Chris Heck - President of Business Operations

[The Left Side]

A little unrelated but does someone know if Lee Preece is still the Supporter Liaison Officer, we tried email Chris Heck in October with a request and no response. We heard that Lee might have moved on but if someone could confirm?

He left on November 28th.

Thanks CD, if anyone knows his replacement that would be great.

[Percy McCarthy]

A little unrelated but does someone know if Lee Preece is still the Supporter Liaison Officer, we tried email Chris Heck in October with a request and no response. We heard that Lee might have moved on but if someone could confirm?

He left on November 28th.

Thanks CD, if anyone knows his replacement that would be great.

No idea. You could try googling ‘world masochism champion’.

[cdbearsfan]

Seems like they advertised the job in October, not sure if anyone has filled it. Although I hate the website now, they're usually pretty good at responding on Twitter via AVFC Support if that's any use.

[eamonn]

Bardell's tweet has been deleted. What did it say?

[tony scott]

The tweet is still up,if genuine it’s hard to find the right words. Brilliant of DB to highlight this. It also highlights the problems bloggers and Podcasters in getting to close to club management.  It could mean compromising their integrity.

[Dave P]

Obviously the owners were happy to sign off on the new North Stand and surrounding area under Purslow's tenure. What we don't know is whose idea it was to rip and all that up and cancel the expansion. My strong suspicion is that it was Heck's idea that they went along with.

Whilst I do agree with this, especially with the quick and easy money GA+ provides, I also think the point of not having 3/4 of a stadium for our first Champions League campaign is a valid one.
What does back up your point is the lack of plans to start an expansion any time soon.

[BC Villain]

The tweet is still up,if genuine it’s hard to find the right words. Brilliant of DB to highlight this. It also highlights the problems bloggers and Podcasters in getting to close to club management.  It could mean compromising their integrity.

This is DB'S tweet

Hi I’ve sent the following to Chris Heck, but doubt he will read it

Hi Chris

I wanted to bring to your attention a situation that occurred during the Juventus game.

An elderly gent who sits next to me (Holte upper, row x seat xxx) has been a Villa fan for a long time, I'm sure you can look at Barry's account and see his history. He was at the 82 final, sat watching Villa in Division 3.... it's not relevant but he is also unwell, 5 heart attacks in the last 12 months and cancer. He lives alone and basically Villa is all he has in life, he also goes to the Villa Women's matches too. 

Being elderly he doesn't have a smart phone, so uses a plastic ticket. when it comes to cup games he has to get a ticket printed, he travels to the ground in advance to get this done.

On Wednesday night he turned up to the Juve game and his ticket didn't work. he was given no support and turned away. He called me in tears about this, said no-one was available to help him out, they claimed there was no way of admitting a fan if the ticket doesn't work as I quote "the turnstiles are fully automated and we can't over ride them"

He had to make his way home totally dejected... to add further insult to injury when he called the ticket office they were less than helpful and also refused to refund him on the basis that the match has been played so they wouldn't be able to resell the ticket. I'm not going to go into the morality of £90 tickets... but I do think that morally he should have been refunded. 

He is upset and I'm upset on his behalf, a poorly man gets turned away from a club he's followed since before you or I were born... to be treated that way... 

I hope you can see fit to do well by Barry, to have him in tears on the phone to me was heart breaking...

Regards 

…..

People can come at me all they like for questioning the club off the pitch, but stuff like this is not right and is now common place.

I love this club, I hate seeing stuff like this.

[Demitri_C]

That is disgusting and inhumane

The club should be ashamed of themselves

[ChicagoLion]

I hope this gets spread on Social Media.
It’s beyond cruel.

[Villan82]

Bardell and one or two others who resigned off FAB have really done a great service in using their profiles to  highlight the issues at the club.

[London Villan]

Not great is it. We messed up getting in at the Bologna game with the e-tickets - basically because we had to pass the phone back to scan in I think we scanned it twice - anyway a steward used a key and opened the turnstile...

What a shambles.

[Brend'Watkins]

Obviously the owners were happy to sign off on the new North Stand and surrounding area under Purslow's tenure. What we don't know is whose idea it was to rip and all that up and cancel the expansion. My strong suspicion is that it was Heck's idea that they went along with.

Whilst I do agree with this, especially with the quick and easy money GA+ provides, I also think the point of not having 3/4 of a stadium for our first Champions League campaign is a valid one.
What does back up your point is the lack of plans to start an expansion any time soon.

Well, they should start now putting these plans in place as there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance we are going to be bothering the Top 4 or 5 anytime soon.

[Villan82]

Obviously the owners were happy to sign off on the new North Stand and surrounding area under Purslow's tenure. What we don't know is whose idea it was to rip and all that up and cancel the expansion. My strong suspicion is that it was Heck's idea that they went along with.

Whilst I do agree with this, especially with the quick and easy money GA+ provides, I also think the point of not having 3/4 of a stadium for our first Champions League campaign is a valid one.
What does back up your point is the lack of plans to start an expansion any time soon.

Capacity wise the current North Stand is much less than 1/4 of our capacity. We aren't going to fulfill the potential of the club until we actually expand.

[London Villan]

As has been said before, the new North meant reconfiguring the northern 1/3 of the Trinity, as well as moving all the media, dressing rooms, match-day officials etc... It could have been done, but on that point I see an element of logic in the decision. This coming summer would have been a better time to start it.

[The Edge]

As has been said before, the new North meant reconfiguring the northern 1/3 of the Trinity, as well as moving all the media, dressing rooms, match-day officials etc... It could have been done, but on that point I see an element of logic in the decision. This coming summer would have been a better time to start it.

That's just it though. Heck announced the cancellation of the rebuild but said nothing about any plans in the future and it felt like a fuck you to the 30,000 villa fans on the waiting list. He can now concentrate on squeezing the pips out of those fortunate enough to already have a ST. His hard nosed US style approach has sucked the life out of the club in my view. I know he's been given the task of raising revenues but there's got to be a way of doing that without alienating huge chunks of the fanbase or having lifelong elderly Villa supporters crying down the phone after being treated so appallingly by the club he loves. Meanwhile Man City gets on with extending their ground to 65,000, Arsenal announce expansion plans and Liverpool open a massive new stand. All while competing in the Champions League.