Nothing of interest; just mindless links to bikes Birmingham City Football Club and useless junk

Blogs I read
Titch
Fat Buddha
Nick's Rants
El Mayor
Archives

 
Legoland. Foundations on sand

Here's a cut and paste from today's Financial Times. This article doens't cover the full story, but you get the (bitter) flavour of Legland's incompetence.

On the plus side, one man, a Bluenose, has battled until he's forced changes. Legoland now have to replace their ticketing system.

A misfit at Legoland over bar codes MUDLARK - CLAY HARRIS.

By CLAY HARRIS
462 words
30 April 2005
Financial Times
London Ed1
Page 4
English
(c) 2005 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved

If you're planning a trip to Legoland at Windsor over the bank holiday weekend, keep in mind the experience of Colin Harris and his family during the Easter holidays. When Harris, an IT business consultant from the West Midlands, tried to enter the park, he was told two of his seven tickets were invalid because they had "already been used".

This came as a shock to Harris (no relation). He had kept the tickets securely at his home since buying them in January. Legoland claimed that one adult ticket and one child's ticket had been used on separate days in March. It would not let the party enter until Harris paid Pounds 40.60 for extra tickets. After the long trip, and with children keen to see the park, what else could he do?

After e-mail exchanges, Legoland refused to accept that it could have made any error. On Tuesday, the PA to Legoland's managing director revealed in an e-mail: "The bar codes used today are what are known in the industry as 1D bar codes, which unfortunately allows them to be copied. However, we will be introducing 2D bar codes which will not allow tickets to be copied."

She added: "Based on the information that we have from our ticketing system, the tickets, or a copy of the tickets, were used on the days and times specified."

Hans Aksel Pedersen, sales and marketing director for Legoland at Windsor, told the FT: "This is obviously a very serious matter for us and having liaised with our ticket system provider, we now believe there has been a breach of security in the fulfilment process. This could have occurred any time from when the tickets were printed at the park until they were delivered to Mr Harris's home address."

He said Legoland was "undertaking a full review of the park's side of the fulfilment process and will take the necessary steps to ensure that this situation is not repeated." Legoland was "aware that the bar codes on entrance tickets can be photocopied, just like all other bar codes".

Mr Pedersen added: "Our ticketing system ensures that each ticket bar code is unique. Once the bar code has been scanned, the system will not accept it a further time so tickets can only be used once." One bar-code expert consulted by the FT thought it was not likely that a photocopier could reproduce bar codes to the necessary resolution.

Legoland is offering Harris a Pounds 40.60 refund and seven free vouchers. He has little appetite for a return visit so is giving away the tickets through his local paper.

PSB
posted by kwacky at 9:29 am