Trouble Getting In

[Scouse Hibee]

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I’d suggest operator error is causing most of the problems. I used a ticket in my apple wallet today with no problems although I do agree that some pictures showing what to do would help those less comfortable with modern technology

No chance, it was the technology causing the issues yesterday not the people trying to use it. I observed several tickets being offered to the scanner correctly yet access was denied. I had no problems either but definitely there was issues not the fault of the end user.

[GreenCastle]

I feel the worse part is when s fan queues and then doesn’t get in for some reason and the steward says go to ticket office.

If you are in the East Stand this means about a 10/15 min delay possibly.

There should be a better way of offering customer help at each stand.

[JohnM1875]

Was a total shambles getting in yesterday.

Supposed to be a competitive league cup game.

Didn't have turnstiles open or even have the board displaying the team names and time.

[Scouse Hibee]

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Was a total shambles getting in yesterday.

Supposed to be a competitive league cup game.

Didn't have turnstiles open or even have the board displaying the team names and time.

The scoreboard was being worked on by a guy on a ladder right until KO so obviously broken, just another thing that’s didn’t work yesterday.

[007]

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I feel the worse part is when s fan queues and then doesn’t get in for some reason and the steward says go to ticket office.

If you are in the East Stand this means about a 10/15 min delay possibly.

There should be a better way of offering customer help at each stand.

Some stewards have the handheld scanners but there are maybe not enough of them.

There should be at least 2 stewards for every 2 pairs of turnstiles, checking bags and helping with tickets (just 1 at the East as bags get checked before reaching turnstile). Anyone having problems, the steward can have a quick try with the ticket, if it still doesn't work the steward then directs them to the steward at the fire exit. All stewards at fire exits should have a handheld scanner.

Totally agree, getting sent to the ticket office is a shocker. What if it had been a parent and young child and 1 has got in and the 2nd ticket hadn't worked?

[GreenCastle]

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The scoreboard was being worked on by a guy on a ladder right until KO so obviously broken, just another thing that’s didn’t work yesterday.

It was amateur yesterday. I’ve had better fan experience at Spartans.

Fan experience..

I saw several tourists attend first game.

Long queues to enter stadium.
Scoreboard obviously not tested before yesterday.
Food still the same unhealthy and very priced crap.
Couldn’t hear a word from back of East about announcements as the PA system is so useless.
Seagulls - ridiculous amount of them - can we get some plastic hawks for the top of the stands / encourage folk not to drop their rubbish.??!

[JXM73]

Google pay worked no bother, was expecting it to fail lol

[Keith_M]

What's wrong with paper tickets and human beings checking them at the turnstyles.

Or even just paying CASH at a turnstyle?

[Bristolhibby]

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Luckily I dont trust modern technology, same as flying, when I fly I download the code thing AND the booking form, so if one doesnae work I still have the other. Modern tech sucks, always problems.

This. It’s crazy but I always have both.

What happens if you dropped your phone and smashed the screen?

J

[Jamesie]

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Google pay worked no bother, was expecting it to fail lol

Took a few attempts before my ticket (stored in Google Pay on a Huawei P30 Pro) would scan, even with brightness turned to full. Probably about 25 seconds or so in all.

[Jamesie]

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Seagulls - ridiculous amount of them - can we get some plastic hawks for the top of the stands / encourage folk not to drop their rubbish.??!

We were wondering how the seagulls know to rock up in the second half, generally towards the end of the game. The only logical conclusion we could reach was that they have spotters positioned on buildings outside the ground to let the others know when people are starting to leave. The other option would be that they read the scoreboard but obviously they didn't have that option yesterday.

[Hibby70]

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We were wondering how the seagulls know to rock up in the second half, generally towards the end of the game. The only logical conclusion we could reach was that they have spotters positioned on buildings outside the ground to let the others know when people are starting to leave. The other option would be that they read the scoreboard but obviously they didn't have that option yesterday.

Spotters?? Is it the CCS - Capital City Seagulls?

[Lancs Harp]

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What's wrong with paper tickets and human beings checking them at the turnstyles.

