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Music ramblings and Ticketmaster rants

I’m a huge music fan, especially live music. I pretty much listen to every genre out there, but focus mostly on alt, classic rock & electronic.

I’ve setup my DVR to record Austin City Limits and a variety of music related shows. I didn’t even know there was a VH1 Classic channel until I stumbled upon the Led Zeppelin concert recently (which was awesome, by the way).

So, on to my Ticketmaster rants. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Ticketmaster, the are the world’s leading ticketing company, providing ticket sales, ticket resale services, marketing and distribution of event tickets and information.

And there is no shortage of Ticketmaster complaints on the web. Not only from concert goers, but also concert promoters and facilities, where Ticketmaster chargers outrageous fees. In fact, it is the worst probably in Florida, where Ticketmaster is the exclusive agent for 95% of the seats in Florida’s arenas, stadiums and theaters.

Some groups, such as Pearl Jam, tried to fight Ticketmaster by allowing people to purchase tickets through different means, but eventually had to cave in to the Ticketmaster monopoly.

I was reading through my Live Nation email when I saw that B.B. King was coming to the Uptown Theater in Kansas City on January 25th.

After missing out on Buddy Guy recently, I knew this show was one I wasn’t going to miss.

None the less, I’m not a fan of Ticketmaster, but you don’t have many options. I try to purchase my tickets directly from the venue whenever possible, especially for general admission events.

So, let me break you down my receipt for 2 tickets. The ticket prices ranged from $55 to $125. I wanted good seats, so the pricing below was for the $75 tickets.

Ticket: $75.00 x 2
Convenience Charge: $11.10 x 2
Delivery (Standard Mail): No Charge
Order Processing Fee: $4.90
Total: $177.10

The convenience charges were even higher for the $125 tickets.

Ticketmaster has a page that explains their prices, but it sure doesn’t make me feel any better by adding another 18% to my ticket price.

But the delivery fee, if you wanted to print the tickets yourself, should not be more expensive then having them print the tickets and mail them to you.

Sure, they probably have to pay some fee for encoding the tickets, but I don’t see how that is any different then the bar code encoding they print on the tickets when they send them to you in the mail. And if you print the tickets at home, it saves them printing and delivery fees. So why is it more expensive? I’ve had to use the print on demand feature before because we bought tickets for concerts at the last minute and definitely weren’t going to pay the outrageous shipping fees.

Shipping Fees (click for larger size):

I got better seats than the example below (click for larger size), but this is the first screen that you see:

Problem 1: There was no countdown of the time limit. Sure, the page says there is a time limit on each step of the process, but unless you have a stopwatch handy, it doesn’t do you much good, and there is nothing more frustrating to get to the next step only to say that you have to start over. The amount of time is different for each page and also varies if you already have some information on file or an account. There are a variety of different ways to display a countdown, but any implementation would suffice.

Problem 2: I went to login, but the site said my account already existed, but of course since it was timed, I got kicked out of the system and lost my virtual place in line for tickets. To make matters worse, the reminder email with my temporary password got identified as spam, so I didn’t get it anyway until later. If there is a problem logging in, the site should just let you make an individual purchase (no account required). Do they want my money or not?

Problem 3: I was able to get my wife’s login for Ticketmaster.com (she has purchased tickets several times from them as well) and I was able to login. New problem: the tickets I was presented didn’t show up on the seating chart. Well, I surely wasn’t going to get those tickets, because that meant they were on the very far side and I wanted to be in the middle.

Problem 4: There system wasn’t very smart in handing out the tickets. Why don’t they allow you to select your tickets, just like the airlines? I realize there would be some complexities, but most people buy in blocks of 2 or more anyway, and I’m sure there are algorithms to sort that out. The Ticketmaster system simply went from right to left, starting at seat one to the end, and then going to the next row. So, even though I came back a minute later, I got better seats that were closer to the center.

Eventually, after a few more attempts, I got tickets in the 7th row by the aisle close to the center. Fortunately, I only got bumped back by a few rows with all of the madness, but still an absolutely horrible and frustrating experience.

Technorati Tags: music, BB, King, Ticketmaster, Uptown, Kansas City