Tell me how hard I'm about to get screwed

Quote from PaintTheSkyGrey : You've just been added to a list.

I hope they check for dupes.

Are you picking them up from Will Call? We had to match up the name on the credit slip to the name picking up the tickets (Ticketmaster system) but for a gift card I just matched the card number as best I could and wrote the name from the ID on the credit slip. You should be able to pick them up early from the venue box office as well if the are will call, you need the transaction number though.

Quote from veritablequandary : No legit tix to be had by the time we decided we really wanted to go. I wouldn't have bought these but the price was just right (about $50 less per ticket than any others I could find anywhere). And I made sure they were "electronic delivery" in the listing but apparently "something happened" that made that listing incorrect.

This, this pisses me off so much. I went to buy tickets to a show that's over a month out, but there are none to be had from the official ticket seller. They were ~$35 a ticket. So I check StubHub and TicketsNow and what do you know, with all the bogus fees and junk they want double the retail price. Of course, I bought it since it's a band I really want to see and they aren't likely to come around very often. After paying something like $10 in fees per ticket, I get tickets emailed to me printed with the free version of CutePDF. What a ripoff.

I'm also set to see Bill Cosby tomorrow and I thought I'd peruse SH and TN. HOLY COW! My tickets have more than quadrupled in price since I bought them so many months ago! This whole reselling business is such bs.

Quote from redmaxx : This, this pisses me off so much. I went to buy tickets to a show that's over a month out, but there are none to be had from the official ticket seller. They were ~$35 a ticket. So I check StubHub and TicketsNow and what do you know, with all the bogus fees and junk they want double the retail price. Of course, I bought it since it's a band I really want to see and they aren't likely to come around very often. After paying something like $10 in fees per ticket, I get tickets emailed to me printed with the free version of CutePDF. What a ripoff. I'm also set to see Bill Cosby tomorrow and I thought I'd peruse SH and TN. HOLY COW! My tickets have more than quadrupled in price since I bought them so many months ago! This whole reselling business is such bs.

This whole Paperless Ticketing nonsense that I'm fighting my way through with FindMySeats.com was supposed to prevent that by forcing the person who bought the tix to be present at the venue, since only the card you used for the purchase + your valid photo ID will work to get you in. But TM immediately ran into problems with people who couldn't make the concert for legitimate reasons, and others who wanted to buy tix as a gift. So there were instant loopholes and we're right back to where we started with resellers snapping up all the tickets and turning them for a profit.

I don't know the answer EXCEPT if it was for every band & venue to do what Louis CK and some others did, and sell tix at a flat fee to everyone, and do it directly, themselves, without involving a broker like TM. But then you're back to waiting in line at the box office which means I have to take an afternoon off to go do that...

I mean on the one hand I'm grateful that I can even get tickets to shows or games I want to see on sites like StubHub, and part of me says lassiez-faire & let the market decide. I have the money and if/when I don't, well, I can't go to that show.

On the other hand it really rankles to see $35 on the face of the ticket that I bought for over $100 with all the fees. And WTF is up with charging me $5 to print my own tix?

I set up Google Alerts and subscribed to a couple of free concert services that allege to be able to notify me the second a concert is announced. So I'll try that for a while and see if I can get tickets to shows I want to see.

Dear Penthouse...



The show was great, the night is young.

Quote from veritablequandary : Dear Penthouse... The show was great, the night is young.

good, you need to get laid, your PMs have been lacking lately.

Quote from TigerStar : good, you need to get laid, your PMs have been lacking lately.

Quote from veritablequandary : I don't know the answer EXCEPT if it was for every band & venue to do what Louis CK and some others did, and sell tix at a flat fee to everyone, and do it directly, themselves, without involving a broker like TM. But then you're back to waiting in line at the box office which means I have to take an afternoon off to go do that...

I like the Louis CK model in theory, but in practice it sucks. I went to his show in Detroit last fall, and while the show itself was great, the logistics were terrible. Apparently, brokering services are responsible for managing things like parking and hiring ushers who know what the F they are doing, and without them, it turns into a cluster. They only had 2 parking people for a 3500 seat venue, so most of the people trickled in throughout the show. We left with plenty of time, but were still 40 minutes late into a 90 minute show. It was an hour of sitting on the highway, then exit ramp, then surface streets, then stop lights, then finally into the parking lot.

Also, the ushers weren't familiar with the theater, so they didn't know where the seats were. We ended up finding our own in the dark.

Good thing he's funny, but I wouldn't do it again.

Quote from veritablequandary : Dear Penthouse... The show was great, the night is young.

No doubt ticketbastard sucks. Between the "convienence fees" and the other fees, you end up paying almost double the cost of the tickets. Last tiem I bought tickets with ticketmaster, the tickets were 35 each. "Convienence fees", you know the fee to print out MY tickets on MY printer using MY ink, were 12 each ticket. Plus there was an overall fee for soemthing else that was another 12 , so for 2 tickets I ended up paying what I would have paid for three tickets with no fees. Forget if you try Stubhub. You pay face value, plus all the ticketbastard fees, plus the stubhub fees, plus the scalpers markup.

Quote from MSUSteve280 : I like the Louis CK model in theory, but in practice it sucks. I went to his show in Detroit last fall, and while the show itself was great, the logistics were terrible. Apparently, brokering services are responsible for managing things like parking and hiring ushers who know what the F they are doing, and without them, it turns into a cluster. They only had 2 parking people for a 3500 seat venue, so most of the people trickled in throughout the show. We left with plenty of time, but were still 40 minutes late into a 90 minute show. It was an hour of sitting on the highway, then exit ramp, then surface streets, then stop lights, then finally into the parking lot. Also, the ushers weren't familiar with the theater, so they didn't know where the seats were. We ended up finding our own in the dark. Good thing he's funny, but I wouldn't do it again.

When I ran a box office for an arena I was responsible for all that, IF the client/manager wanted me to. some had their own people they wanted to use instead of my trained people. Ticketmaster is just a computer system, we had plenty of flat shows that didn't use them and ran just fine.

Quote from medicchick : When I ran a box office for an arena I was responsible for all that, IF the client/manager wanted me to. some had their own people they wanted to use instead of my trained people. Ticketmaster is just a computer system, we had plenty of flat shows that didn't use them and ran just fine.

Good to know. The buzz going around was that he used his own people for that, rather than specifically ticketmaster. I suppose the crowd unfairly correlated the two.