We Apologize for any Inconvenience.
Saturday (5/13/2006) morning (which was my birthday, coincidentally), Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets went on sale at 10:00AM. I’ve heard of the atrocities of Ticketmaster, so I had six browsers going at 9:50AM. All of them had me logged in with my Ticketmaster account (which has my billing information preloaded) so there would be no delay for any reason. At 9:59:30AM, I started refreshing each browser in turn. The fourth browser offered me tickets! I asked for two, and was offered two in Row 11 (seats 5 and 6). Score! I bought them without incident. It was sweet.
Sunday (5/14) morning, Radiohead tickets went on sale for the two Berkeley shows at 10:00AM. Since my system worked perfectly for RHCP, I tried it again. I knew that these would be a bit more competitive, so I also had Maudie on the phone with Ticketmaster (on three phones, actually, and only one of them got through to a representative). So that’s six browsers and three phones. Again, I was offered two tickets on the fourth browser I tried. But when I tried to buy them this time, BAM: server error. Here’s the email I sent to Ticketmaster about it:
Hi,
I tried to purchase two tickets for a Radiohead concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA for 6/23/2006 at 10:00AM PDT today (5/14/2006).
After selecting two tickets and entering the distorted code word, I was taken to the screen to confirm my purchase (I was already logged in with my Ticketmaster account with billing information). I looked over the details and submitted the purchase. The next page contained the following:
—–
There was a problem processing your request.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
If you submitted an order, and are not sure if it went through please check Order History or contact Customer Service.
—–Obviously, my purchase wasn’t in the Order History. I happened to be on the phone with customer service at the time (in case something like this happened). The representative told me that there is nothing he could do to help.
He also told me that he could not find any tickets for the show. He spent over five minutes looking for the venue, which I clearly told him was the Radiohead conert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA on 6/23/2006. Of course, the tickets had sold out by the time he figured out how to do his job. Again, there was nothing he could do to help.
He recommended using the phone instead of the Internet next time, as it is “more reliable.” I hope the irony of that recommendation is not lost on you (as if someone is reading this).
I attempted to start over with the online method. I can’t say I was surprised to see that the tickets had sold out.
If you are going to sustain an abusive and unaccountable monopoly, please at least have the web server capacity to support it.
If you are planning to respond to this message claiming that there is nothing you can do to help me, then you would be wrong. I would greatly appreciate it if you would refund the $194.95 I just spent on eBay to purchase the two tickets that were originally offered to me on ticketmaster.com (I am happy to supply records of the eBay transaction). Simply credit the Visa card I have saved in my ticketmaster.com account. It will be a lot cheaper than getting new web servers!
Another dejected customer with no options and no recourse,
Sumul Shah
