So this is wayyyy off topic of my normal book posts. But I’m pissed. Beyond pissed.
I have enjoyed Lady Gaga’s music for years. I’m not a die-hard fan, but I’ve always wanted to see her in concert. She has to put on an awesome show! So I was really excited to see that she was coming to St. Louis when her tour was announced. Yeah, it’s through the week but I had my childcare lined out and was ready to buy me some tickets!
I even pre-ordered her new CD to get a presale code for the tickets. I figured that would be a good use of $17 …. I’d get her CD and a leg up to grab some good tickets!
I’m waiting patiently for 10am to roll around yesterday. At 10:00am on the frigging dot I log into Ticketmaster and put in my presale code. It “unlocks” and I click the search button …. for the site to essentially crash all to hell around me. For 35 minutes it was essentially inoperable … I watched that stupid ticket fill up and down in blue for 35 minutes. No joke. By the time it finally came back up and gave me the “best available” seats … they were shit. Absolute shit. And $300 for 2. For shit tickets? Hell to the no.
I was pissed. I was depressed. I was almost to the point of crying. Because I *knew* scalpers had been at work. The tickets were already being listed on the secondary market sites. And there I was stuck with the option of buying a good seat for triple its value on the secondary market or a shitty seat that I didn’t want for the face value. I chose to walk away.
I have used secondary market before. That’s how I was able to see Adele. And I paid out the nose for those tickets. And I said I would never do that again. Adele didn’t get that money out of me. Some random Joe with an awesome computer program got my money. And it left a nasty taste in my mouth.
Then tonight my sister-in-law asks me if I bought Lady Gaga tickets. I told her about the drama filled morning I had yesterday. And she proceeded to tell me that she wasn’t surprised … she had a friend on Facebook posting a presale code to all her friends. WHAT THE EFF? THAT is the type of person that ruins it for someone like me. Someone who tried to do things the honest way. I gave Lady Gaga my money for her music … in return I got a personalized presale code to be able to have the leg up on everyone else and be able to see her in concert. And yet there’s random people on Facebook posting presale codes? This is everything that is wrong with this industry. Seriously. All it does is make it impossible for average people to see the concerts they want. But come on, at some point enough is enough.
And I feel like it’s finally going to start going that way…. on Tuesday I bought Metallica tickets for my husband in June. Spent $250 a ticket for some “enhanced experience” tickets. To get everything all settled up and printed out to find out that MY credit card and MY id had to be presented to use these tickets. I wasn’t even planning on going to that show – the other ticket was intended for my brother-in-law! But I’m going … because I couldn’t figure out how to get them to change the name on the tickets to reflect my husband’s name. (My sister-in-law ended up buying two tickets for her and my BIL, so now we’re all going…) But the point of this is that using credit card/ID entry is how this industry is going to have to stop these scalpers. I was reading somewhere a while back that Eric Church had actually voided a bunch of tickets to his shows because he had found out that they were being resold at unbelievable amounts. YES for him! Thank you!
Because at the end of the day I wanted to see Lady Gaga in concert. And now I don’t get to. Because people can’t be honest and truthful and do things the proper way. And I’m not going to give some scalper my money. Lady Gaga deserves that money. But now she’s not going to get it either… and I don’t get to see her concert. I’m still peeved about the whole situation 😦
Tales of a Book Addict 