9 ms·

Ticketmaster is a horrible company

589 points by hjhart 10y ago

nathancahill 10y ago
That "Minutes left to complete the purchase" is one of the oldest tricks in the sales book. I felt my blood pressure going up just looking at that gif, and I wasn't even buying tickets! Edit: I know why they do it, but it isn't necessary for most ticket sales. Just turn it on when there's high demand.
- jarjoura 10y ago
  To be fair, it's 100x better than the old days of waiting in 6-8 hour lines to guarantee a ticket to popular events.
  - jbverschoor 10y ago
    Have you ever tried to get a ticket for something popular with TM?
    - jandrese 10y ago
      At least there is no wait, the website just stops responding for 5 minutes then comes back with "all tickets sold (to scalpers)".
    - csydas 10y ago
      To elaborate for the above commenter, ticket master sales for popular events often sell out within seconds of the sale starting as a swarm of bots attacks the site and buy up available tickets. It usually takes just a few minutes for ticket sales to go up on Craigslist or eBay. Users see just a blank page or ticket masters internal loading errors while scalping bots buy up tickets. I remember trying to get tickets for my younger cousin to The International and I didn't evn have a chance. Even worse was neither Valve nor ticket master at the time has announced they weren't allowing ticket transfers so trying for tickets from those lucky enough to get some was useless as well. My uncle unfortunately was out $400some on eBay as a result; the guy I found on Craigslist was luckily way more understanding and when he was unable to initiate the transfer after a cash in hand meetup, he gladly offered to stay in contact until he could sort the issue on his side and transfer. It's honestly a mess and it leaves a lot to be desired for most users. I get that ultimately they can't satisfy all customers because we all want the same scarce product, but it's very hard to shake the feeling that botting and ticket scalpers get too many of the tickets, a
      - gpvos 10y ago
        So, if all tickets go to scalpers and no-one (including presumably the scalpers) can transfer a ticket, it must be that the venues remained empty. How is this a sustainable business for anyone?
        jbverschoor 10y ago
        You can simply sell the tickets. Sometimes people were scammed by buying doubly sold e-tickets. ticketswap.com solves this problem in coop with also ticketmaster if I'm not mistaken
      - kingosticks 10y ago
        It's a great deal for TM and the like, they get paid 3 times! 1. Scalper pays fee when buying ticket. 2. Scalper pays fee when selling ticket on TM's reselling platform (stubhub?) 3. Concert goer pays fee when buying ticket from reseller platform. In the UK there's been some investigation into this business practice (select committee) but I doubt anything will come of it.
    - spelunker 10y ago
      Every year TM knows the Great American Beer Festival is going to be crazy popular and sell out within 10 minutes, and every year it's still a mess. I mean I get it's a hard problem and a large crowd like that can't be easy, but if anyone can do it, Ticketmaster should be able to.
  - x0x0 10y ago
    In the sense you can not get tickets from the convenience of your couch!
- firebird84 10y ago
  It's really just a "countdown to being infuriated." I've had it lapse on me and I had to go back, find the right seats, and repeat literally the entire process all over again. "Give us your money quickly or we'll wage a bizarre form of psychological warfare on you." it seems to say.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Thats to stop DOS attacks by putting all seats in a shopping cart and having the next guy who logs in see no seats available. You need to hold them somehow as it takes a couple minutes for most people to pull out their credit card and fill out the form, so you use a timer. If they don't finish, the seat gets listed as open again. I don't think its a sales tactic at all, but certainly can be made to look more urgent than it needs to be to. Back when I was a teen we had to get up at 6am to buy tickets for popular shows and go wait outside our local reseller, which was usually a department store in the mall and join the long line of people ahead of us. I much prefer the web based system. Also its worth mentioning that TM is only as evil as venues allow them to be. A lot of the fees and charges are kickbacks to the venue. That's why there's no competition. Venues say, "Look we're getting an extra $7 per ticket with TM, can you beat that?" They're not interested in less fees as these fees are free money for them.
  - jsmeaton 10y ago
    Yep. I hate most ticketing practices but the countdown is reasonable.
  - lolc 10y ago
    Well that's a sensible explanation for events that sell out quickly. They shouldn't be trying to "upsell by default" on the smae page however.
- lolc 10y ago
  Is that really what it means? I was unsure about it because nobody would be that scummy. But then I have no previous experience with Ticketmaster.
- ebbv 10y ago
  How would you propose not doing this for any purchase of a specific product like a seat in a theater which must be held for the customer while they are making the purchase? Would you prefer they don't hold it for you and at the end of the process you get a message "Your seat has been sold to someone else."? Ticketmaster sucks but not because they hold your seat for you while you place your order.
- firloop 10y ago
  Not a huge Ticketmaster fan, but I actually don't have much of a problem with this as they have a complicated problem: allocate demand of a often scarce good (event tickets) in a way that's fair to non automated buyers. By placing a hold on the stock for a few minutes (rather than allocating at final checkout), it gives humans a fair chance to check out as their ability to secure the stock isn't based on how quickly they check out. Showing the time left to purchase is transparent to the buyer and eliminates confusion.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - qntty 10y ago
    Under certain circumstances, sure. But it doesn't make sense to enforce the time limit by forcing you to re-do the purchase when there are still available tickets not being held by an active checkout.
  - Retric 10y ago
    If they are selling out fast enough that Automated buyers are a problem then the price is to low. A 'presale' at 5x price that ticks down to normal prices over say 2 weeks would solve this problem. However, Ticketmaster makes more money getting a cut from scalpers without paying the bands their cut.
  - Coincoin 10y ago
    I don't know if this is common elsewhere but to buy hockey tickets up here in communist canuckland, the local broker uses a virtual queue system. You can register up to 4 hours in advance and get placed in the pool. When the countdown reaches zero, they randomly, yes randomly, place you in the giant queue. When it's your turn, you just select what day and place you want and confirm. There is no slowdown unless you check in the pool at the last minute. If you register after the countdown, you get placed at the end of the queue and your chance of getting anything are basically zero.
SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago
Can anyone offer any evidence to confirm or dispute the rumor I frequently see online in message boards that Ticketmaster is passing most of the profit from these fees onto the venues and it's really the venues that are doing the price gouging here? The idea that is frequently floated is that Ticketmaster bears the brunt of the hate from fans in exchange for letting the performers and venues collect most of the extra fees and giving TM a relatively small piece of the pie.
- jarjoura 10y ago
  Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with venues and usually owns the venues outright, so it doesn't matter where the money goes, it's all back into their coffers. http://www.livenationentertainment.com http://www.livenationentertainment.com
  - chinathrow 10y ago
    Indeed, look at their filings: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000119312512075895/d277780d10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000119312512... LOL: "Competition in the live entertainment industry is intense. We believe that we compete primarily on the basis of our ability to deliver quality music products, sell tickets and provide enhanced fan and artist experiences. We believe that our primary strengths include: [...] • ticketing software and services; [...] "
    - treehau5 10y ago
      Wow what did they do in 2009 to 2010 to increase their customer database from 25 million to 96 million?
      - Bartweiss 10y ago
        Merged with Live Nation.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      "Competition... is intense", hah. TicketMaster's big advantage is that competition between venues isn't intense. Smaller cities will generally only have 1-2 venues of a decently large size, especially if you require things like alcohol licenses and permission to stay open late at night. In any market where opening a new competitor was easy, someone would be fighting TicketMaster on prices and services. But since they deal in heavy venue lock-in, and opening new venues is essentially impossible (hi there, zoning laws), they get to gouge basically everyone involved.
jbverschoor 10y ago
Yup. They're horrible.
dreamcompiler 10y ago
Ticketmaster has been horrible since forever. Having no real competition, Ticketmaster has zero motivation to treat customers decently. They're kind of like taxis before Uber.
- evv 10y ago
  And once Uber squashes Lyft, there will be no competition again, and they can start treating customers as badly as Ticketmaster does!
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    The barriers in this case are legal, not market-based. Presumably someone could start up Lyft-2 and compete with Uber. Uber would have to literally become what they replaced to avoid this.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  And like taxis, they operate in a space where creating legal competitors is incredibly difficult. They just get their legal barriers at one remove - you can't get zoned for new venues, and so by getting venue lock-in they avoid competition. There are a few groups like SoFar Sound doing the Uber thing of creating safe-but-quasi-legal competition, but it's not a simple task.
ameesdotme 10y ago
Well said. It's a shame TM has a monopoly when it comes to the larger events in my country.
jandrese 10y ago
That insurance scam is only reason #8382 not to use Ticketmaster. Of course there is one reason to use Ticketmaster: you often don't get a choice anymore. The Venue box office is a joke, and Ticketmaster has an exclusive agreement for the rest so it's either them or pay even more to a scalper. This is why I go to barely any shows anymore. The ones I do go to are at the one local venue that doesn't use Ticketmaster (Wolftrap). It is a testament to our weak antitrust laws that Ticketmaster has been able to gouge the public for decades with no repercussions whatsoever.
- blowski 10y ago
  Agreed. I go to small gigs with max 200 people. I don't miss the overpriced crap beer, half a kilometre from the stage. I like the fact you can talk to the band after.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    Agreed as well. It's a bit easier for me that my city is out of the way and generally doesn't get national touring acts (at least mainstream ones, we get plenty of (inter)national punk) and when we do the cheapest tickets are incredibly pricey and I'm paying at least $6 for a PBR.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
  it's a testament to you weak cowards and your inability to properly wield weapons and rise up against your oppressors in blood. you're all idiots.
- zdean 10y ago
  "It is a testament to our weak antitrust laws that Ticketmaster has been able to gouge the public for decades with no repercussions whatsoever." Genuinely interested to know what is keeping a nimble new startup from stepping in and blowing this up.
  - throwaway999234 10y ago
