Herewith, My Saga (in VERY condensed form).
*LONG POST WARNING AHEAD*
I got my letter and card on Monday (after MUCHO attacks of nervousness for a week. I had no idea if my membership had expired or not, and I French-kissed the Propaganda envelope once safely within my own private walls.)
I waited until Friday night to register, after reading the numerous horror stories from here and elsewhere, thinking that this--and a simple Prop code, I thought mine was going to be simple to enter, judging from what I'd read about the code problems--would make things easier. WRONG. I was one of those people whose code, it seemed, wouldn't register even when I hit "refresh" first. As a result, I go back a second time and started with the Red X in the box. This got me to the $40 page, and there was no way I could make the coupon page appear. Furious, and crying, I have to admit, thinking I was completely screwed, I get on the phone with FanFire, choosing the "Customer Service" option on the menu. The girl who answered at first had no idea if I was officially registered as a $40 member or not. I filled in the Credit card info but hesitated before pressing the "Process Order" button. (May I state that this was also going to be my first ever credit transaction online, I am a privacy nut and ONLY this being the sole way to order for Prop would make me do this. I am VERY bitter about losing the "money order" option.)
So I sit there chatting with this girl for 5 mins, telling her that I haven't submitted my credit card info yet but am I stuck in the system as a $40 member? She told me that she couldn't pull the page up on the screen but I thought that was because she hadn't filled out any info. I discuss the problems that people have been having, including the $20 coupon option not functioning and people still getting charged $40. Finally, after making her ask someone else, she tells me that I can go ahead if I want and subscribe for the $40, but my Prop code is entered in the system. I can then either email them, or sign up again next week when the Coupon code was fixed. (She said "possibly" Monday the coupon function would be working correctly; We shall see, but I'mnot going to rush to find out.)
So I thank her and get off the phone. She hasn't mentioned a thing about problems with access codes, and I am freaking out, thinking that I screwed up because I did it a second time hitting the X, after not being able to get the $20 page with refresh. Still--(and wisely, it turned out) I didn't hit the Process box, and backed out altogether. I got out of the site, got back in, logged in, and got the wrong page again. I get back on the phone, this time choosing "Order". After a total of about 20 mins of waiting--and being cut off twice--a very nice--at first-- girl came on but I poured out my story and made her get a supervisor. She asked me, a bit rudely, what I needed a supervisor for. (Because you don't seem to have a clue, Miss, I think. And you'd better believe that's the "family-friendly website" version
.Turns out, they don't have "supervisors", only "leads." A massive warning bell went off in my head. More on this in a minute.
She puts me on hold "(interestingly, their "elevator music" for being put on hold is SYCMIOYO-which makes perfect sense, but believe me, I'll never hear the first 2 stanzas of that song the same way again! It was the only amusing part of this episode.)
The lady who came on sighed when I said "U2", and I had brief small talk about how many calls they must have had. She related horror stories from the first hour the site was up. I explained about the U2.com member heirarchy and she said she understood, but I insisted on telling her a bit more about Prop. (I wanted to say, "You think we U2 fans are pain in the arse now, wait until the Prop tickets go on sale"?) I know it was dumb but somehow--even though I suspected I was dealing with a call center by now--I felt the need to explain to this woman that this was going to be the biggest tour of next year and the distinguised history of the fan club, just to differentiate us U2 fans from the common lumpen prole herd that calls FanFire over other paltry acts (am I nuts? I don't think so. Our money is going to single-handedly rescue the concert biz next year and they had damned well better be thankful for us while we're around.)
So then I get into my problem, and in the course of the conversation it turns out that not only is she reading her info off a sheet of paper--I can tell--she, a "lead", can't even access the site. Nobody can. I am incredulous. She couldn't even pull up the screen to see exactly what it was I was talking about? She did know about problems with access codes, however,and this is how I found out that not only had I NOT screwed up the first time, but also the fact that if I had not submitted my credit card info and backed out of the site, and allowed my code thus to languish for a couple of days, it would disappear from the system by Monday and I could try again with a blank slate. She sounded like she had talked with superiors on this, and seemed to be quite knowledgable on it, even though she had no computer there. But this was by trial and error, NOT info looked up on a computer, so....?She talked at length about the credit card problems and said that "by Monday" all the $20 coupon options would be working--the FanFire site was being updated to handle them all.
After some more clearing up, I got off the phone, dreading the future more than ever. I am going to wait until Teus or even Wed to register--the people who got charged $40, which is an awful lot, will have to re-apply, so there goes their being high up in the "database list." SOme people didn't mind being charged megabucks subscribing multiple times, but how many can there be? I was in the "middle" of the old Prop database--I subscribed in the spring of 1991-- and had no prob with getting great seats, so I don't mind being in the "middle" online. Which I prob will be, considering the speed of things and how many people haven't even gotten the letter yet.
Why do I dread the ticket sale now even more than before? Because it's aparent that the vaunted FanFire operation is being run out of a drab little Call Center.
Now I'm sure many of you are familar with Call Centers and know they work, and some of you may have even worked for one. I haven't, but have read a lot about them. And as a public service for disgruntled people on here, for the people who don't know, let me tell you the difference between a Call Center and a RESPONSIBLE Customer Service network.
I've done work over the phone for the local State Divisions of FEMA, a Health Care network, and for the Income Tax Service. (Never again, that last, unless I am starving.) Then, I had my own cublicle and computer as well as the phone. I knew my conversations were recorded, but I had my relative privacy, and didn't have a supervisor breathing down my neck, and they were available to handle my questions about difficult calls. I could easily access each screen I needed to get into during the course of the call. I jotted notes. Some transactioms--like determining the elability of a caller for a certain program--were comlicated and took many minutes. But it was the quality, not the quantity, of my work that counted, and nobody hassled me about "volume."
