Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Sooner or Purolator you'll get your tickets

Purolator is the 91% Canada Post-owned courier company that is also the official courier company of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

A courier company, by its very nature, is supposed to offer faster, higher-quality service than a post office. I might as well have been at a Canada Post outlet Tuesday night to pick up a package of Olympic tickets. I wasn't home when delivery was attempted on Monday.

There already was a lineup when I arrived at the Lonsdale outlet in North Vancouver around 6:20 p.m.

One staffer was so mesmerized by her paperwork and data entry duties at the front desk that she did not even acknowledge the growing lineup. The one employee who was handling customers disappeared for up to five minutes behind-the-scenes with customers' photo identification and the door-hanger left by the delivery driver to retrieve their ticket packages. A manager not wearing a Purolator uniform eventually showed up at the desk to handle other customers.

Idle chatter among the lineup, which grew to eight people, concluded that everyone was attempting to pick-up Olympic tickets. VANOC set a mandatory minimum $10 charge on ticket deliveries through Purolator. One middle-aged woman approached the staffer on paperwork and data entry duties and politely asked why she wasn't helping serve those lined-up and was greeted with a rude response: "I have work to do!"

I finally got my package and was out the door by 6:35 p.m. Clearly one Purolator outlet is not ready for the prime-time crush of Olympic ticket-holders and the experience only added to the frustration many have felt in their quest to get tickets to witness first-hand the Games they're already funding through their taxes.

Tell me your Olympic ticket purchase experiences: bob.mackin@sunmedia.ca or twitter.com/bobmackin

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