Valley Boys
By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS
Tribune Staff Reporter
lmunnings@tribunemedia.net
THIRTY-SEVEN per cent of Junkanoo parade seats are reserved for certain people, with many seats located in prime positions in Rawson Square and in the front of Scotiabank.
This, ALIV chief information officer Dwayne Davis suggested yesterday, could explain why many struggled to get tickets yesterday after Boxing Day and New Year’s Day tickets went on sale at noon.
Frustrated residents complained about technical challenges with the ALIV Events app.
Some said many seats were not available for purchase. Others said it was difficult to see which seats were taken, describing the process as tedious.
During a press conference, Mr Davis said 37 per cent of seats are reserved for government partners, groups and sponsors.
“Sadly, everybody wants to sit in Rawson Square, and everybody wants to sit in front of Scotiabank,” he said. “Where did most of that 37 per cent come from? In Rawson Square and Scotiabank.
“Those areas are sold out but there are other areas on Bay Street that are available for purchase. So it’s no conspiracy. No, we did not take all the tickets out before they went on sale.”
The launch of the app last year was seen as an opportunity to modernize ticket purchasing for the Junkanoo parades. People can also buy tickets ALIV Cable Beach and Habour Bay stores.
Junkanoo Corporation of New Providence (JCNP) chairman Dion Miller said an estimated 8100 seats were available. Officials said within the first hour of yesterday’s launch prime sections were sold out.
Mr Davis acknowledged technical challenges.
“We had an issue with payments this morning,” he said. “Because we had so many transactions trying to process at the same time, it was rejecting a token, probably looking as fraud.”
“Another issue that we have is a mandate by the government and if I’m speaking out of turn, minister, let me know. It was mandated that persons are allowed to purchase tickets in cash as well as in the app, so you will have situations where persons were either at Harbour Bay or Cable Beach purchasing a ticket with cash, and you try and purchase the same ticket via the app.”
Fifty per cent of the tickets were reportedly sold up to yesterday afternoon.
Comments
bahamianson 11 months, 3 weeks ago
Is that something new? Every year , everytime you have to use anything via the internet, there is always a problem.
alfalfa 11 months, 3 weeks ago
Tried to log in on my gateway to pay a Govt fee. Message is my gateway not working. Went to the Govt agency to pay. Message our system ain't working. This is today Dec 5. They have no clue what is going on. I was told come back tomorrow. Mind you I am trying to pay the government. This place aint real.
ThisIsOurs 11 months, 3 weeks ago
"This place aint real"
When they guh let us know?
ThisIsOurs 11 months, 3 weeks ago
"Because we had so many transactions trying to process at the same time, it was rejecting a token, probably looking as fraud.”
Uhm... so Im pretty certain this is PR cover, Mr Davis knows his IT.
There were 8000 tickets in total. Imagine Amazon saying it couldnt handle 8000 payments. In reference to cash and online at the same time the system should be able to resolve a contention for the same ticket within seconds of each other. The problem with most systems is either enough testing isnt done or enough real life scenarios arent tested. Then someone has to provide a logical sounding reason for what happened that doesnt present like an error. And most Bahamians buy it because "hey, its technology, these things happen". imagine if you went in your car put it in drive and it reversed, would you say, "hey its technology, we expect some errors?". No system is perfect, but there are some things that should never happen, like double booking, one transaction should fail gracefully, no matter how close they are together.
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