Thanks for coming tonight. You've Been A Great Audience !

hungryheart

Has anybody else had any bad experiences with the likes of Ticketmaster ?

Tickets arriving very late ?

Excessive fees?

Unable to buy seats on the on sale day to find them available later ?

Please let us know.

M4RKM

Stephb1986 wrote: »

I'm in total agreement with you. Like the Oasis gig later this year at Heaton Park Manchester, I seen tickets for £75 my OH found them for £45 the fact that its a park that was left to the public of Manchester by Lord Heaton doesn't matter they are still charging these extortionate prices, It was £50 per ticket for Ricky Hattons fight in Manchester, and i've also been to a few comedien acts last year the likes of Jimmy Carr, Ross Nobel. I also went to see the Foo Fighters while they was in Manchester at £50 a ticket too.

It is very expensive now to go and see live acts and im 22

Steph xx

don't go see oasis and the foo fighters then, check out new music at smaller venues, and then you only pay £6 each to see a gig.. or check out great bands who just ain't as big..

eagles of death metal at manchester uni £15 inc booking fee
GLASVEGAS, FRIENDLY FIRES, WHITE LIES, FLORENCE & THE MACHINE, leeds o2 academy (also playing in manchester!) £17.73.. so that is 5 bands, which is £3.54 each! BARGAIN

IMO, you can't whinge about prices of tickets for HUGE acts.. I paid £40 last year to see REM, and it was worth every single penny.

i buy tickets normally cash, from a record shop near me. this way, i get the ticket there and then, and also, there isn't a huge booking fee, or a huge postage fee... there are ways around things..

M

duchy

Don't get me started about ticketmaster.......bad enough are fan presales with really poor seats-surely the idea of presale is to give fans better seats-not sell them rubbish and then put the better seats on sale later but what really irritates me is their "hot tickets" normal seats sold at touts prices.

hungryheart

markymoo wrote: »

don't go see oasis and the foo fighters then, check out new music at smaller venues, and then you only pay £6 each to see a gig.. or check out great bands who just ain't as big..

eagles of death metal at manchester uni £15 inc booking fee
GLASVEGAS, FRIENDLY FIRES, WHITE LIES, FLORENCE & THE MACHINE, leeds o2 academy (also playing in manchester!) £17.73.. so that is 5 bands, which is £3.54 each! BARGAIN

IMO, you can't whinge about prices of tickets for HUGE acts.. I paid £40 last year to see REM, and it was worth every single penny.

i buy tickets normally cash, from a record shop near me. this way, i get the ticket there and then, and also, there isn't a huge booking fee, or a huge postage fee... there are ways around things..

M

Fair comments.

But what happens if you really want to see the top acts ?

What happens if you live in a rural backwater like I do ?


I ordered a ticket to see Bryan Adams in Newcastle. Top live act. Always sells out his shows. Crucially always puts on a top show giving value for money.
Face value was thirty pounds.
Booking fees/postage /admin fees came to £7.50.
25% mark up on the ticket price for doing !!!!!! all .
But the worse part was they had my money six months before the gig. Charged large fees. And it took them six attempts to deliver my ticket to the right address. Please don't mention the poor call centre service.
Ticket finally arrived three days before the show !!

Why ? They said it was to stop touts.

I was seething . Still am! :mad::mad::mad:


If this was any other high street store I wouldn't shop there ever again!

But it isn't.

And they have a monopoly over the Live Music ticket sales.

SO BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POST. WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT ?

Blue264

hungryheart wrote: »

Unable to buy seats on the on sale day to find them available later ?

Please let us know.

One of my colleagues used to work for Ticketmaster and she told me that one of their biggest binds was this. People go to buy tickets online, secure their seats then keep them on hold whilst they phone round their friends to see who wants a ticket, but then they don't complete the sale.
This can make the seats chosen appear unavailable for up to 30mins to anyone else who requests them.

My biggest issue with buying gig tickets, and speaking as someone who has a Ticketmaster booking office on the route to work, is seeing all the kids in black hoodies lined up outside the office before it opens. It's so obvious that they are buying tickets for touts and many a time I've seen them come out of the office and hand the tickets over to the tout waiting outside.
That practise needs to be clamped down on!

But as has been said by a few other people in this thread, catching onto a band early in their career really is the way to go. The first time I saw the White Stripes was at the L2 in Liverpool for about £14 and in those days, Jack White would go to the bar himself whilst the support were on and was happy to chat to the other gig goers. The first time I saw The Verve was infront of a crowd of about 120 people.

The Strokes played the tiny Zodiac Club in Oxford after they hit the big time and Snow Patrol slogged their guts out for a good 6 years or more at smaller venues until the became well known.

It can be done and it makes the experience so much richer when a small band you watched in tiny venues on the 'toilet gig circuit' makes it big.
You can do a lot worse than check out the gig guide on Barfly...

http://www.barflyclub.com/

hungryheart

My biggest issue with buying gig tickets, and speaking as someone who has a Ticketmaster booking office on the route to work, is seeing all the kids in black hoodies lined up outside the office before it opens. It's so obvious that they are buying tickets for touts and many a time I've seen them come out of the office and hand the tickets over to the tout waiting outside.
That practise needs to be clamped down on!


This one paragraph sums the problem!

Next step EBay or the secondary market.

Stop The Resale. Stop The Problem. Stop The Rip Off !

RedBern

agree wholeheartedly with previous posters. It infuriates me that you see the price with ticketmaster quoted as £x and then booking fee + £y, and postage £z - making the ticket price nothing like the original price. Why don't Ticketmaster say - tickets are £xyz price - a booking fee for EVERY ticket if you're buying 4 - why?

lisaloo1977

It is alright saying that people are still buyiny and selling out the stadiums so all is good. I would say a HUGE amount of people who are buying when it is one of the big desirable shows are touts. They have multi creditcards are all registered at different addresses and they buy up everything they can get their grubby hands on. Vermin as far as i am concerned :rolleyes:

This means people like me, who would just like to buy a ticket for myself and my partner to go see a band we like are at a massive disadvantage, along with every over genuine buyer. It ussually mens we miss out, because i sure as hell am not lining someones pocket from the likes of Fleabay!!!!

It is the same when you see poor mums and dad running around looking for that must have Christmas present, and some person without children looking to double the price has gone and bought them all and stuck them on ebay.

I have to say i was very, very tempted to buy as many Wii's as i could and stick them on ebay at a buy it now. I would have put them on at normal price just to stop people having to pay infalted prices. I just thought i might be stopping all those people who would not normally use the internet and only walk in and buy them.

I second small gigs, living in Leeds i have been lucky enough to see some wicked bands in small settings. Good job really given the main ticket scam buying process.

Rant over.....

jules85_2

Well I just puchased tickets to see Keane and was charged £2.25 per ticket booking fee for going online and booking my own seats - then was lumped with a £2.00 fee per ticket for the privilage of printing out my own tickets, using my own ink and paper.
It's just ridiculous

Reggie_Rebel

I think the artists have to some of the blame here. They, especially the huge ones, could insist that their tickets are not sold with a booking fee.