Hello all.
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I had a mailbag all ready to publish (I will do it tomorrow), but I have to write this now, because for the last 7 months (Really!!!!) I have had a column in mind about the experience at the Sun Bowl, the home of the UTEP Miners and biennially, the home of the Battle of I-10.
7 months ago, I didn’t have this Aggies column, but I do have another column where I talk consumer experiences, customer service protocols and ethics on both sides, and I sprinkle in a little media critique in there as well. I call it The Notorious Banker: Consumer Beast, and my most recent column, I broke down how the local news in El Paso broke down a story about a celebrity stalker. You would like it, I promise you:
But some breaking news that might interest some borderland people.
BREAKING TODAY: Sun Bowl is poised to announce Major Upgrades to the Stadium, per sources. Heather Wilson should make an announcement very soon about it.
I was going to write about the Sun Bowl there, because I went to two major events in the summer and fall of 2023 and as an observer of processes from my managerial days, coupled with the fact that I consult on customer service protocols as a sort of side gig, not to mention document problem handling everywhere I go to make sure people get the BEST experience, I can tell you that the Sun Bowl has some of the worst fan experience issues of any place I have ever seen.
Mind you, I managed a bank with 5600 clients walking into it, I have talked customer experience with execs in banking who made 7-figures a year, more than Coach Sanchez and Hooten combined. When I left banking, my mission was to ensure that I kept the one skill I learned well there, customer experience and ethics when dealing with clients strong, because it WILL take me higher in this job and any other job I do.
In the early 2000s, while I did some music writing, I also worked part-time with the Sidney Frank Bottling Company, which makes Jagermeister for handling backstage operations for their big music tours like Ozzfest, which included corralling musicians, getting materials ready for performers interactions with fans, and to be a little funny, make sure they didn’t get too drunk/high
You may not know who the guy on the left is, but Howard Jones from the band Killswitch Engage sold a couple million CDs in his time.
Customer/Fan Experience means a lot to me.
The Sun Bowl, in its man-made wonder, challenges my fundamental beliefs in customer service EVERY SINGLE TIME I GO.
I do also want to mention, because it is relevant, that my wife is a big event planner, and plans one of the biggest events at NM State every semester. I’ll leave it at that. So both of us are cognizant and watching how people function in an event environment.
August 2023 - Motley Crue Concert
Issues with Staffing
Issues with Staff Not Knowing The Rules Set By The Venue
Issues with Parking
Issues with Food Purchases
Issues with Cell Signal
I got to admit. It was a great concert. Motley Crue is getting old, and lead singer Vince Neil doesn’t have the pipes anymore, but it is still fun. Alice Cooper was always great, even in his late 70s, and Def Leppard is still relevant in 2024 as it was in 1984.
The Sun Bowl, who predates almost every aged rocker on stage that night has held up like Vince Neil’s vocal range, which is not well.
First off: The Staff… There’s literally nothing more I can’t stand than a staff that doesn’t know their job. I, however, as a manager and consultant can tell you one thing: When a staff doesn’t know how to do their job, it is the managers fault. Pure and simple. They are supposed to have training processes to get it right.
Read the list of prohibited items at Sun Bowl that day, straight from their Facebook.
There’s a lot of things you can’t take, which I get, because there is always one knuclehead that says, “Well, it doesn’t say I can’t bring my emotional support Emu.”
But that list is a lot, but I circled the important one: “Prohibited: Water Bottles (one sealed, plastic water bottle permitted per patron)”
So, we waited almost 40 minutes to get through security and no more than 25 times did I hear “YOU CAN’T BRING OUTSIDE FOOD AND BEVERAGES INSIDE”
That little canopy was the site of a lot of ticked off people that day. People told to throw their sealed bottles in the garbage. People who read the rules, followed the rules, spent money on their water bottle were told they were in the wrong, and would not get in unless they complied. The tension you could cut with a knife… a knife that is prohibited, that is.
