I've used the Eventbrite app plenty of times in the past to attend events, mostly fundraisers. Once or twice, I couldn't access the ticket I paid for, and I either showed up and they let me in anyway. Or I took the introvert's way out and didn't show up at all.
But the other night, I really, really, really wanted the ticket, as it was a wonderful gift from my wonderful friend Joyce.
Joyce has always been a terrific cook, and a cooking hobbyist - following certain favorites, buying new cook books, subscribing to food mags, trying new recipes online. Me, less so. A lot less so. I've always been a pretty good baker, but just an OK cook. I'm good at what I do, but haven't tended to venture very far beyond the good at what I do. But I've gotten more into cooking over the last couple years, becoming more adventurous, often trying out recipes that Joyce has recommended and adding them to my growing repertoire.
Anyway, the other day, I got an email telling me that Joyce, for a belated Christmas gift, had gifted me with a cooking class this May. An Italian cooking class that sounds quite wonderful. Una classe perfetta, in fact.
The platform used to sign people up for the class is Eventbrite.
As I said, I've used Eventbrite plenty of times in the past.
When I got the email about the class, I immediately clicked through to "claim" my gift.
And then the trouble started.
The event, with details, showed up on the Eventbrite app, but when I clicked through to get the ticket itself, which I assumed would show the barcode or QRS needed for admission, this space mushroom was what I saw.
Eventbrite "help" is provided via AI chat. Which might have been fine it it actually was smart enough to provide help. But no...
Instead, I went through an endless doom loop of do-this-do-that chat that took me nowhere.
I reclaimed the gift again. I downloaded an updated version of the phone app. Twice.
No dice.
I'd click on some link provided - you can access your ticket here, you can contact the organizer (the cooking school) here - and nothing happened. At least nothing helpful happened. I'd end up on a screen and the only recourse was to hit the Ask a Question button, which got me back to the AI bot. Sometimes, the bot had told me that if I clicked on a link it sent me, there'd be a form that I could fill out that would, say, go to a human. Hah, I say hah, hah. Form? What form? A little AI prank, perhaps?
At one point, when asked to repeat some details for the nth time, I asked why they couldn't just refer to the most recent chat. But, no. Each chat was its own little useless monster.
Ingest this, you little $%@!##@&! (At least now I know what the use of symbols in place of an obsenity is called. It's grawlix or an obscenicon. Good to know!)
Anyway, I kept asking whether it was necessary to even have a ticket for such a small event, whether the listing of the event was enough.
But AI kept insisting that I needed a ticket.
Via text, I roped Joyce, who lives in Dallas, to step into the support hell fray. She tried a few things to help out, but none of that was working either. (Little did I know until I spoke with her the next day that she had had difficulty signing up and buying the class as a gift, and had spent an hour on her own with AI chat to try to figure out if they had charged her four times for the ticket. It finally suggested that she call her credit card company. A very nice human support rep in India helped her out. Ah, for the sweet, sweet sound of the voice of an actual flesh and blood customer service rep.)
Finally - maybe this was after I asked whether their engine was one of Elon Musk's products - AI told me that some events don't actually issue a ticket. Info which it seems to me it could have conveyed in the early stages of our encounter, not when I'd been on the phone - make that the smartphone, via text - chatting away and getting more an more annoyed.
AI engines can, of course, respond to what I was typing in, doing sentiment analysis, checking my language to determine my emotional tone.
"We know you're frustrated..."
No shit, Sherlock. Was it bringing up Elon Musk's name that did it? I swear to god, I didn't swear once when "communicating" with the AI. Not once. But I'm sure there were plenty of annoyeds and frustrateds in that natural language they could process. Clever of AI to pick up on my temperature - but not so bright to do nothing about it. Save your sympathy, I wanted to type in. Just give me an email or phone number, or even a form, that will put me in touch with a human.
Well, that never happened.
Meanwhile, Joyce, as the buyer, did have an email for the cooking school, so she wrote to them about the issue, copying me. I quickly followed up with an email describing my experience with Eventbrite non-support. The cooking school person got back within minutes, assuring me I was all set (and noting that she had also had negative experiences with what she called Eventbrite's "phony" support. She assured me that my name was on the list. I was good to go. No ticket necessary. Which is kind of what I thought it might be, given that there are only about a dozen folks in the class. But if this had been a large scale event, attended by thousands? What's the recourse then?
It is no exaggeration to say that by the end of my hour+ with Event-not-so-brite's support system, I was having heart palpatations. I almost texted my sister to let her know that if I died that night, Eventbrite's AI chat was responsible.
Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the class. A new pasta. A new chicken dish. A new veggie dish. A new dessert.
Mangia!
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