How did you get on with the ticket office today?

Ticket for Real Madrid at home?

Go ahead and share your stories if you can still muster the strength in your broken fingers having smashed the keyboard up with your clenched angry fists. Blood splattered over monitor whilst screaming 'Nooooooo' in the same way Anakin Skywalker did when he awoke to find himself as 'Darth Vader' in a galaxy far far away. I actually stood up in the cinema and also screamed 'Noooooo'. George Lucas, what have you done?

Many of you this evening are shaking your heads at incompetence a little bit closer to home relating to the process and resulting nightmare that is the lottery to get your hands on a ticket, as a member of the club. Daniel Levy, are you listening?

Some examples of complaints below.

Sent to: ian.murphy@tottenhamhotspur.com

Dear Sir

It is with a heavy heart I write to you today with regard to the online ticketing system.
I have in the last few months, come to hate the "lottery" that the system appears to apply to applications and feel if I do not raise it with you, you will be unaware of these issues.

As before, tickets are on sale at half past nine in the morning. Like everyone else I log on earlier than this to join the queuing system for a ticket. At one point the queuing bar jumped from 2/3 full back down to 1/3. I have no idea why. I finally was let in at around 10:30am (~2 hours queuing). This I would think, would be a good result. The map of the ground is before me and all orange. Orange is good - it means there is limited availability but not sold out. I only want 1 ticket so I should easily be able to get one.

This turns out not to be the case. Every block I select comes back with the response simlar to "you cannot buy that amount of tickets in this block". If there are no tickets left, the block should be red. If there are, I should be able to purchase one. Therefore I must assume that either there are seats reserved for sale at the ticket office, in which case they should be marked as sold on the website, or there are complex rules at work not wishing to seat only one person when it could perhaps seat 2 or 3 people next to each other. Can you please tell me which it is?

It is inordinately frustrating to spent 30 minutes clicking blocks trying to find an available seat on that system. It should not be this way and I would like to know if there are plans to make it more efficient and work better. Can you tell me what the plans are for the ticketing site, given that with Ticketmaster it is just shambolic. I cannot even select a seat that I might want - it is a pure lottery in terms of being able to get into the site, and then in terms of where I can sit. I presume this is again to enable larger groups to sit together. This is not acceptable to me and many fans however. I recommend that policy is rescinded. Can you comment?

I then jump on the popular forum, glory-glory.co.uk to find people not only in a similar boat, but worse off than I! Some talking about how they end up opening web browsers on more than one machine, and the latter machine is further in the queuing process than the one that has been queuing for an hour already! Then I hear someone logged in via their mobile phone at 09:35am and got straight in and secured 3 tickets!

I have no problem with a queuing system as long as it is fair and works. The current one clearly doesn't. Then, even when logged in it is nigh on impossible to purchase a ticket despite the site showing availability.

I am sure the Club are simply happy that again it is going to be another wonderful European night at the Lane and that it is sold out. The process of getting there is so arduous and disheartening to supporters however that it creates great depression and produces a lot of bad feeling towards the club. When we finally make a decision on what to do about a new stadia, and it is completed then hopefully this will mitigate people not getting seats but even so, it will not change the fact that the application process for tickets is shambolic and simply not good enough.

I hope you are able to respond to the points I raise here today, and that you have a good weekend.

best regards,
David Beamish
<member number>

Dear Mr. Murphy,

Another big match at White Hart Lane, another online ticketing farce. When it comes to high demand matches the current online ticketing system is not fit for purpose. It does not work. It's as simple as that.

I joined the online queuing system at 07:45 this morning. I did not get past the queue and into the site until 11:30 this morning. At around 09:15 when the progress bar indicated that I was nearly at the front of the queue, it reset itself to almost zero, for no reason.

I know several people who joined the queue over an hour after I did, yet they got to the front of the queue and were able to buy tickets long before me. This would not be possible if the system worked. I know several other people in the same boat as myself. The progress bar telling us our position in the queue is meaningless, it is random, it bears no semblance to reality.

