Howdy everyone. Hope everyone had a good summer. Don’t know if any of you have been following this story about Ticketmaster, but if you ever need a reason to refuse to purchase tickets through Ticketmaster for any event, here’s a pretty good one.
Seems that TM has found a rather lucrative way to cheat music fans out of their money, some of it involving cheating you twice, or more, on the same ticket. They have built their own personal network of scalpers, whom they pay to scalp tickets on resale markets, so they can collect fees twice. This also allows them to control supply and demand, because they frequenty will hold back tickets from public sale. So the average fan has no option but to purchase aftermarket tickets at hugely inflated prices. More details here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/a-public-relations-nightmare-ticketmaster-recruits-pros-for-secret-scalper-program-1.4828535
Can you imagine what would happen to a festival ticket if TM was the ticket agent?
See you in June!
Igot caught up in one of these scams. I ordered tickets for a local show the day they went on sale through ticketmaster. The tickets were good seats and were pretty expensive, but not much different than the average good seats at this venue for any other show. As it got closer to the show my wife and I thought we wouldn’t be able to go, and looked to sell the tickets through ticketmasters resale site. I thought if I offered them for 5-10 dollars less than I paid I’d easily get rid of them, they were good seats, and I knew there were seats more expensive. No luck selling. So I went to the venue itself and asked if I could return them. They had seats in the same row for sale at half the price I paid. I was furious. So I called ticketmaster. They told me there was no refund, because technically (though it was never known to me) that I had bought my ticket through a third party via ticketmasters site. Now remember I bought these tickets the day they went on sale 20 minutes into the sales starting, and there were already third party tickets being re-sold at scalper prices, without it being public that these were scalped tickets. Thats the last time I’ve ever ordered tickets from ticketmaster.
Thank you VERY much for posting this. Evil Nation/TicketB@st@rd should be shunned whenever possible. These are horrible horrible companies that fleece people and artists.
Support grass roots festies and local music promoters and leave the sheds, arenas and stadiums behind. Selah!