In 4 days the Swiss can do what South Africans can’t in 4 weeks

So I finally got my World Cup 2010 tickets. That is, I actually got them about two months ago but only got confirmation now. Why? Crap service from ticketing service in SA. Here’s the full story:

I successfully applied for 7 games (4 group games, 2 second round and 1 quarter final). FIFA debited a substantial amount of money (R 7000) from the credit card but their website said “application paid” for the 2 second round games, the other five were listed as “application pending to pay”. I wasn’t too worried at first, as I just thought it will take them a while to process the payment for all the games. After the status didn’t change after two weeks I started getting nervous – losing 7k and not going to the quarter-final would suck big blue balls. So I decided to complain to FIFA. Their website says that there are two ticketing centres – one in Switzerland and one in SA. The latter being for local applicants, the former for everybody else. So I emailed the SA centre and explained the situation. After about a week they replied asking me to fax them the proof of payment. After doing that I waited. And waited. And waited. For about two weeks. No email. No SMS. No Fax. No Pigeon mail. No nothing. Faxed the stuff through again. Still no reply. Emailed again. No answer. Decided to call. These FUCKING ASSHOLES DO NOT PICK UP THE PHONE DURING BUSINESS HOURS. I tried calling about 10 times – on different days. So in total, I spent about 4 weeks trying to get hold of them and resolve the problem. And all I got in response was one emailed which wasn’t followed up, even though I provided all the correct info.

I got pissed off and decided to email the ticketing centre in Switzerland and complain. I honestly thought they will tell me to fuck off because they’re not supposed to deal with SA applicants. Instead, they replied within two hours and in a very polite manner requested that I scan and email them the proof of payment. After I did that they emailed me and told me that the matter has been passed on to their financial department and I should check the status on FIFA.com in a few days. That was on Monday. On Thursday morning the status was indeed changed. In 4 says they did what the SA ticket centre couldn’t do in 4 fucking weeks! Even though they technically weren’t even supposed to help me!

I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one sitting with this problem so if you googled SA FIFA 2010 ticket problem I hope you stumbled across this page for some advice 

I’m glad that SA organized a successful Confederations Cup, but simple problems like these are not addressed we are looking at some very unhappy customers.

In the mean time I’m looking forward to the quarter final. Category 1 seats at Ellis Park – Fuck Yeah!!!