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81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

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Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#111

Post by hypeatei »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

I agree, this is a good way to stop scalping and reduce costs by not having to print physical tickets. It's interesting to see the negative sentiment here given other threads about scalping overwhelmingly suggest we need government regulation to stop it. Well, here's a private solution to that problem but apparently that's also bad and requires threats of government action via the ADA... incredible.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#112

Post by crazygringo »

jjulius wrote: post #109
crazygringo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, however, easily get lost or left behind. Phones, on the other hand, can be charged. And if they're smashed, you can just log into your account on a friend's phone if you haven't replaced yours yet. If you can't even do that, you can go to the ticket window and they can look up your account information and verify your ticket.

Paper doesn't spy on you.

If you don't give the app any permissions, it doesn't spy on you either.

It doesn't have any more information than the info you give it to buy the tickets in the first place.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#113

Post by LadyCailin »

tomwheeler wrote: post #84
crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone. Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone. Maybe he has dexterity issues that make using a smartphone difficult. Maybe he doesn't want to install their invasive app. Maybe he finds that paper tickets are easier to manage. Maybe he recognizes that the vend…

I’m not sure how exactly this should be worded in law, but I really wish they would pass a law requiring supporting people without smartphone apps. Obviously there would be some exceptions where justified, even for things other than “the app is the whole point” and those need to be thought through, but in this case and plenty of others, there’s just no reason they can’t accommodate non app users. “It costs more to support non app users” is not a sufficient justification.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#114

Post by thinkingtoilet »

mrweasel wrote: post #79
crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

There's an amusement park we like to go to. We get season passes, which normally means renewing the small plastic card we got the first year. They've switched to app only this year, with the option of getting a card, if for some reason you cannot or will not use the app. I believe there's a small fee for issuing the card. I believe their reasoning is much the same. They have some types of tickets, which can technical…

>They have some types of tickets, which can technically be handed over to others and abused. Think weekend ticket, where you hand the tickets to someone else for them to use on Sunday, or tickets that can be converted to season passes, if you do it the same day.

This is not abuse. If they sell a ticket for days worth of resources and you use two days of resources it's not abuse at all. That is a very consumer hostile attitude. If their business model relies on you not using what you paid for then they need a new business model.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#116

Post by jjulius »

hypeatei wrote: post #111
crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

I agree, this is a good way to stop scalping and reduce costs by not having to print physical tickets. It's interesting to see the negative sentiment here given other threads about scalping overwhelmingly suggest we need government regulation to stop it. Well, here's a private solution to that problem but apparently that's also bad and requires threats of government action via the ADA... incredible.

Nothing's perfect. Some ideas to fight against things we don't like will come up, and then we'll see the collateral and go, "Oh, maybe that's actually not the best way to do it". That's okay! That's the way life goes! It's not "incredible" or hypocritical or whatever else you're trying to imply. What you're seeing is merely folk working through things.

Are we supposed to always jump at the first "solution", consequences be damned?

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#117

Post by shevy-java »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.

This misses the point.

The question is: why would a smartphone be required, to watch a local game?

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#118

Post by nwallin »

crazygringo wrote: post #90
mrweasel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an amusement park we like to go to. We get season passes, which normally means renewing the small plastic card we got the first year. They've switched to app only this year, with the option of getting a card, if for some reason you cannot or will not use the app. I believe there's a small fee for issuing the card. I believe their reasoning is much the same. They have some types of tickets, which can technical…

> Blaming scalping doesn't seem entirely plausible to me, because there was always the option of making the tickets and season passes non-transferable. That's not desirable either. You often can't make it to all the games, so they want you to be able to give some tickets to friends, etc. They're trying to prevent people who purchase the season pass to almost exclusively resell tickets to individual games. So you real…

The last time I had a season pass to something, they printed me the equivalent of an employee id badge with my face and name printed on it. The badge was the ticket. How do you resell an individual ticket?

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#119

Post by mrweasel »

crazygringo wrote: post #90
mrweasel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an amusement park we like to go to. We get season passes, which normally means renewing the small plastic card we got the first year. They've switched to app only this year, with the option of getting a card, if for some reason you cannot or will not use the app. I believe there's a small fee for issuing the card. I believe their reasoning is much the same. They have some types of tickets, which can technical…

> Blaming scalping doesn't seem entirely plausible to me, because there was always the option of making the tickets and season passes non-transferable. That's not desirable either. You often can't make it to all the games, so they want you to be able to give some tickets to friends, etc. They're trying to prevent people who purchase the season pass to almost exclusively resell tickets to individual games. So you real…

But you can do that the same way you do with the app. The does this by tying you ticket to your season pass, and to you. If you want to give the ticket to someone else, call the ticket office, ask them to re-register the ticket to your friend. If the ticket office notices that X number of tickets tied to that season pass has been re-registered, just refuse, or better, have the system refuse.

Fans can pick the easy option with the app, or if they really want, the expensive option where they need to go pick up the re-registered ticket if they want to give them to a friend. You can do this without the app, it's just more work, which isn't much of a hassle, as most won't pick this option and the passes are expensive enough that you can justify the extra handling cost of maybe 5% of the tickets.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#120

Post by SoftTalker »

moondance wrote: post #67
crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

Have you had the pleasure of coaching a technologically illiterate grandparent through the process of learning how to use a smartphone? It’s a never-ending job and disheartening for all parties involved. Modern mobile UX is not designed with accessibility for the elderly in mind, and it is constantly changing in a way that demands constant re-learning. Not to mention the disabilities and neurological conditions often…

Now have your grandparent try to teach you something you aren't interested in and don't really want to learn, and see how it goes.
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