    https://dice.fm/ https://dice.fm/ I'm in the UK and I use Dice whenever I can and absolutely avoid TicketMaster. They also work up the road from me.
teddyh 10y ago
Ticketmaster recently lost a class action suit, but managed to be allowed to pay the customers it unfairly charged not in money, but in coupons for Ticketmaster. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7370600/ticketmaster-class-action-settlement-approved-details http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7370600/ticketmas...
- Spooky23 10y ago
  That's a rage item for me. Not only did you get "paid" in Tickemaster scrip, but redeeming it is some onerous process that requires all sorts of nonsense. After that, much of the supposed payment is limited to a tiny list of shows and venues. Last time I checked (October), the closest show was a punk band playing in Maryland. (I live in NY)
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    Ha! For the first week of that "offer", there was no events west of Chicago, but they were counting down from a global pool of tickets.
- creaghpatr 10y ago
  I was a recipient of those vouchers, they were only good for a certain subset of shows and then they didn't work when I tried using them. That said, I never felt baited and switched by TM, the fees are ridiculous but they've always been right there in front of you when you buy the tickets. It was a shock the first time but hundreds of shows later you just kind of accept it. In any case the market drives the show prices for the most part.
  - ishields 10y ago
    > "In any case the market drives the show prices for the most part" I completely disagree. Maybe for the ticket face value that may be true but look at the provided example: $18.50 face value for a ticket (driven by the market/demand) + $1.50 "facility charge" + $4.50 "service fee" + $4.00 "order processing fee" + $2.25 "shipping" so no you're paying $18.50 for the ticket plus $12.25 in fees just in order to get your ticket. That's 66% of the face value of the ticket in fees alone (assuming you don't get tricked into the $8 "protection" which would bring the fees to 109% of face value of the tickets) Want to get 2 tickets? You'd think that you'd only have to pay the fees once since it is all processed together but nope, now the fees all double. There are no alternative ticketing options short of going to the venue and getting tickets in person, so there is not really any competition, so I'm not sure how you can say the market drives the prices when the prices are set by a company that has no competition (and the lack of competition is due to exclusive deals, not really anything else)
brogrammernot 10y ago
They're also the worst company I've ever had a phone screen with. I remember being told it was with a member of the technical team, and it was a technical recruiter who asked me questions straight off of a paper that made no sense I hate having to use their service but they seem to be the best worst to use when it comes to selection. They screwed me a bit too when I bought a pair of pricey US Open tickets ($800+ total) and wanted to sell them through their site. Apparently the combo I had purchased was not "resellable" but no where was that found on their site or terms. I really hope a company "disruptes" them, as much as I hate that word, because as far as their service goes it's absolutely horrid.
- jandrese 10y ago
  Being an effective monopoly means you don't need to care about customer service.
- sbov 10y ago
  The problem is they tend to own everything down to the venue. It makes disrupting them a cash intensive, long process.
- stoic 10y ago
  TicketFly, EventBrite, Queue, and Front Gate Tickets sell probably 90% of the event tickets here in Austin. AFAIK, TM only handles the arena shows here (Cedar Park Center, Frank Erwin). Disruption is out there, but as long as Live Nation/AEG owns the big venues where you can see Journey or Kanye or whatever popular thing, there will probably always be TM extracting their pound of flesh.
tptacek 10y ago
I understand the psychology here, but it seems pretty irrational. Even after every modifier Ticketmaster applies, tickets to major events are underpriced, as evidenced by the fact that things like the Japandroids show this person bought tickets for almost certainly sold out, and by the fact that the secondary market for tickets clears. I too would rather get one simple straightforward price, rather than the pointlessly itemized breakdown Ticketmaster provides. But that's just because I want to read and click less to make my purchase.
- x0x0 10y ago
  The difference is if you paid more to the band, I'd be ok with that. My suspicion is this mostly involves paying more to ticketmaster.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Bands are in a fluid negotiation with both Ticketmaster and the venue for how much of the proceeds of their shows they get. It's different for different bands; you can't look at any breakdown of Ticketmaster's fees or the ticket price and know what it is. Moreover, to whatever extent the bands themselves aren't getting fee income, the venue sure does; the venues might have more market power than Ticketmaster does. The split between the venue and the artist is one of the oldest business negotiations in entertainment. Why are we alarmed about it now?
- mhaymo 10y ago
  The fact that many tickets are underpriced doesn't change the fact that TicketMaster's site is misleading and frustrating. Just because the market is willing to pay even more for the product than the advertised price + hidden fees doesn't mean I am, and even if I am it's still an obtuse experience.
- CoryG89 10y ago
  In Atlanta I have purchased tickets from Ticketmaster the day before or even the day of a show on numerous occasions. Seems like shows always sell out here in the bay area, but I don't know if that's true for the majority of shows across the country. From my experience it more rarely happens in the southeast.
tonylemesmer 10y ago
As somewhat of an antidote to the tale here, but probably worse than useless to a chap from Seattle, when I discovered this website[0] it restored my faith in humanity. I only discovered it after a similar experience on Ticketmaster and reached out to try and get some gig tickets a few years back. Scarlet Mist saved the day, even if it is a truly abysmal example of a website. edit: oh yeah, and news is[1] that Ticketmaster / Livenation supplies tickets directly to touts/scalpers whatever they call them in your locality, so yes they truly are a horrible company. [0] http://www.scarletmist.com/ http://www.scarletmist.com/ [1] http://www.musicweek.com/live/read/reports-suggest-italian-government-could-be-moving-to-ban-secondary-ticketing/066543 http://www.musicweek.com/live/read/reports-suggest-italian-g...
r34yll2k 10y ago
"My legal understanding of ecommerce could be better..." There is your problem. Vote Trump he will fix it.
buildbuildbuild 10y ago
The unfortunate truth is that it is impossible for a live music fan to completely avoid Ticketmaster in 2017 without missing many of the best shows. They strongarm venues into exclusivity agreements: all phone and online tickets at those venue must be sold through Ticketmaster. Even walking up to buy a ticket at some box offices results in a venue using Ticketmaster as point of sale. Their parent company Live Nation also outright owns many venues, a true monopoly in my opinion.
- giarc 10y ago
  I would disagree that they strong arm venues into exclusive agreements. If I owned a concert hall or arena, signing an exclusive agreement would be an easy decision. Have your tickets sold and processed by one of the well known and experienced companies. So what if it has a bad reputation, it doesn't stop people from buying up all the tickets. It's probably the easiest decisions as a venue owner. I'm not saying I agree with it, but if you think about it, Ticketmaster is a great resource for owners.
- squozzer 10y ago
  Then the path to disruption is clear -- bypass the venues. Hmmm, maybe this Internet thing might be useful after all, assuming you can set up a decent streaming service and avoid the pitfalls.
  - elastic_church 10y ago
    Sounds like someone that hasn't seen music live, physically, for a long time. Computer speakers are incapable of replicating the sounds and air distortions that your body can actually feel. Computer screens are incapable of emulating the pyrotechnics that your body can actually feel even from way back of the venue. There are plenty other nuances that limit the utility of a streaming service.
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      What about buying rights to the liveatream and setting up a huge movie screen and sound system. Sell tickets to the live rebroadcasting venue.
amelius 10y ago
Perhaps time to start a facebook awareness campaign, and have TM boycotted by artists and fans (?)
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  TM uses venue lock-in to prevent this. Multiple artists have tried, but they quickly have to choose between dealing with TM and abandoning fans in smaller cities that only have a few venues available, all of which are TM-contracted.
  - amelius 10y ago
    Perhaps the campaign should include a petition then, to address this through politics.
sean_patel 10y ago
I take issue with the title itself. > Ticketmaster is a horrible company, and I won't give them my business anymore Ok, but what choice do you have, if Foo Fighters are playing in your City and you want to go? Or Manny Pacquiao is fighting Floyd Mayweather and you want to go? It's not like there's a choice. There is, and that is to not go to the event. Because the core premise of TicketMaster's scam is the exclusive contracts they have with Venues and Artists.
- mi100hael 10y ago
  Usually they have an exclusive contract for online sales. You can still go line up outside your local arena and buy tickets from the box office just like your parents used to do.
  - pimlottc 10y ago
    Provided you have the luxury of being able to take the extra time and effort to do so. And by the time you do so (unless you lined up early), you will probably end up with worse tickets than you could have gotten online.
    - mi100hael 10y ago
      Isn't that still how it worked before TicketMaster existed, though?
sean_patel 10y ago
Seriously though, what are the alternatives? Until then we all all 'stuck' with this Sh*t company. The only alternative is to 'not go' to watch your favorite performer / artist / fighter / singer. Why hasn't this space been disrupted like how Uber disrupted the Cab Mob (oops, I mean the Taxi Medallions)
- giarc 10y ago
  It's a hard space to disrupt because Ticketmaster has exclusive rights on venues. So the only disruption is scalpers really. Uber disrupted the cab business because the cabs don't have exclusive rights on the road (although regulatory issues have perhaps indicated they do have exclusive rights on certain transportation verticals).
  - sean_patel 10y ago
    Wow. Very smart reasoning. Thank you! I never thought of it this way. You are right about Uber vs Ticketmaster.
mbloom1915 10y ago
Hoping more people use seatgeek & gametime as alternatives - even stubhub is getting monopolistic as the single 'exchange' platform
parthdesai 10y ago
I wanted to buy tickets for MLS final in Toronto this year. General Sale was at 1pm. I log on at 1pm, site doesn't load. Keep refreshing and all tickets are sold by 1:01pm. And rows appear on stubhub at 1:20pm for ~$500 a ticket. I can fucking watch Real Madrid vs Barcelona (arguably the biggest soccer game in the world after CL final) for a ticket price cheaper than that. Fuck Ticketmaster.
- ams6110 10y ago
  What would be fair is an auction. Then the price would be more representative of the market value. The reason those tickets all sell out in 30 seconds is that they are too cheap.
  - ishields 10y ago
    While this may be true in a pure capitalistic sense, many believe that experiencing the arts isn't something that should be limited to the rich
    - olalonde 10y ago
      Being physically present in the stadium is not necessary to watch the game and in a way, those tickets subsidize the game for the rest of us at home. This is especially true for the arts since many artists make most of their money from concert tours (a great example of price discrimination).
