# Question About Ticketing



## soundguy99 (Feb 7, 2012)

Hey guys,
I have an Inquiry for you guys concerning how you guys process your tickets.
Currently Our theater is using Ticket Turtle which has been ok. To extend our services we also have been allowing our customers to buy tickets online, or over the phone, with them having the ability to print their own tickets out at home, and then be scanned at the door.
The system works ok however because were using barcode scanners through ticket turtle some of the tickets being printed off at the customers home won`t get recognized by our scanners or the bar code on the ticket gets strenched so the scanners wont read them.
The idea of the scanners defiently help speed up the line up at the door, as well as the idea of having the customer printing off their own tickets at home, defiently has its advantaes as a fair amount of our customers live in the surrounding rual area and would have to make a seperate trip into the city to pick up their tickets.
I don`t know is there any difference or advatages of maybe using QR codes instead of traditional bar codes?
I was wondering if anyone else had similar experiences with using barcodes and scanners, or even printing tickets on home printers and could offer any insights.
As I said to avoid the barcode mess were looking at stopping people from printing their own tickets, however it would be a great service to our rual customers if we can find a way to make it work.
Anythoughts would be greatly apreciated,
Thanks,
soundguy_99


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## josh88 (Feb 7, 2012)

I don't have experience with scanners and such, but if you did choose to stop the home printing, couldn't your rural customers still do a will call type pick up, where they make their purchase and then the tickets are set aside for them to pick up the day of the performance. That still saves them from making another trip. Just a thought.


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## Footer (Feb 7, 2012)

Most places that don't want to do the scanners do will call, my venue included. When they byy the ticket, they make a printout. The night of the show our box office manager prints the will call, stuffs the tickets, and sets them aside. As patrons come in, they go to the will call window and trade the printout for the tickets. Less then 20 seconds of window time per person.


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## soundguy99 (Feb 7, 2012)

Hey guys,
Thanks for the replies,
We definetly do do that as well, however we also have alot of last minute customers, so between the will call and the last minute ticket buyers, our box office staff can get pretty overwhelmed.
Thats why we tried getting our over the phone or online customers to print their own tickets. So they could have their tickets ready to be scanned like any other customer freeing up our box office staff to deal with the new ticket buyers.
It can get pretty hectic last minute the night of the concert as many of you know. So we were trying to help resolve that.
I just wanted to post the question to see if anyone else had something similar and could suggest something we haden`t tried yet, to help improve the online and over the phone customers while avoiding the last minute confusion the night of the concert.
Again any thoughts are greatly apreciated,
Thanks,
soundguy99


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## cpf (Jul 11, 2012)

Seeing as this was never really answered, and for future reference:

Linear/1D/normal barcode will always be more error resistant than 2D ones - its just a matter of information density. If your reader is having trouble reading linear barcodes that you think should be fine, you probably want a better reader. In my experience, laser models are quite good at reading challenging codes, but they are a bit pricey.

As for [email protected] tickets: I've never heard of the software the OP is using, but in general e-tickets should be provided to the user as 8.5x11 PDF files, making it hard to screw up the printing. 

I don't know the workflow of your theatre, but ideally the scanner-operators should be within arms reach of a numpad/keyboard to manually key in ticket numbers should a ticket be unscannable. Even if they're just typing into a notepad window for later entry, just as long as the line is moving.


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## ruinexplorer (Jul 12, 2012)

Thank you for following up on this thread.


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