Dumbarton vs Stirling Albion

[Mattie1880]

Absolutely ridiculous, that’s at least £50 on trains I’ve spent / days off work to come to these games. Dumbarton should absolutely be deducted points and anyone that says different is talking out their arse

[sonsanorak]

I remember travelling to east fife in the fans bus to be told that the game had been called off, snow I think.  If I'm right John Sharp from their board met us at the door, apologised and invited us up to the bar for a bit before.

Late cancellations will unfortunately happen.  What makes the difference after that is the reaction from the club.

We rely to a huge extent on volunteers manning almost everything except the catering, security and front desk, so there would have been a lot of people on our side who may have been uninformed and unsure what to do.

Comms and customer care should have been thought of, but it's easy to say that after the event and intensity has died down.

Edited April 12, 2023 by sonsanorak
Finger slip

[WC Boggs]

Today's weather will be excessively violent with a chance of DFC board dismemberment. Tune in later for our 5 day forecast.   And now some music.

 

[Bring Back Paddy Flannery]

5 hours ago, Mattie1880 said:

Dumbarton should absolutely be deducted points and anyone that says different is talking out their arse

[Frank Quitely]

7 hours ago, DCismyhero said:

Anyone who was in the bar know who that silly old b****d was who announced the game was off, tried to blame the ref, and then laughed as he quickly scurried out the side door when folk started to ask for their money back? He looked like a club official. 

That was Dumbarton Director Colin Hosie.

[pleslie99]

There’s not a sons fan that’s not pissed off with the situation, Our pitch and our groundsman will undoubtably bear the brunt of the anger.

that being said, some of the Stirling fans have proper lost the plot. Points deductions, police investigations, homophobic abuse to name just a few of the bonkers comments we are all waking up to this morning!

[FifeSons]

25 minutes ago, pleslie99 said:

There’s not a sons fan that’s not pissed off with the situation, Our pitch and our groundsman will undoubtably bear the brunt of the anger.

that being said, some of the Stirling fans have proper lost the plot. Points deductions, police investigations, homophobic abuse to name just a few of the bonkers comments we are all waking up to this morning!

Glad I wasn't the only one to fall for that one!

[Skyline Drifter]

13 hours ago, Bring Back Paddy Flannery said:

Wait, so instead of just handing fans their money back as they left the ground, we went to the effort of printing oot daft wee cardboard passes AFTER the game was called off to hand out to punters who were made to queue in the pissing rain? Who the f**k makes these decisions!?

That's pretty standard event organisation to be honest. It's not easy necessarily to organise direct cash refunds by getting all turnstile cash back and having enough of right change (I don't know what it actually costs at Dumbarton), albeit it's probably considerably easier at Dumbarton than it is at Palmerston to be fair as there are far less entry points and I imagine a chunk of the crowd bought online? I was going to say lower numbers too but I guess it's possible there were a lot of Stirling fans paying cash. As someone else said too, it's definitely not easy to handle an angry queue when it's not clear necessarily what category they paid in as either.

We have standard abandoned game vouchers in the office to use if games are called off once people are in. It's far easier to do that and then refund at leisure if people can't attend the rearranged game and return their voucher.

There may well be things to criticise Dumbarton for here but issuing cardboard vouchers isn't really one of them.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Skyline Drifter

[DCismyhero]

2 hours ago, Frank Quitely said:

That was Dumbarton Director Colin Hosie.

Presume he was the one that Hosie’d the pitch too. 

[DCismyhero]

2 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

There may well be things to criticise Dumbarton for here but issuing cardboard vouchers isn't really one of them.

It is when some folk got vouchers, and some got their cash back. Organisation piss poor. 

[The Moonster]

8 minutes ago, DCismyhero said:

Presume he was the one that Hosie’d the pitch too. 

The homophobic patter is hard enough to read but this is a step too far!

[Skyline Drifter]

17 minutes ago, DCismyhero said:

It is when some folk got vouchers, and some got their cash back. Organisation piss poor. 

Depends on context. Like I say, standard event management would be to issue a voucher. At the end of the day though, if someone kicks up enough fuss then it will end up being easier to just refund them than get into a rammy with them, even if it comes from the pocket of the person dealing with it!

If on the other hand there was two different queues dealing with it differently that's clearly horrific organisation.

There is no easy way to handle such instances though (and this one didn't even start which presumably means there were both people inside and outside the ground (who hadn't actually paid) complaining. I can't think we've ever had a game we let people in the ground at that then didn't start. Not in the last two decades anyway. Technically if a game gets to half time there is no entitlement to refunds at all and 3 of the 4 games I can think of us having abandoned did get to half time. At a couple of Ross County games abandoned due to floodlight failures with less than 20 mins to go we gave no refunds but offered reduced pricing on the rearrangements. When Dundee United were at Palmerston and the referee abandoned at half time having decided the pitch was frozen we again did no refunds but ran the rearranged game at £5 for everyone. Because it was a half time abandonment though we had time to organise and make decisions in consultation with the Dundee United Chairman who was there (Stephen Thomson at the time) before making an announcement.

