I Hate Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster has got to be the worst organization known to man. I do not jest. I hate ticketmaster and it subsidaries with a burning passion that cannot be extinguished.

I´ve spent a good amount of the past week thinking about how to score tickets to Phish during the general onsale which happened this morning at 10:00am. See, Phish is better than most. Phish had a lottery for a small percentage of tickets before the general onsale. We did not participate in this, but we did bite the bullet and pay quite a bit of a marked of price to a scalper for Friday night tickets, in case things didn´t work out. I figured that even if we did get tickets from the loto or from the onsale, we could easily resell and break even.

It´s a good thing we bought those tickets then. 

So, I had a brilliant plan of how we were going to try and get tickets. Between me and both my parents, we had 4 computers and 3 phone lines. I figured ONE of us must be able to get through, and that´s all you need.

Anyways, so this morning rolls around and my plan for the phones was to call around 9:40 and just bullshit about other concert tickets until 10:00 when Phish tickets went on sale. Well, by 9:35 every ticketmaster line in the country was busy. Every single number. You couldn´t even get through to a point where they´d put you on hold. You just got a busy signal. G-d I hate ticketmaster.

The basic problem here is supply and demand. The venue, Hampton Coliseum, holds about 13,000 people. Even a 3 night stand, that´s only 39,000 (and it´s safe to assume that most of the concert goers will go to more than one show.) So let´s say there are 20,000 tickets available. Well, just in the lottery, which wasn´t advertised that well, over 150,000 people entered. Assuming that there are more people going for the onsale, and assuming that most of them have their neighbors, girlfriends, and dogs all helping them, the amount of requests could be close to 1,000,000. 

I eventually got through on the phone and got on hold. I got my call answered at 9:56, which I figured would be perfect. But no. The first thing the woman says is ¨are you calling about Phish tickets?¨ It turns out that you have to call after 10:00 to be able to buy over the phone. What?? I can´t even get on hold at 10:00, how the hell am I supposed to get answered in time to get tickets?

Well, I gave up on the phone and just hoped for the best with the online. We still had 4 computers between the three of us, which I figured might give us a chance. Ugh. Getting tickets when there is this much demand online is basically a lottery as well. It´s all about exactly when you click ¨refresh¨ and get to get in the ¨virtual line¨ for tickets. Well, I got in the virtual line a few seconds after 10:00 but, I hate ticketmaster, there´s a little word in a box that you have to type in to verify that you´re not a machine (hackers used to use these machine cheat that would simply flood the servers with requests). Anyways, the word didn´t show up. I hit give me a new word and nothing. I went back (getting out of the virtual line) and finally there was a word there. By now it was 10:00:45 and I knew it was probably long over.

I sat and waited 15 minutes for it to tell me that the show was sold out. Thanks. And then, here´s where I get really pissed off, when you get to the little screen where it says ¨you didn´t get tickets,¨ it has an advertisement on the side for one of its sister companies ¨tickets now.¨ 

Now, these tickets were $40.00 each. Ticketsnow is a scalping website where you could buy tickets for the low price of $300.00 each. So, here´s what´s happening... ticketmaster is taking these tickets that it has a right to, selling them to its sister site, and jacking up the price nearly 1000%. Not only is this a huge dick move, but it´s also ILLEGAL. Selling tickets above face value is AGAINST THE LAW. It´s a CRIME. How can they get away with this?

I hate scalpers. I hate ticketmaster. 

It breaks my balls that most of the people who were able to get tickets (by the way, all 3 nights sold out in less than 8 seconds), were scalpers or brokers who paid 1000 guys in India to sit in front of a computer and click refresh and type in those words really quickly. And then we, the fans (phans), get screwed over because suddenly there´s enormous demand and the only supply is in the hands of a bunch of heartless, soul-less scalpers who sell tickets for now OVER 1500% of face value. Let me just say, I felt shitty buying a scalped ticket, but even though it seemed like a lot at the time, right now, Friday tickets are OVER $500 each.

The worst part is that there´s nothing we or bands can do about it. Ticketmaster has contracts with almost all major venues, so if a band wants to play at anything bigger than Andrew Bernard´s living room, you basically need to deal with them. It´s a monopoly and it´s terrible.

Anyways, sorry to rant and bitch, but this really drives me mad. I haven´t updated in a while and I will try to get to that in the next few days.