Ticketmaster

[AndrewSchofield]

Given that Ticketmaster is widely used as THE retailer of tickets for the vast majority of sporting, music and other entertainment events - am I the only one who feels that the Ticketmaster website and method for booking tickets is extremely limited?

For example; i recently tried to book tickets for an event at the Manchester MEN arena. The show had a total of 20 dates and it wasn't really an issue for us which day we attended. Every time you search for tickets and find that non are available, you have to start again from scratch and at the time (presumably due to high demand) it was taking at least 15minutes every time you attempted to find tickets. Would it be too dificult to just show all the tickets that were available at the time and let you pick the ones you wanted? I have booked tickets at two other venues who sell tickets through their own website and one displayed a layout of the theatre with every seat on and available seats coloured green, booked seats shown red and a stadium where the stadium plan displayed all blocks of seats which had available tickets, along with the price for that block. Obviously from these other two venues - the technology to do this exists, and it doesn't seem that complicated to me? Surely it would be possible for one of the, if not THE, biggest ticket retailing website to do this too.

And then when you book tickets through Ticketmaster, the prefered delivery option is to get the tickets e-mailed to you and you print them out yourself - but still have to pay the £2+ postage and packing fee???

 

[Deluks]

Bloody farce buying concert tickets these days. Gigs sell out in record time then half that are sold end up on eBay for triple the price.

I remember the good old days of going up to the venue and paying cash at the box office. No booking fee and you knew that you had the ticket in your hand. Prices seem to have rocketed too, but to be fair the artists are probably just trying to recoup lost money from internet piracy.

 

[imamartian]

Have you tried booking on the venue's website?

 

[Chukka63]

i looked at buying some tickets from ticketmaster but didnt.the booking fee is unreasonable in my mind and like you say.then you have to pay for postage.

 

[wotan]

Ticketmaster, is the ultimate scam, you ring up and ask for the best available seats, and are invariably given mediocre ones, you arrive at the theatre and see prime seats that are vacant, these are usually from a corporate block booking, where people can't be bothered to turn up.
This denies the true devotee the opportunity of the best seats, I far prefer to book my own seats on line, but unfortunately ticketmaster seem to have everything sewn up.

Wotan