Armed with the screenshot of the UTEP Facebook page, I knew it would be a confrontation for me. Me? I am not afraid to challenge someone when I know they are wrong and/or not following procedure. I may be shy, but in customer service, I am not.
I go up, I get told that I can’t bring it in…I show them the facebook post about “No outside food and drink” but “may bring in one sealed bottle.” I look the person in the eye. He waves me through. I win. They lose. Though I feel bad for them. They were likely lazily told by someone “NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR DRINKS PERIOD!” and they are being usurped by their own bad communication.
This was another angle with comments about the same issue.
Ruling: They hire people off the street, give them no training, and feed them to 50,000 wolves.
We were 10 songs into Def Leppard, the second to last band and there were people STILL getting into the stadium. People complaining about an hour wait for a beer, and the beer was hot.
The cell tower was shut down apparently too, and I can confirm that. I was frustrated the whole time I was there because I wanted to be in close communique with my mom because it was 1 month after my grandpa died, and wanted to be able to check on them. Yes, I know some of you will say, “Well, it’s your fault for going, James!” True… But no cell signal (place is notorious for cell signal issues anyway) made me upset which leads into another complaint.
Almost all vendors at Sun Bowl are cash only, and I cannot for the life of me believe that is because the lack of a cell signal means POS Credit Card systems are inert because of the no signal thing, which leads to likely millions in lost commerce a year.
So aside from Stadium concessions that sell the basic stadium food (popcorn, pickles, sodas, beer) there is a ton of little food trucks that represent the borderland. Small business owners who likely pay a hefty fee just to be included in the concession area at Sun Bowl. I was impressed by the options, and YES, THEY HAVE MORE CHOICES THAN AGGIE MEMORIAL.
But, I was taken aback that I would say…80% of them were cash only. Now, cash only is not a big deal to me usually. In southern NM, El Paso, and most people in this demographic prefer cash. Trust me, I got a report every week in banking saying how terrible we were at cash management, because our clients demanded to have cash in hand instead of using their debit cards. (Literally got written up for it all the time)
But.. I also sold credit card machines for Bank of America, POS Devices, what BofA calls “Merchant Services”
I sold these products called Clover, which are terribly overpriced, have big claims they they have triple the backup in case phone lines go down, meaning you can take cards even if your main internet/connection are down, plus you actually are able to generate more revenue with tips with it.
Although my bank overcharged for this and made people do long-term leases, it DOES help you in business be able to sell more things more efficiently, particularly in a busy place
Every time I saw a new business accept a credit card, I felt responsible for making their business grow, because you DO spend more money with a card than you do with cash.
So almost every food truck (I wish I had a photo) had a sign that said cash only. For Mr. Banker (me) that means I am not going to eat anything.
For the record GECU, A HUGE SPONSOR for UTEP, and honestly, a great bank who is opening their first Las Cruces location soon, DOES have ATMs at most of the concourse areas. Problem there is, non-members will get charged a fee for the “convenience” of the inconvenience of the bad signal not allowing CC Transactions.
That’s a big issue to me. I heard about those fees every day of my career, and I trained myself not to do it.
Also what happens is all that machine gives out are 20s, which inevitably means that people are breaking 20s, which will lead to change shortages by food vendors, which can impact their net profit if they are paying out more change than they should because they are running low on small bills. You are creating an issue that can’t be fixed (getting change for the day) at that moment.
Plus, those portable ATMs almost rarely carry a decent amount of cash in them. (shh don’t tell anyone) but a portable ATM like the ones in the Sun Bowl will have maybe just under 100k in them. Trust me, even if you put a $300 limit on people, it will go fast. It goes fast in a small town like my hometown of Socorro, NM. So ATMs are not the answer. I will get to what GECU needs to do in a bit, because inevitably, those food truck people are their customers as well, and the people who want to spend money to eat, but with a card are being sold on the convenience of a card knowing in the Sun Bowl, you likely can’t use it.
