NDK and Ticketportal by placescases.com

Ticketportal.bg- LOW-tech, userNONfriendly, sluggish customer support

Last time visited in December 2015 virtually

Read the Bulgarian language version (under category BG), as well as more reviews in English and Bulgarian at placescases.com

This is my first review about virtual service. I know that virtual is not like real, or at least our 5 dimensional sensograph will be a little distorted with those cases but I shall try hard to transmit all my perceptions in a similar way. Virtual services are entering our daily life fast and furious, so I consider necessary at least to give a try to include them as a topic in my blog.

So here it  is.

See… out- of- date site design, overcrowded info and annoying coloring scheme.

Smell… how can we explain the smell in virtual perceptions? Let’s use a coloring scheme. Bright blue that smells like frost, drab yellow and red like rotten fruit.

Taste…  of bitterness and anger, as well as disappointment.

Feel and Experience… customers ignoring and service negligence, despite of the convenience of buying online and the home-printed tickets option.

Hear… no answer by any communication channel, no help.

That is one of my very rare and maybe the only one up to now totally negative review. I am sorry for this but I cannot help myself telling the ugly truth.

I have experienced a cultural and technological shock with Ticketportal.bg platform for online ticket purchase. I have bought tickets for a show in National Palace of Culture (or as it is famous here NDK), a well respected, famous, in fact the biggest cultural center in Bulgaria, through this portal. NDK is partnering with Ticketportal for online and retail distribution since the former has only 1 ticket sales point.

First of all, when I used the redirecting link from the site of NDK to Ticketportal I have noticed a tremendous difference in the interface and the design of the two sites. I had the feeling that I was jumping from 21st century to the 90’s or 2000 of 20th century. You can see the difference by yourself on the following gif.

The site of NDK looks up-to-date, modern, easy to navigate through, while the other is overcrowded with info, too much menus and text. Somehow I succeeded to pay by card, got a confirmation by mail and printed the tickets. So far so good. I informed my fellow culture fans that we are visiting the show and we all started expecting happily the show event.

The next month I planned buying tickets for another show and entered my account in Ticketportal. To my surprise there was a text that I had a reservation for the event in question above and moreover the deadline for confirming the tickets has expired. I was in a shock!  I thought I had printed real tickets, that I had a purchase number, seats reserved and more over I had money from the credit card deducted and all of a sudden expired reservation instead of real tickets! What was I supposed to say to my 6 fellows whom I had assured that we would go to the show?

 

I started digging over and over the content of the site for contact details. Maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding. I needed customer support. Another surprise was waiting there for me- there was not telephone number, neither e-mail address. No “Contact” menu at all. At least there was a link icon for their Facebook page. Following the link I looked for contact data in the left column where usually this info is located. Well no luck here as well. Finally in the “About” menu I found out the tel.number and a mail address.

After constant attempt to reach Ticketportal staff from 9 am till 12 o’clock  by the phone there was not result. I wrote on the wall in their Facebook profile and sent a mail. No answer. Desperate that there would be no resolution of my problem I wrote to NDK that their partner is ignoring me and I shall contact the authorities accusing Ticketpotal for playing phantom company with their customers. The staff of NDK contacted me immediately and in parallel contacted Ticketportal. After the interference of NDK , finally  I had my first answer to my mail and then to my Facebook posted question. No  callback on the phone though.

It turned out that the reservation deadline concerns only the payment and since I have paid the tickets via credit card, it had been considered that  I had real tickets.

My message to this company Ticketportal or better SloppyWorkPortal sounds like this:

Thank you very much for all these misleading messages and info on your site, wasting my time for finding out any contact data of yours, no answering the phone, the mail, the Facebook messaging. This is customer service negligence. I shall be better off spending some time traveling to the only 1 sales point of NDK to buy my tickets in stead of going through all that disrespect and ignoring!

Not coming back on this site!

 

What do you think about this?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.