Or even just paying CASH at a turnstyle?

Keith come on its 2019. Man landed on the Moon 50 years ago modern turnstyles dont accept cash its all electronic and its never going to turn back. Its about 20 times quicker getting into the ground, prevents the old fraud of handing your cash over and jumping the turnstyle (we all know where the money went) It just needs initial problems ironing out, i sure there were similar problems 100 years ago when turnstyles were introduced. Embrace the change mate it isnt going away.

[Power]

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Hopefully the fans rep can answer this.

I managed to get in with my mate no problem but the queues were absolutely horrendous! Some folk were getting told to make their way to the ticket office in order to collect paper tickets and potential to be stuck in two long queues.

Surely these new scanners would have been tried and tested to avoid a potential major problem like the one today. Hopefully they are sorted before Tuesday night.

If it works perfectly it would be great but when it goes wrong on a number of levels yesterday is the result.

It’s on my pad to flag a number of things yesterday and the overall roll out of the new ticketing partnership. It’s something that will be great but hasn’t landed smoothly.

The matchday experience is being looked at in a heightened focus at the moment and I’ve no doubt this will improve vastly on several points after review - I would love more testing on different process and approaches to ensure everything has been covered to an inch of its life to obtain success (ie. does the ST discount work? What’s the ticket journey now in it’s full steps, practising more on the tech etc). Mistakes and errors happen, it’s part of life, but I really hope they aren’t repeated and learnt from.

I’ll update everyone at the end of the month but I’m here to help any time.

[Hibbyradge]

It worked fine for me.

Mind you, after an hour I was almost wishing it hadn't!

[millarco]

To provide a bit more context and information from the club's perspective:

The new system, when fully installed and settled in, will be a significant improvement on what we had before. The last installation was six years ago, and technology has obviously developed a long way since then.

We had persistant issues with the scanners over the last couple of seasons - not massive failures but constant niggles that impacted on supporters. Some of this was user error - scanning and not pushing, print at home tickets with insufficient ink quality to be scanned, crumpled tickets etc. Some of this was down to the scanners - through age they become less accurate, so it took supporters longer to get in and some struggled to get in at all. It was also difficult to offer effective resolution at the turnstiles, resulting in the need for supporters to go back to the Ticket Office for a resolution.

We've improved the situation with regards to the signal for hand scanners, allowing us to have more effective on-site resolution. This means fans will be able to go to a specific resolution point(s) at each stand in the first instance where a steward supervisor will assess the reason for the no-entry. Supporters will only need to go back to the Ticket Office if the steward is unable to resolve the issue. These resolution points will be clearly sign-posted in due course.

The new scanners will also get supporters in quicker than before - more accurate reading of the tickets so fewer issues to resolve in the first place.

Mobile ticketing is also a significant step forward - football clubs across the UK are playing catch-up to other industries in this regard, but would expect it to be commonplace across the top leagues in Scotland and England before long. It'll be easy for supporters to purchase, download and scan tickets, without the need for ticket office/pod queues or print at home. In time we hope to get season ticket cards onto mobile devices - they are a bit more complicated than individual match tickets but it is doable. A lot of the enquiries at the Ticket Office on a matchday relate to STHs and print-at-home supporters looking for reprints for forgotten tickets, so mobile ticketing should cut that down.

We tested the new scanners at a couple of turnstiles for a couple of games towards the end of last season, and saw the impact described above. Due to time constraints we couldn't have all turnstile scanners replaced in time for Saturday, so have a plan in place to phase them in over the next two weeks so we're at full capability for St Mirren.

A 5-6k crowd was anticipated for these two games, and we had enough turnstiles in place to cope with that, with additional hand-held scanners as a contingency should there be a late walk-up (both in terms of tickets purchased and fans reaching the ground) or in the event of scanner failures. The turnstiles were tested and were fine on Saturday morning, but encountered a significant fault around half 2 which wiped the majority offline. That clearly put a strain on the situation and led to big queues. In the end all supporters were in the ground for 5 past 3, but the queues were obviously unacceptable and not what we wanted - the lessons from Saturday will carry into Tuesday, so we should see an improved situation then.

