In accordance with the No Tickets Left Behind Act of 2009, You can now subscribe to e-mail alerts for categories which will inform you when tickets are available for that category. Just look for the e-mail field on “No Tickets” error pages (hint: The calendar image to the right is on these pages!)

Even more awesome alerts will be landing shortly…

TicketStumbler will now be introducing new maps every Monday now through at least the beginning of baseball season. That’s right folks, from the makers of When TicketStumbler Met Livingston, Compare Contrast Profit, You Ruined Ashley’s Sunday Funday and OH THE HORROR, we’re pleased to bring you weekly map updates to improve your ticket buying mojo.  We have 10 new NBA & Concert venues. Some of them even feature monster truck events and WWE Wrestling if you’re in to the whole breaking stuff and grappling thing. Finally, this past week we were fortunate enough to appear in the Financial Times’ Hungry Start-Ups on a Drastic Diet and the Boston Globes’ Best of the New 2009. Now on to the list!

American Airlines Arena – Yeah the Miami Heat traded Hack-A-Shaq who happens to be on twitter (where he laments about his poor free throw shooting and spelling ability), but Dwyane Wade is pure entertainment even if Shaq spelled his name for him.

Amway Arena – Named after an  MLM company, Amway hosts the Orlando Magic featuring the beast/superman that is Dwight Howard.

Arco Arena – Unfortunately the Kings are having a season to forget. But, if you’re in to wrestling there’s a WWE event in February and if you’re a teeny bopper, Britney Spears is coming in April.

ATT Center – This is where the Spurs play. Spurs legend Tim Duncan has never committed a foul in a home game…according to…Tim Duncan. It’s also located in one of Mark Cuban’s favorite cities.

Bradley Center – Home of the Milwaukee Bucks and Marquette Golden Eagles. I went to the University of Dayton so I’ll remain silent about one of our biggest rivals.

Conseco Fieldhouse – Where the Indiana Pacers score lots of points and Larry Bird stares on blankly. Hey, at least they’re fun to watch.

Energy Solutions Arena – If you live in Salt Lake City, there’s not exactly an abundance of things to do. If you’re not in to basketball, there’s other awesome good events like Celine Dion & the Rascal Flatts with Jessica Simpson.

Fedex Forum – The Grizzlies traded their best player away for Kwame Brown and a bag of donuts; the bag of donuts provided more utility. Needless to say, they won’t be making the playoffs this year. In less depressing news, the Memphis Tigers, who also play at the Forum should make the NCAA tourney.

Ford Center – The Ford Center hosts the team formerly known as the Seattle SuperSonics. They have the worst record in the NBA this year – ahh karmic justice.

Izod Center – Hosts the New Jersey Nets and oddly, the New Jersey Devils’ playoff games. The Nets are mediocre, likely won’t land LeBron and reside in one of the worst states, but Devin Harris rocks and is worth the price of admission.

We’ve added a new page to http://ticketstumbler.com, http://sports.ts.com and http://concerts.ts.com which allows you to view more upcoming events in your area with a single click. Just look for this button:

Additionally, the upcoming local events on the homepages and on this new page make use of the new geo-spatial querying which allows us to find events truly “in your area” rather than simply based on the city and state you originate from — this means if you live in a boring city with a nearby metropolis, you’ll see more events (or if you live in VA but are closer to DC, etc.)

Finally, I’ve made a few performance improvements to the site, including on the 3 homepages and when doing searches, so those pages may load slightly faster… if such a thing is even possible!

I’m thrilled to break the silence with our latest big new feature: Interactive venue maps!  At select venues, you can now choose sections you wish to sit in and see tickets for only those areas.  The instructions are incredibly simple:

Click on sections to select them; click again to deselect

Phew, that was tough!  You can select multiple sections at once, too. Whited-out sections mean that no tickets are available there.  And guess what!?  The new map filtering plays nice with all the other filters; if you change prices, quantity or anything else, that will be reflected on the map, too!

These interactive map pages are easy to find because they have a fresh new look:

Okay, maybe “fresh and new” was an exaggeration, but it is rearranged!

We’ve started out this “beta” testing phase by enabling interactive mapping for 10 venues.  All of these venues are home to multiple sports teams as well as concerts, so there are already many events working with them.  Once we’re satisfied that all bugs have been worked out and that both accuracy and performance are optimal, we’ll start adding more.

Making all venues interactive is a huge task, however; right now we have events at 1263 distinct venues!  It’s unlikely we’ll ever have these souped-up maps for every venue, but the ultimate goal is to have all the big places covered.

