In my last post I mentioned someone whose season card was confiscated. That person wishes to remain anonymous but here is Bob’s update.<\/p>\n

Chaps,<\/em><\/p>\n

To save me explaining it 10 times later, see below.<\/em><\/p>\n

I had a letter from Nigel the Finance Director of SUFC on my doorstep when I got in last night. It said that I owe them \u00a3305, that they did not know why I hadn\u2019t paid and that if I didn\u2019t pay within 7 days then I would be taken to court. It also said \u201cThe club depends on debts being paid on time\u201d (which is presumably why they didn\u2019t set up the direct debit as instructed and never pay the government when they owe them).<\/em><\/p>\n

Spoke to Nigel who apologised for threatening to take me to court and said that the ticket office hadn\u2019t done the handover properly (shocker). I told him that I\u2019m not paying because it\u2019s their mistake and the whole way this matter has been handled has been (at best) amateur. Nigel didn\u2019t like this. Nigel said that the club has acknowledged that it made a mistake and that I was \u201cscrewing them into the ground\u201d over it. I explained to Nigel that if I make a big mistake at work then I get the sack. I got the impression that Nigel\u2019s arris is on the line over this balls up. Nigel said that he couldn\u2019t let me off because it would be unfair on the other 3449 season ticket holders. I told him that I was told that I wasn\u2019t the only one this had happened to and that the only way the club would learn was to be hit in the pocket. Apparently there are \u2018about half a dozen\u2019 others that are also doing the same as me and Nigel is sending the bailiffs round to get the money. What utter nonsense.<\/em><\/p>\n

I told Nigel that he had a decision to make \u2013 he can dig his heels in and take me to court and, in all honesty, probably win the \u00a3305 and lose me and Fred as fans \u2013 or \u2013 they can put this down to experience and not ask Doris the tea lady to do the direct debits set-ups next year when I renew my season ticket and continue to take Fred for the rest of his\/my lives.<\/em><\/p>\n

About 10 minutes later he called to say that he had referred it up to Tara Brady and that I\u2019d be getting a call some time that evening.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tara called – \u201cEllo issat Robert?\u201d\u2026\u2026 \u201cI think you mean Robin?\u201d\u2026\u2026.. \u201cOh yeah, sh*t, sorry Robin it\u2019s Tara here\u201d. Basically, Nigel hadn\u2019t \u2018referred it to Tara\u2019 \u2013 he had \u2018Blacklisted\u2019 me so that I was not able to go to any more games and that gets referred immediately to Tara with no explanation so I had to explain the whole thing again.<\/em><\/p>\n

He followed up his opening gambit with the revelation that the club had indeed \u201cF**ked up big time\u201d and that he \u201chad to have something to go back to the boys with\u201d and could I spread \u00a3120 over 12 months? I said that it is now not about the money but about the principle of the way I\u2019ve been treated and he could do one for his \u00a3120. Apparently I\u2019ll hear from \u201cthe boys\u201d soon. I also told him that I thought I\u2019d had fair value for money so far. How we laughed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apologies for the essay, but hey, what else have you got to do on a Friday?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last post I mentioned someone whose season card was confiscated. That person wishes to remain anonymous but here is Bob’s update. Chaps, To save me explaining it 10 times later, see below. I had a letter from Nigel the Finance Director of SUFC on my doorstep when I got in last night. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[86,280,367,385,402,448],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-card","tag-martin","tag-ron","tag-season","tag-southend","tag-united"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1356,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions\/1356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}