TicketLeap WTH?!

[screamforadream]

Tater, I hear ya man/granny. I understand where you're coming from, I just wish someone was more available to provide a remedy.

And Shane, I do agree and understand with you, but it took more than what I have to my own name and my partners name to put this together, and like you, we hit an ungodly amount of roadblocks along the way, the one thing that shouldn't lose us money or tarnish our name is Ticketleap.....and they did both, accident or not, it still happened, and when there's a lot at stake, it needs to not just be fixed but they need to do something for the businesses like mine that LOST a lot of money because of them.....it's a LARGE financial loss for us...

[graystone]

Bobby

How did you lose money? Do they do your credit card processing? Shane and it's fill me in! Shane

[MovieRelics]

Wait Hold on a minute here...I can see your and Larrys point, But Lee did come on here...He Did Post...told you what happened. As for him to be the first, lets think of it like this

Servers are crashing, Whole system is down, Haunts are blowing up your phone, your a sales guy, and your first reaction is OH HEY....LET ME GO TO HAUNTWORLD and make a thread. NO! you do everything you can to help the people on the phone. He might not of even had info on what was going on.

Perfectly put. I would rather Lee is on the phone dealing with the IT department trying resolve the issue the best they can to get everyone back up and running. Also, you should always have some kind of backup system just in the event things like this happen. Most companies use Amazon web services for their website. I even use them myself for hauntersDigest.com and HauntApps.com. No company is going to be able to guarantee a 100% uptime. Network outages are just something that you going to have. I would suggest, if your using TicketLeap as your primary, and they go down and you need a alternative short term CC processor. Consider something like Square, Paypal, or another solution that won't bring your CC processing to a complete stop. When you see TicketLeap is back, then start processing your CC's with them. That way it hasn't been a total loss.

I can understand frustrations when things like that happen, but always have a backup to cover your bases. And I give props to Lee for being upfront and open about what happened. He's the 6th post in the thread and was very clear about the problem and what they are doing to help ensure smooth operations here on out. Threatening to abandon a great company like TicketLeap that provides ticketing solutions that processes thousands of tickets for people every day for various business because of a very rare one time issues, that wasn't even their fault but a problem with Amazon experiencing an outage, seems like a very knee jerk reaction.

[screamforadream]

Lost money in the sense that people didn't come, or thought we were sold out, or were so pissed they went and complained about not being able to buy tickets on facebook and twitter and lord knows where else.....so the incident cost me sales. And it shows, in our saturday sales from Ticketleap 2 weekends ago, to this past weekend, and this saturday is not all that impressive at the moment, however, we don't see any major spikes in sales until the afternoon of the saturday really, so it will be hard to tell, but there's no reason why 2 saturdays ago should be DOUBLE what last saturday was....... that's a BIG loss in any book, no matter how you look at it.

[SeanMassacre]

If people didn't get the tickets on our site, they called us. We had a record breaking night that night anyhow with 2500 people. Online ticketing is the newest feature. Most people know that they can get tickets at the door. We posted on our Facebook page to our over 20,000 fans that the online ticketing was down and to use a coupon we posted at the door.

Tater is right that Lee should be working on a solution instead of being on here.

Larry Kirchner is right that TicketLeap should not have crashed, but they also do need 24 hour technical support.

What would everyone be saying if this was a hacker attack that was out of TicketLeap's control?

Also, does anyone have anything to say about HauntWorld going down on Monday?

Like we all know and will always know, MURPHY'S LAW - ANYTHING THAT CAN HAPPEN, WILL HAPPEN.

I will probably get another warning from Jeckyll @ HauntWorld for speaking my mind.

[screamforadream]

If people didn't get the tickets on our site, they called us. We had a record breaking night that night anyhow with 2500 people. Online ticketing is the newest feature. Most people know that they can get tickets at the door. We posted on our Facebook page to our over 20,000 fans that the online ticketing was down and to use a coupon we posted at the door.

Tater is right that Lee should be working on a solution instead of being on here.

Larry Kirchner is right that TicketLeap should not have crashed, but they also do need 24 hour technical support.

What would everyone be saying if this was a hacker attack that was out of TicketLeap's control?

Also, does anyone have anything to say about HauntWorld going down on Monday?

Like we all know and will always know, MURPHY'S LAW - ANYTHING THAT CAN HAPPEN, WILL HAPPEN.