We had six experienced staff members from Ticketmaster and the company who installed the system on site on Saturday, and they will be there for the next three matches too to support the implementation, and we had a briefing with steward supervisors on Saturday morning (and will do so again pre-Arbroath).

Clearly Saturday's situation wasn't the experience we want supporters to face, but I'm confident that once the teething problems have been resolved we'll see a much more efficient entry system in place. A bit of short-term pain for long-term gain.

Things like turnstile signage, online info-videos etc are good suggestions and will come in time. There'll be a few new things to come up through mobile ticketing that we'll need to adjust and tweak, but I'm sure once the club, stewards and supporters are more familiar with the processes we'll be able to see the benefits.

[hibbysam]

Slightly away from the scanners but can anyone give a reasonable answer as to why the big silver gate at the South-East corner isn’t open pre game for all non cat A games? It was open after the game yesterday but not pre game. I’m guessing it’s half to do with the check point at the top of the hill for bag checks etc but that only had one steward, couldn’t have been hard to put one more steward facing the other direction.

[millarco]

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Slightly away from the scanners but can anyone give a reasonable answer as to why the big silver gate at the South-East corner isn’t open pre game for all non cat A games? It was open after the game yesterday but not pre game. I’m guessing it’s half to do with the check point at the top of the hill for bag checks etc but that only had one steward, couldn’t have been hard to put one more steward facing the other direction.

It was open pre-match, or at least was when I was there around half 1/quarter to 2. Was maybe just shut over but unlocked.

[Scouse Hibee]

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To provide a bit more context and information from the club's perspective:

The new system, when fully installed and settled in, will be a significant improvement on what we had before. The last installation was six years ago, and technology has obviously developed a long way since then.

We had persistant issues with the scanners over the last couple of seasons - not massive failures but constant niggles that impacted on supporters. Some of this was user error - scanning and not pushing, print at home tickets with insufficient ink quality to be scanned, crumpled tickets etc. Some of this was down to the scanners - through age they become less accurate, so it took supporters longer to get in and some struggled to get in at all. It was also difficult to offer effective resolution at the turnstiles, resulting in the need for supporters to go back to the Ticket Office for a resolution.

We've improved the situation with regards to the signal for hand scanners, allowing us to have more effective on-site resolution. This means fans will be able to go to a specific resolution point(s) at each stand in the first instance where a steward supervisor will assess the reason for the no-entry. Supporters will only need to go back to the Ticket Office if the steward is unable to resolve the issue. These resolution points will be clearly sign-posted in due course.

The new scanners will also get supporters in quicker than before - more accurate reading of the tickets so fewer issues to resolve in the first place.

Mobile ticketing is also a significant step forward - football clubs across the UK are playing catch-up to other industries in this regard, but would expect it to be commonplace across the top leagues in Scotland and England before long. It'll be easy for supporters to purchase, download and scan tickets, without the need for ticket office/pod queues or print at home. In time we hope to get season ticket cards onto mobile devices - they are a bit more complicated than individual match tickets but it is doable. A lot of the enquiries at the Ticket Office on a matchday relate to STHs and print-at-home supporters looking for reprints for forgotten tickets, so mobile ticketing should cut that down.

We tested the new scanners at a couple of turnstiles for a couple of games towards the end of last season, and saw the impact described above. Due to time constraints we couldn't have all turnstile scanners replaced in time for Saturday, so have a plan in place to phase them in over the next two weeks so we're at full capability for St Mirren.

A 5-6k crowd was anticipated for these two games, and we had enough turnstiles in place to cope with that, with additional hand-held scanners as a contingency should there be a late walk-up (both in terms of tickets purchased and fans reaching the ground) or in the event of scanner failures. The turnstiles were tested and were fine on Saturday morning, but encountered a significant fault around half 2 which wiped the majority offline. That clearly put a strain on the situation and led to big queues. In the end all supporters were in the ground for 5 past 3, but the queues were obviously unacceptable and not what we wanted - the lessons from Saturday will carry into Tuesday, so we should see an improved situation then.