So I don’t eat. I will wait until I get home and gorge, not spending money in the venue, a decision I am sure a lot of people made, and can easily be in the millions over the course of every couple years.
The chaos of that event is still not lost on me.
The parking situation is every college, to be fair, and places that are off limits are typically the spots that you should want people to park. All along the hilly road to the Sun Bowl there are parking attendants who have to inform people if they park on the side there, they would be towed, leading to gridlock while a bunch of people make 5-point turns. It’s a mess. We got there early, and because we had knowledge of what the last songs would be, we got the hell out of there before anyone else and got home at a normal time.
October 2023 - UTEP/NMSU Game
Issues with cell connection
Issues with event staff
Line was long to get in as always. Though an estimated 30,000 less people than the event in August, the line definitely flowed better. It was a wednesday night and the stadium half full, we mosey our way to the ticket taking spot before the game. We walk by where the players exit the arena and the bands entered the arena. We stand in line, with our cell phones in hand to go to the east side where our seats were. We are on the NM State sidelines in the second row, purchased the day before the game. Sweet!
So we show this pass.. this is the exact pass here
The lady, a spanish-speaking only lady (which I am fine with. I can speak enough to get by) looks at the phone with bewilderment and tells us in Spanish that those aren’t the tickets (they are) and that it should have a bar code for her to scan with her device…one of those ticket taking devices that has a bar code scanner and a NFC scanner for todays new tickets.
I told her those are the tickets UTEP sent. The line stops because of us.
Now… I understand that yes, Ticketmaster/UTEP…SOMEONE still is selling tickets with a barcode. I get that. I am fine with that, but even so, she mentioned to her coworker that the device wasn’t working either, meaning bar code or not, it wouldn’t be able to validate my ticket SHOULD I HAVE A BAR CODE. It is 2-3 minutes later. We went from being the only ones in line to 20 people behind us in an instant.
The other girl, who spoke English, just reiterated that they can’t let us in with the tickets that are saved in my wallet because “I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN AN EMAIL FROM UTEP THAT HAS A BAR CODE FOR THEM.”
Now, you got to understand something. It’s human nature to want to go, “NO YOU IDIOT!!!! THATS NOT HOW IT WORKS!!! ARE YOU DENSE!!!!,” But as my years in customer service told me… someone gave them bad information. I told her, “I don’t know what to tell you. This is the ticket.” I left it at that. Stood there. The lady gets on her radio and mentions in Spanish that this guy says he doesn’t have a ticket with a barcode and he only has it on his phone…
A few seconds later, we are waved through without scanning our tickets (remember these are second row!) and that it will be ok, which of course it SHOULD have been ok, but in the end, the tickets weren’t scanned. That means I could have had any ticket on my phone even if it wasn’t mine and because their systems weren’t working and/or they aren’t trained to even take tickets, I could have caused chaos with some creative editing of my ticket.
The first lady looked at me like I had 12 heads that I was the crazy one for not having a bar code ticket, and the second lady created a scenario where she put it on me that “I SHOULD HAVE RECEIVED AN EMAIL.”
Bad customer handling experience, and that can only be described by these folks being hired on a event basis, rather than trained to be regular staff on call and ready to enforce rules they were taught in some training somewhere.
While I am all about hiring the most amount of people you can, it is crazy that absolutely no one in that interaction knew how NFC tickets work, yet they hold a device that scans NFC tickets that doesn’t work because of the cell signal issues.
We made it and we saw the Aggies win!
I DVR’d the pregame show KTSM ran for the game, with Andy Morgan and Natassia Paloma doing a good job under the circ*mstances, but doing a live shot at the venue is like doing it from the Outback of Australia or in the Space Shuttle. There are weird delays in sound, picture quality issues and more.
I critiqued Andy Morgan, who at times works for NM State about his critique of Diego Pavia not speaking to the media, but I made it a point to credit him on a good pregame show despite the connectivity issues, issues Andy himself confirmed to me.