      - ishields 10y ago
        I'm generally speaking about concerts more than sporting events, and as someone who frequently goes to concerts, I wouldn't consider live music to be anywhere near the same thing as listening to recordings
  - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
    Auctions are obviously the least fair model. A lottery would probably be the most fair.
MicroBerto 10y ago
Many bands, startups, and other well-intentioned people have taken on TicketMaster in an effort to shake up the industry. All have lost. Nothing has changed.
- blang 10y ago
  Yup the first one I remember was Pearl Jam http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-19951228 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pearl-jam-taking-on-t...
ThomPete 10y ago
So how would one compete with them since they seem to have exclusive deals with the venues.
justinholmes 10y ago
Trying help disrupt TM by building a Stripe version of ticketing to provide nice APIs/grpc etc. https://ticketscale.io/ https://ticketscale.io/ (still very much alpha)
- shaklee3 10y ago
  I think the main issue is not having a different way to buy tickets, but actually signing deals with bands/venues to sell them. There have been many companies that have tried to compete against them, and typically they only get bands that want to move away from TM (Pearl Jam).
  - justinholmes 10y ago
    It's focused on providing the platform for developers to build a better ticketing experience thus enabling bands/venues to jump ship.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      There already are plenty of good platforms available. That's not the problem. The problem is that Ticketmaster/Live Nation have exclusivity with most artists and venues already.
    - dbbk 10y ago
      A better ticketing experience is not what bands/venues are looking for. Sorry, but it doesn't sound like you understand this market (and why Ticketmaster has a stranglehold on it).
bjcubsfan 10y ago
They also store passwords in plain text. They emailed me my password for a reminder on a season ticket account. My account is a few thousand dollars, others would be 10s of thousands.
jason_slack 10y ago
I used to do web contract work for a company that was eventually bought by Ticketmaster. I left before the sale. I was actually "let go" because I didn't comply with design goals. One of the things that was encouraged in the design was to "hide away" things that detracted the user from checking out quickly. This included: * Smaller font for things that you would gloss over or not even read, when you really needed to read it. * A "time ticker" when one really was not needed. Create the illusion that those seats would be gone if they didn't checkout as fast as possible. In reality users were seldom in any danger of losing the seats. * Put in the users face the event they were checking out for. Keep them reminded that they want to go to this event. Show them stuff about it and then show the cost and fee's in smaller font and break it up into steps so they see a smaller total first, keeps them happy, then add fees on but keep that "time ticker" going so they don't look to much. Working there, I felt almost like we were a sleazy porn site. Edits: clarifications Edit 2: added that I didn't work for Ticketmaster.
- giarc 10y ago
  Re: the time ticker. Is that true, because if you let that timer expire, you are indeed kicked back to the "Select Tickets" page and have to browse again.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    You're kicked back, but it still creates artificial urgency in the sense that it's applied to shows that will take weeks to sell out any given section. That wouldn't be so bad (airline tickets are similar) except that the "best available seats" function is very unreliable, and sometimes the only choice for picking seats. With no 'new seats if available' option, you're forced to pick blind and under time pressure whether to give up what you have for the possibility of better seats.
  - jason_slack 10y ago
    back then, when a user selected seats, they were temporarily "locked" (at least from our end). If other users were "browsing" seats, they would see those seats as unavailable. Honestly, we did this because it was easier to "lock" the seats as it made searching easier for other users on the systems. It lessened the e-mails that said: "I thought I had these seats XYZ picked, but I didn't get them...". We weren't really being nice, but it came off that way. If a user took longer than the 4 minutes or so there would have had to be more users on the system wanting the same type of seats and none available. This really didn't every happen except for insanely popular events, like NYE or some very popular singer, etc. If after 4 minutes, your time was up. You were taken back to search again, but we said "your last seats are still available. Check out now?". I cannot say now-a-days, if the timer has more importance and I cannot say from a Ticketmaster standpoint technically. What I can say is how we used to do it. Edit: added the "Honestly" part, first paragraph.
nix0n 10y ago
Some venues will sell you tickets directly if you are able to go there in person.
TallGuyShort 10y ago
Yeah they've been disgraceful to deal with for me too. They once double-booked seats I was in and I was given the option of being seated elsewhere or leaving with a refund. I opted to be seated elsewhere, but the venue took so long to do it I missed the first few songs and ended up seated where the show wasn't even visible. I was then refused a refund because it was too late to choose that option, and the venue insisted it was Ticketmasters fault, and Ticketmaster I had missed my chance for any compensation by entering the stadium to see my other seats. I eventually only got an offer of credit for Ticketmaster, so I just informed my credit card company that they had not delivered what I had paid for and did a charge-back. Only remotely satisfactory outcome after spending hours on the phone with them. Not even an apology - just constant passing the buck.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Yeah, just like the tales from the NBA Playoffs, etc. Got 200K Twitter followers? Ticket sites will "reach out to the team" to get you seats when they mess up. No? Well, you'll get a "so sad, too bad, credit toward future purchases from us". Also happened (one of the most egregious) - someone bought tickets to the Lakers in what would become, months later, Kobe's last home game. -MONTHS- after the purchase (and when ticket prices were now sky high for that game), buyer got an email saying "Sorry, the original seller told us he sold you those tickets by mistake. Here's a refund."
  - ascagnel_ 10y ago
    > Also happened (one of the most egregious) - someone bought tickets to the Lakers in what would become, months later, Kobe's last home game. -MONTHS- after the purchase (and when ticket prices were now sky high for that game), buyer got an email saying "Sorry, the original seller told us he sold you those tickets by mistake. Here's a refund." That was resold tickets via StubHub, not Ticketmaster. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10857478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10857478
    - FireBeyond 10y ago
      True, I knew it was a different site, though I was a little vague - "other sites".
peteforde 10y ago
Hey, first off: chillllll out. Choose your battles carefully. Ticketmaster is not a great company, but it's become a lot better than it used to be. Truth! Anyhow, you need to be aware that venues absolutely will charge a venue fee. Even purchasing tickets at my local club in Toronto from the front bar there is a 10% markup or $1 minimum, whatever is greater. You don't have to get tickets printed and mailed to you for $2.25. It's 2017 and virtual tickets work very well. In fact, they have advantages like being able to electronically transfer them to your friends in a way they can verify. That is better in every way except that you don't get a stub for your collection. Anyhow, your post is a sign that their business model is working: you think that TM exists to sell you tickets, but their actual and entire business model is to provide a layer of abstraction over the venues+radio+promoters so that they absorb all of your bad vibes. It's literally the only thing that they add, and they do it really well.
- stoic 10y ago
  They charge you to print your own tickets as well.
  - notwhereyouare 10y ago
    digital tickets though. I've never had an issue pulling up the ticket on my phone and letting them scan it
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      "E-ticket convenience fee" still applies though, at least much of the time.
    - huehehue 10y ago
      Not always an option. Some tickets even say that the venue will not accept a barcode on a phone, and the ticket must be printed out. Recently went to a Trans-Sierian Orchestra show where this was the case.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
evv 10y ago
This is why you want to be a winner in a market with network effects. You can treat customers however you'd like once you've won. Ticketmaster has 'earned' this spot in the ecosystem, and the benefits that comes with. To challenge that would be to challenge the nature of capitalism itself. As a consumer I'm infuriated but as an entrepreneur, I can relate- why would I stick my neck out there if the potential benefits don't outweigh the costs? Every entrepreneur in the valley wants to be the "Tickermaster of X" or "Uber for X". Everybody wants the luxury of answering to nobody, including customers.
yardie 10y ago
> I’m going to go hop on my scooter and drive 15 minutes out of my way to the theatre’s box office to go pick up a single ticket. Out of spite! I have some really bad news for you. The venue is probably also using Ticketmaster as their POS and some of those fees will be the same. Other than that completely agree, Ticketmaster is a racket.
v89 10y ago
"Surely I wouldn’t be charged this facility charge if I went directly to Neptune Theatre and purchased tickets" Yes you would, because the venue pays Ticketmaster a small slice of every ticket sold to use their system. They just don't explicitly tell you as part of the transaction.
kzisme 10y ago
I've mistakenly clicked the "insure my tickets!" which is done by a third party anyways... I ended up calling after reviewing my email I received afterwards and saw the added fee. They promptly removed it, but it seemed like that happens all too often...
codazoda 10y ago
Listen, I'm no fan of Ticketmaster but you should be very careful in your wording of a piece like this. Although clearly opinion, it contains real slander and you should tread lightly. For example, "Which means that ticketmaster is purposefully delaying their efficiency in order to get people to purchase more expensive shipping times". This is the conclusion you came to but the company may be able to prove it has the delays for various other reasons. Because it's not a "fact", it's likely slander or defamation. The title is also problematic, "Ticketmaster is a horrible company". You might or might not be able to prove that as fact.
- robbrown451 10y ago
  I hope he doesn't change his wording. If Ticketmaster sues, it will draw more attention to all of this. If the blogger is taking a risk (which I doubt is a significant one), I think he should be commended for it.
- rewrew 10y ago
  You need to look up libel law (this would be libel, because it is written, not slander). This is all opinion, there is nothing legally actionable in this piece. I don't think you have a background in this kind of law to be giving this kind of advice (at least not in the U.S.). The article is definitely protected speech here.
- czta394583 10y ago
  This comment is closer to defamation than the article is. And neither is close. (Assuming U.S. law, as Live Nation is U.S. company.)
- aioprisan 10y ago
  It's neither slander nor defamation, it's someone's opinion based on a very real, repeatable, documented experience.
tomcam 10y ago
