Green Bay Packers Stock Offering Technological Disaster

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Today the Green Bay Packers offered shares of their stock for the first time since 2011.

Based on how poorly it went, apparently they are still using technology from 2011.

Due to financial losses to the team, the Green Bay Packers offered shares of their organization to the public for $300 per share. These shares are not like other stocks you may invest in. For a complete breakdown of what these shares actually are, click here.

By all accounts, this offering has been a total disaster for the general public who were interested in purchasing any Green Bay Packer stock.

The first thing the interested parties were faced with was an “online waiting line”. Basically, you went into a line to wait your turn to buy your shares. Apparently, this was put in place to protect their systems from becoming overloaded.


Not only did it not work, it just added more frustration to the process.Depending on when you entered the online line, users reported waiting 2 to 5 hours for the next step. See the cute little screen you got to stare at while waiting.

It moved across as you got closer to your turn in line. But who has time to stare at a slow-moving dot all day?

The good news is they allowed you to enter your email address so you would be notified when it was your turn in line. When you got the email notification, you then had 20 minutes to begin the transaction.

Let me repeat that in case it did not sink in – you had 20 MINUTES to complete the transaction, or you would lose your place in line.

This is on a Tuesday.. A workday.. So the brains that were in charge think that not only do you watch your email every minute of the working day for your notification, they also believe that it would be no problem to stop whatever you were doing to go online and complete a financial transaction. “Hey boss, I know we are in the middle of an important meeting, but I have to run to my desk because I now have less than 20 minutes to buy some Packer stock.” Kind of curious what would happen even within a meeting of the Packers organization if you tried that one.

And email… In 2021? Maybe in 10 years, when they roll out their next offering, they will have discovered text messaging that will just blow their minds. Of course, if you read the fine print, you will see that you are actually joining their mailing list.

So fast forward the 3 hours of your life you have been watching for this email notification, and it comes through—time to buy your shares. You go through all of the processes and get to the confirmation where their system stops / crashes. As you can see from the screen below when it compiles the documents for signature and payment, it simply stops and never responds.

There is a help button on the top of the screen. When users press this, it provides an email and phone number for technical support. Users reported being on hold for 20 to 40 minutes with the same message being repeated over and over “thank you for your patience while we connect you with someone.”

Based on the quality of the phone call and the non-Wisconsin accent of the individuals answering the calls, it is pretty clear this call center is not in Wisconsin and probably not in the United States. It is unfortunate that a Midwestern football team with supposedly Midwest values would outsource customer service like this because Wisconsin has some of the best call centers in the United States.

The representative who finally answered the phone was pleasant.

When I explained the issues, to my surprise, she said they were aware of the issues and were “working to resolve them.”

Maybe the Packers or the junior level IT company/department that was in charge of this shit show should have updated the voice mail greeting to let callers know they were aware of the issue and they were working to resolve it. It is times like this when big companies like to avoid the easiest solutions.

She then told me to click the link again later.

What link?

The link in the queue that said It expired in 10 minutes? Refresh the screen that their system was stuck on?

She said she had no idea – all she was doing was passing on the information she was told to pass on to callers.

After hearing the same horror stories from many others who feel they wasted the better part of the day on what should have been a simple transaction, I certainly hope the Green Bay Packers use some of the money they raise to invest in their IT department and leadership.