Ticketmaster is a horrible company • Hacker News Board

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#231

Post by patmcguire » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:09 AM UTC

jason_slack wrote: post #83

giarc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Timer is not sketchy if it's long enough, but four minutes is probably too short. You need locking for the reasons you said, and if you didn't have an expiration you'd have fun denial of service either accidentally from users deciding not to purchase, or purposely for the sheer malicious joy or from resellers who would scalp a ticket for a higher price, then use their lock to buy the actual product.

Fifteen minutes seems more appropriate, though.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#232

Post by pvg » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:40 AM UTC

parthdesai wrote: post #223

pvg wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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."

I suppose I don't.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#233

Post by wdr1 » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:48 AM UTC

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #3

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…

It's not necessarily the venue, but also the promoter & sometimes the artist. If you promise a top A-list performer a 105% of the cover ticket price, you've got to find that 5% somewhere. (Not to mention other costs.)

One of the major reasons for Ticketmaster early success was its flexibility. Other systems expected you to conform to predefined contracts. Ticketmaster didn't. Want to slice your inventory into 10 price groups on Friday & Saturday, 5 on Sunday, and 2 during week? No problem. Want a $20 ticket price & $5 fee, no problem. Want a $15 ticket & $10 fee? That works too. Need to sell the Staples Center with one configuration for Madonna on Monday & a different setup for U2 on Tuesday, easy peasy. Need to put 3 more nights on sale? Done.

In a nutshell whatever the ticket owner wants (usually the promoter) Ticketmaster can do.

It was really hard to find that type of flexibility in the 70s. Let alone a system that can scale to the demand associated with live events. (LiveNation spent north of $100M trying to do so before throwing in the towel & buying Ticketmaster outright.)

Source: I'm a former TM engineering director.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#234

Post by gabeio » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 6:12 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #185

jansenv wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evils has Vistaprint committed? I'm curious. I know their products suck.

Vistaprint tries to sell all sorts of addons after you've chosen what you want to buy. Got your business cards? Great—here's a mug, t-shirt, balloon, and hat that all say the same thing. Just finished your purchase? Here's an offer to get 50% more for a "discounted" price (which may actually be higher per-unit than what you just paid, if you used a coupon code). For me, Vistaprint has actually been a good vendor with…

I actually had a fairly similar experience while trying to buy flowers for valentines day. At check out they would show you offers for other flowers that looked the same but in actuality cost more (for no immediate apparent reason) and then your total would end up being higher than you had anticipated. They would also stuff your face in other offers like it would be 15% off if you add this mason jar. But then the mason jar adds that 15% back to the cost and more.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#235

Post by dopamean » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 6:56 AM UTC

jarjoura wrote: post #184

Bartweiss wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually is a bit strong, yeah. Here's their ownership map: http://www.livenationentertainment.com/map/venues They do have far more exclusive-license venues than that, though.

That map is only their large stadium sized venues. http://www.houseofblues.com is one of the biggest conglomerates for small size venues, also owned by Live Nation.

House of Blues was actually what I was thinking of when I commented. Again though...

> one of the biggest conglomerates

House of Blues is 10 locations in 9 states.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#236

Post by vldr » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 8:30 AM UTC

At 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 :)

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#237

Post by mjolk » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 11:15 AM UTC

zdean wrote: post #102

smallnamespace wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ticketmaster either owns or has deals with all the venues. I wouldn't be surprised if all those deals specified exclusivity. No venue will switch to a new entrant unless the new entrant can guarantee the same demand, so you have the normal chicken and egg program.

Yeah, but I would think there's a corner of the market that TM doesn't have yet...maybe the really small venues. Start with those as MVP/proof of concept and then "wow" the medium venues, repeat.

I've tried and failed in this space. In your MVP, you have to be relatively feature complete and be ready to handle chargebacks, CC processing, customer service, and be willing to sustain on whatever price you set as the surcharge -- the established players are often "free" to the venue.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#238

Post by flavor8 » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 11:29 AM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #190

WorldMaker wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat more recently comedian Louis CK attempted it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/louis-ck-ticketmast... I can't find a good copy of his conclusions from that experiment in my searches right now, but I remember his emails from around that time were not always the happiest.

He is still selling direct to fans on his site and from the looks of this he has taken this a step further by actively invalidating resold tickets; https://louisck.net/tour-dates

Ironically enough, when you click "buy tickets" it takes you to Ticketmaster.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#239

Post by rux » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 11:50 AM UTC

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

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#240

Post by ascagnel_ » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 1:49 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #211

TallGuyShort wrote: post #58

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 insis…

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…

> 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