Even if you are lucky enough to get past the queue, more pitfalls await. I spent nearly twenty-five minutes clicking on blocks which show as orange (indicating limited ticket availability) only to be told that no tickets were available when I did so. It was by sheer random luck that I happened to get a ticket in East Upper Block G, probably after the fifth or sixth time I had clicked on that block.

It cannot be right that loyalty points play no part when it comes to once in a lifetime fixtures such as our match with Real Madrid, or our match with AC Milan, which suffered a similar meltdown with the online ticketing system.

How can it be right that somebody with 400+ loyalty points, who has followed the club for years, has the same chance of getting a ticket as someone who may have bought a membership as a one off just to attend this glamour fixture and has no intention of going to another match until the likes of Real Madrid visit us again?

The current system shows loyal Tottenham fans, who have spent their money on the club for years, no respect at all. The way the club dismisses these concerns after every ticketing bungle gives the impression that the club does not care how loyal a fan is, just as long as there's someone there to step up and line the clubs pockets.

Surely the only fair way to sell tickets for these matches is on the same basis as away matches. Allow everyone who wants a ticket to apply, work out how many loyalty points are needed, and then allow everyone who exceeds that limit to purchase a ticket.

This would also have the effect of encouraging fans to attend the less glamorous fixtures in order to build up their loyalty points.

Obviously loyalty points would need to have some kind of time limit, otherwise it would be impossible for new members to catch up older members who have been attending matches for many years. I would suggest that at the start of each season any loyalty points over three years old be removed. That way, a new member can build up their loyalty points and within three seasons have just as much chance to get a ticket to the big games as long time loyal members.

At the very least, even if there is no change to take loyalty points into account, that the club looks into replacing the current online ticketing system with something much more robust. The server capacity clearly cannot handle the demand and strain placed on it and the design and implementation of the software is shoddy at best. It really does need to be changed for a better system.

Thank you for your time,

Yours faithfully,

EJG

From Twitter:

took me 115 calls and 6 pcs at work to get 2 tickets.. 15 mins before selling out. also, it wasn't 1st come 1st serve online as my colleague logged in 35 mins after me, and got in before me? - @Stevewfinch

Yes. Guy at ticket office said "this is why you should have supported move to Stratford". Hundreds there to hear it - @Shpates

From Spurs:

All available tickets for our forthcoming Champions League Quarter Final Second Leg tie with Real Madrid were sold out to One Hotspur Bronze and Lilywhite members within two hours of going on sale this morning (Friday).

We should like to thank all supporters for their patience as extended queuing times were experienced due to the unprecedented demand at the Ticket Office, on-line and via our Ticketmaster call centre service.

65,000 members were eligible to purchase a ticket, and at 9 30am this morning over 20,000 individual members were queuing on-line. We are aware that many fans will be extremely disappointed not to have been successful in acquiring a ticket. This demand shows the fantastic fan-base the Club has and we should like to thank you for your support.

Hands up if the steward who proclaimed "this is why you should have supported move to Stratford" should be stuck in a Gunnersaurus costume and pushed into the Park Lane toilets at half-time?

Only joking. Would never consider doing that. For a start nobody would see him from all the smoke.

There is no disputing we have a supply and demand issue and that moving to a new stadium is paramount. But this isn't about appeasing the masses. It's about having a system that isn't the equivalent of playing Gary Doherty and Ramon Vega in central defence. It's always been a complaint and today emphasis that fact tenfold.

It seems utterly random. If there are so many eligible people then perhaps the club can attempt to redefine the application process (which in this case was log in, hit, hope). Loyalty points perhaps. Building a 60,000 is hardly going to help unless we delay the fixture for five or so years. In all seriousness, if we were playing in a stadium twice the size of WHL as of right now, we'd still have fans applying and being made to pi** in the wind.

Fix the process, make it fair. Treat us like Tottenham fans not screaming teenagers after a JLS ticket.

If you haven't already, please visit Supporting our Future and complete the survey.

We, a group of supporters of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, intend to offer a practical proposal based on the opinions of the fans to resume development of a World Class football stadium worthy of the club and its ambition at our current home, White Hart Lane.

Have your say. We've all had something to moan about in the past six months, let's not all suddenly go quiet again until the next twist and turn rears it's head.