We have put to the club issues arising from the turnstile failures. They cover contingency planning, what happens to people who couldn’t touch in (when every attendance counts towards retaining your season ticket) and other issues. The full list is on online Gooner and will appear in the next print edition.
We have also asked about the east stand drenching (still), the inability to hear the pitch-side presentations, and whether the text size for the teamsheets is large enough on the big screens for those not seated right beside them.
If you have any more questions, please add them here.
Meantime, if we get answers, we’ll put them here as well.
(Apologies it has taken a while to upload this. AISA Towers uses Virgin Media and the connection of late has been utterly useless. If the turnstiles at the Emirates are in any way connected to Virgin, not only do I sypmapthise with the club, but also warn everyone it will happen again. Virgin Media has been utterly useless in resolving the problem, affecting the whole of the neighbourhood close to the stadium, and this little rant is to warn people off being tempted by Virgin’s TV and poster advertising. I will now desist.)
Copy of excepts of an email sent to Layth at the Gooner…who has requested feedback on the ticketing issue “Onto the “new” ticket system. Whilst I didn’t get caught up in the mess outside as had arrived at the ground at 11.30 and was enjoying a couple of pre-match beers, the intended total switch to digital is and has been my main concern since it was announced. I immediately thought of a retired fan who sits behind us who is not tech literate and only last year got a smart phone. He uses it for phone calls that’s it! When I asked him on Saturday do you use it for the internet , the answer was no. Surprising yes in this day and age but proves that tech is not for everyone. To cut a long story short he did get access into the ground after visiting the box office for assistance. But after the game we spent 45 mins outside the ground with him to try and get him set up on his phone. That was a challenge too far with regards to passwords gmail accounts etc etc. We failed and I advised to get in touch with the box office to request a plastic card again which we have heard in the ground was being made available to non smart phone users. Tech is not for everyone, even TFL (not my favourite people with ulez imminent) have decided that Oyster cards are going to be retained as that form of ticket suits some people and probably always will. My own season ticket also took an hour or so on the Thursday evening before the game to get assigned to another mate who hadn’t been in our network previously…only for him to be sent a pdf ticket without the transfer appearing in his app until the next day. Cue more worries/stress caused with tech. Another new member wasn’t recognised at all when trying to get him into our network. Gave up on that for now. All in all and that’s without the failures of the system itself not Arsenal’s finest hour. And if this is all an attempt to cut out touting…what did I see immediately outside Arsenal tube station? Touts… …and quite a number of them. Seems that this new system hasn’t stopped them one bit.”
I’m not sure if Saturdays problems were worse for Android users like me but I only managed to get in thanks to the fact that my son had had the presence of mind to download my ticket onto his iPhone and to (unusually) meet me before the game and stand immediately behind me in the (massive) queue. This will not always be possible for us to organise.
Generally speaking, putting ‘all my eggs in one basket’ and relying on my phone for all payments/travel/event entry seems like madness to me. It may or may not help to deter touts but it certainly has an adverse impact on me. Snatching phones is now amongst the most common crimes and that doesn’t have to happen close to the stadium.
BTW I’m sure that the early kick off had something to do with the generally calm mood amongst the fans. What might the mood have been had a even a few more had the chance to have spent a bit longer in the pub beforehand?
I know the Club is in the middle of a detailed investigation and fan survey in an attempt to get to the bottom of what went wrong on Saturday but I would ask you to urgently look at more fundamental reasons behind what went wrong concerning what should be a basic function of running a football club i.e. admitting supporters safely and quickly into a football ground.
My name is John James and I was instrumental in setting up the Independent Arsenal Supporters Association (IASA) in the 90s. I worked closely with Ken Friar and David Dein in ensuring the supporters’ voices were heard.
What transpired on Saturday was the culmination of a downward trend in listening to Fans Views and without descending too much into the relms of cliche, was an accident waiting to happen and was depressingly inevitable.
To introduce the phone/digital entry system without adequate testing of (a) the robustness of the system and (b) perhaps more importantly, a thorough testing that supporters understood the process was foolhardy in the extreme.
To rely entirely on online videos and complicated matrices was to totally ignore the realities of what happens at a football ground with thousands of people trying to funnel through narrow turnstiles which, and as it came to pass, if one person either can’t navigate the system or the system itself crashes, cause an immediate blockage.
Since the Emirates opened, it’s entry system has been the envy of the Premiership and whilst the excuse “that if it aint broke don’t change it” is often used to avoid progress, in this case it was spot on.
Many football clubs are using phone apps but they are doing so in conjunction with a card system and it works very well. Whichever device is used first cancels out the other.
The message(s) by the club were also contradictory. Tickets transferred between Members were printed out from pdf s and used easily at the turnstiles. Other supporters were able to use plastic cards having applied on the basis that they could not use a smart phone.
Whilst the Club is to be congratulated on listening to specific cases and accommodating their wishes, this all left us with a muddled and confused system and the resulting chaos that ensued.
A way forward for the club is to take a step back from this and reset.
All season ticket holders should either have their plastic season tickets reactivated, or if they need a new one, a replacement issued. The rest of the season should be used as a trial to migrate to the new digital system for next season.
The argument that the new system deters ticket touts is a specious one. Touts were operating freely outside Arsenal and Holloway Tube stations either transferring tickets to peoples’ phones or in one case, printing out the ticket on a mobile printer.
The Club rightly praises its stewards for the calm way in which they behaved but the fact is the Club put its stewards in an invidious position. The staff at gates F and G could not cope and I and others witnessed many distressing scenes.
With Stewards being asked to police the new ‘no food policy’ and forcing children to remove bags of crisps from their bags (please stop this with immediate effect) whilst at the same time trying to cope with crushes which were not of their making was unfair and irresponsible by the Club.
I hope the Club listens to fans voices and admits that perhaps it got it wrong and comes to a satisfactory solution to all. We do not want a Matchday experience like that again!
I’m a silver member and was lucky in the ballot for the Fulham match and bought adult tickets for myself and my grandson. I discovered afterwards that he is away on Saturday. No problem, I thought, I’ll transfer the ticket to my daughter who is also a member in my ‘network’. Only then did I discover that this functionality is restricted to season ticket holders only. This seems arbitrary and irrational.
I have loaded my grandson’s pass on my phone alongside my own and hope that I will be able to use my phone to get her in. But given what happened before I’m anticipating problems.
The club’s communication around the availability to transfer within our networks is poor and the restriction to season ticket holders only becomes clear when you try it as a Silver Member.
Judging by the way the membership and ticketing pages of Arsenal’s website have been designed – which my programmer / coder daughter found as difficult to navigate as I do – the club needs to reconsider whether its current software supplier is doing a good enough job.