FAQs (for prospective customers)

General

Money

Box Office Operations

Security and Privacy


FAQs (for existing customers)


FAQs (with answers)

General

How do I figure out if this will work for me?

We suggest three steps:

  1. Sample the information on the web site, maybe paying the most attention to the testimonials.
  2. Run through the live demo (which uses our sample data), to see what the purchasers’ experience is, and also what reports ticket sellers get.
  3. Then have us set up a test drive with your own data.

It's free to you and very low cost to us, so there is no obligation. If you're satisfied, we can make the test drive into a live webstore very quickly.

Do I have to have a web site to put the link on?

Yes.

Is there any minimum number of performances or tickets?

No.

How long a lead time do you need?

A day. Our timing record is a high school in Maryland. They sold their first ticket on-line five hours after first contacting us. There were performances eight and nine days later. Eleven days after the first contact, we mailed them the check for the tickets they sold on-line.

Can I set the system to accept donations?

Yes, if you're a non-profit organization. And we don't charge our fee for those, although the bank's credit card charges still apply.

Can you ensure that tickets are not duplicated by the recipients?

No. About 5% of our customers treat what people print at home on 8 1/2" x 11" sheets as just a receipt to be brought to a will-call window. But those sheets can be matched to a list the system provides by name, phone, email, or last 4 digits of credit card, so any duplications can be detected, if not prevented. In practice, this problem seems never to come up in the communities we work with.

Will Seat Yourself work for community theatres?

Some community theatres do use Seat Yourself. But here are some things many community theatres need that we don't have:

  • We don't have online subscriptions and group rates.
  • There is no support for thermal ticket printers.
  • You can't set up multiple logins with different permissions for different employees.
  • We don't offer the option to use your own credit card merchant account.
  • We don't support credit card swipers, so taking credit card payments at the door is cumbersome.
  • We can't release any funds until after the associated event. See this note for details.

Can I read through a more formal agreement?

Absolutely. Here is our complete Client Agreement

How long have you been in business?

Since January, 2002. Our first customer, a non-profit regional theater, has been using our software to sell tickets for over 7 years. We have been selling high school performing arts tickets since the fall of 2007.

Do you have any relevant affiliations?

We are the exclusive online ticketing licensee of the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA), a non-profit organization that includes over 4,000 Thespian Troupes as members.


We are the only online ticketing service under contract with the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL.

Money

Is there a setup fee or any sort of cancellation fee?

No.

Are there any other fees besides the 50¢ fee that the on-line ticket purchasers pay?

Credit card fees charged to us, and passed on to customers, are 25¢ per transaction plus 3%.

Can you give me an example?

Someone buys four $10 tickets, using Visa. They pay $42. We take $2. The bank takes .25+(42*.03)=$1.51. You keep $38.49.

Is there any flexibility on which fees the purchaser pays and which we do?

Yes. For almost all of our customers, the 50¢ per ticket fee is paid by the purchaser, and the bank fees are paid by our customer. And the purchasers see their fees separately from the ticket price, but do not see the bank fees. But we can almost always tailor the fee split to your needs.

Can purchasers cancel and get refunds?

Our policy is no refunds. We make exceptions when the performance has been cancelled, or if you send us an email request, or when a purchaser contacts us immediately and claims they purchased something without wanting to. Each of these 3 situations is uncommon.

When do you send me my money?

We schedule a payment with our bank within one business day of hearing from you (via email) that a performance or set of performances has happened. The reason we can't send the money immediately is because if you cancel a performance, we have to reverse all the credit card charges. The reason you have to send us an email is that we have no independent way of knowing whether a performance has happened.

Can you do direct deposit?

Yes, if you send us a voided check, via e-mail or fax (914-239-4803).

Do I need to have my own credit card merchant account?

No, we provide that.

Box Office Operations

Do customers print their own tickets?

Yes, using any standard printer.

Can you do reserved seating as well as general admission, or even mix both in the same performance?

Yes. Just send us your seating chart, via e-mail or fax (914-239-4803).

Can I see how ticket sales are progressing?

Yes, you get a login and can see reports on who bought tickets and for how much at any time.

How do I keep you from selling seats we already sold, or want to sell offline?

The box office application includes a seat manager that lets you determine which seats the webstore can sell, and which seats you make reservations for. You can move seats back and forth between the two categories, as long as they haven't been sold.

Can I sell tickets beforehand or at the door without paying any fees?

Yes. We give you a simple box office application that you use to sell seats and print tickets. If you take cash or check, there are no fees whatsoever. If you accept a credit card in payment, our 50¢ fee and the bank charges apply.

Do you keep selling tickets right up to curtain time?

No, we shut off web sales, typically 12 hours before curtain. And you can set that earlier or later.

Why don't you let purchasers choose the exact seats they want?

We've found that our approach reduces the number of isolated seats that can't be sold later. Also, many theatres prefer not to let all purchasers see exactly what has and hasn't been sold. Instead, the system suggests seating choices, and purchasers choose from among those. You can set the number of seating choices suggested large enough (e.g., 15) to offer purchasers a relatively wide choice.

Can individual students get credit for sales they help make?

Yes. We can designate a field on the checkout page for purchasers to enter the name of the student to credit for the sale.

Security and Privacy

How do you protect the security of credit card information?

Credit card numbers are erased after we put through the charge, typically seconds after the information is entered by the purchaser. We process charges through Authorize.net, (a subsidiary of Visa, Inc.), whose seal is at the bottom of the site pages. Also, our credit card merchant account requires us to be PCI-compliant, and we use a company called Trustwave to validate that compliance. Look for the Trusted Commerce seal at the bottom of the site pages.

How do you protect the security of other information?

We use industry standard security certificates and encryption. Look for the Thawte seal at the bottom of the site pages.

Do you treat my purchasers' names and email addresses as confidential?

Yes. We treat all information provided by purchasers as confidential, and we don't share it with anyone but you.