Tag Archives: sharks

11/4/08

08-09 Sharks Schedule (or converting .csv to .ics)

Every year I end up manually inputting the entire San Jose Sharks schedule into iCal because the Sharks organization doesn’t provide an industry standard .ics file (instead they support Microsoft Outlook). This year, I finally decided to figure out how to convert the .csv file to .ics.

Anyways, long story short, if you’re looking for a schedule of the San Jose Sharks in .ics format you can download it here.

But here’s how you can convert any Outlook compatible .csv calendar export into .ics:

  1. Download/export the .csv
  2. Login to Google Calendar
  3. Create a new Google Calendar under Settings->Calendars (I called it “San Jose Sharks”)
  4. In the left side tool bar, under “Other Calendars” choose Add->Import Calendar
  5. Choose the .csv file and the new “San Jose Sharks” calendar
  6. Go back to Settings->Calendars and click the Export My Calendars link
  7. After downloading, extract the .zip file
  8. Find the .ics file corresponding to your new “San Jose Sharks” calendar.
  9. Import it into your calendaring app of choice (Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, PHP iCalendar, etc)
04/15/08

Ticketmaster is more evil then I thought

So here’s the email I sent to my season ticket holder account representative:

Hi [name redacted],

I’m very upset at what can only be seen as deceptive business practices by the Sharks partner, Ticketmaster against their best customers- season ticket holders.

My wife and I are going to be out of town for Thursday’s game so I went to sell our tickets last night on the Sharks Power Play Ticket Trader. Here’s what I finally figured out this morning:

1. Tickets I sell aren’t actually sold at the “posting price” which I enter, displayed on the confirmation page or in the confirmation email. After looking for 5 minutes, I can’t find anywhere in the process where Ticketmaster actually states the actual dollar amount the tickets will actually sell for.

2. Ticketmaster uses an intentionally convoluted and misleading algorithm for determining the actual sale price and how much profit they make:

If a ticket is sold, you will receive a credit for 90% of the ticket’s Posting Price. The “Posting Price” is an amount that you will be given the chance to designate subject to a minimum and a maximum reflected during the posting process. The tickets then will be listed for sale for 115% of the Posting Price. If the tickets are purchased, the buyer will pay that increased amount plus an authentication and ticketFast® fee.

3. Ticketmaster only explains this in a popup window under the misleading title of “How much can I sell my individual game tickets for?”.

4. Ticketmaster then intentionally hides your own tickets for sale when you search for tickets to buy so that you’re less likely to become aware of this slight of hand on their part. I literally had to use a different computer to see my own tickets listed for sale because when I looked for my own tickets they were filtered out.

The reason for this is quite clear- Ticketmaster is intentionally misleading season ticket holders to artificially raise ticket prices by %15 (the difference between the “posting price” and actual “sell price”) in order to make higher profits.

I understand that Ticketmaster should be compensated for the Sharks Power Play Ticket Trader service, but doing so in such an underhanded and deceptive way does not treat season ticket holders or the people who purchase tickets fairly. I can only hope that SVSE and the Sharks were not aware of Ticketmasters policy. I trust that SVSE and the San Jose Sharks organization do the right thing for season ticket holders and all the fans wishing to buy tickets to Sharks games and force Ticketmaster to stop their deceptive business practices by:

1. Clearly showing to people who wish to sell their tickets the actual selling dollar amount and how much Ticketmaster is actually charging.

2. Removing the filter which prevents people from seeing their own tickets for sale.

Regards,
Aaron Turner Sec 203, Row 7, Seats 5 & 6