It’s no secret Peter Gelb and the Metropolitan Opera are trying to court a younger audience. Both its advertising campaigns as well as the Met’s Live in HD broadcasts are hoping to snare a wider and younger audience. I thought of this at the last opera I attended there, Macbeth, as I sat in a sea of gray hair and labored breathing. What is the future of opera? With the New York City Opera homeless, opera companies all over the country going out of business, what does the future of the Met look like?
If you’re looking to the Metropolitan Opera’s Fulfillment Group for the answer, it is not good.
My boyfriend and I saw eight operas at the Met last season, so we decided to purchase a subscription for the upcoming season. We are exactly who the Met claims to be looking for in terms of its future audience. I am relatively young (34), well educated, gainfully employed and actually interested in opera. I even joined the Met Guild earlier this year, a technologically snafu laden nightmare unto itself. Regardless, I eagerly called up the Met when subscriptions became available, hoping to get the best seats possible. The young woman assisting me sounded helpful and interested, suggesting a three-month installment plan that would make it easier to purchase our subscriptions. Now, my order was mildly complicated: I was paying for my ticket on my credit card, and my boyfriend’s mother was paying for his on her card. Not an issue, I was told. Yet the baffling ordeal of problems and mistakes that ensued over the next few months was shocking.
After giving the customer service woman the credit card numbers, I was told I would receive my seat assignment in a month. After waiting eight weeks and hearing nothing—but being faithfully charged for my tickets each month—I again called the Met’s customer service line. The young woman who answered this time claimed to have no record of my purchasing seats. When I pointed out that I was charged, as was my boyfriend, she did a quick search for him. He came up, but I did not. At this point I asked to speak to a manager, and thus began my tumultuous and draining relationship with Ramon. Ramon had the translucently thin veneer of poise that comes only from the rote reading of a corporate approved customer service script. He said he “understood my fears” and would handle the matter “expeditiously”. He just needed to speak to the “Seating Committee.” Annoyed, I asked that he speak with his staff about this error and let me know as soon as he heard back from this mysterious and all powerful Committee. And so I sat for a few days, awaiting Ramon’s phone call.
Little did I know that in the meantime, the Met had called my boyfriend’s mother, Nancy, to make sure I was not a mistress being given tickets. The Met thought my boyfriend’s mother was actually his wife; and I was his mistress. Neither of which is true, incidentally. Apparently the Met screens its patrons to make sure no one is cheating on their spouse. Although from what I understand adultery is still a fairly common event even in the Met’s coveted elite demographics.
Ramon called me back within a few days, apologized for the delay with the sincerity and enthusiasm of a subpar Wal-Mart greeter and claimed everything was resolved. Great.
However, at the end of the month I saw on my credit card statement the Met had fully charged me for two sets of tickets. I immediately called and asked for Ramon but was told he was in a “meeting”. So I started to explain my situation to the woman who answered. I explained the previous ticket snafu and told her I knew about the call to Nancy inquiring about whether I was his mistress. (Nancy had told me.) She said “Well, that does happen, you’d be surprised.” I wanted to say how greatly I admired the Met’s mandate in attempting to weed out romantic duplicity in their patronage, but I decided to hold my tongue.
When I mentioned the additional charges of over $1000, Ramon was suddenly and magically out of his meeting and able to speak with me. I explained to him what happened with the two charges. I also expressed my disappointment with the Met and how this has been an ongoing problem—first my seats were not obtained, I didn’t exist in their system in spite of being charged for a subscription and now that I have my seat I had been charged a second time. Ramon said, “Lets move forward.” I asked if he saw this as a problem. He said it wasn’t his fault, and again, that we needed to “move forward.” I responded that, as far as I was concerned, he was the Met and that it was upsetting to hear that this was somehow not the Met’s problem. I asked how he was going to fix the problem. As he outlined the various things that needed to happen to remedy the situation, I verbally affirmed each point with a “mm-hmm”. Ramon started caustically mimicking me back “MMM-HMMMMMM”. I interrupted him; was there a problem? He said no. I asked why he was sarcastically mimicking me. He said he wasn’t being sarcastic, I was. I informed him that I was just affirming his statements and noting so by saying mm-hmm. He said he was doing the same. I could not believe that I was on the phone with someone from one of the premiere artistic institutions in the world. Old Navy or Time Warner, maybe. But not the Met. The idea that I had spent over a thousand dollars on tickets, had my seat lost and then been double charged for it and now to be receiving this arrogance from a customer service representative was unreal. I told him that I did not understand why he was sarcastically mimicking me, especially given that this was a problem created by them. He told me that was “my perception”. I was flabbergasted and now speechless. I proceeded with the conversation by the numbers to keep my disgust in check. Ramon indicated he would be taking the charges off my Amex.
Biting the head off my number 2 pencil, I thanked him and asked to speak with the head of subscriptions. I was given the number for Mary-Lynn, the manager at Subscriptions and Special Services, which I dialed as soon as I hung up with Ramon. She answered and I began to recount my story. Finally, for the first time I got a response that seemed reflective of the Met and appropriate for my situation. Mary-Lynn found it “despicable” that Ramon’s employees were calling people to find out if they were taking their mistress to the opera instead of their wife. She was also very upset to find out that Ramon was in any way condescending to a customer. She promised to speak to him, his staff, and clear this up. She was gracious and changed our seats to better ones (apparently a meeting with the “Seating Committee” wasn’t needed here somehow) and profusely apologized.
A few weeks later I received written confirmation that my seat was moved and fully paid for. I couldn’t help but notice that the Met’s letter suggested I donate both to the Met and the Met Titles. I wonder how Peter Gelb would feel about Ramon almost losing one of Gelb’s oh-so-coveted demographic. And I wonder if this has happened to others. I will not be donating to the Met. My interactions with Ramon have left me far too drained to give anything more.
-Elizabeth Frayer
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How ridiculous! And they can't even blame outsourcing.
We've always had a good experience with the San Francisco Opera (though we haven't had a subscription since a certain small boy appeared on the scene) as well as SF Symphony. Silicon Valley dollars and some savvy management have enabled the SFO and SFS to stay strong relatively speaking.
Nevertheless, non-pop music organizations are hurting nationwide. 'Classical' radio & recording industry, opera companies, choirs, chamber, symphony, you name it.
Enabling children to understand and love its language is the only thing that will save 'classical' music in the long run, yet music education has been decimated. A concert once a semester isn't sufficient. I support Education Through Music, which offers regular music instruction to grade schools in NY and the Bay Area. It's a start.
Elizabeth, Mary-Lynn heads the "seating committee" – that is why she was able to help you in the manner that she did.
So to smooth the way for someone asking her to rejoin the guild, you're saying that there's "nothing we can do" about her frustrations, that she shouldn't be angry about what happened, and that customers such as Ms. Frayer express their anger all the time "for no reason". That doesn't sound like a good advertisement.
Every single person I know is "just trying to get through the day". That statement doesn't make anyone special, and doesn't preclude them from performing a promised service after they have already been paid for that service. Especially when, after a situation like Ms. Frayer's, they have the gall to call again later and ask for more money.
Seriously, you should turn the above into a letter that goes to Peter Gelb and Gary Feinstein.
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Wait… what??? "Little did I know that in the meantime, the Met had called my boyfriend’s mother, Nancy, to make sure I was not a mistress being given tickets." Are you being serious here? Like, they actually said this was the reason they were calling?
Ha! Thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure not to get a subscription at the Met with my married boyfriends. Too bad, they're the one's with the money to spend. 😉
No, but seriously…customer service is EVERYTHING, especially in the arts!
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