
Regardless, apparently that is what led to the change seating-wise. Because they decided to go to reserved seating, there was no way they could program the tickets to print off with different seats for different games. As a result, they had to make the seats for the football section and Big Chill the same, which is why the hockey section had to be added on separately. I asked why the hockey section couldn't be added on the section 25 side of the main student section, and the reason is those seats are already apparently sold (once again, more lack of planning ahead).
To me, these issues are the result of Michigan being completely blindsided by the enormity of the event and wanting to take the easy way out. I get that they wanted to just send the tickets for The Big Chill along with the football season tickets, but they could have easily just waited to assign seating and had people pick up those tickets separately at a later date. That way they could have put all of the hockey season ticket holders in better seats and put the football season-ticket holders in the rest of the normal section, as well as section 33. Why didn't they do that? Well, I'm assuming they figured it would be easier to just give the football section the same seats and not have to worry about everybody picking them up later.
The other interesting thing is that he mentioned general admission for football games has been kicked around in the past, but they don't believe it's feasible. I get why (don't want people camping out/a mad rush into the stadium/everybody overcrowding the lower rows), but I don't think it would have been a huge problem for The Big Chill. There is probably a limited number of people that would have got there extremely early for the good seats, and many probably don't understand that the good seats are going to be a bit higher up. Sure, a ton of people are going to show up right before the puck drops and it is going to be crowded, but that's no different than a football game with reserved seating. The majority of students wait until right before kickoff and some even after kickoff to get there, and every exit is packed with people trying to get in. Personally, I just don't think U-M wanted to deal with the supposed extra work with dealing with a general admission crowd.
Even after talking to Bodnar for 10-15 minutes I came away with the impression that Michigan is taking the easy way out and isn't thinking about the students in the process.
for the info. Things are now slightly clearer and (very, very slightly) more understandable.
Michigan is definitely taking the easy way out, there are plenty of ways to do this that would make more people happy, but involve some amount of effort from the AD. And if you remember the last time Michigan thought about the students, let me know. Every instance I know of Michigan, "thinking about the students" involves a coach's prompting.
Marty is really good at taking time out of his day to explain his decisions. With that said, from my experiences, he comes off as half assing some of the decisions or working without doing the proper research. He has reversed some of his decisions in the past (giving grad students priority = freshman regardless of the # credits, a grad student section separate from the undergrads). It appears this decision will not be reversed. I hope if they ever decide to hold the Big Chill 2, the plan out the tickets for students with a bit more thought. Since they did away with spouse tickets, I have a friend buy my wife a season ticket for football and hockey. So I have two extra tickets for this game. They were going to my cousin and her now fiance as a wedding gift. I was hoping to sit with them, but now I am going to have to sneak them in my row.