We had six experienced staff members from Ticketmaster and the company who installed the system on site on Saturday, and they will be there for the next three matches too to support the implementation, and we had a briefing with steward supervisors on Saturday morning (and will do so again pre-Arbroath).

Clearly Saturday's situation wasn't the experience we want supporters to face, but I'm confident that once the teething problems have been resolved we'll see a much more efficient entry system in place. A bit of short-term pain for long-term gain.

Things like turnstile signage, online info-videos etc are good suggestions and will come in time. There'll be a few new things to come up through mobile ticketing that we'll need to adjust and tweak, but I'm sure once the club, stewards and supporters are more familiar with the processes we'll be able to see the benefits.

Thanks for the update, hopefully all fans can expect a smooth entry on Tuesday night.

[Blaster]

Not sure why only 1 turnstile out of the 4 for the west upper (FF end) was open last night. The west lower at the same end had 2 out the 4 open and had queues too until they used the exit door to scan manually

Arrived at 7.20 and took nearly 20 mins to get in. Felt sorry for the steward. She was getting verbals. Hardly her fault

[Antifa Hibs]

Anyone else find the new scanners extremely slow? From when the person infront of you scans there ticket to when the 'GO' message cleared took a good few seconds. Going to be fun and games at the St Mirren game!!

[Onceinawhile]

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Anyone else find the new scanners extremely slow? From when the person infront of you scans there ticket to when the 'GO' message cleared took a good few seconds. Going to be fun and games at the St Mirren game!!

I'm sure I saw it mentioned that the lag will be fixed, or decreased anyway.

I'd imagine the Newcastle game will see an improvement on last night and then hopefully the St Mirren game will be an improvement on that. Then we should be roughly where we were last season.

I'll be heading round a wee bit earlier than usual on game day though!

[wookie70]

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Not sure why only 1 turnstile out of the 4 for the west upper (FF end) was open last night. The west lower at the same end had 2 out the 4 open and had queues too until they used the exit door to scan manually

Arrived at 7.20 and took nearly 20 mins to get in. Felt sorry for the steward. She was getting verbals. Hardly her fault

The stewards don't help themselves. Spent 5 minutes in a queue and on getting nearly to the front was told this was a queue for phones not tickets and the whole lot of us had to shuffle to the back of the next queue. My tickets had a QR code and the chap next to me the usual barcodes, my ones had bar codes on Saturday and I followed the same routine in printing. Ticketing has been very poor since LD took charge. She has been brilliant for many things but this is a basic and I would have been very pee'd off if I had missed the first goal last night.

The eticketing isn't much better. I wanted a package for adult and child and tried repeatedly to get tickets in a central section of the East. It gave me no's 3 and 4 which is right at the FF end of the East. I eventually gave up and just went with the tickets offered and went all 1980s by sitting at the 18 yard line the way Hibs were shooting both halves. Yet again we are promised improvements and it has made things worse.

[Oscar T Grouch]

I checked the slot with my phone (iPhone XS Max) and it didn't fit, this system is in place for the foreseeable future and phone screens aren't getting smaller. It seems strange to install a system that cannot take all mobile phones.

[matty_f]

We were through quicker than it took to scan my old card last season, using the ticket on my phone last night.

[Conj]

Also doesn't help if they tell people to turn up early to give plenty of time to get in then don't open the gates on time. Saturday was about 10 past 2 before they were open and last night was after 7

[GreenCastle]

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To provide a bit more context and information from the club's perspective:

The new system, when fully installed and settled in, will be a significant improvement on what we had before. The last installation was six years ago, and technology has obviously developed a long way since then.

We had persistant issues with the scanners over the last couple of seasons - not massive failures but constant niggles that impacted on supporters. Some of this was user error - scanning and not pushing, print at home tickets with insufficient ink quality to be scanned, crumpled tickets etc. Some of this was down to the scanners - through age they become less accurate, so it took supporters longer to get in and some struggled to get in at all. It was also difficult to offer effective resolution at the turnstiles, resulting in the need for supporters to go back to the Ticket Office for a resolution.

