I am a season ticket holder and I was a bit miffed to find that the name plaque on my seat had been removed this season. I had thought that perhaps in time they would be replaced with the new crest, but having watched the Fans' Forum 'highlights' it seems that Lee Hoos has decided that the £20k it would cost can be better spent elsewhere. In these straitened times it is right that Hoos keeps strict control over expenditure, but this seems like an own goal to me. This was a small gesture that had had a real feel-good impact. If we're really scratching around for twenty grand why didn't they just add a couple of quid to the cost of each season ticket? What do you think?
I had in mind a blue plaque listing my dates of residence and why I am famous. It would be a very small plaque. It costs virtually nothing, could easily be paid for as a part of the ST price, and taking them off has wound many ST holders up. Personally not an issue, even if I still had an ST, but not clever by Mr. Hoos.
I'm with Finglas. The Whittingham bloke who writes a lot on LFW put it well for me - I have copied this on to the Fans Forum thread.
The club should have notified ST holders of the plans and asked if they were keeping their seat would they like the old name sticker left on thus saving the club money not having to pay someone to remove the stickers in the first place.
I agree that to give ST holders name-stickers for a personal touch, and then to remove them a couple of years later, is not a great public relations strategy. But since the name stickers didn't make the seats any more comfortable or give me more leg room, I'm not really bothered and so have voted this way
Really not fussed at all. Having said that if I had been been askedif I would have liked my name on my seat, I would have declined.
What annoys me about this is having the plaques allows you to see which seats are taken by a season ticket holder and which are not. In the past this helped me buy tickets for friends so they could sit near me. I suppose it wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to find out which seats around me are not season tickets but it helped anyway. As for the need for them in general: I think they're not essential. It would have been nice to have them but they don't really change my matchday experience. I can live without them.
That's the other way that I was referring to. But what I meant was being there and seeing physically which seats around you were not going to be season ticket seats for the whole season was an easy thing to do. There are other ways. Apart from that they're not essential. But, of course, it's nice having your name there. I can definitely live without it, though.
Here's my post ( more or less ) from the fans forum thread on the names on seats issue. The club bang on about rewarding our fans loyalty and try and emphasise this point throughout the video of the fans forum evening. I think Lee Hoos is great at what he does and is an open and approachable bloke but he has got this one wrong. To use the club's new era of austerity by removing fans names from seats is a massive own goal, especially when you take into account that the club were paying SWP £60,000 a week to not play football. To sacrifice this gesture for the sake of a few quid is a kick in the teeth to the common working person. I think he said it cost about £20,000 to do. As there are roughly 10,000 season ticket holders that equates to about £2 a head. They should of at least have been asked when renewing if we were willing to pay for a name on your seat or just added it to the season ticket price and replaced them without the fuss. They only removed them because we had the old badge on them. If that wasn't the case they would have left them in situ. They have the cheek to charge us a £3.50 booking fee to stick the cup games on our cards so why not have the cheek to ask us for two quid? I'm not overly bothered but my girls like seeing their names on their seat as I'm sure many other kids do. They should've at least replaced the kids names. After all the money the club have wasted over the last five years it is really petty of them to try and save a few bob at the expense of the loyal supporters.
How will people know that Handel used to have a seat next to Jimi Hendrix? In all seriousness though, 20K is quite an insignificant proportion of our weekly wage bill. Also, this was covered before by the season ticket cost so it would be reasonable to ask what that couple of quid is now financing that it wasn't previously. It would also be a fantastic PR save if say the players had a bit of a whip round and paid for all the U14s seats or something.
The business I work for has a much higher turnover than QPR but would still see £20k as a significant saving. It's a sticker with someone's name on. Sell them in the club shop if it really means that much to people.
That's assuming that the cost hasn't been covered in the season ticket cost. That wouldn't make it cost saving then. I'm sure your frugal company only puts it's workers in the cheapest hotels and doesn't waste money on open golf days or wining and dining clients (or having copious amounts of presentations that need those stupid expensive platters full of catered sandwiches). No overpriced branding or excessively priced flipcharts I assume too. I guess if one of their revenue streams was from 10K loyal then penny pinching from each of those is the main area of potential cost saving. I'm not a season ticket holder but if I was, anything that showed a little personalisation so that I wasn't just a name on a DD mandate and an e-mail distribution list might go a long way even if it's relatively cheap and insignificant.
Having my plaque removed won't ruin my season but I did rather like it being there and I would have gladly paid a couple of quid extra for it to remain.
They're tight as a duck's arse on profit-maximisation on everything including the products we sell which is part of the reason I'm leaving. Perhaps I'm in the minority on this which is fine. I think the club should do nice fluffy stuff for young supporters but for all the many things they've got wrong in recent years, I can't believe this is what anyone is bothered by.
Good luck with whatever you've got lined up next. It's not really the actual item but the token gesture (and it would probably have been better received if they'd increased the ticket prices by 5 quid but kept the names).
QPR is a business which relies upon its loyal supporters. Without the support the club is nothing. I think the removal of the stickers is an own goal and takes away a small but personal element of connection between the fan and the club. For the sake of what is an extremely nominal saving, it's a mistake.
