

Burning Man sends out False STEP notices - you may already be a loser!

Truly unbelievable news this morning.

My brother won tickets in the STEP program!  Our whole group (6 total) will be able to go!  We can build a proper structure and have people to help out at camp!  Woooo!

But that was just when we were reading the email, an email that claimed to be "happy to tell you that tickets have been resold into the Secure Ticket Exchange Program and are now available for you to buy."

But when we clicked the link in the email, we were no longer happy:

This is heartbreaking.

I don't know how many of these they sent out, but not only is it hugely embarassing for the BMORG, but it's rude, insulting and demeaning to those still left in the STEP program.  You win!  No you don't.  There's no reason that this message should ever be sent out because of "routine server tests".  That doesn't many any sense.  (I'm an IT guy, and I hate to call for anybody's job, but this is a colossal blunder.  I can't think of anything worse that you could do if you worked for a ticketing website, than sending out false notices that people have won tickets.  Think about it.  The entire purpose of the website is to sell tickets properly...)

I'm starting to worry about the future of Burning Man, if they can't manage to get this ticketing situation worked out. 1,000 extra tickets went into STEP, but clearly they just did that twice or managed to load last week's database, causing this embarassing error.   Then they're going to put 1,000 tickets into the new land rush (and hope the servers doesn't crash too badly), this makes me think that next year's plan (which is still a secret, because you wouldn't want any feedback from the community) is simply going to be another land rush with better servers.  I used to spend most of the year making Art for Burning Man, now I spend it trying to get tickets.  Is this what they have planned for next year?

1 comment: