Jamie Pollard statement regarding ticket scanning process during home opener

[LeaningCy]

1. Imagine upgrading the locks on your front door resulting in your spouse being unable to enter your home for 30+ minutes on a 95 degree day.

2. Now imagine instead of just apologizing and working on the locks, you instead say "unfortunately, the combination of your arrival time, my inability to help you understand the technology, and the excessive heat, came together to create a perfect storm of a poor home entry experience."

They'd be willing to forgive you for #1, but #2 would result in divorce or murder.

 

[BCClone]

The guy working the line that I was in was the best. He would watch the person on the first attempt and then ask if he could just do it for them. I thought it would be like the bar code thing so I tried that, he said that that wasn't right and asked if he could do it. 10-15 seconds for the whole group of four in that process. key is having the tickets right there and ready to go. I saw several people that just had their phones and then would be fumbling around trying to pull them up at the kiosk.

 

[SEIOWA CLONE]

Does Kinnick use this same ticketing system? If not, it's going to be a total cluster F again this week. I'm guessing probably about 15k-20k of the fans entering will be Hawkeye fans that will have no idea how to go about this.

There is no way in hell that there are going to be 15 to 20,000 EIU fans at the game, that would be one in three fans.

I think this is a problem of ISU's own making, when they built the bridge, they now have forced the majority of the fans to enter the stadium from either the North or East side of the stadium. They have made it basically impossible to come from the North and enter the stadium on the West side because of new football facilities, and there is not much tailgating space on the South side. So the vast majority of people are trying to get in at the North and East gates and its just a cluster. Jamie needs to come up with a way to get people from the tailgating lots from the North and drop them off on the South side, and then allow people parking in the GA lots to get across university by stopping the traffic and use the South gates.

 

[Pope]

1. Imagine upgrading the locks on your front door resulting in your spouse being unable to enter your home for 30+ minutes on a 95 degree day.

2. Now imagine instead of just apologizing and working on the locks, you instead say "unfortunately, the combination of your arrival time, my inability to help you understand the technology, and the excessive heat, came together to create a perfect storm of a poor home entry experience."

They'd be willing to forgive you for #1, but #2 would result in divorce or murder.

Your analogy is pretty funny, but it would be more accurate if you were married to thousands of women who were all trying to enter your front door around the same time.

 

[carvers4math]

The guy working the line that I was in was the best. He would watch the person on the first attempt and then ask if he could just do it for them. I thought it would be like the bar code thing so I tried that, he said that that wasn't right and asked if he could do it. 10-15 seconds for the whole group of four in that process. key is having the tickets right there and ready to go. I saw several people that just had their phones and then would be fumbling around trying to pull them up at the kiosk.

That’s why our bag checker was ignoring bags and telling people to have the wallet open to the tickets. Bag checkers better be checking bags next game.

 

[flycy]

"Unfortunately, the combination of many fans arriving closer to kickoff, our staff’s inability to help fans understand the technology, and the excessive heat, came together to create a perfect storm of poor customer service."

So the reasons things didn't go well according to the AD are:

1. Fans arrived too late
2. Fans didnt understand our instructions
3. It was hot

This shows a lack of awareness of what the real problems were and doesn't give me much hope of improvement next week.

It's just a PR letter. The real test is next week. It will also be hot, maybe hotter since kick is at 230 and there will be even more people. Problems like Saturday are somewhat excusable on a first attempt.

 

[Trice]

There is no way in hell that there are going to be 15 to 20,000 EIU fans at the game, that would be one in three fans.

I think this is a problem of ISU's own making, when they built the bridge, they now have forced the majority of the fans to enter the stadium from either the North or East side of the stadium. They have made it basically impossible to come from the North and enter the stadium on the West side because of new football facilities, and there is not much tailgating space on the South side. So the vast majority of people are trying to get in at the North and East gates and its just a cluster. Jamie needs to come up with a way to get people from the tailgating lots from the North and drop them off on the South side, and then allow people parking in the GA lots to get across university by stopping the traffic and use the South gates.

I think people are overthinking this. I entered from the north last year and it was fine. Saturday was a disaster. So what changed between last year and Saturday? The kiosk system. Solve that and it's fine.

 

[Pat]

The guy working the line that I was in was the best. He would watch the person on the first attempt and then ask if he could just do it for them. I thought it would be like the bar code thing so I tried that, he said that that wasn't right and asked if he could do it. 10-15 seconds for the whole group of four in that process. key is having the tickets right there and ready to go. I saw several people that just had their phones and then would be fumbling around trying to pull them up at the kiosk.