I try to be reasonable and to see the other side of things. I try not to whinge. Even if it's a business I don't like, I recognize they may have issues I don't understand well. But I run my own business, I'm a programmer, and I know what kind of fee discount Ticketmaster can get with credit card companies. I hate them. I buy tickets through them when I have to, but every time I do they are building up whatever the opposite of loyalty is. I wish that company only the worst. Did I mention I hate them?
nfriedly 10y ago
Yep, welcome to the club. I always buy directly from the venue whenever possible.
johansch 10y ago
Another A/B test casualty.
erikj 10y ago
Am I the only person who first heard about Ticketmaster on the website of Terry Davis? He wrote an operating system for them.
wnevets 10y ago
Louis CK is really the only celebrity that I can think of that went out of their way to cut out ticketmaster. We really need attempts like this to succeed http://www.ticketnews.com/louis-c-k-sells-tickets-for-tour-without-ticketmaster/ http://www.ticketnews.com/louis-c-k-sells-tickets-for-tour-w...
- enobrev 10y ago
  I've been to his past two shows in Chicago, and absolutely appreciated this both times. Two years ago it was $35, no matter where your seat was. No fees, nothing. $70 for two tickets. Last year it was $100, total, for two tickets and we were in the front row. Interestingly we bought them from Ticketmaster both times, but he had the deal with TM to ensure no extra fees. I plan to keep going every year - especially if he plans to keep up this honest, up-front ticket-price deal.
dfar1 10y ago
I've stopped using them for similar reasons. I don't mind them adding all the fees as much. But it's wrong for the original price listed by them to be so far off from what you will actually pay. You see something listed for $15, and end up paying $30. That's misleading and should be prohibited. Unfortunately this seems to be common practice in most marketing now ... smartphone plans come to mind...
kenbaylor 10y ago
The Federal Trade Commission very actively prosecutes 'Deceptive Practices' that affect consumers. Sounds like the author (or anyone else affected) should file a complaint. A FTC 'consent decree' is effectively a $100m fine. Google, Microsoft and others have had to comply with FTC consent decrees: https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca....
- cynoclast 10y ago
  What have they done to tm?
  - kenbaylor 10y ago
    Looks like their last interactions were in 2010. Time for a rematch :-) https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/02/ticketmaster-ticketsnow-settle-ftc-charges-deceptive-sales https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/02/ticke...
- winteriscoming 10y ago
  In the comments of that article, the author says he's filed a complaint https://hjhart.github.io/2017/01/03/ticketmaster-is-a-horrible-company.html#comment-3081436407 https://hjhart.github.io/2017/01/03/ticketmaster-is-a-horrib...
israrkhan 10y ago
Unfortunately these sort of practices are getting very common. This should be submitted to http://darkpatterns.org/ http://darkpatterns.org/
droithomme 10y ago
> "If I can help it, I will never order another ticket from them again." I find these to be weasel words. I don't use Ticketmaster. Full stop. If your concert uses Ticketmaster, I'm not going to that. It's not a problem because all the cool acts don't use Ticketmaster. Only lame old decrepit acts use Ticketmaster anyway. And if I wanted to see those, I'd go to Vegas, and at least get a comped all you can eat buffet as well. Brown Paper Tickets is an alternative that is fair and reasonable. Oddly, many fantastic acts I've see such as The Orb use them for ticket sales instead of the vile corrupt corparate boondoogle that is Ticketmaster. https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ Ticketmaster was corrupt and horrible 30 years ago. If you are still using them or claiming to buy tickets from them for any reason then you're either a corporate shill or terminally clueless.
- schwap 10y ago
  > Only lame old decrepit acts use Ticketmaster anyway ... and a few little sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and NHL (for primary sales).
- anoonmoose 10y ago
  You're not serious, are you? As a person who goes to dozens of concerts a year, not using Ticketmaster would be a huge hassle. Let's take just one example: I'm going to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in NYC. I have three options to get tickets directly: -Ticketmaster -In person -Over the phone Since I don't live in NYC, I don't want to give my CC number to some random theater employee over the phone, and I am not going to skip seeing my favorite band in the world, what do you suggest I do?
  - dublinben 10y ago
    >I am not going to skip seeing my favorite band in the world, what do you suggest I do? See them somewhere else, in a venue that hasn't sold out to Ticketmaster.
    - Bahamut 10y ago
      Because people should spend potentially thousands of dollars just to avoid seeing one artist at a venue using Ticketmaster - this is ludicrous. There were a couple of times I had no choice this year but to go through Ticketmaster because they were the only times when the day & location aligned. I had little choice when booking an Iron Maiden ticket, or a ticket to two Dream Theater shows. I generally avoid Ticketmaster when I can and when it is convenient enough to do so, but I'm not going to idiotically avoid going to a show I want to go to and sacrifice enormous time & money to not use Ticketmaster. The reality is that Ticketmaster is largely immune to a ticket purchase boycott - their involvement in owning venues mitigates the effect of a boycott because they're the only way to see a huge swath of entertainment.
geephroh 10y ago
The hidden service fee may not be legal under WA state's fairly strong consumer protections. You can and should report this to the AG's office at: http://atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint.aspx http://atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint.aspx If there are enough complaints, things can actually happen.
- hjhart 10y ago
  Thanks. I filed a complaint through that website.
Fiahil 10y ago
Well, you should move out of the country. Here, in France, we have Ticketmaster, but also Fnac Spectacles, Digitick and many others. It's less awful.
btnewton 10y ago
Those are some dark design patterns
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pedalpete 10y ago
With all the comments here regarding "why doesn't another start-up come in and disrupt this market", I'm surprised nobody has mentioned SongKick which had an exclusive to sell Adele tickets in Europe in 2015. They're making inroads, but it is a long and challenging market.
throwaway999234 10y ago
If anyone's looking for alternatives, check out https://dice.fm/ https://dice.fm/ No booking fees, timers, insurance, etc. Browse gigs and in 2 presses on the screen you could have a ticket. I don't work for em, just a satisfied customer.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
A favorite quote of mine: "If Hitler owned Halliburton, it would not be as evil of a company as Ticketmaster." https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/c4704/fuck_you_ticketmaster_that_is_all/c0q0rnu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/c4704/fuck_you_ticket...
rasz_pl 10y ago
>Interesting, actually, that if you add up all the extra Ticketmaster charges that they are actually making $22.74 - which is more than Japandroids are making and they're doing the actual work. and this is why Louis CK decided to ignore ticketscam and sell his own tickets directly for 2012 tour. Interestingly I just looked up and current events are all handled by Ticketmaster, guess they offered him something he couldnt refuse, or he was simply unable to find venues willing to work around the scam (tickermaster has exclusive deals prohibiting competing inline sales).
yalogin 10y ago
Ticketmaster has single handedly stopped a lot of impulse buys for me. So I at least saved some money because they are shitty.
caf 10y ago
This is called "drip pricing", and it's illegal in many countries.
owly 10y ago
I would gladly fund a startup dedicated to overthrowing their empire. I guess it would need to start in NYC?
marclave 10y ago
Sidenote: I love Japandroids! Saw them in vancouver!
jen729w 10y ago
Australian here, so things are probably a little different, but I have direct experience using Ticketmaster to put on a large show at the State Theatre here in Melbourne. Here's how the charges work here: - You decide how much your ticket should cost. Let's call it $100. - Ticketmaster takes an "inside charge" off that for the privilege of selling your tickets. From memory, it's around $8. So you get $92. - Ticketmaster adds an "outside charge", which is the processing fee that the punter sees. So your ticket actually costs $108, plus any additional credit card, postage, etc. It's likely to end up costing ~$112. So, that's a rort. What do they do for their $20/ticket? Very, very little. The main thing is that they have access to enormous EDMs that, especially as a small indie producer, you really want. They'll send a message or two out to that list for you. Otherwise, their actual database software is hideous. Putting on a stage show involves complicated ticketing - what seats are reserved for the house, which rows are A reserve, which are B reserve, all of which can be different for each instance of your show, blah blah. I ended up writing my own database in FileMaker Pro to interface with theirs; the other producers I saw literally printed out the seat maps and highlighted them with marker pens before manually entering all of the seat information in and sending back to TM. A disgrace of a company.
fallingfrog 10y ago
Pearl Jam tried to boycott and sue Ticketmaster over these same practices in the 90's, and they lost. Good luck beating them now..
vldr 10y ago
At https://gutstickets.com https://gutstickets.com we're currently trying to somewhat disrupt the ticketing market where, of course, ticket master is the big evil giant. Our primary focus is to make disgraceful secondary ticket pricing impossible, something from which TM profits directly through subsidiaries such as seatwave. But we also just want to have a fair price for fans. No hidden fees or absurd prices for minimal features. No dark patterns. The fact that our tickets can't be copied, faked or printed makes this a lot easier - we couldn't charge for an fraud insurance or printed tickets even if we wanted to :) And even though a lot of the market is locked-in there's still a huge long-tail of events and organizers that are free to chose their ticketing company. Hopefully the rest will follow :)
rux 10y ago
I dearly, dearly wish that the Resident Advisor system would be adopted for more shows. RA only cater for a particular subset of music genres, but the way the ticketing system works with regards to combating touts is awesome. If you decide to not go to a show you bought tickets for, you can relinquish them and they goes back into the stack to be re-sold. Once the standard stock of tickets is exhausted, your tickets get put back into the pool of available tickets. If someone buys them, you get your money back minus the service fee. Whenever I've put tickets back in the pool this has happened, often within minutes of them being re-listed. Yes you can probably get more £ for your tickets by hawking them on gumtree or craigslist, but thanks to countless horrible transactions with ticket touts I'm always more than happy to use this system, as I know I'm getting a fair amount of my money back, and I know that whoever buys my tickets is getting a fair price too. https://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=25747 https://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=25747
hussfelt 10y ago
Their giftcard system does not even work mostly, completely broken (by code, bugs). Tried purchasing a e-giftcard with a custom photo for weeks. Contacted support and no response for over 3 weeks. Finally made a purchase of a normal giftcard in Safari. Think it was just pure luck, had to go back and forth the contact details page several times to be able to check out. Seems like Ticketmaster simply does not want our stash? :)

