Twins Tix Disaster:  Word of Mouth Spreads Bad News Fast.

FIVE Hours Trying to Buy Twins Tickets Online = No Tickets = Angry Fans

At least my time was not wasted, I am completely caught up with correcting my students’ papers and exams.

Like many Twins fans, I waited patiently to get to the front of the line in the virtual waiting room. At first I thought that was pretty cool, I could see myself moving up, but mysteriously, I would suddenly jump back a few places. I was in two lines — one on Safari and one on Foxfire, both on Macs. Pretty quickly I was first in line on Firefox, and with great hope I pressed continue. Uh oh, like thousands of other fans I went to the white screen of death — i.e. a blank screen that is still there.

Joyfully, I kept moving up on Safari and then suddenly, I was in! I was ready to shop. Unfortunately that system was overloaded, too. I had to continually re-enter my ticket requests. After awhile, I had a shopping cart full of fun. Maybe not the games or days I wanted to go to, but still games!

Check out time!

I entered my info, my credit card number, declined ticket insurance, and pressed purchase.

POOF!

I was back in line. My ticket purchases erased. Gone for good.

I’m not alone.

Thousands of people just like me are telling the same story — from their front yards, on their phones, but more importantly online…

How do I know this? Easy! #Twins on Twitter is full of very, very angry and not so polite former, current and never-again Twins fans. The angst was big enough that the Star Tribune eventually picked the story up:  Server Problems Plague the Twins by Abby Simmons. As of 4:30 today, the story had been Tweeted just 13 times. Nobody must have cared enough to share the news. Why? They are all complaining on Twitter and Facebook.

I have to say, it’s nice they apologized, right there on Facebook.

Somebody’s minding the store, after all. But it’s not enough.

Public Relations Nightmare, but just saying that makes me feel guilty because I’m a whole lot luckier than anyone in Japan right now.

Will the Twins recover? Of course. We Minnesotans are a fairly nice bunch of people, we forgive, we forget. Will I go to a game this summer? Not likely.

Too bad the MLB didn’t invest in their technology. After all, our rapid devotion for all things Twins and the M & M Boys is pretty well known, as are server overloads–SXSW Tweets crashed Twitter just last night.