The St. Louis Cardinals have announced a new program to add money to tickets for spending at the ballpark. Like anything, there are benefits and risks.
This past week, the St. Louis Cardinals announced a new program for 2010 called Cards Cash. It is essentially stored money loaded into the barcode of your game ticket which can be used at any Busch Stadium register, including concession stands, kiosks and the Team Store.
The Cardinals have begun selling tickets with Cards Cash in the first three configurations that follow with the fourth coming in a couple of weeks:
• Holliday Pack –7 games and $7 per ticket in complimentary Cards Cash for each of the specified games ($49 total value Cards Cash added per pack)
• Outfield Loge Box Season Tickets – Full Season, Half-Season, and 27-game plans, with $5 per ticket in complimentary Cards Cash for each game ($405 total value Cards Cash added per seat for full season plan)
• Group Tickets – groups of 25 or more may choose to add Cards Cash to their tickets and receive $12 Cards Cash value for only $10, or $6 value for only $5.
• Single game individual tickets – when they go on sale in early March, a single-game Cards Cash feature will be offered in which fans can add Cards Cash and receive $12 value for only $10.
The first two Cards Cash configurations offer a good deal – if you were planning to purchase these plans, that is. In that case, you have found money, so to speak. If you want to use the stored value, great, but if you don’t, you still receive the value from the tickets you bought. (Update: As always, be sure to compare per-game ticket prices across packages.)
That is not so for the tickets that most people will buy, however – single game tickets and to a lesser extent, Group Tickets. In those cases, any money added to your ticket is nothing more than a loan to the Cardinals, which you can collect with interest – if and only if you follow all the rules.
Otherwise, you are sunk.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the concept and the use of new technology. It works well as a perk with the ticket packages. But until they work out the limitations in future seasons, the average fan has to be very careful when adding stored money to his or her single game ticket.
If you know you are going to the game and plan to spend more than $10 on goodies, go for it. Just understand there is no turning back.
As a public service, here are six questions and answers that illustrate the risk. (In case you can’t tell, I wrote these, not the Cardinals, but I do believe the answers are accurate.)
Q: If I added Cards Cash to a single game ticket, but find out later that I can’t attend the game, can I get my money back?
A: Sorry, no refunds on tickets or Cards Cash.
Q: Well, can I move my stored money to a ticket for another game, then?
A: No. If you don’t use the Cards Cash on the day of the original ticket, it is gone.
Q: If I don’t spend the total stored value on my ticket the day I am at the game, can I keep my ticket and use my Cards Cash later in the season?
A: No. See above. As an aside, you probably didn’t buy much at the game, as it doesn’t take much effort to make $10-$12 disappear pretty quickly.
Q: What if I lose my stored value ticket or it is damaged once I am in the ballpark?
A: It’s gone. It would be no different than if you lost a ten-dollar bill. (I hope you remember where you were sitting!)
Q: What if I can’t attend the game for which I bought a ticket with Cards Cash and give the ticket to a friend (because I would never deal with scalpers)? Where does my stored value go?
A: It stays with the ticket. You had better get your friend to pay you an extra $10 to cover your sunk cost and don’t forget to tell him he has a bonus.
Q: If I don’t spend the total stored value on my ticket the day I am at the game, where does my money go?
A: The Cardinals keep it.
It would seem that an interpretation was made that Cards Cash does not fall under the Federal Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, shortened to “Credit CARD Act of 2009”. Enacted by Congress and signed by President Obama last May, among the many provisions of the Act is protection for consumers who purchase certain types of gift and stored value cards through the establishment of a five-year mandatory expiration date.
Some states have enacted even stricter Gift Card Consumer Protection Laws, according to the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, ConsumersUnion.org. Missouri is apparently not among these states.
The Credit CARD Act of 2009 specifically covers “general-use prepaid cards”, “gift certificates”, and “store gift cards”, but excludes “several other common types of prepaid cards, such as reloadable cards that are not marketed as gift cards, telephone cards, cards not marketed to the general public, and loyalty, award, or promotional cards,” according to the US Federal Reserve.
Follow me on Twitter.
You know its early in camp when you see articles about…
how a player selected his number
what the team is eating for breakfast coming from a Hall of Fame writer…
Is it me, or is there a greater level of coverage from all parts of the media this spring? The television and radio outlets are putting out more written and video content, there are now two newspapers, the AP, MLB.com, etc. It is impossible to keep up with and the position players haven’t even yet officially reported.
This morning, before 8 a.m. camp time, the tweets are already flowing as the media fight to be the first to post video of Pujols and Holliday walking in from the parking lot. I am not making this up…
May just be that the media is reporting it more but seems like more and more players showing up early.
Did you really mean to say more written stuff from radio and TV outlets?
Good point about early arrivals. I will see for myself when I get down there, but I suspect there is more media than ever. My specific question regarding Cardinals camp is whether or not there are enough unique events for all of them to see and cover…
Yes, I did mean written stuff from radio and television. That was precisely my point. Here are a couple of quick examples. The members of the KTRS radio crew are actively tweeting and have a blog with camp tidbits. As you may have seen prominently mentioned on The Cardinal Nation message board, FOX Sports Midwest has launched a new website with video and new articles. They have also joined the daily tweetathon.
The lines between the various types of media are blurring.
That’s true. P-D with lots of video now. I hate audio and video for the most part because it is so much slower than reading. However, my guess is in 5 years there won’t be much written news. Tree newspapers are dying and internet news will be all audio and video because it is faster and cheaper to publish.