589 points by hjhart 10y ago

That "Minutes left to complete the purchase" is one of the oldest tricks in the sales book. I felt my blood pressure going up just looking at that gif, and I wasn't even buying tickets! Edit: I know why they do it, but it isn't necessary for most ticket sales. Just turn it on when there's high demand.

jarjoura 10y ago
To be fair, it's 100x better than the old days of waiting in 6-8 hour lines to guarantee a ticket to popular events.
- jbverschoor 10y ago
  Have you ever tried to get a ticket for something popular with TM?
  - jandrese 10y ago
    At least there is no wait, the website just stops responding for 5 minutes then comes back with "all tickets sold (to scalpers)".
  - csydas 10y ago
    To elaborate for the above commenter, ticket master sales for popular events often sell out within seconds of the sale starting as a swarm of bots attacks the site and buy up available tickets. It usually takes just a few minutes for ticket sales to go up on Craigslist or eBay. Users see just a blank page or ticket masters internal loading errors while scalping bots buy up tickets. I remember trying to get tickets for my younger cousin to The International and I didn't evn have a chance. Even worse was neither Valve nor ticket master at the time has announced they weren't allowing ticket transfers so trying for tickets from those lucky enough to get some was useless as well. My uncle unfortunately was out $400some on eBay as a result; the guy I found on Craigslist was luckily way more understanding and when he was unable to initiate the transfer after a cash in hand meetup, he gladly offered to stay in contact until he could sort the issue on his side and transfer. It's honestly a mess and it leaves a lot to be desired for most users. I get that ultimately they can't satisfy all customers because we all want the same scarce product, but it's very hard to shake the feeling that botting and ticket scalpers get too many of the tickets, a
    - gpvos 10y ago
      So, if all tickets go to scalpers and no-one (including presumably the scalpers) can transfer a ticket, it must be that the venues remained empty. How is this a sustainable business for anyone?
      - jbverschoor 10y ago
        You can simply sell the tickets. Sometimes people were scammed by buying doubly sold e-tickets. ticketswap.com solves this problem in coop with also ticketmaster if I'm not mistaken
    - kingosticks 10y ago
      It's a great deal for TM and the like, they get paid 3 times! 1. Scalper pays fee when buying ticket. 2. Scalper pays fee when selling ticket on TM's reselling platform (stubhub?) 3. Concert goer pays fee when buying ticket from reseller platform. In the UK there's been some investigation into this business practice (select committee) but I doubt anything will come of it.
  - spelunker 10y ago
    Every year TM knows the Great American Beer Festival is going to be crazy popular and sell out within 10 minutes, and every year it's still a mess. I mean I get it's a hard problem and a large crowd like that can't be easy, but if anyone can do it, Ticketmaster should be able to.
- x0x0 10y ago
  In the sense you can not get tickets from the convenience of your couch!
firebird84 10y ago
It's really just a "countdown to being infuriated." I've had it lapse on me and I had to go back, find the right seats, and repeat literally the entire process all over again. "Give us your money quickly or we'll wage a bizarre form of psychological warfare on you." it seems to say.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Thats to stop DOS attacks by putting all seats in a shopping cart and having the next guy who logs in see no seats available. You need to hold them somehow as it takes a couple minutes for most people to pull out their credit card and fill out the form, so you use a timer. If they don't finish, the seat gets listed as open again. I don't think its a sales tactic at all, but certainly can be made to look more urgent than it needs to be to. Back when I was a teen we had to get up at 6am to buy tickets for popular shows and go wait outside our local reseller, which was usually a department store in the mall and join the long line of people ahead of us. I much prefer the web based system. Also its worth mentioning that TM is only as evil as venues allow them to be. A lot of the fees and charges are kickbacks to the venue. That's why there's no competition. Venues say, "Look we're getting an extra $7 per ticket with TM, can you beat that?" They're not interested in less fees as these fees are free money for them.
- jsmeaton 10y ago
  Yep. I hate most ticketing practices but the countdown is reasonable.
- lolc 10y ago
  Well that's a sensible explanation for events that sell out quickly. They shouldn't be trying to "upsell by default" on the smae page however.
lolc 10y ago
Is that really what it means? I was unsure about it because nobody would be that scummy. But then I have no previous experience with Ticketmaster.
ebbv 10y ago
How would you propose not doing this for any purchase of a specific product like a seat in a theater which must be held for the customer while they are making the purchase? Would you prefer they don't hold it for you and at the end of the process you get a message "Your seat has been sold to someone else."? Ticketmaster sucks but not because they hold your seat for you while you place your order.
firloop 10y ago
Not a huge Ticketmaster fan, but I actually don't have much of a problem with this as they have a complicated problem: allocate demand of a often scarce good (event tickets) in a way that's fair to non automated buyers. By placing a hold on the stock for a few minutes (rather than allocating at final checkout), it gives humans a fair chance to check out as their ability to secure the stock isn't based on how quickly they check out. Showing the time left to purchase is transparent to the buyer and eliminates confusion.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- qntty 10y ago
  Under certain circumstances, sure. But it doesn't make sense to enforce the time limit by forcing you to re-do the purchase when there are still available tickets not being held by an active checkout.
- Retric 10y ago
  If they are selling out fast enough that Automated buyers are a problem then the price is to low. A 'presale' at 5x price that ticks down to normal prices over say 2 weeks would solve this problem. However, Ticketmaster makes more money getting a cut from scalpers without paying the bands their cut.
- Coincoin 10y ago
  I don't know if this is common elsewhere but to buy hockey tickets up here in communist canuckland, the local broker uses a virtual queue system. You can register up to 4 hours in advance and get placed in the pool. When the countdown reaches zero, they randomly, yes randomly, place you in the giant queue. When it's your turn, you just select what day and place you want and confirm. There is no slowdown unless you check in the pool at the last minute. If you register after the countdown, you get placed at the end of the queue and your chance of getting anything are basically zero.

SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago

Can anyone offer any evidence to confirm or dispute the rumor I frequently see online in message boards that Ticketmaster is passing most of the profit from these fees onto the venues and it's really the venues that are doing the price gouging here? The idea that is frequently floated is that Ticketmaster bears the brunt of the hate from fans in exchange for letting the performers and venues collect most of the extra fees and giving TM a relatively small piece of the pie.

jarjoura 10y ago
Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with venues and usually owns the venues outright, so it doesn't matter where the money goes, it's all back into their coffers. http://www.livenationentertainment.com http://www.livenationentertainment.com
- chinathrow 10y ago
  Indeed, look at their filings: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000119312512075895/d277780d10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000119312512... LOL: "Competition in the live entertainment industry is intense. We believe that we compete primarily on the basis of our ability to deliver quality music products, sell tickets and provide enhanced fan and artist experiences. We believe that our primary strengths include: [...] • ticketing software and services; [...] "
  - treehau5 10y ago
    Wow what did they do in 2009 to 2010 to increase their customer database from 25 million to 96 million?
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      Merged with Live Nation.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    "Competition... is intense", hah. TicketMaster's big advantage is that competition between venues isn't intense. Smaller cities will generally only have 1-2 venues of a decently large size, especially if you require things like alcohol licenses and permission to stay open late at night. In any market where opening a new competitor was easy, someone would be fighting TicketMaster on prices and services. But since they deal in heavy venue lock-in, and opening new venues is essentially impossible (hi there, zoning laws), they get to gouge basically everyone involved.

jbverschoor 10y ago

Yup. They're horrible.

dreamcompiler 10y ago

Ticketmaster has been horrible since forever. Having no real competition, Ticketmaster has zero motivation to treat customers decently. They're kind of like taxis before Uber.

evv 10y ago
And once Uber squashes Lyft, there will be no competition again, and they can start treating customers as badly as Ticketmaster does!
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  The barriers in this case are legal, not market-based. Presumably someone could start up Lyft-2 and compete with Uber. Uber would have to literally become what they replaced to avoid this.
Bartweiss 10y ago
And like taxis, they operate in a space where creating legal competitors is incredibly difficult. They just get their legal barriers at one remove - you can't get zoned for new venues, and so by getting venue lock-in they avoid competition. There are a few groups like SoFar Sound doing the Uber thing of creating safe-but-quasi-legal competition, but it's not a simple task.

ameesdotme 10y ago

Well said. It's a shame TM has a monopoly when it comes to the larger events in my country.

jandrese 10y ago

That insurance scam is only reason #8382 not to use Ticketmaster. Of course there is one reason to use Ticketmaster: you often don't get a choice anymore. The Venue box office is a joke, and Ticketmaster has an exclusive agreement for the rest so it's either them or pay even more to a scalper. This is why I go to barely any shows anymore. The ones I do go to are at the one local venue that doesn't use Ticketmaster (Wolftrap). It is a testament to our weak antitrust laws that Ticketmaster has been able to gouge the public for decades with no repercussions whatsoever.

blowski 10y ago
Agreed. I go to small gigs with max 200 people. I don't miss the overpriced crap beer, half a kilometre from the stage. I like the fact you can talk to the band after.
- 67726e 10y ago
  Agreed as well. It's a bit easier for me that my city is out of the way and generally doesn't get national touring acts (at least mainstream ones, we get plenty of (inter)national punk) and when we do the cheapest tickets are incredibly pricey and I'm paying at least $6 for a PBR.
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
it's a testament to you weak cowards and your inability to properly wield weapons and rise up against your oppressors in blood. you're all idiots.
zdean 10y ago
"It is a testament to our weak antitrust laws that Ticketmaster has been able to gouge the public for decades with no repercussions whatsoever." Genuinely interested to know what is keeping a nimble new startup from stepping in and blowing this up.
- throwaway999234 10y ago
  https://dice.fm/ https://dice.fm/ I'm in the UK and I use Dice whenever I can and absolutely avoid TicketMaster. They also work up the road from me.

teddyh 10y ago

Ticketmaster recently lost a class action suit, but managed to be allowed to pay the customers it unfairly charged not in money, but in coupons for Ticketmaster. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7370600/ticketmaster-class-action-settlement-approved-details http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7370600/ticketmas...

