OK OK. I know that I am not supposed to blog angry, but I can’t help it this time. I am in the middle of attempting to purchase tickets for the Mansfield-Metcalf dinner from the Montana Democratic Party, but the website is down. Since I spend a considerable amount of time reviewing websites here, let’s talk about that for a moment, shall we?
The tickets were to go on sale this morning at 9:00 am. I have waited patiently for weeks. The dinner will not only feature local political rockstars like Schweitzer, Baucus and Tester, it will also feature presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This is an event that I, like many other Democrats, have been really looking forward to. At exactly 9:00 am I clicked the button that was seeming mislabeled as ‘Click Here To Purchase Tickets’ and was presented with a standard credit card form. I filled in all the blanks and hit send and waited for confirmation that never came. Instead I got a ‘timed out connecting to server message’.
Just a little investigation (looking at the url) turned up that the party is using a service called Political CFO’s. In some ways, it makes sense to farm out some of this stuff. Since the ticket purchasing is hosted by a third party, it is not technically the party’s fault. However, it is their fault for not choosing a third party solution that can competently perform the task. For example, Alberto Gonzales is not George Bush, but I blame Bush for having relied on one so incompetent. I blame the Montana Democratic party for the fact that I have spent 40 minutes trying to buy tickets for their event. The software engineer in me wants to tell you that it is called ‘load testing‘. Try it out. The party supporter in me wants to tell them ‘THANK YOU FOR WASTING MY MORNING!”.
At 9:40 the site alternates between saying “System database error”, “Tickets for this event will go on sale at 9:00 AM MDT, Wednesday, March 19th.” and “Tickets for this event are sold out”. I wonder which is the truth.
Finally, the credit card form comes back on again. I fill it out and click submit. I am answered with a blank page. I go back, and get the message again that tickets are sold out. Has anyone had any luck in purchasing tickets?
[Update 0] In case you were wondering if I had called the party, I have. About 50 times and each time I got a busy signal. No answering machine, no ‘All representatives are assisting other pissed of democrats.” Nothing but beep beep beep.
[Update 1] This link from the Montana Democratic website says that the tickets are all sold out now. So, am I the only one that had all of these problems? I entered my credi card information 3 different times and clicked submit. Why don’t I get tickets? Also, am I the only one bothered by this mechanism of selling tickets only online and while people are at work? Isn’t the democratic party supposed to be the party of the working stiff? I mean, I suppose if you have a cushy job like me, with flexible working hours, then who cares? If you are a mechanic, carpenter, teacher, factory worker, cook, waitress or the like, then we really don’t care about you.
[Update 2] I finally got though on the phone to a nice machine that told me the tickets were sold out and no human was going to talk to me. Huge failure.
