Ever wonder why good concert and event seats sell out so fast? Read this copy of my consumer awareness email and you will have the answer:
My children told me about a band that was coming to the Tweeter Center that they really like. Out of our 7 children, 5 of them want to go see the concert. Since all of their birthdays fall between March and May and the concert is in March, I thought, "What a great birthday present to get for them." They range in age between 10 and 14.
Tickets went on sale about 2 weeks ago, but they told me the day after the tickets went on sale. So I thought, no problem, I will go to Ticketmaster online and see if I can get them. Of course, they were totally sold out. I began to check out eBay and other websites to see if maybe they were available somewhere else. They were, but they ranged in price from $100 to $300 each, which was too steep a price to pay for the 5 tickets for the kids and the other 2 for me and my husband to chaperone.
After doing a little research for the following week to see if there were any other shows within a reasonable distance, I found that there was going to be a second show added at the Tweeter Center. I received an email from Ticketmaster saying that the tickets went on sale Saturday, 1/28 at 10am. So I was up early on Saturday and planned to go on at 10am and get them some really good tickets. I logged into Ticketmaster's website at 9:45am and was ready to "click the button" at exactly 10am. So at 10am, when they were up for sale, I chose 7 best available seats. What I was offered was way in the back, so I thought, "This must be a mistake." I clicked search again and it offered me seats that were just as bad. So I figured that this was all I was going to get and ordered them.
Then, out of curiosity, I called Ticketmaster (supposedly the phone operators are using the same system that a customer would be using online, but I wanted to check just for the benefit of the doubt). I waited on hold for a bit and asked the operator for the best tickets they had available. He gave me the same bad options as I received online. I asked him how, if I was online at exactly 10am, I could not get good seats, and that there was no possible way that the front 50 something rows had already been filled. He chuckled and told me, "Preferred customers are customers who buy a large quantity of tickets all of the time, and they are given promo codes to use to order prior to the opening of the sale of the tickets to get the good seats before the general public has a chance at them." So I replied, "In other words, the scalpers and internet scalpers have the first chance at the tickets so that they can buy up all of the good seats at $30 and sell them for $300?" He chuckled again and replied, "I can't answer that."
I am astonished that they are allowed to do this. They are allowing these scalpers to rip people off. Is this legal? Do the venues like the Tweeter, Wachovia, etc. know that Ticketmaster is doing this to their customers? Ticketmaster is where you must go to buy the tickets if you do not plan on or are unable to stand in line for tickets. And those poor people who stand in line did not have a chance either, because Ticketmaster already sold all of the good tickets, probably before they even got into the line. All that I wanted was to be able to give my kids a good birthday present... For 3 of them, their very first concert experience, in some seats where they could at least see the band. I was not looking for front row, but at least something good. I guess in addition to the tickets, I had better buy them some binoculars.
If you search the web for tickets, you will run into a bunch of sites selling tickets. I was on eBay the day before the tickets went on sale and was wondering how someone was already selling tickets that were not on sale yet.
0 comments