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Ticketmaster is a horrible company

hjhart.github.io

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Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#221

Post by pimlottc »

vonklaus wrote: post #213
dublinben wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ticketmaster is immune to a ticket purchase boycott because of people like you who will go to great lengths to justify why they have no choice but to continue purchasing their tickets.

I agree. Patronizing a company diametrically opposed to one's interests is terrible. Disproportionately, music lovers seem to be the first to deride TM but defend why they won't use anything else.

What choice do they have? Music is not fungible. You can't substitute Kanye West for Michael Bublé, or Miley Cyrus for Bruce Springsteen.For most shows, there is only one online option. An increasing number of venues don't even sell advance tickets in person any more, and when it is an option, it has additional costs in time and effort, as well as risk of missing out completely.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#222

Post by pimlottc »

mi100hael wrote: post #73
sean_patel wrote: post #33

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…

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.

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.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#223

Post by parthdesai »

pvg wrote: post #220
parthdesai wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. It IS upto Ticketmaster to try and avoid scalpers/bots buying all the tickets and then reselling. Bring credit card that you bought tickets with and show it at the door along with government ID. It is easily possible. MLS is to blame, but so is Ticketmaster.

You can't tell me your point is the price is unreasonable when comparing non-comprable prices inaccurately and then when I say that's not true, I'm missing the point because ticketmaster, who doesn't organize the event or the venue, didn't magically run some fairer ticket distribution system. I mean. You can, it just doesn't make any sense.

>It IS Ticketmaster's fault that fans don't even get a decent shot at buying the tickets. How do you justify site not loading at 1:00pm and tickets selling out at 1:01 pm. There was a per-sale that started at 12:00pm and by 12:10pm, pre-sale tickets were sold out.

That was my main point. Maybe you just don't understand what i said or maybe you don't want to.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#224

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

wickawic wrote: post #126
ishields wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

The dirty secret is that those fees are really part of the ticket price. It is still the market at work, albeit a dark and slimy kind of market that makes you feel bad about the future of commerce. If in your example you truly couldn't/wouldn't pay more than 18.50 once you saw the fees, someone else would.

Except you don't pay the fees at the box-office. Hence not really part of the ticket price.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#226

Post by pimlottc »

ksenzee wrote: post #104
zdean wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

No need for a new startup. Brown Paper Tickets is the obvious successor.

I always cheer for competitors and I used Brown Paper Tickets a couple times now without issue, but in my experience, the alternatives tend to crumble under the pressure when they try selling tickets for a truly high-demand show (usually when a high-profile act plays a venue much smaller than they usually do). For all its sins, Ticketmaster does seem to manage to handle high loads on a regular basis.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#227

Post by jen729w »

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.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#228

Post by aaron695 »

parthdesai wrote: post #41

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.

> Fuck Ticketmaster.

How exactly is Ticketmaster at fault?

Their site is to quick for users?

They sell tickets to people who want to buy them?

They can't telepathically tell scalpers from normal people?

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#230

Post by winteriscoming »

kenbaylor wrote: post #115

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....

In the comments of that article, the author says he's filed a complaint https://hjhart.github.io/2017/01/03/ticketmaster-is-a-horrib...
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