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I went to a couple of concerts at King's Place near King's Cross in London yesterday. I'd booked the tickets over the internet some weeks ago and thought they were going to post them to me but when they hadn't arrived on Friday I phoned the box office and was told to pick them up before the concert. That's the second time in a row that this has happened with the King's Place box office.
There were engineering works on the line from Guildford to Waterloo yesterday so I set of early to get there in good time, but then got into Waterloo so early I had a full hour to get across London. Feeling like I needed the exercise, I set off walking, thinking if time got tight I could hop on a tube, but then lost track of time. I picked up my tickets at the box office, looked at my watch, and there was about five minutes to the start of the concert and I needed the loo.
I found the ticket for the first concert at the end of the strip of tickets they'd given me but when I got into the concert hall there was a woman sitting in my seat. I pointed this out to the attendant, who was very confused. We had identical tickets. At this point someone who had a ticket but needed to leave early gave me her ticket as she had found a spare seat at the back. When I sat down the seat on this ticket I then I had time to look more closely at the tickets I'd been given. There were two sets of tickets all in one strip as they'd come off the ticket printer. One set was mine and the other I presume was for the woman in what I thought was my seat. My seat was actually somewhere else.
After the concert, I pointed this out to the attendant and the woman in question was coming past at the same time. It turned out that when she had turned up at the box office, they had been unable to find her tickets and printed a new set off. Now they knew what had happened to the missing tickets.
They could have least have offered e-tickets instead of making me collect them at the box office. Both the South Bank centre and the Barbican do that now. I just wish that the Barbican, when I book more than one concert, wouldn't send me a separate pdf for each ticket. The actual ticket covers just 7cm of a side of A4, the rest blank, and there is a second page with the terms and conditions. And I always forget to print off just the first page of each ticket.
There were engineering works on the line from Guildford to Waterloo yesterday so I set of early to get there in good time, but then got into Waterloo so early I had a full hour to get across London. Feeling like I needed the exercise, I set off walking, thinking if time got tight I could hop on a tube, but then lost track of time. I picked up my tickets at the box office, looked at my watch, and there was about five minutes to the start of the concert and I needed the loo.
I found the ticket for the first concert at the end of the strip of tickets they'd given me but when I got into the concert hall there was a woman sitting in my seat. I pointed this out to the attendant, who was very confused. We had identical tickets. At this point someone who had a ticket but needed to leave early gave me her ticket as she had found a spare seat at the back. When I sat down the seat on this ticket I then I had time to look more closely at the tickets I'd been given. There were two sets of tickets all in one strip as they'd come off the ticket printer. One set was mine and the other I presume was for the woman in what I thought was my seat. My seat was actually somewhere else.
After the concert, I pointed this out to the attendant and the woman in question was coming past at the same time. It turned out that when she had turned up at the box office, they had been unable to find her tickets and printed a new set off. Now they knew what had happened to the missing tickets.
They could have least have offered e-tickets instead of making me collect them at the box office. Both the South Bank centre and the Barbican do that now. I just wish that the Barbican, when I book more than one concert, wouldn't send me a separate pdf for each ticket. The actual ticket covers just 7cm of a side of A4, the rest blank, and there is a second page with the terms and conditions. And I always forget to print off just the first page of each ticket.