We've improved the situation with regards to the signal for hand scanners, allowing us to have more effective on-site resolution. This means fans will be able to go to a specific resolution point(s) at each stand in the first instance where a steward supervisor will assess the reason for the no-entry. Supporters will only need to go back to the Ticket Office if the steward is unable to resolve the issue. These resolution points will be clearly sign-posted in due course.

The new scanners will also get supporters in quicker than before - more accurate reading of the tickets so fewer issues to resolve in the first place.

Mobile ticketing is also a significant step forward - football clubs across the UK are playing catch-up to other industries in this regard, but would expect it to be commonplace across the top leagues in Scotland and England before long. It'll be easy for supporters to purchase, download and scan tickets, without the need for ticket office/pod queues or print at home. In time we hope to get season ticket cards onto mobile devices - they are a bit more complicated than individual match tickets but it is doable. A lot of the enquiries at the Ticket Office on a matchday relate to STHs and print-at-home supporters looking for reprints for forgotten tickets, so mobile ticketing should cut that down.

We tested the new scanners at a couple of turnstiles for a couple of games towards the end of last season, and saw the impact described above. Due to time constraints we couldn't have all turnstile scanners replaced in time for Saturday, so have a plan in place to phase them in over the next two weeks so we're at full capability for St Mirren.

A 5-6k crowd was anticipated for these two games, and we had enough turnstiles in place to cope with that, with additional hand-held scanners as a contingency should there be a late walk-up (both in terms of tickets purchased and fans reaching the ground) or in the event of scanner failures. The turnstiles were tested and were fine on Saturday morning, but encountered a significant fault around half 2 which wiped the majority offline. That clearly put a strain on the situation and led to big queues. In the end all supporters were in the ground for 5 past 3, but the queues were obviously unacceptable and not what we wanted - the lessons from Saturday will carry into Tuesday, so we should see an improved situation then.

We had six experienced staff members from Ticketmaster and the company who installed the system on site on Saturday, and they will be there for the next three matches too to support the implementation, and we had a briefing with steward supervisors on Saturday morning (and will do so again pre-Arbroath).

Clearly Saturday's situation wasn't the experience we want supporters to face, but I'm confident that once the teething problems have been resolved we'll see a much more efficient entry system in place. A bit of short-term pain for long-term gain.

Things like turnstile signage, online info-videos etc are good suggestions and will come in time. There'll be a few new things to come up through mobile ticketing that we'll need to adjust and tweak, but I'm sure once the club, stewards and supporters are more familiar with the processes we'll be able to see the benefits.

Thanks for detailed update.

I went earlier last night and was in the West compared to usual East and still a queue of 25 people in front of me.

The queue with hand held scanner was much quicker than the turnstile - that's a slight concern.

It was better than Alloa in the East but maybe once all the turnstiles are open it will be quicker? But then the crowd will be double so maybe not?

I noticed some posters near turnstiles but something more visible needs to be done as the stewards were getting the grief and they weren't even in the wrong.

Maybe something clear about what phones work / don't work and a diagram showing how to scan phones.

[overdrive]

It is horrendous. A few of the stewards were saying it was the worst scanning system they’ve come across. The woman in front of me scanned, it said “Go” but didn’t release the turnstile.

I’ll be turning up an hour early from now on as I don’t trust it.

[hibbyfraelibby]

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I checked the slot with my phone (iPhone XS Max) and it didn't fit, this system is in place for the foreseeable future and phone screens aren't getting smaller. It seems strange to install a system that cannot take all mobile phones.

Apple fanboy...get a Sammy

[Jay]

I scanned my ticket and the machine beeped, the turnstile wouldnt move so the guy shook it and told me to try again. I scanned my ticket, no beep but the turnstile moved. I wondered if it was more to do with the turnstiles than the actual machine, maybe have to click in place or something?