It's Bone Pickin' Time!

Ok, this is a bit of a rambler, but it's a cautionary tale, so I urge you to read it in its entirety...

About two months ago, I had the honor and distinct privilege of participating as a groomsman in the wedding of one of my best, good friends. As is customary with weddings, the Bride and Groom gave a gift to each member of the wedding party as a token of appreciation, friendship, etc… For each groomsman, the Groom purchased a gift certificate for tickets to home games of their favorite baseball team. For the bridesmaids… well, I can’t remember what they got because I was entirely too excited about the baseball tickets coming my way.

I was truly impressed by the thought that went into this gift: For one thing, there were 4 groomsmen and we all have a different favorite team. There was a Yankees fan (of course), a Phillies fan (watch out for batteries), an Orioles fan (I try to talk him out of it), and myself – a Pirates fan (at least we have a great stadium). For another thing, everyone got essentially the same thing, but each gift was fundamentally different (I know, I’m probably breaking a few logic rules with that sentence). That way, no one can claim that the groom was playing favorites in any way with the gifts (you know how caddy groomsmen can be). Also, the gift offered flexibility. It’s not like he got us something engraved like when Joey bought the friendship bracelets for Chandler and himself on “Friends” and Chandler hated it, but felt obligated to wear it when he was around Joey. He didn’t buy us an object… he bought us an event – an opportunity to enjoy something and create memories… sorry for the sappiness, but I was excited.

Almost immediately, I began to think about when I would be able to make it to Pittsburgh for a game. I decided I wanted to invite the groom to make the trip with me; not because I felt obligated since he bought the gift, but because I always talk about the Pirates (and Pittsburgh sports in general) around him and wanted to give him a chance to witness, first hand, what it’s like to see a game in PNC Park. Plus, he’s moving to New York this fall, and I almost feel like an era is coming to an end… sort of… so to speak… again, sorry for the sappiness. We cross-checked our calendars with the Pirates’ schedule and decided we'll go up the weekend of August 26/27. The Astros will be in town and, who knows, maybe we’ll get to see Roger Clemens pitch one final time before he retires (if you haven’t ever seen Roger Clemens pitch in person… let’s just say you need to find your way to an NL city sometime soon… he’s worth it). All that needed to be done was to arrange for the tickets… a place to stay that weekend would work itself out.

Now for the part where I go ape-nuts over something that seems to me to be completely retarded…

The Pirates’ box office works through Tickets.com: sort of like Ticketmaster, only smaller and (as you will come to understand) much much much MUCH less convenient. The gift certificate itself contains the following language:

“SUBJECT TO TICKET AVAILABILITY
REDEEM BY MAIL OR BOX OFFICE ONLY
NOT VALID FOR POSTSEASON PLAY”

Apart from the obvious question – why do they tease us (Pirates fans) with even the mention of postseason play? – I was a little concerned that redeeming this gift certificate wouldn’t be as simple as going online to reserve tickets and entering a code. Alas, my concerns were validated because I went online and… no dice… there is no option to redeem a gift certificate. I thought, 'okay, fine, well, I’ll just call the box office and do it over the phone.' Even back in the 20th century you could reserve tickets over the phone. Apparently you can’t in the 21st century… at least not with a code on a gift certificate. You see, they have to actually have the gift certificate in their hands to redeem it for tickets and they told me I need to come into the box office.

“You mean the stadium?” I ask.

“That’s right,” was the woman’s response.

So I says to the lady on the phone, I says “I live in Baltimore… getting to the box office at PNC park is more than just a quick stop after work.”

“Ohhhhhh,” she says, as if the thought never occurred to anybody that one of these gift certificates might be given to someone who doesn’t live in Pittsburgh. She said I could mail it in with a letter requesting tickets. The obvious problem with this is that it doesn’t come with a guarantee that the tickets I request will be available by the time my letter gets there (if it gets there at all) so I flat out rejected that possibility.

“Let me see if there is somewhere you can take the gift certificate around Baltimore,” she says. A few seconds later, she comes back and tells me I can take my gift certificate to a Bradford Bank location... apparently Bradford Bank (a small local bank, formerly a savings & loan… I looked it up) isn’t just a bank, it’s also a retail outlet for Tickets.com. It’s like a superhero with a secret identity and now, it had the chance to save me from my current conundrum… pickle… whatever this is.

“Ok, I’ll give that a try,” was my response.

Saturday was my only option because, of course, I have my own job during weekly bankers’ hours, so I figured I’d give it a shot this weekend. Wouldn’t you know it, the first (and closest) branch to which I went had recently seen their Tickets.com machine hit the fritz, so they suggested I try the branch a couple miles up the road. Sure, no big deal, I had gas in my car ($3.19 / gallon gas) and a good CD in the stereo.

I got to the other branch and went to the counter. The lady took one look at the gift certificate and grimaced like I was asking her to prove the math theorem from the beginning of “Good Will Hunting.” It was mystery… A gift certificate!... FOR TICKETS!... What to do?!!! She was going to have to call this one in. Never a good sign.

So she gets on the horn and the sentence I overhear that stands out in my mind the most is “He has to take it to the stadium in Pittsburgh?” To which, I muttered “un-flippin’ believable:” a reaction that caused the other lady behind the counter to chuckle a little. I guess it would be sort of funny to an outside observer, but to me, it was sort of… no, not sort of… INSANELY annoying. I had met a new incarnation of the Soup Nazi… meet the Ticket Nazi: Tickets.com is a company that so desperately wants to keep people from attaining tickets to the events under their control that they will go to great lengths to alienate the people who most want to attend the event.

I guess I could blame the Pirates. I could chalk it up to another fantastic business decision made by the current ownership group: the decision to partner with Tickets.com for all their ticket issuing needs. Heck, maybe it’s not Tickets.com that made the decision to make the gift certificates redeemable at the stadium box-office only. Maybe that was the Pirates too. I’m pretty sure this that all insanity is a collaborative effort between the two entities. The difference is that Tickets.com, as the outsourced ticket agent, is responsible for anticipating this type of thing and coming up with reasonable and logical contingencies. They have failed in that respect and I feel the need to sound off on them for it.

We’re still going to Pittsburgh that weekend. We got a pair of cheap tickets to the Saturday night game already and were planning to use the gift certificate for better seats to the Sunday afternoon game. Now I just have to figure out how to get those tickets. Because it would be idiotic to expect that the seats I want on Sunday, August 27 will still be available when I get to Pittsburgh on Saturday, August 26, I have to figure out a way to get the gift certificate to the stadium box office. Do I inconvenience one of my relatives in Pittsburgh by mailing the gift certificate to them and asking them to go to the stadium box office for me? Or do I risk losing the gift certificate by mailing it directly to the box office?

See? It’s a pickle I tell you… and it’s added a big flaw to a seemingly perfect gift. Not the Groom’s fault though… I went online to see if they warn you before you buy a gift certificate… they don’t. I guess I should be used to poor customer service... I am a Comcast customer.