Ticketmaster!

[shakalaka]

How does this piece of shit website work? I am not much of a concertgoer so I don't book tickets often but I am trying to book tickets for the Drake concert that's happening in Edmonton as the wife would like to go.

The tickets just opened up literally 6 minutes ago and when I search for 2 standard tickets it keeps saying, 'sorry no tickets match your criteria'.

WTF is this shit? Couldn't have been sold out that fast especially when there are two concerts one day after the other. When I search for 1 it shows up. How the hell do I book a freaking ticket to this shit show?

[roopi]

Keep trying. It means currently there are none available (either on hold processing or sold out). If you try and purchase a single ticket it lets you so the site is working fine.

[dandia89]

high profile shows will have scalpers all over it. you may get lucky if the tickets get timed out after ~10-15 minutes and pick up their left overs. i find my success using the mobile app & LTE instead of wi-fi or a computer

[pheoxs]

There are lots of shows that almost sell out instantly. It unfortunately doesn't help that scalpers will buy up large amounts of tickets to flip them.

Just keep trying, when you get tickets in your cart you have ~10 ish minutes to go through the order. There is usually people trying on multiple computers so lets say 5 minutes after they go onsale it says no tickets available, but then at the 10 minute mark some get released back into the pool and you can snag some again and so on.

[lasimmon]

You gotta get in on a Pre-sale to have any chance anymore IMO.

[shakalaka]

Fuck I passed on a couple of options that became available cause I didn't like the area of seating. But it sounds like I should have just taken it...

[msommers]

Ticketmaster is a giant piece of shit. We tried to get Adele tickets for Toronto awhile back, got in their online queue, selected seats, put in all my required info, go to hit submit...order not filled but I got an order number!

Tickets for the two of us would have been ~$450. Next day on Stubhub, $2,500/ea.

I complained and complained to Ticketmaster, which first started as a $25 gift card, to $50, to finally $100. I demanded an explanation on how their system kicked out purchasers as I wasn't alone. They had no answer other than the system was overloaded, no money was ever actually transferred in the end and they don't owe me anything. So I took $100.

In that particular instance, all of the concerts in eastern North America went onsale all at once...dumb.

The reality is that many of seats are already sold before being opened to the public. Online scalpers have a system which is somehow bypassing TM's queue system or they actually have many, many computers open.

[nzwasp]

There was a CBC podcast on this on the weekend. Its not all scalpers fault although they are a big part of it. There is a set number reserved for presale and then also the concert organizers also reserve a number of seats for them to sell on stubhub as well and effectively become scalpers themselves. I think the example they used in the podcast was the adele concert as well.

Regarding the scalpers using fast computers, they have preprogrammed bots to grab tickets in the fraction of a second. I sure would like my hands on one of these ticket bots.

Im sure that these tragically hip concerts are going to be sold out in seconds as well, sure that the scalpers will be targetting that.

[shakalaka]

Thinking of taking up a new job as a scalper if there's so much margin. The ticket I passed on was $69 in the top row and then it became available as a resale ticket for $208. Fucking unbelievable.

Anyway, I finally got tickets for $100 each still in a shitty top row and I was willing to pay more but wasn't going to risk passing on them after having no luck for a long time.

That's why I hate this bullshit about concerts and don't bother usually. Things you gotta do to make the wife happy.

[rage2]

Wrote about this in another thread:


Originally posted by rage2
That's because all the tickets are reserved, and there are actually very few tickets available for the general public. From various promoters getting several sections reserved for them, to all the best seats for the multiple VIP packages, to presales (AE, fanclub etc) and of course a whole bunch reserved for TicketsNow, there are very few day 1 tickets available, and they're all the worst seats.

Closer to the concert date, the unsold reserved tickets, or the good seats, become available for sale, but it's a gamble.

Even Foo Fighters method, the line up gets you the worst seats haha. Those reservations are contractually obligated by the promoters, venue, sponsors, etc.

So, find someone who's a promoter (or works at a promotion company) and be their BFF. Or spend tons of money with a company that has box seats. Or be bling and pay for the VIP packages, which are always the best seats in the house.

From here: http://forums.beyond.ca/st/396046/ticketmaster-fails/

[nzwasp]

what is ticketsnow? I see that for the hip concert the first avaliable seats for the first concert are avaliable on ticketsnow.

Also how come for this hip concert there is a presale sell date listed on ticketmaster for edmonton but not calgary.

[rage2]

Ticketsnow is a reseller site owned by Ticketmaster. Secondary market, tickets at market (scalper) value. Because it's owned by TM and integrates with their ticketing system, the tickets are 100% authentic as the old codes are disabled once it's sold and the buyer gets a brand new unique code.

Other reseller sites can't do this, so you run a risk of buying a ticket with a bad or duplicate code.