I wouldn’t want Wellemeyer’s old number either…
It’s all in your age and perspective, Mr. Nutlaw. To me, #37 means Keith Hernandez, my favorite Cardinal of the late 1970s and early 1980s, not a transient like Wellemeyer.
Ironically, the featured subject of today’s post, Freddie Schmidt, also wore Cardinals #37 in 1946 after returning from the War. When he moved to Philly the next season, he again sported #37, a quarter century before an unrelated Schmidt also donned #37 for the Phils, Hall of Famer Michael Jack Schmidt.
The volume of stuff coming out of ST this year is way up, Brian. You aren’t imagining it. I had been getting a little annoyed by it, since one can spend an endless aount of time wading through it without finding anything really newsworthy.
Finally I admitted that I enjoy all the mundane and trivial stuff. It allows those who can’t be there, and those not behind the scenes, a sence of what its like that could never be had in the days when everything had to come by way of expensive newsprint or airtime. It is something new though, and takes some adjusting to. All in all, I’m for it and look forword to continuing evolution. Can’t imagine trying to sort through all the tweets and re-tweets.
Sometimes things can get a little over the top, though. Remember the blue powderpuff marking the puck during hockey telecastes. New this year in the olympics, coverage of the curling matches is using a Madden style ‘curlestrator’ so the ‘analyst’ in the booth can diagram stuff on screen. Jeesh.
With all the video from Jupiter, the thing I’d love to see isn’t there.
This from John Marecek’s blog:
“-Nick Stavinoah nearly drilled Bill DeWitt Jr. and John Mozeliak with a batting practice line drive.”
Brian, I deal with the Credit Card Act regularly as one function of my job and I can see no real reason why it would even remotely apply to this program.
I have sat down with lawyers and had conference calls with credit card processing and special finance companies (spec. those that provide “store credit cards”) so, while my experience may be on a slightly different within The Act, I am very familiar with it.
The relevant things I do know…
I know for a fact that “store credit” stored on physical cards is exempt.
This product seems like store credit…but without the physical card (which is an important distinction). If a small/smalltown (I only make that distinction to assume they don’t process everything via physical cards) retail store hands you $10 in store credit, they can say you have to use it within a specific time period without any issue. Many stores do.
Purchased gift cards, which are essentially a contract between the buyer and the store, are different – in actuality and in the law.
For reference, and without giving too much away, one of our clients, a large 30+ store retail chain, wanted to run a promotion giving $50 in store credit for every purchase increment of $500 (so, spend $500, get $50, spend $1,000, get $100, etc.) as a way to move some of their larger ticket items before Spring.
They came to us for guidance because they wanted to put a 30 day expiration on the store credit earned because of said purchases.
We got on the horn with attorneys in-the-know and higher-ups at the bank card processing provider and both gave the program the absolute “no problem”.
I was surprised they were even worried about it enough to ask, really, because none of the information we had seen to create our corporate position on The Act suggested otherwise – but we did our due diligence just in case.
Thanks for the background, easton. I am sure you recognize that in this case, there are two related, but slightly different implementations of Cards Cash. One is gift credit provided for free when purchasing a ticket package. That did not seem a gray area to me.
The other is an actual purchase of the stored credit value (offered along with and delivered on a ticket). That is the part that caused me to look into The Act, as I knew legislation for gift certificates was tightened to offer more protection for the consumer. As I noted and you noted as well, there are inclusions and exclusions based on the type of card and credit and this seems to be excluded.
No matter what The Act says, how Cards Cash actually works is something I thought people should be made aware of, as the sales materials aren’t going to lead with the risks.
Ah…I see what you mean about the last two options. I missed that the inclusion was voluntary.
That makes much more sense re: why you would think to look into The Act.
I could speculate on how the voluntary and knowing purchasing of credits would be treated, but it would be only speculation – and my other shared information was more than that.
Good info, thanks.
The ‘free’ Cards Cash aspect of the program could lead to trouble. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Holliday Pack claims to offer $7 per ticket ‘complimentary’ cards cash. But the ticket price on that pack is almost $6 more per ticket than some other packs. So, actually you are getting roughly a 20% discount on the Cards Cash, the same as with the other Cards Cash promotions which offer $12 for $10 or $6 for $5. In other words, the claimed bargain and the reality are two different things.
bb, I missed the important nuance that you suggest the Cardinals may be using part of the price of the tickets in the packages to cover most of the cost of the “complimentary” Cards Cash. (Reading the materials again, they don’t say “free”.)
Buyer beware!
Now that I look deeper into the construction of the various ticket packages, I am not sure if there is an apples-to-apples comparison possible. The per-game ticket price does vary by package, but so does the desirability of the games in the packages.
For example, the Holliday Pack isn’t ANY seven games, it is seven hard-defined ones. They aren’t necessarily the ones you might consider first. I wonder how many of the packages they are going to sell – Cards Cash or not.
I had problems with the comparison as well, but looking at two sets of tickets, defined or not, is doable. Adding in the Cardinal Cash, jiggling the ticket prices, including various discount on the Cardinal cash, trying to compare that to something else offering the option to add cards cash at $12 for $10. It makes it hard or at least very time consuming to figure out what costs what. Not a good thing for the consumer.
I don’t accuse anyone of anything sinister, but someone might think that the Holliday Pack is meant to sell tickets to less well attended games by suggesting a deal that is not really there, and obfuscating that fact with smoke and mirrors. I really hope the team doesn’t go down that road. To be fair, I’ve had season tickets in the past, and have never looked into the various multi-game packages before. So this sort of thing may be SOP, I don’t know.