Spooky23 10y ago
That's a rage item for me. Not only did you get "paid" in Tickemaster scrip, but redeeming it is some onerous process that requires all sorts of nonsense. After that, much of the supposed payment is limited to a tiny list of shows and venues. Last time I checked (October), the closest show was a punk band playing in Maryland. (I live in NY)
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Ha! For the first week of that "offer", there was no events west of Chicago, but they were counting down from a global pool of tickets.
creaghpatr 10y ago
I was a recipient of those vouchers, they were only good for a certain subset of shows and then they didn't work when I tried using them. That said, I never felt baited and switched by TM, the fees are ridiculous but they've always been right there in front of you when you buy the tickets. It was a shock the first time but hundreds of shows later you just kind of accept it. In any case the market drives the show prices for the most part.
- ishields 10y ago
  > "In any case the market drives the show prices for the most part" I completely disagree. Maybe for the ticket face value that may be true but look at the provided example: $18.50 face value for a ticket (driven by the market/demand) + $1.50 "facility charge" + $4.50 "service fee" + $4.00 "order processing fee" + $2.25 "shipping" so no you're paying $18.50 for the ticket plus $12.25 in fees just in order to get your ticket. That's 66% of the face value of the ticket in fees alone (assuming you don't get tricked into the $8 "protection" which would bring the fees to 109% of face value of the tickets) Want to get 2 tickets? You'd think that you'd only have to pay the fees once since it is all processed together but nope, now the fees all double. There are no alternative ticketing options short of going to the venue and getting tickets in person, so there is not really any competition, so I'm not sure how you can say the market drives the prices when the prices are set by a company that has no competition (and the lack of competition is due to exclusive deals, not really anything else)

brogrammernot 10y ago

They're also the worst company I've ever had a phone screen with. I remember being told it was with a member of the technical team, and it was a technical recruiter who asked me questions straight off of a paper that made no sense I hate having to use their service but they seem to be the best worst to use when it comes to selection. They screwed me a bit too when I bought a pair of pricey US Open tickets ($800+ total) and wanted to sell them through their site. Apparently the combo I had purchased was not "resellable" but no where was that found on their site or terms. I really hope a company "disruptes" them, as much as I hate that word, because as far as their service goes it's absolutely horrid.

jandrese 10y ago
Being an effective monopoly means you don't need to care about customer service.
sbov 10y ago
The problem is they tend to own everything down to the venue. It makes disrupting them a cash intensive, long process.
stoic 10y ago
TicketFly, EventBrite, Queue, and Front Gate Tickets sell probably 90% of the event tickets here in Austin. AFAIK, TM only handles the arena shows here (Cedar Park Center, Frank Erwin). Disruption is out there, but as long as Live Nation/AEG owns the big venues where you can see Journey or Kanye or whatever popular thing, there will probably always be TM extracting their pound of flesh.

tptacek 10y ago

I understand the psychology here, but it seems pretty irrational. Even after every modifier Ticketmaster applies, tickets to major events are underpriced, as evidenced by the fact that things like the Japandroids show this person bought tickets for almost certainly sold out, and by the fact that the secondary market for tickets clears. I too would rather get one simple straightforward price, rather than the pointlessly itemized breakdown Ticketmaster provides. But that's just because I want to read and click less to make my purchase.

x0x0 10y ago
The difference is if you paid more to the band, I'd be ok with that. My suspicion is this mostly involves paying more to ticketmaster.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Bands are in a fluid negotiation with both Ticketmaster and the venue for how much of the proceeds of their shows they get. It's different for different bands; you can't look at any breakdown of Ticketmaster's fees or the ticket price and know what it is. Moreover, to whatever extent the bands themselves aren't getting fee income, the venue sure does; the venues might have more market power than Ticketmaster does. The split between the venue and the artist is one of the oldest business negotiations in entertainment. Why are we alarmed about it now?
mhaymo 10y ago
The fact that many tickets are underpriced doesn't change the fact that TicketMaster's site is misleading and frustrating. Just because the market is willing to pay even more for the product than the advertised price + hidden fees doesn't mean I am, and even if I am it's still an obtuse experience.
CoryG89 10y ago
In Atlanta I have purchased tickets from Ticketmaster the day before or even the day of a show on numerous occasions. Seems like shows always sell out here in the bay area, but I don't know if that's true for the majority of shows across the country. From my experience it more rarely happens in the southeast.

tonylemesmer 10y ago

As somewhat of an antidote to the tale here, but probably worse than useless to a chap from Seattle, when I discovered this website[0] it restored my faith in humanity. I only discovered it after a similar experience on Ticketmaster and reached out to try and get some gig tickets a few years back. Scarlet Mist saved the day, even if it is a truly abysmal example of a website. edit: oh yeah, and news is[1] that Ticketmaster / Livenation supplies tickets directly to touts/scalpers whatever they call them in your locality, so yes they truly are a horrible company. [0] http://www.scarletmist.com/ http://www.scarletmist.com/ [1] http://www.musicweek.com/live/read/reports-suggest-italian-government-could-be-moving-to-ban-secondary-ticketing/066543 http://www.musicweek.com/live/read/reports-suggest-italian-g...

r34yll2k 10y ago

"My legal understanding of ecommerce could be better..." There is your problem. Vote Trump he will fix it.

buildbuildbuild 10y ago

The unfortunate truth is that it is impossible for a live music fan to completely avoid Ticketmaster in 2017 without missing many of the best shows. They strongarm venues into exclusivity agreements: all phone and online tickets at those venue must be sold through Ticketmaster. Even walking up to buy a ticket at some box offices results in a venue using Ticketmaster as point of sale. Their parent company Live Nation also outright owns many venues, a true monopoly in my opinion.

giarc 10y ago
I would disagree that they strong arm venues into exclusive agreements. If I owned a concert hall or arena, signing an exclusive agreement would be an easy decision. Have your tickets sold and processed by one of the well known and experienced companies. So what if it has a bad reputation, it doesn't stop people from buying up all the tickets. It's probably the easiest decisions as a venue owner. I'm not saying I agree with it, but if you think about it, Ticketmaster is a great resource for owners.
squozzer 10y ago
Then the path to disruption is clear -- bypass the venues. Hmmm, maybe this Internet thing might be useful after all, assuming you can set up a decent streaming service and avoid the pitfalls.
- elastic_church 10y ago
  Sounds like someone that hasn't seen music live, physically, for a long time. Computer speakers are incapable of replicating the sounds and air distortions that your body can actually feel. Computer screens are incapable of emulating the pyrotechnics that your body can actually feel even from way back of the venue. There are plenty other nuances that limit the utility of a streaming service.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    What about buying rights to the liveatream and setting up a huge movie screen and sound system. Sell tickets to the live rebroadcasting venue.

amelius 10y ago

Perhaps time to start a facebook awareness campaign, and have TM boycotted by artists and fans (?)

Bartweiss 10y ago
TM uses venue lock-in to prevent this. Multiple artists have tried, but they quickly have to choose between dealing with TM and abandoning fans in smaller cities that only have a few venues available, all of which are TM-contracted.
- amelius 10y ago
  Perhaps the campaign should include a petition then, to address this through politics.

sean_patel 10y ago

I take issue with the title itself. > Ticketmaster is a horrible company, and I won't give them my business anymore Ok, but what choice do you have, if Foo Fighters are playing in your City and you want to go? Or Manny Pacquiao is fighting Floyd Mayweather and you want to go? It's not like there's a choice. There is, and that is to not go to the event. Because the core premise of TicketMaster's scam is the exclusive contracts they have with Venues and Artists.

mi100hael 10y ago
Usually they have an exclusive contract for online sales. You can still go line up outside your local arena and buy tickets from the box office just like your parents used to do.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  Provided you have the luxury of being able to take the extra time and effort to do so. And by the time you do so (unless you lined up early), you will probably end up with worse tickets than you could have gotten online.
  - mi100hael 10y ago
    Isn't that still how it worked before TicketMaster existed, though?

sean_patel 10y ago

Seriously though, what are the alternatives? Until then we all all 'stuck' with this Sh*t company. The only alternative is to 'not go' to watch your favorite performer / artist / fighter / singer. Why hasn't this space been disrupted like how Uber disrupted the Cab Mob (oops, I mean the Taxi Medallions)

giarc 10y ago
It's a hard space to disrupt because Ticketmaster has exclusive rights on venues. So the only disruption is scalpers really. Uber disrupted the cab business because the cabs don't have exclusive rights on the road (although regulatory issues have perhaps indicated they do have exclusive rights on certain transportation verticals).
- sean_patel 10y ago
  Wow. Very smart reasoning. Thank you! I never thought of it this way. You are right about Uber vs Ticketmaster.

mbloom1915 10y ago

Hoping more people use seatgeek & gametime as alternatives - even stubhub is getting monopolistic as the single 'exchange' platform

parthdesai 10y ago

I wanted to buy tickets for MLS final in Toronto this year. General Sale was at 1pm. I log on at 1pm, site doesn't load. Keep refreshing and all tickets are sold by 1:01pm. And rows appear on stubhub at 1:20pm for ~$500 a ticket. I can fucking watch Real Madrid vs Barcelona (arguably the biggest soccer game in the world after CL final) for a ticket price cheaper than that. Fuck Ticketmaster.

ams6110 10y ago
What would be fair is an auction. Then the price would be more representative of the market value. The reason those tickets all sell out in 30 seconds is that they are too cheap.
- ishields 10y ago
  While this may be true in a pure capitalistic sense, many believe that experiencing the arts isn't something that should be limited to the rich
  - olalonde 10y ago
    Being physically present in the stadium is not necessary to watch the game and in a way, those tickets subsidize the game for the rest of us at home. This is especially true for the arts since many artists make most of their money from concert tours (a great example of price discrimination).
    - ishields 10y ago
      I'm generally speaking about concerts more than sporting events, and as someone who frequently goes to concerts, I wouldn't consider live music to be anywhere near the same thing as listening to recordings
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  Auctions are obviously the least fair model. A lottery would probably be the most fair.

