HOUSTON – Two Astros fans love their 'Stros, but they say they didn't get the playoff seats they paid for. They want the Astros to make it right. It's a sensitive and embarrassing situation, one Marc Duncan said Minute Maid managers should have helped with.
As the Astros were sliding away from the Yankees in the ALCS, Duncan and his wife missed the moves that got the Astros to the World Series. Duncan paid $700 for two seats in section 321, row 8, but they were partially occupied.
Recommended Videos
A fan seated next to them was so large he took up his own seat and half of both seats on either side of him.
"It was a difficult situation. I felt bad for him," Duncan said. "I didn't want to embarrass him, and yet at the same time, I thought my personal space started at the arm rest."
Duncan is recovering from colon cancer. He could not physically stand to watch the game, so his wife did. They finally stopped a seat attendant, and then went through three levels of employees at the park.
"It was just, 'We can't do anything,'" Duncan said.
'Well, what am I supposed to do?' he asked Minute Maid Park employees. "'Well, we don't know. Wander around,'" he recounted. "I mean, it was just crazy."
With no place to sit, Duncan and his wife left at inning 3. After multiple calls to the park, a guest relations manager offered them two tickets to a regular season game next year.
When asked what he would like to say to the managers at the Astros, Duncan said, "Irrespective of what you feel like you owe us or don't owe us, that you, really for your own sakes to have a policy in place 'cause this will come up again."
The Houston Astros declined to comment for this story. Consumer attorneys we spoke with had different takes on the situation. One said selling tickets for seats that are technically not available could be a violation of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Another attorney told Davis it would be very difficult to enforce a policy that would make people of a certain size move or buy two seats. Even Southwest Airlines changed its policy that once required customers of a certain size to buy an extra seat if they couldn't fit between the 17-inch armrests on its planes.