How to Win Fans and Influcnce This Guy

I am a simple man. I don't need to be treated like a superstar (although rumors are that it doesn't hurt). I fly coach, I buy generic drugs, and I've tried to print my own money. However once in a while I get blown away by either (and usually) a negative experience or sometimes a positive experience with a company I'm doing business with.

The later happened this week when Mrs. Bloggerman and I tried to take the Kid to his first basketball game over at the University of Maryland. It was a high demand game featuring the 0-13 Delaware State Hornets at the end of December. Because there was no way in hell that I was going to pay full price ($30 each) for a game that would be no more then 50% full because students were on winter break. Enter my friends at ScoreBig.com.

ScoreBig is essentially the Priceline for sports and concert tickets. You find the event you want to go to, pick a "star" level for the tickets you want and "bid". If you're bid is accepted you've bought them and if not you can try again later. The better the seats the higher the stars and the deals are pretty good. We've used them in the past to buy tickets to both the Nationals and the Orioles and have been very satisfied with our seats.

Back in November, we decided to go and invited another friend to join us. I went online and found 3 star seats in Section 118 (corner of the floor) for $18 each. They accepted my bid and I also had a $20 promotional credit so the tickets worked out to about $11 each. Great deal that was almost 66% off the face value. I paid and the tickets arrived in the mail a few weeks later. I checked that they were the right section/date/etc and put them on the fridge. The morning of the game I realized that I wasn't sure about where to park so I grabbed the tickets and hit the interwebs. I won't go into how bad the University of Maryland's site is and how little actual information is provided. Let's just say that my tax dollars better be going to great professors because the web content team stinks.

After finally figuring out parking I saw a 3-D, interactive seating map for the Comcast Center so I decided to see where our actual seats were. YIKES! They were 3 rows from the back of the arena. That can't be right. These are supposed to be near the floor. (Truth is they were near the floor...26 rows away...in a 31 row stadium!) Next I went over to ScoreBig to see if they had similar seats for future UMD games. The next game they had was on New Year's Day and the seats were listed as 1-star. I called their customer support line at 9am but they are based in California and weren't open until 30 min before our game started. I called right at noon and got through to a representative right away. Alfonso listened, asked good questions and did some research. He confirmed that the seats we had tickets for were not in right star "rating" and that he couldn't do anything for us in terms of new seats because the game was going to begin. He told me to go in to the game and enjoy it and that he would follow up with his manager when he got back in (on Jan 2) to find out about at least a partial refund. I got an email from him saying the same thing and that was that. The game was great and the seats were ok but not great. Most importantly the Kid had a great time at his first game and I think I heard him yell, "DUNK" a few times...or he might have just been looking for his cheese-its.

Yesterday at lunch my phone rings and it's Alfonso again. He began by first apologizing again and then actually took the time to ask me if I enjoyed the game (good move!!). Then he said that his manager reviewed the situation and was issuing a full refund for the tickets and giving me an additional $10 credit to use toward future tickets. Wow! The refund and the money were great but what really blew me away was that he 1) followed up when he said he would, 2) actually took the time to ask me how the event was and remembered that I said that it was my Kid's first game and 3) that they extended us a full refund.

You now have a customer for life and I am officially declaring ScoreBig.com the "Official Ticket Broker for Nobody Likes A Jerk". That's quite an honor...trust me.

How Saving a Buck Can Cost $37

What do you get when you cross a notorious tight wad with an un-metered parking spot in DC?

Yep, It’s Me.

You see fine readers, instead of just parking in a lot this morning when I got in at 6am (which would have only run me $13 for the day) I thought, “hey if I have to pay for parking at the game tonight anyway, I should try to find one of my ‘secret’ spots on the street to save a few bucks”.

Well I found a great one. Right on the corner of Pennsylvania Ave and 18th Street, NW. 2-Hour parking (unmetered) from 7am-6pm. So I left the car at 6am and went for a run, shower, and then came back to toss my bag in the back before heading over to Starbucks for a free pastry today.

Upon my return I actually noticed two papers folded under the wiper blade. Low-and-behold, one of DC’s Finest had tagged me for two violations in less then 3 minutes. Ticket #1 was at 619am for being too close to an intersection and Ticket #2 was at 622am for obstructing a cross walk. Over $70 in fines right there.

But wait....These pictures (thanks for the cam phone Les) show another story.
The spot was perfectly legal and I was actually not in the crosswalk (I was less then 25 feet from the intersection but so were the other two cars behind me who were also in legal spots and not ticketed).

So off to the office I went and quickly merged pictures and words into a contesting my tickets form and then off to the fine people working in DC’s Traffic Adjudication Office. Here’s where the costs start. The fee to mail the letter, certify it’s delivery, and get signature confirmation (not taking any chances that they “lost” it) runs $6.

I head back to the office and come back around 12pm to check on the car. Sitting right there on the windshield is another ticket for “staying in spot over stated time period” i.e: I was there more then two hours. The kicker here: according to the ticket, it was the same officer who tagged me at 6am....what a day. Cost: $25

Jumping in the car and circling the area around my office I found a metered spot and popped the car in there. After feeding the meter twice I’m now set until the end of my work day. Cost: $6

Total Cost to Park at Work: $37 (assuming my earlier fines are cleared)
Total Cost for a Garage for the Day: $13
Seeing me turn beet red: Priceless!

I Need Two on the Aisle!

How is it that the worse the team whose game you are trying to get tickets for the harder it is to find good seats? Good seat without going through a scalper that is.