MicroBerto 10y ago

Many bands, startups, and other well-intentioned people have taken on TicketMaster in an effort to shake up the industry. All have lost. Nothing has changed.

blang 10y ago
Yup the first one I remember was Pearl Jam http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-19951228 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pearl-jam-taking-on-t...

ThomPete 10y ago

So how would one compete with them since they seem to have exclusive deals with the venues.

justinholmes 10y ago

Trying help disrupt TM by building a Stripe version of ticketing to provide nice APIs/grpc etc. https://ticketscale.io/ https://ticketscale.io/ (still very much alpha)

shaklee3 10y ago
I think the main issue is not having a different way to buy tickets, but actually signing deals with bands/venues to sell them. There have been many companies that have tried to compete against them, and typically they only get bands that want to move away from TM (Pearl Jam).
- justinholmes 10y ago
  It's focused on providing the platform for developers to build a better ticketing experience thus enabling bands/venues to jump ship.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    There already are plenty of good platforms available. That's not the problem. The problem is that Ticketmaster/Live Nation have exclusivity with most artists and venues already.
  - dbbk 10y ago
    A better ticketing experience is not what bands/venues are looking for. Sorry, but it doesn't sound like you understand this market (and why Ticketmaster has a stranglehold on it).

bjcubsfan 10y ago

They also store passwords in plain text. They emailed me my password for a reminder on a season ticket account. My account is a few thousand dollars, others would be 10s of thousands.

jason_slack 10y ago

I used to do web contract work for a company that was eventually bought by Ticketmaster. I left before the sale. I was actually "let go" because I didn't comply with design goals. One of the things that was encouraged in the design was to "hide away" things that detracted the user from checking out quickly. This included: * Smaller font for things that you would gloss over or not even read, when you really needed to read it. * A "time ticker" when one really was not needed. Create the illusion that those seats would be gone if they didn't checkout as fast as possible. In reality users were seldom in any danger of losing the seats. * Put in the users face the event they were checking out for. Keep them reminded that they want to go to this event. Show them stuff about it and then show the cost and fee's in smaller font and break it up into steps so they see a smaller total first, keeps them happy, then add fees on but keep that "time ticker" going so they don't look to much. Working there, I felt almost like we were a sleazy porn site. Edits: clarifications Edit 2: added that I didn't work for Ticketmaster.

giarc 10y ago
Re: the time ticker. Is that true, because if you let that timer expire, you are indeed kicked back to the "Select Tickets" page and have to browse again.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  You're kicked back, but it still creates artificial urgency in the sense that it's applied to shows that will take weeks to sell out any given section. That wouldn't be so bad (airline tickets are similar) except that the "best available seats" function is very unreliable, and sometimes the only choice for picking seats. With no 'new seats if available' option, you're forced to pick blind and under time pressure whether to give up what you have for the possibility of better seats.
- jason_slack 10y ago
  back then, when a user selected seats, they were temporarily "locked" (at least from our end). If other users were "browsing" seats, they would see those seats as unavailable. Honestly, we did this because it was easier to "lock" the seats as it made searching easier for other users on the systems. It lessened the e-mails that said: "I thought I had these seats XYZ picked, but I didn't get them...". We weren't really being nice, but it came off that way. If a user took longer than the 4 minutes or so there would have had to be more users on the system wanting the same type of seats and none available. This really didn't every happen except for insanely popular events, like NYE or some very popular singer, etc. If after 4 minutes, your time was up. You were taken back to search again, but we said "your last seats are still available. Check out now?". I cannot say now-a-days, if the timer has more importance and I cannot say from a Ticketmaster standpoint technically. What I can say is how we used to do it. Edit: added the "Honestly" part, first paragraph.

nix0n 10y ago

Some venues will sell you tickets directly if you are able to go there in person.

TallGuyShort 10y ago

Yeah they've been disgraceful to deal with for me too. They once double-booked seats I was in and I was given the option of being seated elsewhere or leaving with a refund. I opted to be seated elsewhere, but the venue took so long to do it I missed the first few songs and ended up seated where the show wasn't even visible. I was then refused a refund because it was too late to choose that option, and the venue insisted it was Ticketmasters fault, and Ticketmaster I had missed my chance for any compensation by entering the stadium to see my other seats. I eventually only got an offer of credit for Ticketmaster, so I just informed my credit card company that they had not delivered what I had paid for and did a charge-back. Only remotely satisfactory outcome after spending hours on the phone with them. Not even an apology - just constant passing the buck.

FireBeyond 10y ago
Yeah, just like the tales from the NBA Playoffs, etc. Got 200K Twitter followers? Ticket sites will "reach out to the team" to get you seats when they mess up. No? Well, you'll get a "so sad, too bad, credit toward future purchases from us". Also happened (one of the most egregious) - someone bought tickets to the Lakers in what would become, months later, Kobe's last home game. -MONTHS- after the purchase (and when ticket prices were now sky high for that game), buyer got an email saying "Sorry, the original seller told us he sold you those tickets by mistake. Here's a refund."
- ascagnel_ 10y ago
  > Also happened (one of the most egregious) - someone bought tickets to the Lakers in what would become, months later, Kobe's last home game. -MONTHS- after the purchase (and when ticket prices were now sky high for that game), buyer got an email saying "Sorry, the original seller told us he sold you those tickets by mistake. Here's a refund." That was resold tickets via StubHub, not Ticketmaster. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10857478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10857478
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    True, I knew it was a different site, though I was a little vague - "other sites".

peteforde 10y ago

Hey, first off: chillllll out. Choose your battles carefully. Ticketmaster is not a great company, but it's become a lot better than it used to be. Truth! Anyhow, you need to be aware that venues absolutely will charge a venue fee. Even purchasing tickets at my local club in Toronto from the front bar there is a 10% markup or $1 minimum, whatever is greater. You don't have to get tickets printed and mailed to you for $2.25. It's 2017 and virtual tickets work very well. In fact, they have advantages like being able to electronically transfer them to your friends in a way they can verify. That is better in every way except that you don't get a stub for your collection. Anyhow, your post is a sign that their business model is working: you think that TM exists to sell you tickets, but their actual and entire business model is to provide a layer of abstraction over the venues+radio+promoters so that they absorb all of your bad vibes. It's literally the only thing that they add, and they do it really well.

stoic 10y ago
They charge you to print your own tickets as well.
- notwhereyouare 10y ago
  digital tickets though. I've never had an issue pulling up the ticket on my phone and letting them scan it
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    "E-ticket convenience fee" still applies though, at least much of the time.
  - huehehue 10y ago
    Not always an option. Some tickets even say that the venue will not accept a barcode on a phone, and the ticket must be printed out. Recently went to a Trans-Sierian Orchestra show where this was the case.
Bartweiss 10y ago

evv 10y ago

This is why you want to be a winner in a market with network effects. You can treat customers however you'd like once you've won. Ticketmaster has 'earned' this spot in the ecosystem, and the benefits that comes with. To challenge that would be to challenge the nature of capitalism itself. As a consumer I'm infuriated but as an entrepreneur, I can relate- why would I stick my neck out there if the potential benefits don't outweigh the costs? Every entrepreneur in the valley wants to be the "Tickermaster of X" or "Uber for X". Everybody wants the luxury of answering to nobody, including customers.

yardie 10y ago

> I’m going to go hop on my scooter and drive 15 minutes out of my way to the theatre’s box office to go pick up a single ticket. Out of spite! I have some really bad news for you. The venue is probably also using Ticketmaster as their POS and some of those fees will be the same. Other than that completely agree, Ticketmaster is a racket.

v89 10y ago

"Surely I wouldn’t be charged this facility charge if I went directly to Neptune Theatre and purchased tickets" Yes you would, because the venue pays Ticketmaster a small slice of every ticket sold to use their system. They just don't explicitly tell you as part of the transaction.

kzisme 10y ago

I've mistakenly clicked the "insure my tickets!" which is done by a third party anyways... I ended up calling after reviewing my email I received afterwards and saw the added fee. They promptly removed it, but it seemed like that happens all too often...

codazoda 10y ago

Listen, I'm no fan of Ticketmaster but you should be very careful in your wording of a piece like this. Although clearly opinion, it contains real slander and you should tread lightly. For example, "Which means that ticketmaster is purposefully delaying their efficiency in order to get people to purchase more expensive shipping times". This is the conclusion you came to but the company may be able to prove it has the delays for various other reasons. Because it's not a "fact", it's likely slander or defamation. The title is also problematic, "Ticketmaster is a horrible company". You might or might not be able to prove that as fact.

robbrown451 10y ago
I hope he doesn't change his wording. If Ticketmaster sues, it will draw more attention to all of this. If the blogger is taking a risk (which I doubt is a significant one), I think he should be commended for it.
rewrew 10y ago
You need to look up libel law (this would be libel, because it is written, not slander). This is all opinion, there is nothing legally actionable in this piece. I don't think you have a background in this kind of law to be giving this kind of advice (at least not in the U.S.). The article is definitely protected speech here.
czta394583 10y ago
This comment is closer to defamation than the article is. And neither is close. (Assuming U.S. law, as Live Nation is U.S. company.)
aioprisan 10y ago
It's neither slander nor defamation, it's someone's opinion based on a very real, repeatable, documented experience.

tomcam 10y ago

I try to be reasonable and to see the other side of things. I try not to whinge. Even if it's a business I don't like, I recognize they may have issues I don't understand well. But I run my own business, I'm a programmer, and I know what kind of fee discount Ticketmaster can get with credit card companies. I hate them. I buy tickets through them when I have to, but every time I do they are building up whatever the opposite of loyalty is. I wish that company only the worst. Did I mention I hate them?

