Why I hate Ticketmaster

Last night I received a text on my phone from the local radio station. "Beastie Boys and Tenacious D Nov. 3 @ the Fillmore, tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10AM" the text read. I was thrilled. I have been listening to the Beastie Boys since I was in middle school. I have always wanted to see them live and this was the perfect chance. Plus Tenacious D is really funny, so it was like an extra bonus. I discussed this information with my best friend Ky and we decided I would wake up and purchase the tickets. 9:50 rolled around this morning and I jumped out of bed with excitement. I had actually woken up at 8:50 because I was afraid I would sleep through the release of the tickets. I did that once before with Rolling Stones tickets and vowed never to do so again. So at about 9:52 I was on the ticketmaster website continually refreshing so I could get the tickets as soon as they were released. Ten o'clock happened and I had three tickets reserved. I would buy one for myself, one for Ky, and one for another friend or to sell for a little more money. I continued on to enter my credit card information. According to Ticketmaster I had six minutes and fifteen seconds to do so. I am pretty efficient with my computer, know my information, and had my credit card info in front of me, so I would guess that it took me about 3 or 4 minutes to get all my information in. Then I clicked the finalize button with much excitement. I was immediately filled with terror when I was told there was an error and to go back to the event page. The Beastie Boys are kind of a big deal with a huge fan base. On top of that, they rarely play concerts so I knew I was in trouble. By this point it was about 10:15. I went back to the event page on Ticketmaster and searched for new tickets, but found nothing. I lowered the number of tickets from 3 to 2 then to 1, nothing. Then I got angry. I realized I am not put in a position where I will have to pay a scalper a premium to purchase tickets. Already on craigslist people are asking for $100-$150 a ticket. Unbelievable.

Today I was reminded of why I hate Ticketmaster so much. If you want to buy tickets for just about any major event, from concerts to sporting events to Disney on Ice, you have to go through Ticketmaster unless you are willing to deal with a scalper. But Ticketmaster is the primary seller of tickets, and they are an absolute joke. First, they always charge a bogus convenience fee on all tickets they sell. The tickets I was trying to purchase today cost $38, which is a pretty good price to see the Beastie Boys. But then there is a $10 service charge. That's over a 25% mark up, ridiculous. Also, the customer service is well documented as being a joke. