Sevilla away sold out!

[squirtyflower]

Not that I'm bothered either way but wouldn't you have just gone to the games you qualified for and have had to miss the games you didn't building your loyalty points up when you got the tickets yourself? What difference does the supporters club make here?

They help you get tickets when you have not qualified on your own points, but you then get the points on your card

 

[dannybcity]

They help you get tickets when you have not qualified on your own points, but you then get the points on your card

Really?! Well I never knew that, that's a daft rule.

 

[squirtyflower]

Really?! Well I never knew that, that's a daft rule.

You'll get someone on here from a branch or two telling you that it doesn't happen but it has been going on for a good while.
A mate on here has a ticket for the derby, he has about half the points it sold out on, another guy I know, not on here, has two Seville tickets yet he is more than 5000 points short of Friday's sell out threshold
C'est La Vie

 

[dannybcity]

You'll get someone on here from a branch or two telling you that it doesn't happen but it has been going on for a good while.
A mate on here has a ticket for the derby, he has about half the points it sold out on, another guy I know, not on here, has two Seville tickets yet he is more than 5000 points short of Friday's sell out threshold
C'est La Vie

Disappointing if its allowed. I can live with people getting hold of tickets / sorting tickets out for mates, I've done both myself once or twice, but you definitely shouldn't get the points for it.

 

[tonea2003]

Whilst I agree with the sentiment this 'hard yards' shite is bollocks

You mean 'hard yards' since the points system has come into play

I know lads including myself who went home and away for years during the 80s/90s who are on nowhere near as many points as some on here due to dropping their ST for a few years when we moved to COMS for various reasons (Family etc etc)

A lot of these boys are hardcore support and cannot be dismissed

Like the earlier person mentioned...if you're determined and resourceful enough you can get a ticket for any game

Some just like it handed to them on a plate

i'm pretty much the same as you, mainly 80's rather than 90's and yeah family and others things meant i couldn't commit to city as much as i used to
i managed to keep my ST going but had to drop aways purely due to finance, so i get where you are coming from.
the points system had to start at some point once demand outstripped supply.
and your last line, if its by fair means good on you if not then there is a debate to be had as someone will feel hard done by

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

That's the hard pill to swallow, unfortunately.

I've only got my back up because people blame the supporters clubs unfairly in my view - of course there are the odd people who flout the rules, but it won't be as many as a lot on hear want people to think.

It's the clubs fault, all of this, because money means more to them than loyalty. If I won the lottery tomorrow I'd bet I could go to every game home and away and never have to mention loyalty points!

It's a hard pill to swallow because people like you have abused the system by getting tickets through a branch that someone who doesn't belong to a branch was more entitled to than you were if the system were rigidly enforced. And the blame for that is squarely in the court of the supporters' clubs, who allow and even encourage that scenario. I don't want to knock the fact that you spend most of your hard-earned money on watching City but many of us have had to do it the hard way.

Like many, I had to give up going regularly for a while due to family and work pressures. When my kids were older and my son wanted to go, we got season tickets again and started from scratch. In the Keegan/Pearce era we went to as many away games as we could when it was easier to get tickets and built up our points. Still miseed out on many big games though and I accepted that. Then my son went to live abroad and work took me away from home more often than not, which made it too difficult to do away or midweek games. I try to do about half the aways each season where I can and have dropped Platinum and the LC/CL schemes as they were a waste of money if you know you can't get to the games. Yet I've still got 9,000 points. Had I been able to do more games, kept up Platinum and been on the midweek cup schemes then I would be on a lot more, probably closer to 12,000. So it can be done and at that level you'd only miss out on a handful of games.

You've played the system to your advantage so please spare us the pathetic bleating that you're doing it as a selfless deed to help the club keep the support level young. You'd have been far better keeping shtum as you've now admitted that branches can allocate tickets to whoever they want, regardless of whether they have the points. Yet you've come on and virtually boasted about it.

I'd rather see the loyalty points system dropped as it's now virtually meaningless. Better off having a ballot for whatever tickets they put on general sale and weight it so that those who have been to the most games over the last 2 years have a better chance of getting tickets than those who have been to less. So if's there's 1,000 tickets going, allocate 500 to the ballot for those who've been to 40-50 games in the past two seasons, 300 to those who've done 30-40, 150 to those who've done 20-30 and 50 to the rest.

 

[Manchester33]

Not that I'm bothered either way but wouldn't you have just gone to the games you qualified for and have had to miss the games you didn't building your loyalty points up when you got the tickets yourself? What difference does the supporters club make here?

Yes exactly, but that's where the problem is.

If you're happy to go to the odd one now and again it's fine.

If you are City mad like me - to the point you could call it an obsession or an addiction - the system doesn't work as well as it should. If I was born 10 years earlier I would have made the 'cut off' and been able to go to most of the games because no one had a head start on each other when the points system was put in place. However as I'm a lot younger I could only start going to the games roughly 10 years after they'd been in place - meaning there were people with a 10 year head start. I'm at the age where I managed to catch up (just about) because the platinum membership reduced the impact of points gained by people 10 years earlier. But whats going to happen in another 10 years? Kids who are 10 now will have me to catch up with, then the people I had to catch up with as well - then you think what it will be like in 30 years etc...

The gap is going to get bigger and bigger which will destroy our away crowds - you need a big pool of people who go, and they naturally should be filtered over time with new people coming in and other people who stop travelling for financial or family reasons going out. Like the poster above said - if you change to a 5 year rolling period the person with the most points is only 5 years ahead of you, they won't be at a disadvantage as long as they keep going (because they'll always stay top of the list) but the idea of 'slowly building your points up' becomes more realistic because after a season of going to 6 games, you'll over take the people who haven't been to more than 1 away a season in the last 5 years (but have 20 years worth of points from season tickets).

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Well you're a mod on here aren't you - did I break any of the CoC rules?

If I did ban me. If I didn't don't insinuate that I'm doing something wrong/immoral when you work for the website that enables me to do it.

The cheek of it, I say!

I didn't say you had but if you had, then you would have been banned.

Look - I've been a bit hard on you but you've at least been honest (whether you meant to or not) about how you've got tickets. I think there's general agreement that the loyalty points system as it stands is now not really fit for purpose.

The problem is that in the past we could have discussed this at Points of Blue, face-to-face with club officials but that forum was dropped some time ago so the ordinary match-going fan can't even ask the club to look at it.

 

[fathellensbellend]

you can also add superbia members to the list who can flout the loyatly points rule, they ring up, ask for how many they want and bingo, as long as they gave a card to add the points to, and dont go daft, then they pretty much get what they want. Money talks.

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Missing out to someone with a few points lower than you is bad enough but due to the Points Whores on FB site, there will be plenty there with no points or very few because they happened to reply first to a whore. The people blatantly selling their points on there should have their points taken off them.