Eventbrite data being forwarded as "info requested"

I’m glad I found this post because this is such a frustrating experience! I’m glad I’m at least not the only one.

Similar to @jamesmacwhite, we first started having issues when they switched to optional questions on the next page. We were able to “solve” it similarly with a delay (not foolproof, but close enough). We did complain about the change to Eventbrite free support, but I doubt it went anywhere.

I have been seeing a couple things coming in as “Info Requested” in the last couple months that I hadn’t noticed before and I was figuring it was some weird timeout or something. But I went to test one of our new events by registering today and saw that Place Order was before the required attendee questions, and knew that this must be causing that issue.

I have also complained to Eventbrite support about this and asked about switching back, but they said they couldn’t (we’re probably not important enough to get that as an option). @ModularJack did they actually turn this off for you, or just say that they would?

I’m so tired of these large companies who think they can do whatever they want and break existing (good) features all the time with no regard for their customers. It’s not that complicated to think about all the different companies that are using your platform and realize that they probably all have somewhat unique goals. Maybe instead of forcing everyone to switch to do it your way, provide options for different people, so each organization can decide what way works best for them!

I guess we’ll have to start looking for a new platform because having these required fields before payment is received is necessary for us. Anyone have any suggestions so far? I did look around back when the optional questions change came out, but the things that I found had other issues, so we decided to stick with Eventbrite even with that change at that point, but this is severe enough that we may need to switch (if they don’t turn it off).

It confirms my thoughts regarding who they care about by @ModularJack posting what commericial support really is, that depending on who you are, they offer different experiences or support. Free event organisers get thrown to the bottom and my case I opened has yet to receive any formal response.

Regardless, we are long term looking to replace Eventbrite given this situation. Even if they acknowledge they’ve made a mistake and offered to revert us (thus far we received absolutely no response from them officially), the decisions that have been made on their platform have been increasingly disruptive and do not offer value to us. Equally paying £99 per month for the same service we had previously with no cost at all, offers no addiitonal benefits to us and is equally is a big driver too, given we are Further Education college and our budgets are a consideration as well.

I won’t mention other competitors because I’m mindful this is the Zapier Community forum, not Eventbrite support forum, but there is another Eventbrite like competitor who is very interested in this situation and would not be surprised if they start to look at engaging with Eventbrite organisers who are looking to explore other options on the back of this.

@jamesmacwhite Thanks for posting that email address. I will definitely send them an email.

That’s really interesting that the events are still selected at random. That would make sense because we were having registrations for a large event after November that wasn’t experiencing this issue.

I think they are probably rolling it out more frequently even if still randomly (because I’m guessing they were doing random testing before they published that article in November), which makes sense why I’m now noticing it with our two newer events.

After using Eventbrite + Zapier for exactly 10 years, we’re now forced to find an alternative supplier.  Eventbrite’s decision to change all users over to their “better checkout experience” has been disastrous for us.  It’s shameful. If anyone knows a good replacement please do let me know.

Update: We are still seeing the info requested issue at random. Eventbrite management has assured us that we would be excluded from this product update and the last 100 or so registrations went smoothly with no integration data issues. However, we had a registration last night where Info Requested came through our Zapier integrations.

This morning Eventbrite Customer Success is on the case and saying they believe this may be a bug happening at random. They confirmed that we’re supposed to be excluded from the “optimized” checkout process.

We feel for all of you guys. Eventbrite is/was a bit clueless about the impact of this change. If you’re experiencing issues please let Eventbrite know. They did mess up, but contacting them helps them understand and makes it more likely that this gets resolved in a good way for everyone.

@turner59 that’s great info that even Eventbrite doesn’t seem to know or at least didn’t share with us. We were told that they collected name and email but didn’t know where to find that data as it wasn’t shown in the order data. 

@TheCNM make sure you let Eventbrite know how you feel. They’re trying to figure it out, As @jamesmacwhite said, email them  contactsupport@eventbrite.com.

Update:

Eventbrite Customer Success believes that we’re being affected by a bug which is randomly taking some of our orders through the new checkout process and therefore not collecting our required fields, despite the fact that our account is marked for commercial and should be exempted. 

@jamesmacwhite what they’re saying may be true. We are not technically under contract yet. We were negotiating our contract when all of this was discovered. So those under pre-existing commercial agreements may indeed have been exempted. However, even if that is the case, Eventbrite has been quite clear that they are unable to guarantee that this change won’t be forced upon us at a later date, even if we do sign a commercial agreement. 

@TheCNM we are looking at several replacements. https://lu.ma looks like an interesting candidate for an actual EB replacement. Let us know if you find others.

@luckylou If you read the support response that @jamesmacwhite received a few days ago, you’ll see that the Eventbrite support agent is still calling it an experiment. You are correct that their blog and article don’t say that, but I feel that’s just another example on Eventbrite’s inconsistent messaging on new changes.

The fact that it is only rolled out for orders at random (and not for all yet) indicates to me that they are still testing (regardless of what their article says). I myself have seen both behaviors (required questions before and after payment) on the same event form with the same settings without additional terms questions.

However, that’s great news that you shared from your contact with support that they are working on a way for people to opt in/out of this change. That would be a great improvement and hopefully they fast track it because of the number of complaints. I am a little concerned that they specified “ticket buyers,” since we have required questions we need on individual attendees, but hopefully they are including that and just saying ticket buyers as a shorthand. Thanks for sharing!

@AlisonRJ We use the New Order trigger to get the order information separately and work with it. But, since it sounds like you need it in the same Zap, I think you’ll have to do an API request.

Add another Eventbrite step, choose API Request (Beta) as the action.

Refer to the Eventbrite API documentation: https://www.eventbrite.com/platform/api#/reference/order/retrieve-order-by-id

To get the Order information, use the link they show in the documentation and put it in the URL field in Zapier: https://www.eventbriteapi.com/v3/orders/order_id/ (replace order_id with the field from the triggering event with the order Id number). Note that the ending slash is important, you get an error without it.

You shouldn’t need any of the other fields besides URL. Zapier handles the authentication for you since you’ve already connected your Eventbrite account.

Once you test, you should see the order data and you can use it later in the Zap. The field names will start with Response Data (so Response Data First Name, Response Data Last Name, etc).

Eventbrite has apparently just opted us out of this change! We don’t have commercial support and @jamesmacwhite told me they just opted his organization out as well and they don’t have commercial support either.

From the support agent:

“Yes, our product team is working on a way to opt users out of the new post-checkout experience due to the overwhelming feedback we have been receiving.

As I have already submitted your feedback, they have opted you out of this experience as of today.”

Sounds like everyone’s complaints have been working! If you want to be opted out and haven’t been yet, try following up on your case today. Or send an email to contactsupport@eventbrite.com to ask to be opted out if you haven’t already.

So far, our forms seem like they are switched back, but it’s a little hard to tell since it was random before. I’ll have to keep an eye on it and see if we see any more Info Requested coming in later.