Airlines have been using self-scan of mobile devices (and paper!) for at least the last 8 years, so I think you can say the system is tested and robust. And yet, I don’t think I’ve been on a flight where someone doesn’t have a problem scanning their phone (or paper!). Should the AD have anticipated this? Sure, but you can’t let fans off the hook entirely.

 

[dafarmer]

I don't trust any of this stuff. The wallets and the NFC stuff and having my phone track where I've been.

I'm sure there's a level of safety, but I've been in too many fraud meetings where info is stolen and gone in a heartbeat.

This little spy machine is now required to see an ISU game

Welcome to the Brave New World

I guess we should all go back to a rotary phone. JFC people, it is the 21st century.

 

[Pope]

It's just a PR letter. The real test is next week. It will also be hot, maybe hotter since kick is at 230 and there will be even more people. Problems like Saturday are somewhat excusable on a first attempt.

According to the weather experts (I know, I know), the Iowa game should be 10 degrees cooler than the UNI game, thank goodness.

 

[ScottyP]

South Gate needed about twice as many scanners.

 

[flycy]

The one I was in, outside of a few struggle bus people, the scanner I went through was like 3 seconds per person. I had four people and mine together was 10-15 seconds.

3 seconds would be extremely fast for those turnstiles. 10-15 is probably closer to what it took me and had no problems other than employee directing us to change to barcode. Turnstile itself did not turn for my wife until 4-5 seconds after the phone was scan was excepted.

 

[ScottyP]

Adding scanners and removing the turnstiles would be a big help in my opinion. Even if the scans work, turnstiles are just slow things down too much.

 

[flycy]

I would imagine most people have no idea their phone even has an NFC toggle. Anyone with Apple or Google Pay would but I would imagine most others don't.

I wouldn't have known that NFC needed to be on if I hadn't researched a bit before going. There were also no posters at the gate or in line explaining the process or how to set up your phone. The first chance anyone had to learn the process was when they were at the front holding up the turnstile.

 

[Ms3r4ISU]

Airlines have been using self-scan of mobile devices (and paper!) for at least the last 8 years, so I think you can say the system is tested and robust. And yet, I don’t think I’ve been on a flight where someone doesn’t have a problem scanning their phone (or paper!). Should the AD have anticipated this? Sure, but you can’t let fans off the hook entirely.

Airlines can use screenshots. And when in our wallet (and app) there’s a QR code.

 

[Trice]

So a question on these turnstiles, since I never even got close enough to see them, much less use them, before the event staff opened the gates and let everyone in.

I assume the turnstile turns once for each ticket scanned? So you're going in one-by-one? So if I'm scanning in my entire family, I scan one person, wait for the turnstile, then scan the next, wait for the next turnstile, and so on? And then go last myself?

 

[Clonehomer]

So a question on these turnstiles, since I never even got close enough to see them, much less use them, before the event staff opened the gates and let everyone in.

I assume the turnstile turns once for each ticket scanned? So you're going in one-by-one? So if I'm scanning in my entire family, I scan one person, wait for the turnstile, then scan the next, wait for the next turnstile, and so on? And then go last myself?

No, the turnstile will let you scan multiple and then let that many in once you’re done.

 

[Trice]

No, the turnstile will let you scan multiple and then let that many in once you’re done.

Thank god. As others have mentioned, it would be great if there were a way to scan one time for all of your tickets instead of doing those individually. It might save just 10 seconds for each family of four but cumulatively the effect would be huge.

 

[flycy]

1. Imagine upgrading the locks on your front door resulting in your spouse being unable to enter your home for 30+ minutes on a 95 degree day.

2. Now imagine instead of just apologizing and working on the locks, you instead say "unfortunately, the combination of your arrival time, my inability to help you understand the technology, and the excessive heat, came together to create a perfect storm of a poor home entry experience."

They'd be willing to forgive you for #1, but #2 would result in divorce or murder.

Definitely murder.

 

[KnappShack]

I guess we should all go back to a rotary phone. JFC people, it is the 21st century.

Tell me how this is an improvement? Tell me why I need to expose my information to another app that can be hacked and sold in order to go to a football game?

How is this change better for the consumer who doesn't want to stand in hour long lines when prior systems worked well?

Change for change sake isn't improvement. So I'll need to have a smart phone to function in society. A phone that knows just about everything about what I do and where I go. My comfort level is low with that.