Try them out and let us know what you think!

** If things don’t look or work right on these new pages, please refresh your browser window and/or clear your cache! You probably have old files! **

Over a month ago, Ashley of Beats & Eats lamented about her terrible experience at the The Goat, a sports bar near her residence in Columbus, OH.  Ashely’s bartender was rude and inattentive to her and her friends despite a sparse crowd. The Goat was “out” [1] of almost every menu item. When Ashley’s group was finally able to find something the restaurant had, the food was awful. This wasn’t a one time occasion, as Ashley had similar experiences before and had witnessed other patrons’ confrontations with the bartender. However, there was no one to even complain to; the bartender was also the manager.

Making matters worse, the incident occurred on Sunday Funday, a long held post-college tradition. Since Monday’s inevitably blow for anyone with a real job, Ashley and myself [2] have long celebrated Sunday Funday. It’s a very sacred tradition that usually involves drinking, movies, hookah bars, trips somewhere new, sporting events, live music or all of the above. It’s a wonderful deterrent to the crotch-grab/punch to the face that Mondays often bring [3]. Frustrated, Ashley wrote about it. Bill Semeraro, an executive at The Goat’s parent company (and perhaps, a Google/Backtype Alerts user),  responded:

Ashley,
Hi, My name is Bill Semeraro, I run the Goats for Lifestyle Communities. Obviously concerned about your “Sunday Funday” experience at the Gahanna Goat. Please contact me at Bsemeraro@lifestylecommunities.com to discuss further.

Sincerely,
Bill Semeraro

Shocked and enthused to receive a reply, Ashley immediately contacted Bill:

Good Afternoon Mr. Semeraro:

Thank you for contacting me.  I would like to start off saying that I generally enjoy my visits to The Goat.  My friends and I go to both locations weekly and several of them are even registered in the Wii Bowling League and/or the Sand Volleyball League.  I realize that this blog post may sound a bit too scathing, for lack of a better word, but this is by no means a secluded incident.

Please understand that in no way do I wish to shed a bad light on The Goat. I hoped I have made that clear by stating that this is not a rant against the establishment itself. I am open to discussing this further if you wish.

With much appreciation,
Ashley Geisen

Bill responded warmly:

Ashley,

Thank you for responding so quickly to my comment on your blog.  First of all, I’m impressed with your writing skills to say the least. From a managers perspective, you have given me great insight from the view of a customer.

I have no excuses for you because there are none. It’s a totally disappointing encounter when sales and customer counts are a struggle in this economy.  Through your post it seems like this is not the first incident with this staff member.  For that, I’m truly sorry.  I genuinely appreciate your honesty and taking the time to correspond about the experience.  Comments like yours will help us improve our operations and opportunities for POSITIVE memorable experiences. Rest assured, your comments will not be taken lightly by myself nor my team members.  Actually, it  will be discussed and corrective measures will be put in place to ensure better awareness and customer service. To show gratitude for your past and future patronage; I ask one more thing.  If I could get your mailing address I have stumbled on something that could help with future “Sunday Fundays”.

Sincerely,

Bill

We’ve had similar experiences with bush league companies like Comcast where after raging about their ridiculous bullshit fees on twitter, we’ll receive a courtesy call the next day [4]. Some of our friends have also received free months of service or quicker customer responses after posting scathing tweets. It’s nice that companies are listening.

But what always get me is that instead of being proactive and not having shitty service or hack job fees to begin with, companies dedicate teams and spend loads of money to monitor twitter or utilize google alerts. Or, even worse,  overpaying someone to do the same thing as those services. This problem is only exacerbated during a recession. In an effort to satisfy short-term earnings expectations, companies often nickel & dime their customers while laying off people in customer service. It’s as if companies need to be reminded that even in a recession, people still want to be treated right.

The final kicker: even after that pleasant exchange with Bill, Ashley has not received the vouchers (or anything) from The Goat of January 13, 2009. If anything changes, we’ll update this post accordingly.

UPDATE (1/21/09): Though it took a while, Bill from The Goat/Lifestyle Communities is sending Ashley two VIP tickets to see the Killer’s concert on May 5, 2009. Very impressive.

[1] Or as Ashley speculated, maybe the manager was feeling lazy.

[2] At TicketStumbler headquarters all days are mostly the same. As such, when we remember what day it is, we designate Friday as Friday Funday. Drinking at work is fun and often productive.

[3] Monday, I used to hate you. Now I don’t even remember you.

[4] Of course, their fees remain in place while they advertise misleading rates.