I will probably get another warning from Jeckyll @ HauntWorld for speaking my mind.

What industry veterans, and established attractions are failing to realize is that for haunts that are not yet established, and that are within a short driving distance of another attraction that has been around for basically 20 years, such as myself, getting into the market is almost IMPOSSIBLE. Here where I am, I tried to analyze EVERYTHING before making the leap to the professional level of ownership, but you can't always account for everything as I learned in this case. But what I can say with confidence is that our numbers took a TOLL because of the crash.

Our cash sales at the door were on track, meaning, they didn't see an extra bump from the online ticket sales that went down, meaning we did not get those customers. That is fact, not opinion and not trash talk.

Sean, what you stated is TRUE.

However, it doesn't make the situation right. In Connecticut, the industry is VASTLY different than almost any other industry.

We have THREE outstanding, established attractions. One of which, is my neighbor (by total accident, we were about 30 minutes away, but then were forced into a last minute move at the only location we were able to grasp). That attraction is the BEST in Connecticut. I will NOT use names, but this show is the BEST, hands down, you cannot get better than this place, BEST. However, for the longest time, they were just about the ONLY attraction as well. And it has benefitted the community at large in a way so massive no one from outside of Connecticut would even understand. Hell, they've donated almost a million dollars!!! This attraction should be on every top list in the industry, but they do no advertising, no price increases, and have good, classic, and quality scares. Yet, they sell out EVERY NIGHT. Which makes MOST SALES in OUR AREA be ONLINE. Our community is convinced the only way to avoid a 6 hour line is to buy in advance.

When have you EVER paid $10, to go through a highly detailed, high quality show, with practically a hundred actors a night, and the coolest stuff to look at OH, AND THE SHOW IS 45 MINUTES LONG.

I admire, and respect our local haunt community. The local haunt community made me appreciate and fall in love with what is now my life.

Now picture yourself being a full time college student, with no financial help from any family members, and no physical help/aid from your family. Try living on campus, and designing, operating, financing, constructing, moving, and permitting an entire attraction by yourself because you have one business partner who wants as little involvement as possible, while maintaining your year round DJ business, which is keeping you in school, and on top that manage to keep grades above a C+ at all times in order to get into the program you want, and on top of that have your backbone, your other half for two years leave you. So now you're in debt, have everything on the line, and trying to get out of bed every morning and look at yourself with some sort of confidence just to keep trying to do what you love to do, no matter what the cost.

Now, on one of your busiest nights of the season, a COMPLETE ACCIDENT occurs in the least expected location.....and the money you projected to make, never shows up....how do you feel???

For ANYONE to feel as if this ISN'T A SERIOUS ISSUE is DEEPLY MISINFORMED.

Compare it to a car accident. Your tire hit a nail in the road, and you smash into the car next to you by accident. It wasn't planned, it's something that comes with the nature of driving, sometimes freak accidents just happen. And it's okay, because the cops come, do a report, determine the cause, and the person found to be liable, (even though they had no real control over the situation) rectifies the situation by paying for the other person's car damage. THIS IS THE EXACT SAME THING.

[MovieRelics]

For ANYONE to feel as if this ISN'T A SERIOUS ISSUE is DEEPLY MISINFORMED.

I don't think anyone isn't agreeing that it was a serious issue. A loss of revenue is a serious thing. But, you need to have a backup plan when things like this happen because they do happen. You use an online service, you run the risk of it going down. You do CC processing onsite, you run the risk of the phone lines going out from someone hitting a pole down the road, you open on a Saturday you run the risk of zombies rising and killing all the people heading to your attraction from the west side of town.... Murphy is a crule and heartless bastard sometime.

You have a right to be upset and frustrated. Welcome to owning your own company and I'm sure your going to find 1,001 other things to go wrong. It's probably only a matter of time before SpikeTV makes some kind a "1,001 way's how" tv series on it. But you've got to plan for these incidents and have a temporary backup to help get you thru the crisis until your primary is back online. Have an alternative service ready to go at the door to do CC processing.

If people didn't get the tickets on our site, they called us. We had a record breaking night that night anyhow with 2500 people. Online ticketing is the newest feature. Most people know that they can get tickets at the door. We posted on our Facebook page to our over 20,000 fans that the online ticketing was down and to use a coupon we posted at the door.

