We are looking at doing some enhancements to our online exchanges. On the initial build out, we did not make SYOS available, because the transaction was relatively complicated.
I'm curious if anyone has built SYOS into their online exchanges. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Patrick
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trustfitzgerald@trustarts.org
Hi Patrick -
We do SYOS with our exchanges, and you are right, it's complicated! Our business practice is that exchanges are free unless they switch to a more expensive seat/night. If they downgrade (i.e. pay less) they don't get the money back and we sell that excess money to a slush payment type which we attach to a production through reports/GLs etc. (Keep in mind we are a single company with only two stages and less than 10 productions a year - it makes even the complexity of this simple compared to what you guys probably have to deal with).
We have a lot of fancy customized coding that basically takes the price type of the original seats that are being exchanged and compares them with the price type of the seat they are exchanging into and displays any upgrade as the price of the seat. If it is a straight exchange or downgrade it displays $0. It also does this in an exchange MOS only so people can't exchange and purchase at the same time. In the backend we put the downgrade money to an on account payment method and then the box office cleans those up before close of show (I think they do it daily still just to keep the volume down).
Subscribers love it and it seems to be working okay, but it does mean having every price sub price type available for all shows in that MOS.
HTH,
HeatherSeattle Repertory Theatre