By far this is not the first time I’ve railed against scalpers. They are the lowest of the low who put their personal profit over the happiness of a young child getting to see his first ballgame or her first Wiggles concert because you’ve purchased a block of 12 tickets with the express intent of marking them up 150% and pricing out many parents.

I understand that I’m not a parent (unless you count the dog) and I can easily just visit the team’s website and purchase tickets but I know there are those of you out there who are going to get stuck with tickets on your hands and once that first pitch is thrown they are going to be worthless. It’s a kind of cosmic/karmic Montezuma’s Revenge that gets cast on these scum.

But never fear, much like the right reverend Billy Sol Hargus, I am here to heal your pain and grant you forgiveness. Sell me your 2 tickets to Thursday night’s Mets/Orioles game (field box seats) below face value. Sure you may take a $5 loss per seat but you’ll be gaining a warm sense of peace and understanding with the universe.

You Give Us 22 Minutes and We’ll Give You a Trip to NYC (DAY 2)

The Race

We headed into Manhattan in the early morning to meet up with Elliot and run a 5 mile race in Central Park. Parking was fairly easy to come by (see next section) and we walked a few blocks over to the race area. Not only was I surprised to see that this was not a small race (over 5,000 participants) but once the starting gun went off it was the quietest race I'd ever taken part in. It was so quiet that not only could you hear yourself think but you could also hear what the guy next to you was thinking! Lucky for everybody out there, Mr. Entertainment (me) was there to talk the whole way through. In the post race interview with some girl who stuck a camera in my face I even managed to get in some of POTUS' talking points. When asked why I ran the race, Bloggerman said, "If we don't run, the terrorists win!"

Ticket
What the #*+@! Why is there a parking ticket on the windshield when we got back to the car? We specifically moved it from one side of the street to the other and pulled up to make sure we were not in the "No Standing" zone. Oh we can’t park here because numb nuts over at city hall decided the only other sign needed along the whole block would be 500 ft down the other side.
Nice... Thanks for fleecing the drivers so that the empty suit wearing panty-waits at ABC can park in front of their building. We wouldn't want them to have to walk like the rest of us. They might forget all those great reality shows they were thinking of on the commute in!

The Game
Well we finally made it to Shea and had sunny skies and 2 baseball games to take in (they were playing a true double header to make up for the rain out). Thanks to Josh for hooking us up on the seats. We could see everything. Unfortunately that also meant that we could spend 3.5 hours in the sun and see the Mets drop the first of two.

We hit the car after the end of the game because we knew that if we stayed for the second game we wouldn't get home until after midnight.

Friendly’s
For dinner we pulled off just north of Baltimore and thanks to Mrs. Bloggerman's expert navigation (and Google Maps) we found yet another reason to get off at Joppastowne (in addition to the cheap gas). Unfortunately our diets had already been blown for the day so we opted away
from the ice cream and Fribbles for two salads... although after the next marathon, we're going back for sliders, motz sticks, and bacon-cheese waffle fries all on one plate. Yummo!

The Pup-a-Lup
A special thanks to the Boig collective who were gracious enough to watch Mooks while we wenst away. They rock and when we got home she was sprawled out on the bed enjoying her freedom! Well not for long as we had a (near) midnight stroll around the neighborhood and managed to come back with "more" in our bag then when we left.

I'm Pulling for the Patriots? Am I F-in Crazy?

Actually, no. No I'm not. I am pulling for the Pats in their battle against ticket scalping. Here's the quick rundown. The Patriots sued Stubhub (and parent company e-bay) in order to secure the names of the approximately13,000 buyers and sellers of Patriot season and individual game tickets on the site. Yesterday's ruling in favor of the Pats was on an appeal from the lower court who also sided with the team. For full details here's the ESPN.com article.

What I'm most happy about here is not that the big, bad NFL team is trying to get a stranglehold on their ticket sales, but rather that they are cracking down on ticket scalping and allowing fans to buy tickets at reasonable prices. In the worst case example, a 50 yd line seat for the Pats/Jets game in December is posted on StubHub for $1,300. Oh by the way, the face value: $125. So not only is this "fan" trying to unload a ticket they aren't going to use, they're trying to cover the cost of their entire season ticket package! Oh and one more aside, if that fan really "couldn't" attend the game and wanted to sell the ticket so they didn't have to eat it, they could go to Ticketmaster who has a partnership with the club and buy the ticket for face value (and the $30 or so in fees that are legal under Massachusetts law). So would you pay $150 or $1300 for the same tickets? Humm...

I think all sports fans should pay close attention to this story as this could set the precedent for other franchises to go after these jackals (you know how I feel about ticket scalpers) who do nothing more then buy the season ticket plans and resell the tickets for huge profit. Oh and Stubhub of course gets their cut (the percentage of which is not clearly labeled on their site....another indication to buyers that you are getting ripped off).

A Money.CNN.com report earlier this month praised Stubhub and the sites like it for creating a "truly transparent secondary market for tickets." Really? Which part is transparent? That fans are getting ripped off or that scalpers are buying season tickets which real fans have been waiting for (the list for Green Bay Packers season tickets is still 20 years deep) and then selling them piecemeal for huge profits?

I think all sporting teams should take this route. It's not that I don't support a secondary market for tickets, because if you've read the earlier posts about trying to get Springsteen tickets (which arrived yesterday!!!) you'll know I certainly do, but you also know (from those posts) that I detest ticket scalpers who aren't just looking to make their money back on tickets they can't use but to actually turn a profit. And for that matter, where are the DC Police during Wizard and Caps games? How is it that scalpers can sell tickets right in the front of the building? Next time you "have" to buy from a scalper, negotiate and talk them down and above all...ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS see the ticket before buying it!!