For those without Facebook this was posted by way of an update by the Cm rep following the city matters meeting.
Its at least good to know that the people with the power to make changes are aware of the issues so let's see how they respond....
Fellow Blues
As promised, here are the headlines from the CM meeting last night. The meeting had a lot of City staff in attendance including Danny Wilson, Head of Supporter Services and more importantly Roel de Vries the relatively new chap they have headhunted from Nissan to run operations. He is effectively Danny’s boss.
Here are the headlines…
1.
they decide to introduce Mobile Ticketing because they believe the Everton trial had been a ”success”. We honestly laughed at this suggestion and said the supporters believe otherwise.
2.
They honestly believe that Mobile Ticketing will be of great benefit to fans. I told them that so far they had not proved this to be the case and that they should promote the benefits… They have a list of ideas which you might find interesting such as easily upgrading your ticket to a different part of the stadium of finding out which bar does not have a long queue… I have asked them to give me this information so I can share with you. On the plus side, supporters are already using the electronic Ticket Transfer facility which I think will prove popular.
2.
They described what’s going on at the moment as “challenging” and said that in terms of responding to phone calls and emails they are “not where they would like to be”. I made the point strongly that fans were not just feeling a bit let down, they were downright ANGRY! I think Roel de Vries was shocked, believe me, I gave them both barrels on your behalf.
3.
I told them that because Mobile Ticketing is taking up all their time, all the other issues are being missed and ignored because people cannot get through on the phones and emails are not being replied to and this is completely unacceptable.
4.
CM requested weeks ago that City consider should slow down and introduce mobile ticketing in phases but Danny wanted to go for a Big Bang approach. I emphasised that the club’s decision to introduce an untested system when supporters had not been in the stadium for 18 months has created this tsunami of complaints and enquiries. I told them in no uncertain terms this was a self-inflicted wound with older people, disabled people and people not tech savvy particularly disadvantaged. I have requested that the club apologise to supporters and offer something as a token as part of this apology. They promised to take my request seriously and I will talk to them about it next week.
5.
We told them that fans were saying “the team on the pitch are Premier league, the organisation behind it is third division at best”, I could tell this hurt. Roel de Vries promised that in the future major changes will be brought to CM much earlier for our comment and input, let’s see if this happens.
6.
I told them that nobody believes the technology will work well, people are waiting for it to be a disaster. They promised that tomorrow their primary job will be to get fans in the stadium. If something doesn’t work, the staff are briefed to take a note of the problem, let the supporter in, then Supporter Services will address the issue later in the week.
Of course, tomorrow’s weather forecast is for heavy downpours, so like all of you I am looking forward to queueing in the rain for two hours to get into our Stadium to watch Norwich put 11 men behind the ball for 90 minutes. Up the Blues!
