Re: RAT In-House Ticketing

["Donna Sherritt" <ohbelladonna@hotmail.com>]

Mark--

In the theaters for which I've run box office, including my own, we do 
indeed call back to confirm every reservation.  We do it ourselves, so that 
the call is made by someone who knows about the play, the location, etc.  We 
do not use a ticketing service, and I know I'm always frustrated when I try 
to purchase tickets and end up speaking with a ticketing service.

My theatre company does not take credit cards, mainly because we are too 
small to afford the technology.  So far, in two years, we have only made one 
patron actually angry about it.  Another patron only had a credit card, and 
we admitted him on the honor system, and he did send us a check later for 
the price of his ticket.  I would recommend only taking credit cards if your 
staff is large enough to have two people run the box office, as it tends to 
take longer to process the transaction, which can be frustrating.  I'd hate 
to hold the curtain because I was waiting for someone's card to be approved.

Also, I don't really know how much the technology costs to get set up.  
You'd need to be pretty confident in your budgetary priorities.  I'm all for 
keeping the operation as simple as possible, although it is nice to be able 
to make your patrons happy if they'd like to charge it.

Take a look at the demographics of your audience.  If you have a good 
percentage of mid- to upper-income people who haven't ruined their credit 
rating and still charge up the wazoo, then you may want to invest.  If 
you're attracting mainly perpetual grad students and other theatre artists 
who still get those messages on their machines to call Mr. Smith at 
1-800-you'll-never-get-a-credit-card-again-if-you-don't-send-us-your-payment-yesterday, 
then probably accepting credit cards isn't the best use of your resources.

That's my two cents.  Two more cents Citibank won't be getting this month . 
. .

donna


>From: ActorsGng1@aol.com
>Reply-To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>Subject: Re: RAT In-House Ticketing
>Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 16:47:23 EST
>
>Happy New Year to you all and Best Wishes for a wonderful, fulfilling and
>challenging 2000.
>
>Thanks to the many of you who responded to my query about ticketing and I
>would still love to hear anyone else's experiences and thoughts.  I've
>included the original posting below.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Mark Seldis
>Actors' Gang Theater
>
>----------------------------------------------
>
>
>Hey everyone,
>
>I have a few questions for those theatres who do in-house ticketing (vs.
>using a service such as Tickets L.A.):
>
>Do you just use a voicemail line which instructs patrons to leave their 
>name,
>number, and date and number of tickets?  Do you automatically call back to
>confirm or just tell them to assume it's confirmed unless they hear 
>otherwise?
>
>Do you accept credit cards?  Do you have patrons leave the number and then
>run it through or do you do that at the door?  Do you accept credit cards 
>at
>the door or just cash/checks?
>
>What credit card service do you use? How's it working?
>
>Please add how many seats you have.
>
>I know these are a lot of questions, but we're considering doing our own
>ticketing and I just wanted to get an idea of what theatres are doing and
>patrons are used to.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Mark Seldis
>Actors' Gang

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