Competition? Never heard of them!

.. and yes.. ticketmaster does suck indeed..

Posted by: kasia on August 14, 2002 04:12 PM

(Kasia is a Java goddess for tickets.com)

Posted by: Steve on August 14, 2002 04:23 PM

The only money Ticketmaster gets from the tickets is the order processing fees, which are just a one-time charge on the order. The other fees go to the state, artist, venue, etc.

And the service, well, yes... you try and sit in a cubicle all day and take phone calls from stupid people.

Posted by: Bryan on October 13, 2002 01:18 PM

Ticket Master DOES suck.

They charge an understandable processing fee, about 10% of the ticket, then ANOTHER 'Convience Fee' closer to 25% of the face value of the ticket.

I thought the processing fee WAS the convience fee. THEN they'll charge you if you want to use YOUR OWN FRICKIN PRINTER to print out the ticket.

Forget Enron, Martha Stewart and Adelphia. Some prosecutors need to go after TicketMaster. >:^C

Posted by: Dath23 on October 14, 2002 06:28 AM

Ticketmaster Customer Service Sucksss.

And by the way Bryan us "stupid people" are the ones that pay the bills! Dont like your job?

Maybe something with a paper hat is more your cup of tea........

Section 5 floor seating available at 10:30am.
I decide to purchase around 11am. Best available is stated as being section 108.
Thinking all floor seating had been sold out I purchased them.
Check back at 11:30 and section 5 floor seating shows up as being available.

Are you telling me the promoter made these seats available from 10-10:30am, not available from
10:30-11:30am then available again from 11:30am until the following day?

Surely Ticketmaster has transaction logs that can verify my complaint.

Canned responses aint getting it.

Sometimes you have to do the right thing.

When will Corporate America wake up and figure out who is paying the bills??????????????

A copy of this and any future correspondence will be posted in the Tom Petty forum at Warner Brothers Records.

From: customer_support@ticketmaster.com
To: whackamapoo@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Re: myaccountdiff
Date: 16 Oct 2002 12:16:10 -0700

Dear Steven,

The promoters of events hold exclusive rights which they exercise in the process
of releasing tickets at intervals specific to their needs. The best available tickets
to which you refer are indeed the best available at the time of purchase.

Ticketmaster has no say in the decision-making process of releasing tickets for sale. We
are allocated tickets by the venue at the direction of the promoters, and put them on sale
as instructed.

Sincerely,

James
Ticketmaster.com Customer Support

TRACKING NUMBER:

-----Original Message-----

From: whackamapoo@hotmail.com
Sent: 15 Oct 02 18:29:54
To: customer_support@ticketmaster.com
Cc:
Subject: Re: myaccountdiff

Now I see why so many have come to despise your company.
You hold yourself accountable for nothing. Like I said
before I will not use Ticketmaster in the future.

You can be assured my complaint will be posted on every website and
newsgroup I can find. I am filing a complaint with the Better Business
Bureau and American Express.

>From: customer_support@ticketmaster.com
>To: whackamapoo@hotmail.com
>Subject: Re: myaccountdiff
>Date: 15 Oct 2002 07:36:15 -0700
>
>Dear :
>
>
>Thank you for contacting us!
>Ticketmaster always sells the best available seats at the time the order is
>placed, and as agreed to during the order process, there are no refunds,
>exchanges, or cancellations.
>
>If you have any further questions, please reply, and include all
>correspondence. Thank you once again for ontacting us!
>
>
>Sincerely,
>Oscar
>TRACKING NUMBER:
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
>
> From: whackamapoo@hotmail.com
> Sent: 12 Oct 02 13:59:19
> To: customer_support@ticketmaster.com
> Cc:
> Subject: myaccountdiff
>
>
>
>First_Name: Steven
>Last_Name:
>Day_Phone: >Night_Phone:
>Email_Address: whackamapoo@hotmail.com
>City: Houston
>State: TX
>Event_Name : Tom Petty
>Confirmation_number:
>My_question: I used your online service to purchase tickets. I specified I
>wanted the best available floor seats and was given a section up from the
>floor as being the best available. I purchased the tickets thinking these
>were the best I could get. When I checked back an hour later I see several
>floor seats available. I call your customer service department and they
>tell me there is nothing they can do. Your online system is flawed. I
>will not use it again and will recommend to my friends and family that they
>not use it.
>For the $137.45 I spent I am very displeased with your service.

Posted by: Whackamapoo on October 17, 2002 08:06 PM

Just tried to use the new Ticketbastard system. Got plenty of screens showing me the tickets I was being told I could have and then the process FUCKED UP and gave me error pages. One day soon someone is going to bend them over and shaft them the way Ticketbastard shafts us and I will will LAUGH and LAUGH and LAUGH. Whoever put their online system together did a purely shit job. I hope it was an outside contractor cause then Ticketbastard got shafted. Hooray.

