Dialog mticket - A complete waste of time (and money)

This is the follow up to my Spider Man3 - Not a complete waste of time post. Compared to the movie, using Dialog's new 444 mticket service, which promises you a hassle free, ticket buying experience turned out to be a A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME!

Instead of mumblings from the crowd of "what a BIG shot" I was to jump the queue, there was only silence, probably accompanied by silent thoughts to the effect of, "there goes another mticket looser".

As you might imagine, not only did I not have any reserved tickets (not even tentatively), my name wasn't even on their database. This is despite Dialog confirming the ticket with a reference number, two days prior to the screening. This wasn't an isolated incident either, as the person at the counter explained, it had happened before on several occasions including one earlier that very same day! It is somewhat unlikely that the other person also booked the ticket in exactly the same time frame when the system was down and who also wanted to watch the movie 2 days later.

Anyway as you might imagine, it wasn't a pretty scene and my girl friend and I were quite disappointed at the prospect of going home early. There was nothing left to do but to spend another 15/- and make another call (the 3rd by this time) to 444. Here is what that call sounded like ....



As you might have heard it took ages for someone to pickup. The help desk person seemed quite nervous, probably because he knew of the issue, and put me on hold for a good long song. All in all, I was probably on the phone for as much as 15 min.

The audio clips are broken down into two parts, because while I was on hold I wanted to retrieve my reference number stored in another section of the phone, which stopped the recording process. I was hoping he'd at least ask for the ref number, but he never did! He didn't even ask for my name nor mobile number (yes they could have CLI, but what if I was using someone else's phone? Dialog customer support normally asks for your phone number). Unfortunately, I ran out of phone memory to record the second part completely, because I was on hold for a long time. (I cut short the on-hold music from the recording). Basically the part you missed on the recording involved me getting may be 10% more angry and telling him that I didn't want the service and demanding they not charge my phone bill with the ticket price. Only time will tell whether they remembered to cancel it from my bill.

I sensed something was fishy, from the beginning - when I made the reservation. For one thing, I was expecting some sort of automated ticket reservation system. After all this was supposed to be the future today. But hearing a real human voice was actually better and welcomed, even if it seems a little too high to charge the 15/- just to talk to one. Instead they could have added the 15/- to the premium charge for reserving the ticket if they really need that money.

Anyway after conveying my movie requirements, he offered me a seating area and then put me on hold for a couple of minutes to confirm the booking. He came back with bad news stating that he was not able to confirm my booking and for me to call back in another 1 hour time. At this point I remembered he had already asked me for my Name, mobile number and even my email address, which was a first. I asked if he could send me an email or an sms but he refused and insisted that I call him back. That was my first clue it was fishy :)

I called back in about 2 hours, to learn they had no recollection of me making a call. The new support person asked the name of the person I spoke with, a piece of information I never expected to be asked by a company with over 2M customers. At one point during the conversation, the new customer support person seemed to be questioning the actions of the earlier support person, which made me annoyed enough to ask "You tell me! He works there!".

I was then put on hold for a few more minutes only to come back and say that he will call me back shortly. I was somewhat relived that for a change he was going to call me back instead of ask me to call him back and pay another 15/-.

As promised they called me back. "I'm sorry sir, our system was down and I got caught with something. Here is your reference number; please write it down" was his response. So I wrote down the reference number down ET218...... I asked him if I was going to also get an SMS, to which he said no. He assured me that the booking was confirmed and all I had to do was show this reference number.

The rest as you know by now is history! If you know anyone at Dialog, who can fix this problem please forward this so they are aware of this issue. Dialog usually has a pretty good Customer Support System, which totally contradicts with my mticket experience. Overall, I am a happy Dialog phone customer, being with them close to 10 years now. So I would like to see them fix this ASAP, or at least bring down the service till its fixed. As far as I could tell, it was really a poor process/work flow from Dialogs end on what they need to do when the system is offline.

I later discovered that the Dialog's 444 service is provided in partnership with Ceylinco Internet Services, who also have their own ticket reservations system. Perhaps, I was actually talking to some not from Dialog, but regardless it is still Dialog's responsibility to ensure a good customer experience.

So for now, my advice is to stay away from this unreliable service and save your self the embarrassment.