I HATE THE US SOCCER FEDERATION
Like many other US soccer fans, I am very unhappy with the US Soccer Federation today. On December 12th, we all had an opportunity to place an order for tickets to see the USA play in the World Cup in Germany. US Soccer gave us very specific instructions on how the sale would happen and how tickets would be allocated. They said that starting at 10am, we would all receive an application to order tickets via email which we had to fill out and either fax or mail the application to an address they were going to provide. Tickets were to be allocated on a first-come first-served basis and they said they made arrangements so they would be able to accept the large number of faxes. We would be notified by January 6th of the status of our order. If we did not get tickets, we could order tickets on January 6th from US Soccer or today from FIFA. December 12th didn't go as planned. They started sending out applications before 10am so some people had an unfair advantage. Many people tried to fax in their order all day but could not get through. At 5pm, we decided to give up on the fax and FedEx our order in so that it would arrive the next morning. Some people said they found an alternate fax number for US Soccer and faxed their order there even though the rules stated that orders could only be send to the one fax number. A couple days later we got a confirmation email saying that our order was received. My friend Dave, who I'm ordering tickets with, called a few days later to check on the order status. The person he spoke to said that because we were such loyal fans (Dave went to Guatemala this year to see the US play), he would put our order in the "VIP pile".
On January 5th, we all received an email from US Soccer stating that because the demand was so high, there would be no ticket sale on January 6th and that they would not be telling us the status of our orders until January 14th. January 14th was a very key date because the FIFA ticket sale ends on January 15th, and before placing an order on January 15th we had to know the status of our US Soccer order. If US Soccer allocated us tickets and we applied for more tickets through FIFA, both orders would be canceled! So... we needed to know either YES or NO from US Soccer by 3pm today. Some users got confirmation emails last night but many, including us, did not. Which basically means that US Soccer screwed all of us. A few minutes before 3pm, US Soccer posted a message on their website stating that if you did not recieve an email you were not getting tickets. But it was too late! Unfortunately, this was probably my best chance at getting tickets, and now I'm not even sure if I'll be able to go. I have applied for some tickets through FIFA and there is another ordering period next month through FIFA, but demand is so high, I think my chances are slim. My only hope is that the "VIP pile" really exists and they saved some tickets for us. But with the way US Soccer is handling things, I kinda doubt it. US Soccer really angered their biggest fans, just read some of the messageboard posts on Big Soccer.
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