Posted by: britman on February 8, 2003 07:41 AM

TICKEMASTER SUCKS BIG TIME!!!!!! They rip you off and do not deliver!!! I had tickets with a special promotion. Arrangements for that promotion had to be made 48 hours in advance! Tickets were purchased 6 WEEKS BEFORE THE EVENT!! Ticketmaster QUARANTEED the order would be received "AT LEAST 48 HOURS before the event"
I called "Customer service" (what a laugh!) and the dim-witt couldn't even realize the event was 48 hours away and was VERY RELUCTANT to help at all. I sent an E-mail and got a standard response form-what loosers!!!!! 24 hours before the event the tickets arrive! THANKS TICKEMASTER FOR MAKING ME MISS OUT ON THE PROMOTION! MAY YOU GO OUT OF BUSINESS SOON!! KFI Radio in Los Angeles (50,000 watts of power) has a couple of oppoutunities for callers to call in and gripe or rage about things - this sounds like a perfect thing to talk about!! Nationally syndicated Consumer advocate Clark Howard might be interested in this as well!
BOYCOTT TICKETMASTER!!!!!

Posted by: Scooter on May 2, 2003 06:13 PM

I am a customer who is getting the run around from Ticketmaster because I am trying to get a refund due to the fact that when Ozzfest recently came through the Seattle area Ozzy was sick and did not perform.

I am a high school business teacher with an entrepreneurial spirit. I am all for any business entity making a buck.

However, being an silent advocate for entrepreneurs everywhere, I am wondering what it would take to bring down Ticketmaster or at least
cripple their grip enough to open the market back up to small companies who wish to sell tickets?

In my opinion, if juries in this country are stupid enough to reward money to people who play the victim and claim that they did not know smoking would give them cancer, then I wonder how many juries would be willing to gladly help to break up Ticketmasters monopoly?

It looks like on this website their are a bunch of individual voices. Who here is interested in strating a ground swell movement to bring Ticketmaster down and open the market back up to competition?

Posted by: Troy on July 22, 2003 04:14 PM

Ticketmaster sucks big time!! Convenience fees? You've got to be kidding me!! Let me give you 2 examples of "convenience fees". I purchased tickets for Lynyrd Skynyrd online for their July show in Viginia. The lawn seats were available at a discounted rate of $9.47/ticket. I bought 2 tickets, so the base price was $18.94. The total bill came to $37.40!!!!!!!
Another example, I bought 2 more tickets to another Skynyrd show in Pelham, AL. I had to buy the cheapest tickets which were $15.75, but it was buy one, get one free. So, instead of being charged $15.75, the total bill came to $29.10!!!! I was charged a convenience fee for EACH ticket, even though one ticket was SUPPOSED to be free. In both instances, as you can see, the final price was just about TWICE the amount of the tickets themselves.

Now, about the show in Alabama: I bought them in mid-June. By the time the end of July came, I STILL had not received my tix. I contacted them immediately at that point. Their response was that they would hold 2 tix for me at the "will call" window at the venue. Excuse me, but where is the convenience here? Even though I already paid for the tix, I still have to go to the venue box office, and yet I don't receive a refund of the convenience fees?

Finally, the show in Alabama was canceled on the day of the event, due to band member Gary Rossington's poor health. They refunded my money the next day (charged back my Visa), yet it was only for $26. They kept the other $3.00, saying it was a non-refundable "processing fee"!!!!

The government needs to step in and dismantle this money-grubbing, people-raping monopoly. Why is it they have such a hardon for Microsoft, yet they let TicketBastard get away with murder without even batting an eye???

Posted by: Beeracuda on August 10, 2003 06:00 PM

Hi

I agree too that Ticketmaster is rubbish. Given that this is a time of super efficient, Internet driven, sales, why does ticketmaster need to add $20 on top of my $70 Bon Jovi Ticket? Either they're are the most inefficient company ever or they are taking advantage of their stranglehold on venues. Do they really think that they provide benefit that's equal to about 1/3rd of the value of the concert?

On the same topic, they give out your personal details with no option to opt out. See http://news.com.com/2100-1026-5060827.html

I will be buying my tickets direct from the venues in the future

dave

Posted by: dave on August 12, 2003 06:26 AM

I am currently on holdwith TicketBAstard and have been for about 20 minutes. Not too bad except I had already been on hold for 45 minutes when the cheese dicks disconected me. I can't even type the whole problem because it would take forever and would just piss me off. I agree with the other post though that they are a monopoly and I too wonder why the government goes after Microsoft who provides a great product at a reasonable price and let's these a holes get away with porking America for every event there is.

