The first crash test dummy was built in 1949 to test airplane ejector seats, and by the 1970s car makers were regularly using crash test dummies to make their vehicles safer. Crash test dummies have been used to test weapons and predict injuries from fires. As recently as 2023 testers introduced specifically female crash test dummies into car safety tests. Using crash test dummies makes sense. They help make things better for everyone.
Proposing Fan Testing for Club Systems
That is why the West Ham United Supporters’ Trust has been offering to be the club’s crash test dummies for years – we first suggested it back in 2022. Try your communications and ticketing systems on us first, we said, so mistakes can be fixed before launching to the wider fan base. David Sullivan instructed everyone in the club to ignore us – he hated fans and fan groups. He didn’t want our help, even if it made things better. Instead he made things worse. But Sullivan has gone and now the club is engaging with fan groups. And we have just crash tested the latest ticketing change – digital ID verification for season-ticket holders. We have made it better for everyone.
Phased Rollout of Digital ID Verification
ID verification is vital. The Premier League needs it to be introduced by next season and, with hopes of bouncing back up, the club is continuing its plans to achieve that. But ID verification will also stop away fans buying tickets in the home end and prevent ticket touting. The club has already gone through all the concession ticket holders to ensure the concession they claim could be verified. The next phase is to verify the ID of all season ticket holders. After that will come the Claret and Blue members and anyone with a client reference. It will not be possible to sign up in future without verifying that you are who you claim to be.
FAB Consultation and Practical Testing
All the Fan Advisory Board (FAB) members support ID verification, with many of us already verified. Consultation has been thorough. The club first ran through why it needed to do this and how it proposed to do it. Fan group reps on West Ham’s FAB ticketing committee had a chance to ask questions, seek assurances and suggest changes. The club then went away and fine-tuned a little. West Ham’s ticketing office then sent out its draft comms for us to read through. We had a number of comments that we felt would clarify why this was needed and how to prepare for the ID verification process. The club took these on board. Naturally, a couple of us decided to test the process out, one using a mobile and one using a computer at home. The computer method struggled to find the right camera. When we fed this back, the club explained that the whole process had been designed for mobile, not computers, so we suggested that be made clear in the initial emails. The system was not actually live at this point so both the testers received a message saying the verification had failed. But, alarmingly, that notice warned that their season ticket had been suspended. Again we made clear that suspending a season ticket should only happen when the problem has been checked by a human and every effort had been made to resolve the matter with individual season ticket holders. The club agreed and changed the message accordingly.
Identifying Glitches Before Full Launch
When the system went live – but still before any comms had been sent out – the club asked us to test it again. A few people with glasses tried it, with and without their glasses on. The results suggested that you needed to remove your glasses when taking a selfie otherwise the digital ID would fail. That will be added to the instructions unless a technical fix can be found. However, it also failed for one tester who had removed their glasses. There may be a whole host of reasons why the online process – run by an ID verification specialist called GBG – may fail. The name you use for your West Ham account may not be exactly as it appears on your ID, such as your passport or driving licence, for example. In these cases the club’s staff will view the material and may decide without further checks to approve it. If not, they will get in touch to seek clarification or alternative forms of ID. Anyone who doesn’t want to use the digital system can bring their ID to the club for manual verification too. When you log-in to your West Ham account it will show that your ID is either verified or on hold. As Blowing Bubbles went to press the ID verification process was still being tweaked before full launch to the remaining 36,000 season ticket holders who will need to prove their ID. Any system like this will have flaws and gremlins but because genuine fans have been used as crash test dummies, it will work better than it would have done without us.
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