Nice guy who doesn’t send threatening DMs like a colleague of his. (I will tell that story one day…)
We all go through them, and we all have to deal with them. While I am an Aggies writer, I want to like where I am going, and would go to more UTEP events (I mean concerts) if the stadium situation is not so god-awful. I want to like things, and not hate things, you know? I realized life is too short to have bad experiences.
That being said. If the following things aren’t addressed in the Sun Bowl upgrades:
Cell Tower/Internet Connection which allows for fan interactivity with the events, ability to use Apple Pay/Digital Cards at the venue, and/or allow vendors to not stress about how to accept payment.
To that point, the ability to be cashless if things are improved. Being cash only in a market which is predominantly Hispanic, who do prefer cash is something to be mindful about, but at the end of the day, Sun Bowl, UTEP, and small business owners are losing out on millions of dollars of commerce by not fixing this problem with connectivity.
Going to a major venue should not mean a total blackout of cell service.
Seats? While I don’t like the benches with no chairbacks (an issue of mine at AMS) because it hurts my back and legs, and at 41 years old, those things now matter to me, I don’t even care about that, although improving that for the common fan will be cool.
Parking? I would recommend the construction of a parking garage strictly for events, maybe off-site. Where? I don’t know I don’t know EP that well, but something to make it easily accessible, even if it was at a high cost ($20-$30 to park)
Event Staff - Have extensive training for a better fan experience. Those aren’t temp jobs in the sense that you can throw on a shirt and think you know everything. An efficient venue makes a ton of money, and that place is not efficient, and the powers that be that run it KNOW it is not efficient.
I fear it is going to be something silly like luxury/club suites which will lower the capacity, and have a further chasm between average fan and rich person.
I fear that it is going to be LED lights or a bigger jumbotron (which is nice in my opinion already) and not focus on making sure butts are in seats before an event starts and have better traffic flow in corridors, which is part of the line for the basic concessions and leads to Mexico City-Style gridlock at times with people.
I fear it will be Orange Turf or a new design on the turf. We shall see. I am hopeful, because there are TONS of issues to address.
Aggies Baseball Team Falls to DBU 5-3 in CUSA Tourney
Disputed Home Plate Call Leads to Big Inning for DBU. Aggies Play Elimination Game Tomorrow Morning.
While the NM State Aggies, 25-27 on the season, had a hard road to make it to the NCAAs ahead of them, a matchup with DBU, nationally ranked, and likely in the big tourney regardless if they win CUSA was up first.
Aggies kept the Patriots at Bay for a couple of innings until the 4th with the game tied at 1-1, Ethan Mann lines a single to left, Keith Jones, first-team All-conference throws towards home, relay man cuts it off, throws to home and the DBU player Santos iiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssss SAFE!!!
(Wait, What?)
I rarely want to editorialize in telling the play-by-play of a game, but the replays given to us by ESPN and seen by the powers that be who run the replay system clearly could see the Aggies tagging out Santos before reaching the plate.
Here’s 2 angles:
After a challenge, it was ruled that #3 was safe. Couldn’t believe it. That made the game 2-1, and the man who singled home the run advanced all the way to third on the play, and it led to 3 more runs in the inning, which opened the game up.
Aggies scored two on a sac fly and RBI single in the 6th to cut the lead to 5-3. Despite 9 hits, the Aggies can only muster the 3 runs and fall 5-3 today to DBU, who advances, and the Aggies have an early start tomorrow. We will see if the Aggies can stay alive against WKU, a team they played last week and went 1-2 against. First pitch is at 8am Thursday. Pack a McMuffin!
With that I am done until tomorrow. I will have a recap of tomorrow’s game and the mailbag I had ready until the Sun Bowl news today. I hope you liked it and while it is wordy it made sense to you.
Thank You!
Go Aggies!
James Baca - AGGREGATOR
AGGREGATOR is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