Call Centers are different. I wish I could remember my source material for this, so you could read it for yourselves, but trust me.
Call Centers are run by for-profit companies whose staff are part-time, drastically underpaid, little more than the phone equivalent of fast food or garment workers, so badly are they sometimes treated on the job. The big thing about working for a Call Center is that it is the volume, NOT the quality, of the work that counts when workers are evaluated. The more calls a worker handles, the better their performance. (Ah! I remember one of the books I read this from! It's a new book on the health care industry, that just came out 2 months ago. I forgot the authors' names but they are recent Pulitzer Prize winners. It's called "Critical Condition: How Health Care In America Became Big Business and Bad Medicine." Forgot the chapter that discusses call centers but the book is short and you'll find the info soon enough. It talks about the process of calling an HMO about billing problems and states that the success of the Health care call center model had spread very widely to other industries as well. Whatever the heck that means--though I suspect a company's rating with shareholders and cutting costshas a lot to do with it, NOT sucess as in quaility of performance.)
Anyway, intense pressures are put upon call workers in some cases (this is true of the health care industry, I don't know how true it might be of a place like FanFire--but you never know; how many of us are amateur whistle-blowers?) to handle as many calls a day as possible. They are under a strict quota, and under some circumstances, you can get instantly fired if you don't meet the daily quota.
These actions include cutting down to the absolute minimum the individual' worker's personal equipment, sometimes furnishing the workers with little more than tip sheets. This would seem to apply to FanFire not only because of the lack of computers in the office--or at least website accessabilty--but from phrases the girls said. (the kind supervisor said, for example, "the thing they told us to remember about *this one* is to hit the refresh button." So much for thinking you were dealing with the "U2 section" of the FanFire office. or the "U2 Office" of FanFire. We're just getting a big room filled with nabobs who answer questions about every other act in the book. And it's plain they are just reading from the daily or weekly "U2 tip sheet." Or not even that--was it just something stressed at the daily morning staff meeting??! )Also, the volume of the traffic in the background, and the irritation of the girl when I asked for a supervisor, when she'd been so nice starting out. There goes the short length of her call, or the "referral to a manager" would go against her in the daily roundup.)
Call center workers in some industries have little or no break or lunch time, routinely work 12-hr shifts with even bathroom breaks counting as "points" detracted by thier bosses against them from their daily performance sheet. I mentioned the quotas. The supervisors hover closely and note everything. And they can get instantly fired. I am sure you're thinking that this is no big deal if the workers are just students, but think again. Many people have to do this for a living, or go unemployed for a while.
Like I said, I'm sure this is no news to the many of you who know about call centers or have worked for one. But I'm sure many of also you will find this news. And it's of paramount concern if this is how the Propaganda operation is going to be handled from now on. The snail Prop was slow, but when I had a problem I'd rather have the single scruffy college kid on the other end sitting in a cheap apartment somewhere eating potato chips--or a guy like the one in Jurassic Park, you know who I mean-- than McDonald's With A Phone.
It was knowledge of this, and my own past customer service experience, that kept me from at least yelling at anybody on the phone. And I could sympathize with the lady on the phone about job stress. BUT at the same time I have SO MUCH anger that the Propaganda operation was so neatly folded into the common sheep herd of this company and we are being treated like this.IMHO., the Propaganda operation, precisely becuase it is supposed to be run as a "seperate" fan club, outhgt o be handled by an operation where the workers have computers so they can pullup the websites of the act that the customer is calling aobut...major websites handling ticket sales, where a LOT of money chages hands, should be run like FEMA or a state agency..and NOT like a church's fundrasing operation, where it sin't necessary to know a huge amount of info.
I am choosing not to blame the band at this point--they are still out on the promo tour and prob have not had the chance to know. Or amybe they know but are unfamilar or mislead about FanFire. The question here is: How much does McGuinness know and when did he know it? Was this his doing, and how much pressure did the Clear Channel/Ticketmaster jauggernaut put on him.them to fold into these people? We know that Ticketmaster limits the amount of tix a fan club can sell to one-tenth. (I'd love to know how recent this rule is.) Was u2 under intense pressure to "streamline" the ticket ordering process, was it a conscious decision by manager and band, looking at the seeming success of the operation from a perspective of Across the Pond, or did they know it and realized they had no choice?
Time will tell. What I am hoping is that this--converting the database to online--will be the hard part. I am hoping FanFire has been contacted by the band and that thus they know that there WILL be a "different" ordering prcoess for Prop than other FanFire transactions. I am hoping that a system is or will be place, once the database is completed, to "number" it just as the snail Prop was, codes nonwithstanding, and that we will get the online equivalent of "order forms." for the tix. (This is how Prop members would be different from the others--or so we kept being told we are.) That is, maybe the database would be divided up into 3 or 4 or 5 parts (say, the 1's through the 5's, the 6's through the 10's, etc) and each "batch" of individual emails sent out over the course of 4 or 5 days, to spread out the time length of the process and thus prevent traffic from cresting like on Thurs/Fri. And the respondant would be given 24 or 48 hrs to email back with the "order".--Ticketmaster's notorious "5 minute" window" extended to 1 or 2 days.
One can dream, can't one? But it won't happen...I have no experience in how to run a ticket sale, and I think this makes more sense than haivng ONE page and everyone crashing at once...can't wait to see how they run this.
Or maybe I can.
So as you deal with the geniuses at this our new home, remember all this, amd prepare for the nightmare that lies ahead. ON the bright side, maybe the frustration lead to fewer orders online--and more so for people like me
Thanks for reading what must surely be one of the longer posts in Interference's annals
does anyone know how to contact Propaganda? I haven't rec'd a letter yet and should still be a member