Prefect example. Hope on our website and quickly update your facebook and website users to let them know that you online ticketing is currently unavailable and that your doing cash or CC at the door and offer them a $2 off coupon for the inconvenience. Your guest will probably still end up going to you more because your making it more of an encouragement of them to appear at your door vs the other attractions your worried you lost to your neighbors. In this day and age of Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, website, and even using my Mobile App service HauntApps.com, you can find a way to reach your customers and let them know ASAP. Way before they even get to your door. Hell, you may even attract some people that weren't thinking of coming out anyway!

I've working in the entertainment industry coming from the video game industry and I can tell you, when your working on games that operate on a 24/7 365 schedule with anywhere between 100,000 - 500,000+ customers where a small problem can quickly grow to a huge problem, sometimes even in the blink of the eye, contingency places are what you have to start planning to help minimize your impacted damaged as much as possible. I've been involved in a few and I've had to deal with some serious frustatations about 3rd party services faling that are out of my control, but I learned very quickly to keep my blood pressures down that you've got to have a good plan of action that let's you identify these actions and respond to them as ASAP.

Take this as a learning experience, but dont go thinking you have to jump ship from TicketLeap. TicketLeap has a great service and they are vey open to hearing customer complaints from all their clients. Not just a few large clients that they want to make sure they don't want to lose while ignoring the smaller clients. TicketLeap cares about every client they have and Lee has gone above and beyond in working with haunters and 3rd party services like myself to find ways to make their company the best in the industry. They may not have everything figured out, but from my experience with working with them, they take every proposal and complaint and work on finding the best solution that helps keep their clients moving and making money. If your making money, their making money. I'm willing to bet that they guys at TicketLeap are more ticketed about the whole Amazon situation because if you weren't making money, They weren't making money with the 1,000's of other clients that they are representing. So it's hit their pocketbook more than yours.

Lee is a fantastic rep for the company, and In my experience in dealing with reps from everywhere from in my professional career from the entertainment industry and beyond, Lee is always been extremely approchable about hearing the complaints and wishes from his clients to help just not make you happy, but to also improve the TicketLeap service so it works to your advantage. When Amazon.com AWS services went down, a lot of large brand sites went dark. It's safe to say that it cost them more money combined than all haunted house combined. And I'm willing to bet the companies that were losing tens of thousands of dollars+ per hour from the blackout are working with Amazon to come up with new redundancies to help minimize this from happening. But we live in a technical world where when this problem is solved, you will have a group of jackass black hats
sitting in their mothers basement trying to figure out new ways to do some kind of DDoS on these services just because they can.

So when they do happen, call Lee (who graciously gave his Cell phone number, once again proving he's a great rep trying to show he's got your back) or whoever they recommend. Let them know about the problem and remember that their not just losing your sales, but many many many many others. So their losing money just like you are and they will start finding out what's going on to get it fixed ASAP. I'd put $20 down that their main IS lead has some kind of downtime service set for realtime montering to let them know of services failures.

Just look into short-term solutions to get you thru a crisis. Working on as many projects as I've by responsible for, I can tell you the more contingencies that you have the better off you will be. Online Ticket sales go out, send a blast on your social networks that Cash and CC ticketing at the door is open. Get a backup CC process like Square or something similar. Let them take their 2% and your still making money. Got a HauntApp, send out a push to all your users installed on their phone, "Hey! Online Ticketing Offline, but you can still buy tickets at the Door! Come out for some great scares and get $2 off tonight only!"

There are many ways to help minimize the damage. Just remember to breath, keep your head and initiate your backup. When you get a phone call back from TicketLeap saying everything's golden, then make another Social Network blast announcement and your back in business. Your going to look good to your guest as a haunt that is on top of problems and gain a PR look for your attraction. Turn the bad into an opportunity to make your haunt look great by providing great customer service!

[graystone]

Bobby

Buddy, I think you may be stressing over nothing! Buying tickets on line is a convenience much as shopping is! But if you can't get it online you go in and get it! On a average Saturday night we will see 2500 plus people out of that we will see less than 150 online tickets. Its a small percentage of your sales and you will see that. I have talked with alot of Haunt owners and this past Saturday they were down from the past week and it was me included but I know it was nothing to do with the issue of Ticketleap. We did have some people call and say they could not get tickets on line and we told then they would need to come in and they did ( if they really wanted to come!).

