Well, after a great amount of work, I’ve turned OFF the online ticket facility on the BMTG website.

Did it not work? Yes it did. And very well – with little publicity of it, we £500 worth of tickets via it for the last show. Not bad.

It was my decision to turn it off, though, and one which I communicated to the committee (well, my appointed contact on the committee – whether the rest know or not is a different question).

Here is my official reason (Mike is the chap who sells the tickets)…

Since I’ve implemented the ability, there’s no proof that it’s increased sales, just simply moved it from one medium to another.

Additionally, Mike is struggling as he’s not getting the emails from PayPal to say that customers have paid – I’ve attempted to try and sort it out with him but he appears uninterested.

As I said during the AGM, it generated every £1 in £13 generated, but there has been no mention or general interest in it (indeed, my speech during the AGM was the only time it was mentioned). I’m assuming that this is due to my first point – that it’s probably not creating any more sales.

Therefore, for the sake of Mike’s easier life and me not having to maintain it, I’ll turn it off. Obviously I’ll leave a page there, but it will redirect people to contact Mike in the normal ways.

However, you might be able to detect something underlying there – the complete and total disinterest by everyone.

After it did so well for last years show, I started working on a new, improved version of the online sales facility, expecting the committee to come forward and start asking for certain facilities to improve it (and hence being ready for them). I got half way through – and a lot of work – before realising they hadn’t said anything. And probably wouldn’t do. Now, nearly a year later I can say… they didn’t. Nor did it even get a mention.

The problem is that they have an incorrect idea that I just want compliements and slaps on the back for the sake of my own ego. But that’s wrong. It’s not for myself that I want the credit, but the website. It’s doing a sterling job of publicity but no-one appears to care (and if they do, they don’t give out the right signals). So why should I put so much effort into it? Of course, this just leads people to think that I’m “throwing my toys out of the pram.” In other words, I can’t win. Spend my own spare time and effort working on something that everyone ignores or withdraw from it and get accused of spitting out my dummy.

When putting on a show, they appoint a director to essentially “manage” it. But they (the committee) still get involved – of course they do. They want to ensure that things go well, help where they can, etc. But when it comes to the website… no interest. And the members are no different – not surprisingly given the disinterest from the management.

To top it off, Mike doesn’t get the PayPal emails to say someone has bought tickets. I suspect they’re going into his spam folder, but he seems totally disinterested in sorting it out. Thankfully this was noticed because I’m copied into them. So, at the moment, I forward the emails on. But what if I’m busy or on holiday? This shouldn’t be down to me, but at the same time I don’t want customers to suffer (you see, it IS about the society and not me).

So, the online facility is turned off.

The word of the day… disinterested.