Nonni kindly replied to my rant with ...
>I checked this fall, Wayne, and found that we can now leave tickets with them -
> properly in envelope with name of recipient and date of game.  I just left our
> for my nephew for Saturday night when I was on campus yesterday.  I had asked
> Patrick about this and he said it should be a courtesy to ticket holders ...
> and it is now.

Thanks, Nonni (and Patrick)!  It's a hassle for the ticket office, I'm
sure.  But because I, too, occasionally have people from away using my
tickets on relatively short notice, this is an appreciated service.

   (I'll be there;  I just won't get to see as much of the game as I
   might like) ;-)

... back on bundling ...


I've noticed a number of schools trying bundling this season.  Maybe an
AD Convention had a speaker on the subject?  ;-) I suspect Nero saw the
chance to do this experiment with 100 tickets ...  tickets that will be
sold even if the bundling deal flops completely.  If it doesn't flop,
maybe they'll add some new season ticket holders ...  and that's the
real idea and the reason for such highly focused/attentive management: a
great product and great customer service are part of the equation ...
another part is advertising/discovery.

Obviously, bundling hurts and doesn't help the hockey-only fan.  I'm
glad Nero did it because it might work, and if it doesn't, he learns
something about the Maine hockey fan.  Would I have done it?  No.  But I
might have bundled those 100 UNH (or whatever) tickets with specific
game tickets for Women's Hockey ...  or maybe a basketball exhibition or
non-league game.

As to Dan's comment that Nero doesn't address the issue, I disagree.
;-) Nero starts his answer with background ...  calling it exactly that.
Then he directly answers the question of what they did and why.  I
quote:

   ... At this time it became obvious that we were very low on individual
   tickets for the games against our rivals, around 100.  We put on sale
   all the other games, so fans like yourself who do not wish to
   purchase season tickets could choose from the other 12 games
   available.  Since the tickets for the UNH, BC and BU games were so
   limited, we decided to package these games with some of our other
   sports.

   This was done to help generate interest in these other teams.  Our
   hope is that fans such as yourself who enjoy the rivalry such as
   Maine-BU hockey, would also enjoy this rivalry in basketball. ...

If anyone has any of their own ideas on how they would be happy to give
up a few hundred more dollars to UMaine athletics ...  please pass the
ideas on to AD Nero!

If anyone wants to express a concern or distress, I'd think using the
submission page for "Ask the AD" would be easy and effective.  The web
address is

      http://goblackbears.com/feedback/askthead.html

cheers, wayne

Wayne T. Smith
[log in to unmask]                          Old Town Landing
The College Hockey lists: Hockey-L and Hockey3 at http://lists.Maine.edu/