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‘UP’ in arms: Upper Peninsula left off ticket website; company responds with discount for ‘yoopers’

Posted at 9:34 AM, Jun 20, 2017
and last updated 2017-06-20 13:37:12-04

UPPER PENINSULA, Mich. – Here’s your latest social media guideline for businesses: Do not “tick off” the Upper Peninsula.

A website called TickPick, which bills itself as an alternative to ticket broker websites like StubHub, has a map of all the areas they cover on their website.  Somehow they either forgot the Upper Peninsula or thought that Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Superior are all really bigger than they already are.

Image from TickPick website

Now, of course, when people started bringing it up on their website and on their Facebook page, a simple apology would probably have made the controversy go away.  But no, they didn’t do that.  (and the response did bring some bad language from up north.)

As of Tuesday morning, the 800+ “1 star” reviews of TickPick on Facebook has driven their average down to 1.7.

But a couple of people got that today is probably not an easy day for TickPick’s Social Media Manager.

Tuesday afternoon, the company responded to FOX 17 directly:

My name is Brett Goldberg and I am the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of TickPick. To say one of our customer support team members handled the initial outreach improperly would be an understatement. I’d like to apologize to the first person who reached out to us and was seriously just trying to help us. Now I am sincerely sorry to everyone else who was offended by this. When I was just showed the comments that one of our representative wrote I was shocked and appalled as well. Yes this person thought they were being funny: they were not.

Here’s how we are addressing the issue:

1. Once management found out about the issue we addressed the map.
2. I personally am going to take the time to post a response to every negative review to show our sincere apologies for this mistake.
3. We’re going to have a company wide meeting to create guidelines and rules so that nothing like this ever happens here again at TickPick.
4. We’ve engaged a PR firm to further ensure that we are taking all the right steps to make this wrong right.
5. We make 10% on a sale, we have gone ahead and created a promo code for 10% off, just use the code YOOPERS (expires 7/4/17).
6. I am encouraging people to respond to me directly at brett@tickpick.com or support@tickpick.com to provide feedback to let us know what else we can do to make this right.

Brett is actually traveling to the Upper Peninsula tonight and will be meeting with local residents at Blackrocks Brewery at 7pm, and covering drinks for everyone to express TickPick’s appreciation for the people of the U.P.