Regular Joe’s mean nothing to the Yankees.
by Mike TNewsday has an article about the Yankees being basically shamed into lowering the price for roughly 600 seats in the bleachers from $12 to $5 because they are obstructed by the hideous resturaunt in centerfield. The fact that they even have obstructed view seats in a brand new stadium is ludicrous. One of the talking points of the New Yankee Stadium was “improved sight lines”. I’ll tell you one thing, there were no obstructed views in the old stadium (except maybe in the very corners of the outfield if you were sitting in the upper portion of the upper deck you couldn’t see the corner of the field closest to you). The following quote from Lon Trost from the article shows how little the Yankees cared about the bleacher fans:Â
“When we built the sports bar we knew architecturally there is an architectural shadow,” he said. “And that means there are a group of seats that are in the bleachers that if you are sitting very close to either the rightfield or leftfield side of the sports bar, you may not see the opposite side.
“We knew that going in, and to that extent we pre-prepared to put televisions in the wall, as well as that big screen so you don’t miss anything.”
The “Big Screen” is behind you! Why would you pay to go to a game to watch it on a TV on a wall or behind you? The Yankees could have recessed the resturaunt, or even angled the resturaunt in such a way that there were no seats that could not see the field, but they didn’t care. Basically for $12 bucks, the Yankees were content to say “take it or leave it”:
In an interview with Newsday Monday, he said of the obstructed view seats, “We had a choice of selling it to somebody or not. . . . For $12, it’s a choice of taking it or not.”
This is just more of the same fan’s second practice that led to my wife, in essence, losing her season tickets. The Yankees’ ticket representatives misrepresented the facts about the relocation from the start and she lost over 11 years of full season priority and now has no seats. She basically was told that if she switched to a partial plan, she would not loose any priority, when in reality, she was put behind every partial ticket holder that had a partial plan ever. Meaning, even though she bought full season tickets for 11 years, she was behind someone who had a 15 ticket plan for 1 year.
2 comments February 26 2009 1:30 pm | Mike T | Discussion |
Yup, the Yankees’ customer service department did a horrendous job with conveying information to season ticket holders in the conversion of seats from the old stadium to the new stadium. They have been giving out inaccurate information since November! Apparently, full season ticket holders who downgraded to a partial plan called into the FAN yesterday stating that the way the Yankees are treating their season ticket holders is despicable.
There’s a reason why there are full season plans available in sections 115-125. $26K+ per seat… ouch! I hope the TV cameras don’t scan the crowds too closely. There might be a lot of empty seats on the Field Level.
Also, they don’t expect to contact the full season ticket holders who are converting to partial plans until the end of this month to let us know what is available.
What about the Yankees fans who wants to buy a handful of games? When do single game tickets go on sale– the middle of March?
I feel your pain. I have been a Saturday package season ticket holder for the last ten years. I downgraded my seats this year and after filling out that bogus questionnaire, not only did I not get aisle seats like I had before, they stuck me in the last row of the upper deck. I knew my seats were going to be bad, but I at least expected the lower part of the upper deck.Instead of taking care of the season ticket holders from last year first, like they should have done, they opened it up to all comers and people got screwed. I almost took a chance and said no to what they gave me, but after reading all the stories in the paper, I will live to fight another day.