Not really. Refunds is the simplest way to do it. Or bring back Communicaciones or Tecos or whomever is idle that time of year.
I was one of the complainers on that. A post season garbage exhibition is not anything I ever want to see again, that is as far from "Special" game C or whatever it was called as I can imagine. Suck it up and apply it next year's season tickets, give me a merchandise credit or a refund. Don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. That was a bad idea. BAD.
They originally gave the option of refunds or applying the cost of those tickets to the next year's cost, right? The last thing anyone wants to do is to trek out to the stadium for a completely meaningless game in questionable weather. It was more a funeral than a friendly. A lot of the chanting was negative. Good luck trying to get people from Dayton or Mansfield or beyond. Then, 4/5 or 4/6 teams made the playoffs. A team really had to stink the place up to miss the playoffs. Remember the allocation that teams were given for missing the playoffs? I believe STHs are free for the first few rounds of the USOC, which is essentially the same as it was. The number of tickets essentially hasn't changed from when four special games were the norm. I heard there was a survey sent to STH asking about what to do when more home games were added. 1) Keep the special game count the same, but increase the price to reflect more tickets in the package. 2) Remove special games, but keep the price/ticket count the same. The first option was the winner.
Now you're being disingenuous. People complained because refunds weren't offered. Team would only offer to apply the prorated amount to the next year's season tickets. Crew had recognized the revenue long ago and they were determined not to give it back. Things aren't quite that dire today. They could easily include a playoff game in the season ticket package with a refund offered if we don't get a home game.
It's a pain to administer and the credit card companies get money for it still (they still get their service fees--both ways, I expect). Why do you think all of the teams are going to "pay as you go plans" for playoffs? Refunds are a pain.
Huh? Are you not familiar with ecommerce? Credit card fees are negligible and simply a cost of business. They're not paying Ticketmaster level fees. They may even come out ahead on 6-12 months use of free money compared to the cost of the transactions. Refunding full season ticket holders for an unplayed game is trivially easy and cheap.
Since every retail merchant is charged different rates by different processors based on an algorithm which would make your head explode, it's literally impossible to guess exactly how much the Crew pays per transaction. (And actually, the issuers' fee - ie. the bank - is the smallest percentage; independent processors conduct the actual transaction except in the case of American Express, which does their own, and charges at least a full point more than anyone else which is why many places won't accept Amex). Anyway, it's pretty safe to assume that the Crew is paying between 1.5 - 2.5 percent every time a transaction is processed. Doesn't matter whether it's an initial purchase or a refund (although with an initial purchase, it's more expensive if someone inputs the numbers, as in a phone purchase, rather than swipes a card). Anyway, if you figure a higher end fee - the Crew is not a big dollar retailer - let's say 2.0 percent, the total cost of charging and then reversing is, obviously, 4%. But that 4% comes out of pocket. The retailer ends up losing in the deal since unless you charge the customer some kind of fee (retailers like to call it "restocking" which is nonsense) you eat that money. Otherwise, they end up with no sale and have to pay the bank 4% of the original cost. And Common Core math or not, that's a bite.
Bill, I'm surprised you'd argue that refunds are too hard to manage for an unplayed game. The Crew can certainly do better than 2% in fees on each side of the transaction. ProMerchant and MerchantOne offer .29% as an example. I don't know anything about them but the Crew should be able to find someone below 1%. Let's look at the math though. If the Crew sell 6K season ticket packages with an average price of $40, that's $240K in revenue attributable to a specific game. If they have to pay back even 4% of that, it's about $10K. If they have to make marketing efforts to sell those tickets separately in 2 days for a playoff game, apart from the costs involved, if more than 250 people drop out, then they've lost money as well as attendance. If they presell the tickets, then they can spend the 2 days on new customers instead of reaching out to people who already had season tickets. And if their costs are lower than 4% round trip, the math is even more favorable.
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure there was one time during the game when the ball went off of his foot to one of our players. Not certain though.
Bill said it far better than I, but this is an area I know a little about because Mrs. KG is a financial person with a non-profit. You can get dinged pretty good on receiving donations via CC (I think Square is worse as is PayPal)--and the price you get dinged is variable. Cards that give benefits like miles ding you more. Quite a bit more, actually, according to her (she was just commenting about that to me this week--independent of this discussion). Most non-profits accept credit cards because if you make it easy, especially on a recurring charge, folks are more likely to give or continue to give. I do most of my giving that way these days--mostly because I'm absent minded and would forget to send in a check. And our culture is big on credit cards--I've often seen folks use their card at work for a cup of coffee. But it is at a non-trivial cost to the non-profit or merchant.
What they've done instead is something that works. If you are a season ticket holder, you get charged though their auto-renewal plan for playoff tickets (at a season ticket holder discount) when they become available (just like they had the autorenewal of your season ticket memberships). You have to opt out if you don't want them. So the assumption is that it really is a part of your membership *but* you don't get charged until you need them. Works for me.