nfriedly 10y ago

Yep, welcome to the club. I always buy directly from the venue whenever possible.

johansch 10y ago

Another A/B test casualty.

erikj 10y ago

Am I the only person who first heard about Ticketmaster on the website of Terry Davis? He wrote an operating system for them.

wnevets 10y ago

Louis CK is really the only celebrity that I can think of that went out of their way to cut out ticketmaster. We really need attempts like this to succeed http://www.ticketnews.com/louis-c-k-sells-tickets-for-tour-without-ticketmaster/ http://www.ticketnews.com/louis-c-k-sells-tickets-for-tour-w...

enobrev 10y ago
I've been to his past two shows in Chicago, and absolutely appreciated this both times. Two years ago it was $35, no matter where your seat was. No fees, nothing. $70 for two tickets. Last year it was $100, total, for two tickets and we were in the front row. Interestingly we bought them from Ticketmaster both times, but he had the deal with TM to ensure no extra fees. I plan to keep going every year - especially if he plans to keep up this honest, up-front ticket-price deal.

dfar1 10y ago

I've stopped using them for similar reasons. I don't mind them adding all the fees as much. But it's wrong for the original price listed by them to be so far off from what you will actually pay. You see something listed for $15, and end up paying $30. That's misleading and should be prohibited. Unfortunately this seems to be common practice in most marketing now ... smartphone plans come to mind...

kenbaylor 10y ago

The Federal Trade Commission very actively prosecutes 'Deceptive Practices' that affect consumers. Sounds like the author (or anyone else affected) should file a complaint. A FTC 'consent decree' is effectively a $100m fine. Google, Microsoft and others have had to comply with FTC consent decrees: https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca....

cynoclast 10y ago
What have they done to tm?
- kenbaylor 10y ago
  Looks like their last interactions were in 2010. Time for a rematch :-) https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/02/ticketmaster-ticketsnow-settle-ftc-charges-deceptive-sales https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/02/ticke...
winteriscoming 10y ago
In the comments of that article, the author says he's filed a complaint https://hjhart.github.io/2017/01/03/ticketmaster-is-a-horrible-company.html#comment-3081436407 https://hjhart.github.io/2017/01/03/ticketmaster-is-a-horrib...

israrkhan 10y ago

Unfortunately these sort of practices are getting very common. This should be submitted to http://darkpatterns.org/ http://darkpatterns.org/

droithomme 10y ago

> "If I can help it, I will never order another ticket from them again." I find these to be weasel words. I don't use Ticketmaster. Full stop. If your concert uses Ticketmaster, I'm not going to that. It's not a problem because all the cool acts don't use Ticketmaster. Only lame old decrepit acts use Ticketmaster anyway. And if I wanted to see those, I'd go to Vegas, and at least get a comped all you can eat buffet as well. Brown Paper Tickets is an alternative that is fair and reasonable. Oddly, many fantastic acts I've see such as The Orb use them for ticket sales instead of the vile corrupt corparate boondoogle that is Ticketmaster. https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ Ticketmaster was corrupt and horrible 30 years ago. If you are still using them or claiming to buy tickets from them for any reason then you're either a corporate shill or terminally clueless.

schwap 10y ago
> Only lame old decrepit acts use Ticketmaster anyway ... and a few little sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and NHL (for primary sales).
anoonmoose 10y ago
You're not serious, are you? As a person who goes to dozens of concerts a year, not using Ticketmaster would be a huge hassle. Let's take just one example: I'm going to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in NYC. I have three options to get tickets directly: -Ticketmaster -In person -Over the phone Since I don't live in NYC, I don't want to give my CC number to some random theater employee over the phone, and I am not going to skip seeing my favorite band in the world, what do you suggest I do?
- dublinben 10y ago
  >I am not going to skip seeing my favorite band in the world, what do you suggest I do? See them somewhere else, in a venue that hasn't sold out to Ticketmaster.
  - Bahamut 10y ago
    Because people should spend potentially thousands of dollars just to avoid seeing one artist at a venue using Ticketmaster - this is ludicrous. There were a couple of times I had no choice this year but to go through Ticketmaster because they were the only times when the day & location aligned. I had little choice when booking an Iron Maiden ticket, or a ticket to two Dream Theater shows. I generally avoid Ticketmaster when I can and when it is convenient enough to do so, but I'm not going to idiotically avoid going to a show I want to go to and sacrifice enormous time & money to not use Ticketmaster. The reality is that Ticketmaster is largely immune to a ticket purchase boycott - their involvement in owning venues mitigates the effect of a boycott because they're the only way to see a huge swath of entertainment.

geephroh 10y ago

The hidden service fee may not be legal under WA state's fairly strong consumer protections. You can and should report this to the AG's office at: http://atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint.aspx http://atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint.aspx If there are enough complaints, things can actually happen.

hjhart 10y ago
Thanks. I filed a complaint through that website.

Fiahil 10y ago

Well, you should move out of the country. Here, in France, we have Ticketmaster, but also Fnac Spectacles, Digitick and many others. It's less awful.

btnewton 10y ago

Those are some dark design patterns

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pedalpete 10y ago

With all the comments here regarding "why doesn't another start-up come in and disrupt this market", I'm surprised nobody has mentioned SongKick which had an exclusive to sell Adele tickets in Europe in 2015. They're making inroads, but it is a long and challenging market.

throwaway999234 10y ago

If anyone's looking for alternatives, check out https://dice.fm/ https://dice.fm/ No booking fees, timers, insurance, etc. Browse gigs and in 2 presses on the screen you could have a ticket. I don't work for em, just a satisfied customer.

mixmastamyk 10y ago

A favorite quote of mine: "If Hitler owned Halliburton, it would not be as evil of a company as Ticketmaster." https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/c4704/fuck_you_ticketmaster_that_is_all/c0q0rnu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/c4704/fuck_you_ticket...

rasz_pl 10y ago

>Interesting, actually, that if you add up all the extra Ticketmaster charges that they are actually making $22.74 - which is more than Japandroids are making and they're doing the actual work. and this is why Louis CK decided to ignore ticketscam and sell his own tickets directly for 2012 tour. Interestingly I just looked up and current events are all handled by Ticketmaster, guess they offered him something he couldnt refuse, or he was simply unable to find venues willing to work around the scam (tickermaster has exclusive deals prohibiting competing inline sales).

yalogin 10y ago

Ticketmaster has single handedly stopped a lot of impulse buys for me. So I at least saved some money because they are shitty.

caf 10y ago

This is called "drip pricing", and it's illegal in many countries.

owly 10y ago

I would gladly fund a startup dedicated to overthrowing their empire. I guess it would need to start in NYC?

marclave 10y ago

Sidenote: I love Japandroids! Saw them in vancouver!

jen729w 10y ago

Australian here, so things are probably a little different, but I have direct experience using Ticketmaster to put on a large show at the State Theatre here in Melbourne. Here's how the charges work here: - You decide how much your ticket should cost. Let's call it $100. - Ticketmaster takes an "inside charge" off that for the privilege of selling your tickets. From memory, it's around $8. So you get $92. - Ticketmaster adds an "outside charge", which is the processing fee that the punter sees. So your ticket actually costs $108, plus any additional credit card, postage, etc. It's likely to end up costing ~$112. So, that's a rort. What do they do for their $20/ticket? Very, very little. The main thing is that they have access to enormous EDMs that, especially as a small indie producer, you really want. They'll send a message or two out to that list for you. Otherwise, their actual database software is hideous. Putting on a stage show involves complicated ticketing - what seats are reserved for the house, which rows are A reserve, which are B reserve, all of which can be different for each instance of your show, blah blah. I ended up writing my own database in FileMaker Pro to interface with theirs; the other producers I saw literally printed out the seat maps and highlighted them with marker pens before manually entering all of the seat information in and sending back to TM. A disgrace of a company.

fallingfrog 10y ago

Pearl Jam tried to boycott and sue Ticketmaster over these same practices in the 90's, and they lost. Good luck beating them now..

vldr 10y ago

At https://gutstickets.com https://gutstickets.com we're currently trying to somewhat disrupt the ticketing market where, of course, ticket master is the big evil giant. Our primary focus is to make disgraceful secondary ticket pricing impossible, something from which TM profits directly through subsidiaries such as seatwave. But we also just want to have a fair price for fans. No hidden fees or absurd prices for minimal features. No dark patterns. The fact that our tickets can't be copied, faked or printed makes this a lot easier - we couldn't charge for an fraud insurance or printed tickets even if we wanted to :) And even though a lot of the market is locked-in there's still a huge long-tail of events and organizers that are free to chose their ticketing company. Hopefully the rest will follow :)

rux 10y ago

I dearly, dearly wish that the Resident Advisor system would be adopted for more shows. RA only cater for a particular subset of music genres, but the way the ticketing system works with regards to combating touts is awesome. If you decide to not go to a show you bought tickets for, you can relinquish them and they goes back into the stack to be re-sold. Once the standard stock of tickets is exhausted, your tickets get put back into the pool of available tickets. If someone buys them, you get your money back minus the service fee. Whenever I've put tickets back in the pool this has happened, often within minutes of them being re-listed. Yes you can probably get more £ for your tickets by hawking them on gumtree or craigslist, but thanks to countless horrible transactions with ticket touts I'm always more than happy to use this system, as I know I'm getting a fair amount of my money back, and I know that whoever buys my tickets is getting a fair price too. https://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=25747 https://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=25747

hussfelt 10y ago

Their giftcard system does not even work mostly, completely broken (by code, bugs). Tried purchasing a e-giftcard with a custom photo for weeks. Contacted support and no response for over 3 weeks. Finally made a purchase of a normal giftcard in Safari. Think it was just pure luck, had to go back and forth the contact details page several times to be able to check out. Seems like Ticketmaster simply does not want our stash? :)