On credit cards we took the customers info and went back and typed them all in manually just like we do if the swiper cant read the card. It was 5 whole pages and took 4 hours to do after Ticketleap came back up but we did it. We lost about $400.00 in declined cards but that beats losing the $15,000.00 plus we took in those cards by telling them we could not take them. We addressed the problem and set a plan in motion as to how to handle the issue. Thats what a business owner does never lay the blame on someone else or pass the buck as you will see things like this can come up.

You DJ right? Ok so what if the power goes off do you have a plan? Are you going to tell the power company you lost money due to this? Do you keep a generator in your car for such an emergency? What if a speaker or all your speakers blows are you going to blame the power company or the speaker company? What if you have a flat or car wont start are you going to blam the car or tire company? SHIT HAPPENS but as a business owner and the boss YOU need to find a way to continue on in an emergency my friend and not point fingers! Do you have animatronics in your haunt and do they go down? I have tons and I assure you it happens every damn night but I am not on the phone with the companies I have a plan where we deal with it all in house because if not I would be on the phone all damn night. And I don't tell them I lost money because it was not working! If you feel you lost money then ok but don't you think TicketLeap lost money too? Remember you just one of many and I mean many that use them I assure you they lost just as much as all of us combined! So who will TicketLeap blame and so on and so on. WE WERE ALL EFFECTED not just me, not just you but EVERYONE INCLUDING TICKETLEAP!

Bottom line you are the owner and boss. It's all in your hands you need to have a plan in place for such emergencys. This is coming form 20 plus years of owning my own business. The key here is to use this as a learning tool and say " hey I never thought of that but now that it's happend I need to ......" Shane and it's I am prepared! Shane

[screamforadream]

Shane,

This is why I love ya buddy.

Yes, that was EXTREMELY well put, and it was a total bummer. And really??? Do most haunts see online ticket sales as a small percentage??? I need to move out near you!! Online ticket sales are almost non-existent for our Thursday and Sunday nights, but it can be up to 1/3 of our ticket sales on Friday and Saturday nights.

Overall, I guess I am just stressing....the pressures building...if this last week doesn't kick it into high gear, I am stuck at a loss, and that's not good. I'm sure if there was a t.v show of this experience, it would be a hit! lol. Guess, I'll just take the loss and move on.

On a higher note, when the haunt is closed and you can't scare people, do yourself a favor, learn how to juggle. I was just juggling in the middle of our residence quad at 3am and not a single person saw me lol and i was having the time of my life! Juggling, the best way to not be angry lol.

[graystone]

Bobby

I feel ya man!!!! Remember it takes 3 to 5 years to really see anything the key is to stick it out and hang in there! Shane and it's your going to make it man! Shane

[MovieRelics]

Overall, I guess I am just stressing....the pressures building...if this last week doesn't kick it into high gear, I am stuck at a loss, and that's not good. I'm sure if there was a t.v show of this experience, it would be a hit! lol. Guess, I'll just take the loss and move on.

Like I said man, welcome to owning your own company. It's nothing but stress on one hand, but can be some serious good times on the other.

And Shane is absolutely right....

Remember it takes 3 to 5 years to really see anything the key is to stick it out and hang in there!

Most businesses, especially a haunt, will always be in the red for the first few years that they get up and running. Haunted houses are a long term investment and should be treated as such. If you put in the time, don't stress the small stuff, and build a quality haunt that people will want to go to, you will get there! Just remember to not let the stress get to you and avoid knee jerk reactions when the crazy crap that is going to happen happens.

Hope you have a great end of the season!

[drfrightner]

If they don't have 24 Hour support I would dump them 110%. All of these ticket companies should have 24 hour support. All of them... which ones do and which ones don't. I'd like to know! Larry

[graystone]

Feeling Foolish

Well I was the first to defend TicketLeap for last weekends f**K up and what happened last night it went back down! Its Saturday and the system is taking forever to load! Got to say I am speechless this time! I have not got any phone calls or anything back because everyone there is enjoying a stress free weekend and not dealing with everyone getting pissed! Anyone else having problems? Shane and it's I am pissed and feeling like a fool now! Shane

[drfrightner]

They should have moved their system to the CLOUD AMAZON clearly their server is not big enough for the amount of clients they have... they should have done everything possible to get a bigger server. Clearly their server is overloaded. I use to deal with this issue which is why I moved my sites to AMAZON CLOUD!

Larry

[Terrorknight]

I would guess there not sitting around stress free, if the system is going down off and on.