No! I will not be your Ticketslave!!

The BBQ Pit
1

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.

2

Former employee of Ticketbastard checking in…
I DESPISE having to deal with them. Their charges are ridiculous. Their service blows. I hated working for them.

One person called - her dad bought numerous tickets to a highly anticipated show. Dad died. Nope, no refund. You go enjoy the show. Grrr…

Add on sales up the wazoo. If someone is buying tix for Metallica, I’m thinking they may not CARE that Brittany Spears tix can be bought at a discount. Heaven forbid you DIDn’t push the add ons, you could be fired.

3

Is there any other way than Ticketmaster (besides scalpers) to purchase tickets? How is this NOT a fucking monopoly?

4

Tickets can, almost always, be purchased at the venue. Not that that makes the blatant shit that Ticketbastard does easier to tolerate. Any talk of Ticketbastard always makes me think of the Homerpalooza episode of The Simpsons.

Burns: [chuckles] And to think, Smithers: you laughed when I bought TicketMaster. “Nobody’s going to pay a 100% service charge.”
Smithers: Well, it’s a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.

5

Other than going to the venue I know of no other way. I would guess since we could buy them at the venue it negates the monopoly claim. However who can leave work in the middle of the day everytime you need to buy tickets. Of course that doesn’t take into account sleeping overnight at the stadium.

They do seem to monopolize the internet and phone sales though. Ever since Ticketron went out of business (or were they bought by Ticketmaster?) what 15 years ago? I can’t think of any other company in the industry.

6

You guys are going to love this, then…

Ticketmaster to start auctioning off best seats to the highest bidder. Looks like they’ve decided to cut out the middlemen scalpers when it comes to screwing the consumer.

7

I hate Ticketmaster. I couldn’t figure out why I was paying $88 for a Broadway ticket when the cost was only $75 per ticket (and I saw a LOT of shows, usually in the nosebleed section, so those fees added up!). I ended up going to the theatre myself to get them usually - only had to pay the price of the ticket that way.

My one major beef with Ticketmaster is from the Daytime Emmys - I wanted a ticket near my roommate’s parents (he was up for one that year for soap opera writing - he couldn’t take a date without paying $500, which he would have done, but I insisted if he was going to pay $500 for anyone, he should take his mom), but they’d already bought theirs. So I got their seats from them, and called TicketMaster. The seats were in the nosebleed section, and when I looked online, it gave me seats directly across from them, so I wanted to see if there were seats available closer to them. So when I got the guy on the phone, I asked him for the closest seats to AA23 and AA24 (paraphrasing). He said he had Z25 available.

Now, if Z25 was available, and was in essence, a closer seat, shouldn’t the crappier seats be available? I asked about that and he said “I can’t get to those. I have to take what the computer gives me. There are seats available next to them, but the computer won’t let me have them”

Huh? This is a first-rate ticketing deal and he can’t get to the seats? Umm…okay. So, unhappily, I bought the ticket.

And then I got called to seat-fill at the awards, essentially putting me 4 rows back to watch my roomie win his first Emmy, sitting with the cast from the Bold and the Beautiful (I would have MUCH rather sat in the nosebleed section than listen to them whine, however…but that’s another story).

I find it hard to believe that they can’t choose seats from the selection.

Ava

8

Always try eBay. Sometimes you can find a great deal on tickets, especially if the sellers are “virtual scalpers” who can’t be bothered to go to the venue, but don’t want to be stuck with the tickets.

Good luck!

9

I remember people laughing at Pearl Jam…

Yea, I hate Ticketmaster. There are shows I’d love to go to, but the add-on fees push tickets way over my budget. Course I think concert prices are ridiculous these days period.

10

Shocking, truly shocking.
You’re a Rangers fan? EEEWWWWWWW!!!

[sub]Go Habs![/sub]

11

Here is an email that I received from Ticketbastard after purchasing tickets through them to a concert that was later cancelled.

The bolded portion was what pissed me off the most. I won’t ever use them again. I paid for a ticket to a concert that no one will ever see. I got most of the money back from said ticket save for their “processing fee.” Bastards. :mad:

12

Well it turns out I will get to see a concert this year without having to pay TIcketbastard one red cent.

The Dave Matthews Band will be performing for free at Central Park in NYC on 9/24.