An open letter to the NY Comic-Con officials

Dear Comic-Con officials,

I am a busy man. It takes no small amount of effort to clear my schedule for a full day so that I can attend a convention, so when I do so, the LEAST I can expect is that I actually be allowed to attend the convention. Unfortunately, that's not what happened today, when I arrived at the convention center just in time to be told (not be a Comic-Con official, incidentally, because they did not deign this information worth sharing) that the convention had been oversold to a point that none of the several hundred people currently lined up would be able to get in.

I pre-ordered my ticket over a month ago, and I was not going to be allowed in. So I got to stand in line, for an hour and a half, for the privilege of having refunded the money I paid to ensure that I wouldn't have to stand in line for an hour and a half or be turned away at the door.

I hope it is apparent how ridiculous this is.

I'm also going to point out that I did not have refunded the fifteen dollars I spend on train tickets, the two hours of traveling time, or the effort I put into clearing a day to attend this convention. I have never been to a comic convention before, however, I did not think it unreasonable to assume that I could get there in the afternoon and still be allowed in, that the organisers would have some sort of system in place such that people wouldn't be turned away, that if something went wrong the organisers would spare some effort to tell people, or that if I were turned away for some reason, I'd receive something more significant than a refund of the twenty-five dollars I clearly shouldn't have bothered spending in the first place. Even an apology would do. But it would seem that I am being unreasonable, wouldn't it?

All I know is, neither I nor anyone I know intend to attend this event again.