No! I will not be your Ticketslave!!

[NYR407]

I sure this rant is about as old as they come but I need to give a hardy FUCK YOU!!!!!! to Ticketmaster.

Here is what I had to deal with this past Friday and this morning.

So as some of you may have figured out I am NY Rangers fan from my name. I have been a season ticketholder for over 10 years. My friends and I were not able to use the seats (for various reasons) this year and sold the entire season to a mutual friend. No big deal. He was helping us out so the entire season is his, no ifs, ands or buts about it (which probably means they will make the playoffs this year).

Anyway, I decided that I still wanted to attend a few games this year. The big games are always vs the Islanders, Devils and Philly. I am a registered with the NY Ranger E-mail Bulletin and because of this I was given "special presale" access to tickets on Friday 9/5 at 12pm. Great!! I will try to get some tickets to Richters #35 retirement ceremony and try for some other tickets too.

Well 12pm comes around and I get hold of my ticketmaster representative at about 12:01. Hey this is going great. "Yes, I'd like to buy 2 tix to the 2/4 NYR game (I give the presale password) ." "Ok , uhhhh there is only one seat available sir." "Huh? The tix just went on sale one min ago and there is one seat left in the entire garden?." "Sorry, but there is only one seat available."

Great, MSG must have blocked the tix for this game. Ok, lets try this date (vs Devils). "Uh, no seats located together, sir". What!? This is a presale and they are already gone?" Great, lets try this Islander game."

BINGO! "We have seats together for you sir" "Great I'll take them"

Okay, that's $29.50 per tix, plus $7.25 convenience charge, plus a $3.00 processing charge. Your total is $76.50"

"What!!! can you repeat that" ....she does. "No thanks, I am not paying you over $25 more than the tix are worth."

BTW AFAIK the Blue seats are still $25 tix and some how TM charges $29.50 for them.

So I don't go to any Rangers games this year. I'll live. I'll probably get tix through friends but not the choice games.

Which brings me to today. Springsteen tix went on sale a 10am this morning for the Shea Stadium shows (I didn't have access to presale this time). 10am comes around and I use the website and my phone to try to get through.

Phone is a waste of time because I never get through. At 10:00am the website has me on line with a 7 min wait. Great! Hey wait that 7 just became a 9 min wait, a few mins go by and that 9 min wait is now "at least a 15 min wait" What the fuck!? Who the hell is cutting me in line while on line? Fine, whatever the reason it takes 27 mins to get to 1 min wait. The page refreshes for what I hope to be the last time and voila!!

"Sorry, you have exceeded the permissible waiting time. In order to ensure everyone have a chance to get tickets you are given a limited time to place you order" WHAT THE FUCK???!!!! I never placed my order. Hell I never was given a seating choice.

THIS SUCKS!! OK I'll try again. Well, my 7 mins becomes 9 mins again. but the wait is much shorter. After about 14 mins of wating I am finally given a open block of tickets. Well they are little bit farther away than I wanted but I'll take'm. Hell I am not even going to complain about the $9.50 convenience charge this time.

So I hit the Continue button to buy the tix and what do you know......

"Sorry, you have exceeded the permissible waiting time. In order to ensure everyone have a chance to get tickets you are given a limited time to place you order"

What the fuck is the permissible time? 4 seconds? Talk about frustrating. All that time wasted and the worst part is they won't even miss my business. When demand is this much greater than supply they have you by the balls.

FUCK YOU TICKETMASTER!! I will do all I can to avoid using you for any event. This will be extremely difficult because you monopolize the market but I will try my best. If it mean not seeing an event then so be it.

May you rot in hell and be forced to wait in line for a million years for a glass of ice water only to find there is no water left. Then be forced to wait in line again and again and again for all eternity.