Worst Company In Britain – See Tickets v British Gas
By Andy Dawson
Time for another showdown between two of Britain’s biggest corporate shits as our Worst Company In Britain competition rolls steadily on.
We’ve got a double bill for you over the weekend, and as we know some of you spend your weekends flying kites and making love instead of reading this site, we’ll be keeping the polls open until noon on Monday.
First up is gig merchants See Tickets against energy pipers British Gas. Let’s be honest, we’re not offering any odds on the outcome of this one if the comments in your nominations are anything to go by…
Call back tomorrow for another head-to-head of the morally-dead.
Tags: british gas, see tickets, worst company
Posted in ask the readers, worst company of the year award November 21st, 2009 | 22 Comments
Posted in ask the readers, worst company of the year award November 21st, 2009 | 22 Comments
feral trolley of the week
I can’t fault British Gas. Best company in my opinion.
Hi, Brian here.
“Best company”? At what? Being cunts?
They are both robbers but at least BG do it with good customer service!
see tickets who?
See Tickets gets my vote for their £4.95 “transaction fee”.
OMG British Gas and BT need to be in the final. Seriously FAIL companys.
Never heard of See Tickets.
SeeTickets do tickets for events. Badly. Forget to send out tickets (when they do, it can be anything from 4-2 hours before the event so youu’ve usually gone off to pick them up form the box office by then), a customer service division that consists of 3 tape recorders and a hard drive, and they usually charge you more than the price of your tickets in processing fees for this outstandingly shite service.
I’ve only once had a problem with seetickets, and considering I tend to buy tickets from them for atleast one event a month (for the past 4 years) that’s pretty good going. My tickets have always arrived atleast a week before the event and the booking fees are not dissimilar to any other site. They also give text updates if the event is cancelled and updates on when tickets have been sent or reasons why they may have been delayed. My one problem was that I was charged postage for tickets on an event that was cancelled indefinetly, even though the tickets hadn’t been sent out. A minor problem considering the usual consistency I have experienced and I will definetly continue to buy my tickets from them.
Hmm SeeTickets are not great, but they have to be better than Ticketmaster, slightly unfair that they are up here!
This is a really strange pairing – one company most people have never used or heard of , the other provides 14 million homes with energy. To make this a fair comparison we should be looking at similar companies. Otherwise we might as well compare chalk and cheese!
[...] got until Monday at noon to make your feelings known and you can catch up with See Tickets versus British Gas – voting in that one will end at the same [...]
seetickets. let me see, very late delivery sometimes, when tickets go on sale the whole system seems to stop working, numerous cases of trying to buy tickets only for the transaction to fail at the the last second (by which time all decent tickets have sold out) awful telephone service, very vague with information on ticket postage times for example (sometimes they just make it up) . slow if any reply to emails. all around bad really
SeeTickets just because of the rip off admin charges for using a credit or debit card… on an online company.. per ticket.. for a company that sells tickets!
No worse or better than Ticketmaster I might add..
Seetickets. Friend ordered 4 tickets for U2 Wembley shows, we live 225 miles from Wembley, so a 4 hour journey.
The tickets did not arrive until 11.55 the day of the gig despite numerous calls to them that week of the gig asking where their tickets where.
An absolute bloody disgrace.
4 V festival tickets at £170 each sent via Special Delivery only the envelope contained nothing, seemed they had over a 100 tickets stolen from a Royal Mail sorting office. Would not reissue tickets or refund.
Another V Festival we get disabled tickets as on of our concert going friends is severely disabled, our tickets arrived without disabled wristbands which allows us to drive into the disabled camp. No wristband no access. Despite numerous calls to Blindtickets & threatening them with court action under the disibility act there response was sue us!!!
Absolute bastards of a company!!!!!
Oh & their minimum wage student employees are absolutely poorly trained / clueless / don’t give a shit!!!!
Laura, what a lovely post you have left. You wouldnt happen to work for Seetickets ?
British Gas British Gas
I am one of their apparently 10,000 pissed off customers, being handled by half adozen staff. No wonder it takes years to sort out problems.
See tickets are a new company (doesnt excuse the crap service). British Gas however are well established and have millions of customers. They have a dont give a shit, f you attitude as they have millions of customers.
British Gas!! The essential services should never have been privatised in the first place. Gas, Electric & Water should be government owned and cheap!
Stop talking shite about ‘See tickets £4.95 admin charge’, it’s a luxury purchase that you can do without!. How about a £600 per year water bill that you can’t do without, no-one complains about that because they have no choice in the matter.
You have a choice, don’t buy from See Tickets & watch them go bust.
The See Tickets admin charge chat doesn’t tally with what I have seen in the past (it is usually less than the £4.95 you guys keep mentioning from memory) and I’ve not had a problem with their delivery. Customer support / service is dreadful from See Tickets on all sides however nowhere near as bad as British Gas and they aren’t in the same league as BT (whom I came on here for!!)
I don’t expect support from an online ticket retailer unless in exceptional circumstances, in which case I can forgive a slow or inadequate response, I do from a utility provider. I also pay a lot more to the latter to provide the same. Simple equation, really.
As a former employee of British Gas and a current employee of SeeTickets.
I accept full responsibility
As a big gig/concert goer, I have ordered tickets from See many times in the past, but they always seem to play a game of chicken crossing the M4 by dispatching the tickets as late as possible, usually 1-2 weeks before the event.
Its always arrived before, although there is a distinct lack of communication and good planning on their part in sending the tickets out. I might have just been lucky in receiving all my tickets before the show, any small c*ck-up in the mail or on their part would have resulted in me not getting tickets and there not being enough time to reissue new tickets.
Lately I have seen that their dispatch of tickets have been getting later and later, as though the company was struggling and falling apart. Their website as well crashes during the peak ticket sale Fridays and its now almost impossible to get any tickets for any good gigs through them.
Well I’m looking fcked thanks to SeeTickets for Depeche Mode in Glasgow. 4 tickets over £180 and they are saying they were definitely posted them 60 hours ago. Gave me the old, “just go to the booking Office with your reference” story. Really pi$$ed off and this better happen!! Grrrrrr