December 2008 Archives

The Keswick Theatre canceled a show I had bought tickets for.  They then sent a letter insisting that tickets be sent back to them before they will issue a refund.

I purchased my tickets over the Internet and live far away from the box office.  I shouldn't have to pay money (buy stamps) and put in significant time (mail them the tickets) just to get the proper refund to which I am entitled.

I took this up with the box office and they said mailing back the tickets is their policy despite the facts that a) the last canceled show they refunded my credit card without the tickets and b) they never disclosed this policy.  The box office acknowledged the tickets are now worthless (since there is no show) and that there is no real point for them to have them in hand, but they nevertheless refused to give me my refund.  I gave them all the information they should need to do so, including my confirmation #, credit card # & personal other details to verify my purchase, including my credit card authorization code.

This is the second show they have canceled in the 4 times I have bought tickets from them.  I not saying they are doing this on purpose, but the end result is a nice scam to keep money on canceled shows.  

Perhaps many people won't bother with their (new?) policy's intrinsic hassle (mailing back tickets), and might even throw out their notice (thinking it promotional junk mail).  And what if the tickets were never received, e.g. lost in the mail?

I just want a refund on my credit card for the amount paid.  Filing complaints with the FTC, BBB, PA AG's office and various online sites made me feel a little better though.  The irony of spending time on that (and this blog post) is not lost on me.  But I want this post and the complaints to be indexed so that people searching for Keswick will be aware of their policy and bad customer service.

1. Greps for the Web log lines desired.  In my case, I'm looking for two JS files in a nginx log.  In your case, you'll probably want to change everything but the grep.
   
   
2. Awks out the referrer line.  In my nginx log this is the 10th field.  In your case, it might be a slightly different #.
   
   
3. Perls out the domain.  You could skip this step if you want to count each different referring URL differently.  In my case, the widget is deployed on blogs, and so each post shows up as a different referring URL, and that creates noise, so I grouped them.
   
   
4. Sorts the domains, so that 5 works.
   
   
5. Uniqs the domains, i.e. groups & counts them (the -c).  
   
   
6. Sorts the grouped domains by the count, numerically (-n).

Enjoy! 

That's why I created these new Karma & Profiles widgets.  There's a live example (on my homepage): http://www.gabrielweinberg.com

Enjoy!