The one time we had a first half abandonment (high winds after 20 mins v Falkirk) was an absolute debacle as the referee in that case gave absolutely no heads up or indication in advance he was going to abandon (and it wasn't noticeably any worse than it was at kick off). Nor did he take them off for a time to see if it calmed down or make a decision, he just blew his whistle and declared it abandoned. As a result absolutely nobody was ready for it and by the time vouchers were got from the cupboards, stewards had opened the gates and half the crowd had left, especially at the far side of the ground as it took 10 minutes to find the stuff and get people over to the far side with them. Vouchers were given out arbitrarily, including a bundle being handed to organisers of Falkirk buses. There's absolutely no doubt many people left the ground without getting a voucher, and many left with multiple numbers of them. We did honour refunds in subsequent days for anyone who had a voucher and said they couldn't make the rearranged game (no other reasonable option) and we took the vouchers at turnstiles for the rearrangement. I think we also reduced prices in recognition that there were likely people who had paid first time and not got a voucher. It was a costly exercise with a big away support involved.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Skyline Drifter

[DCismyhero]

14 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Depends on context. Like I say, standard event management would be to issue a voucher. At the end of the day though, if someone kicks up enough fuss then it will end up being easier to just refund them than get into a rammy with them, even if it comes from the pocket of the person dealing with it!

If on the other hand there was two different queues dealing with it differently that's clearly horrific organisation.

There is no easy way to handle such instances though (and this one didn't even start which presumably means there were both people inside and outside the ground (who hadn't actually paid) complaining. I can't think we've ever had a game we let people in the ground at that then didn't start. Not in the last two decades anyway. Technically if a game gets to half time there is no entitlement to refunds at all and 3 of the 4 games I can think of us having abandoned did get to half time. At a couple of Ross County games abandoned due to floodlight failures with less than 20 mins to go we gave no refunds but offered reduced pricing on the rearrangements. When Dundee United were at Palmerston and the referee abandoned at half time having decided the pitch was frozen we again did no refunds but ran the rearranged game at £5 for everyone. Because it was a half time abandonment though we had time to organise and make decisions in consultation with the Dundee United Chairman who was there (Stephen Thomson at the time) before making an announcement.

The one time we had a first half abandonment (high winds after 20 mins v Falkirk) was an absolute debacle as the referee in that case gave absolutely no heads up or indication in advance he was going to abandon (and it wasn't noticeably any worse than it was at kick off). Nor did he take them off for a time to see if it calmed down or make a decision, he just blew his whistle and declared it abandoned. As a result absolutely nobody was ready for it and by the time vouchers were got from the cupboards, stewards had opened the gates and half the crowd had left, especially at the far side of the ground as it took 10 minutes to find the stuff and get people over to the far side with them. Vouchers were given out arbitrarily, including a bundle being handed to organisers of Falkirk buses. There's absolutely no doubt many people left the ground without getting a voucher, and many left with multiple numbers of them. We did honour refunds in subsequent days for anyone who had a voucher and said they couldn't make the rearranged game (no other reasonable option) and we took the vouchers at turnstiles for the rearrangement. I think we also reduced prices in recognition that there were likely people who had paid first time and not got a voucher. It was a costly exercise with a big away support involved.

 

[BB_Bino]

1 hour ago, pleslie99 said:

There’s not a sons fan that’s not pissed off with the situation, Our pitch and our groundsman will undoubtably bear the brunt of the anger.

that being said, some of the Stirling fans have proper lost the plot. Points deductions, police investigations, homophobic abuse to name just a few of the bonkers comments we are all waking up to this morning!

Have to admit to not having read that. If that is the case then it should be reported to the club. The police investigation claim was 1 zoomer and should be held as that.

47 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

That's pretty standard event organisation to be honest.

Hhhhmmmmm.....I'm not sure it is standard when the game hasn't kicked off. I know from concerts that it's the consumers right to get a full refund if the ticket was purchased from official sources and the event organisers cancel or move the event, that's very similar to what happened last night, so don't see why it would be any different.

[Skyline Drifter]

12 minutes ago, BB_Bino said:

Hhhhmmmmm.....I'm not sure it is standard when the game hasn't kicked off. I know from concerts that it's the consumers right to get a full refund if the ticket was purchased from official sources and the event organisers cancel or move the event, that's very similar to what happened last night, so don't see why it would be any different.

You'll absolutely be entitled to a full refund. I'm pretty sure the concert organisers don't stand in the foyer handing out cash on the night though! You normally need to apply for it or use the ticket again for a rearrangement.

EDITED to add: If Dumbarton refuse to refund cash for vouchers returned by people who can't make the rearrange date I'm sure they'd be in breach of the law.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Skyline Drifter

[Buddie Holly]

points deduction for the weather

Edited April 12, 2023 by Buddie Holly

[George Parr]

Trying again next Tuesday. Might head down for a laugh.

[Clarko_son]

I think we're just hoping everyone has just forgot about all the issues last night from reading that

[unitedbino]

9 minutes ago, Clarko_son said:

I think we're just hoping everyone has just forgot about all the issues last night from reading that

This is a bit of a piss take. I know plenty fans (myself included) who felt it was an insult to ask us to queue outside in the pissing rain for 30 mins to get the voucher, and so didn't. Dumbarton should be operating an honest jar policy for the rearranged fixture. That would be common sense.

[Gordon EF]

When our game in Dublin against Bohemians was called off about 5 mins before kick off, Bohemians offered cash refunds at the ground. Albeit you had to get a wee bit angry at some guy to get him to stump up.

I think the main point of annoyance was that in both scenarios, it was fairly obvious that the game was going to be called off before the official decision was made but the home club carried on regardless and let folk pay their money just to immediately troop back out the ground.

It wouldn't exactly take a logistical genius to hand out receipts for cash payments, given there must have been a very high probability the game would get canned before the club started taking cash.