Posted by: Apockolips on October 18, 2003 07:00 AM

Well I wanted to buy 4 tickets to see phish in boston on 12.02.03 well the tickets did not go on sale until 12pm so I logged on (I have broadband)at 11:50 and kept refreshing the page until I was able to order tickets which about 11:59

almost instantly I was told there were no tickets available.

I kept trying and after about 20 minutes I was able to get 4 balcony seats. I entered my credit card info and it was kicked back saying that the last 3 digits on the back of the card were no good.

NO GOOD What the hell are they talking about this is a card I just used a half an hour earlier. and it still had a postive balance. and yes the numbers on the card were good!!!!

So to make a long story short I lost the tickets and was not able to get any else because the show sold out

I say PHUCK OFF TICKET MASTER!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: ahog on October 19, 2003 02:56 PM

Agree, agree, and agree. Tickmaster is a monopoly that adds little to the transaction process and charges far too much. Their customer service is non-existant. I tried to get tickets to Simon and Garfunkel. Was on-line before tickets went on sale, refreshed immediately when tickets did go on sale (we're talking micro seconds here), best available was first row but balcony almost behind the stage!!! Then I clicked on the venue map to be sure as to where these seats were located (that little button that Ticketmaster has on the ordering screen), then returned to find out that I had lost even these "cheap" seats due to my two minute warning violation; without warning. Why put the link there if using it is going to cancel the order selection? Signed on again and nothing but behind the stage was available. Where is the convenience here? Negative value added in my opinion. Needless to say, I'm not going. Nutcracker tickets are now on sale through this rip-off group. Processing fees and convenience fees out the yingyang. Once upon a time, long, long ago in Atlanta, tickets could be purchased and in-hand for the face value plus sales tax. There is no justification for an ordertaker to be adding +30% to the price of the ticket just to "sell" the ticket. We used to call people that did that "Scalpers"!!! Also, convenience fees added to every indivdual ticket purchased...what a joke! Processing, handling and "convenience" costs have to go down as the number of tickets purchased per transaction goes up. Someone at Ticketmaster is making a killing and we're bleeding money and inconvenience for it.
Mark

Posted by: Mark on November 24, 2003 10:00 AM

I worked for Ticketmaster for 8 years back in the late 70's and early 80's. I was a glorified bag man for them. Performed the final settlements on the day of the show with the promoters and the talent. Let me tell you that the convenience charge and service charge is not the only way that Ticketmaster makes their money. There are any number of, let's call them, rebates given back to Ticketmaster from the promoters and even some of the venues. There were also cases of fake or duplicate manifests that cheated the bands out of their share of the proceeds. C'mon Bryan, don't be so naive!

Posted by: Steven on February 15, 2004 07:25 PM

Wow, this is ignorant.

I personally am part of the admin staff at Ticketmaster.
Do you people not realize that what pays OUR bills is your convinience charge?
Do you also not realize that the facilities also charge the majority of your fees, called a facility charge. So, if you have a problem with it, take it up with them.

As far as the website is concerned, you try having thousands upon thousands of people going to the same website at the same time, and the service not be slow.

Posted by: Kitten on March 16, 2004 08:40 PM

About 20 minutes after my first confrontation with the ticketmaster web site, I find myself typing "ticketmaster sucks" into google. And here I am.
Normally, I don't post anything at all on the web, but ticketmaster sucks so spectacularly I have to say something.

After finding out that only lame tickets were available (according to the web site) I decide to try a phone call. Several minutes of speaking slowly to the automatic voice recognition software finally gave me a choice to "press 1 to purchase tickets now". I hit 1 and hear "you have made a invalid selection" continually repeated. Figuring that I did something wrong, I do it all again. Same result.

On the third try, when prompted for the event name, I speak slowly and deliberately the words "ticketmaster sucks". The electronic voice says "I'm sorry, I had a problem with that response".
A few more times of responding with "ticketmaster sucks", it decides to connect me with an actual person. Success! I recommend this tactic.

The person informs me that better tickets than the web site offerred are available. We spend 10 minutes or so while I tell him endless information that he "needs" to process my order. Finally, my credit card is "denied" (see below), I am thanked for using ticketmaster and forwarded immediately to "customer service". I listen for 5 minutes to crap music until finally the line goes dead. I say, weakly, "ticketmaster sucks" one last time to nobody before hanging up.

A little later, having verified that my credit card is OK, I find myself back at the ticketmaster web site. What other choice do I have? I now find that new, better, tickets are available. So I get them, and pay them more than 20% of the cost, just for the convenience of it all. Perhaps I should have waited a little longer still, just in case something really good shows up.

Perhaps they'll actually be delivered some day. I'm not confident though. I'll let you know.

Posted by: T.M. Sux on March 31, 2004 08:06 AM

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