Paul Hammond's Blog

I am going on holiday with my family in August, and the last part of our trip will see us in Boston.  Being a big Red Sox fan, I wanted to take my family along to a Red Sox vs Toronto Blue Jays game.  A few weeks ago I searched on Ebay for tickets (since all home games at Fenway Park are sold out for the season), and through that stumbled across a link to StubHub.com.

StubHub has loads of tickets available for the game I want to attend.  The site has some great security features for the wary ticket purchaser, including guarantees that you will get the tickets you pay for etc.  It all seems very professional.  With tickets hovering around $250 each, I wanted to feel confident that it was going to be a genuine purchase, and I was very pleased to have found a great looking solution to my ticket-purchasing desires.

Well, I finalised my travel details today, so decided to choose and buy some seats while there was still a good choice.  I found some excellent seats in the right price range, and proceeded to the checkout.  Now, as part of the checkout screen, there is an option to select your country of residence (and billing address) that includes the following items:

Naturally, I selected “United Kingdom”, entered the rest of my address details and pressed “Next”.  At this point, the page reloaded with the following error:

Just in case, I tried re-entering the post code without a space; this sometimes works.  Same error.  I was pretty much blocked completely!

I called the helpline to ask what I should do next.  The helpful lady on the phone informed me that I cannot order anything off the StubHub.com site unless I use a credit card that has a US billing address, and I have a US address to ship the tickets to!  I asked her why there were options for other countries, but she didn’t know.  All she could do was repeat that I needed US-based shipping and billing details in order to proceed.  So that is it.  The end of the road for me and StubHub.

I’ve looked everywhere on the site, and unless I am being useless (which is, of course, completely possible!) I cannot find a single reference to the fact that you can only purchase from the US.  Not even deep in the help files or the FAQ is it mentioned.  Why didn’t the error just say “I am sorry, you cannot purchase from this site unless you are in the US”.

Sites that restrict sales to “US only” generally frustrate me to a point, but I do recognise that there are often reasons for doing so – perhaps licensing laws (in the case of iTunes or radio services), or shipping difficulties for bulky items etc.  What annoyed me about this situation was the fact that the website lists the UK (and other countries) both during account registration and purchase, with the direct implication that I am perfectly fine to go ahead and spend a large amount of money with them.  I spent probably an hour in total checking out tickets, looking up the view from the seats on various other websites etc.  That is a wasted hour.  To get to the last hurdle and be presented with a particularly cryptic error message that required me to make an international phone call to address is completely unacceptable to me as a user.  To have wasted an hour on a site that could have told me up front that I was not able to ultimately use its features is doubly unacceptable.

Oh, and it means I don’t really have any options for buying Red Sox tickets either.  Which is going to upset my kids more than this experience has upset me!  Any ideas on where I *can* buy tickets from the UK, blogosphere?

The other day, my son was watching a TV show that is set in Boston (The Suite Life for those of you who watch the Disney Channel a lot).  The particular episode featured a baseball game between the Red Sox and the Yankees.

Half way through the show, out of nowhere my son suddenly says, with a big sigh, “I HATE the Yankees…”

When questioned on who he DID like, he replied “The Red Sox of course”.

I just finished reading Johnny Damon’s book “Idiot”.  The impression he gives in that book is that he is a Red Sox through and through.  Seems kind of funny that the day I finish reading the book I see the news story that Damon has accepted a 4 year, $52 million contract with the Yankees.  I mean, he could have gone almost anywhere else, but he had to pick the Yankees.  That sure is going to annoy a whole lot of Red Sox fans.

I believe the Sox offered him a 4 year, $40 million contract.  Funny what people will do for that extra $12 million!  I will be watching the Yankees form next season with great interest.

There are still quite a few free agents that have not signed anywhere yet – you can keep your eye on them using the MLB Free Agent Tracker.  Fingers crossed we can retain Kevin Millar and John Olerud at the very least.

I just returned from a long weekend in Boston with my wife.  Before returning to work for Microsoft back in October 2001, I spent about 15 months working for a company based in Boston and travelled to the city many times on business.

Boston is one of my favourite cities in the world.  Comparatively speaking it is quite a small city, and it has a great community feel to it.  Unlike in London, where people keep themselves to themselves, you will often find conversations in the most unlikely places, and the people of Boston are very friendly and welcoming.

This time around, we managed to actually take in some of the more “tourist-y” things the city has to offer.  We spent an hour touring the city and the river Charles on a Boston Duck Tour.  If you are not familiar with Duck Tours (a lot of cities are now doing them) this involves riding around the streets of town in an amphibious vehicle before plunging in the river and taking a cruise in a local body of water – all narrated as you guy by an eclectic driver.  The name “Duck Tours” comes from the military code for the vehicle – the DUKW.  As well as being great fun, it also filled in some of the knowledge gaps I had in my head about Boston’s heritage.

We visited the Museum of Fine Arts, which was excellent.  I was most impressed with the display of art owned by collector William I. Koch.  This is a man who buys art and antiques based purely on his love of the piece.  There is no specific “genre”, or “era” or partiucular artist that he favours – it simply has to be art that triggers some emotion in him.  In a small collection I saw works by artists such as Dalí, Picasso, Matisse, Monet and Renoir, sculpture by Degas, as well as a collection of historic firearms.  Not being *hugely* educated in matters of art, it was fantastic to spend a small time viewing many different pieces of art, by very famous artists, that were both thought provoking and emotive in nature.

The highlight of the trip was an impromptu tour of Fenway Park.  I am a big Red Sox fan, having been converted to a baseball lover after my first couple of live games at Fenway.  We went over to visit the merchandise store to buy some typically tourist oriented souvenirs and luckily timed it just right to join the end of a tour.  We sat in the “old” seats for a while, listening to stories about the park and it’s current renovations before moving up to the monster seats on the top of the Green Monster for a great view of the park.  In a weird twist of climate, it was snowing pretty hard, but no-one seemed to care – not even the few Yankees fans that had come along for the view.  My friend John is a Mets fan.  For the first time in quite a while, the Mets are playing at Fenway next June in a 3 game series.  I am going to have to talk to him some more about a possible field trip!  My feeling is that we should be looking to get some seats close to left field…

I found a new drink in Starbucks.  Sadly they are only available in New England right now.  Maple Lattes.  A regular Latte, with maple syrup and whipped cream.  It is like drinking a pancake.  BRING IT OVER TO ENGLAND PLEASE STARBUCKS!

We stayed in a hotel called the Charlesmark Hotel, on Boylston Street right opposite the Public Library.  The location is excellent, really convenient for all of Back Bay, as well as being right by Copley T station on the Green Line.  The hotel was refurbished a couple of years ago, and the new bar area was being prepared for a November 1st opening.  As a “boutique” hotel, the rooms were a little smaller than some I have stayed in, but the personal service and room quality was worth the money I think.  I would definitely look at staying there next time I visit. 

Here is a picture of me at Fenway, atop the Green Monster.  In the snow.

The first two innings of a minor league baseball game are going to be played "virtually", using the "MVP Baseball 2005" game on an Xbox .  In the July 16th game between the Kansas City T-Bones and the Schaumburg Flyers, the first two innings will be played by two gamers sitting in recliners on home plate using the CommunityAmerica Ballpark's 16x24 foot video screen.  The scores from these virtual innings will then stand as the two teams take the field for the remaining 7 innings.

Wanna-be contestants are battling it out at local computer stores for the honour of representing the teams on the day.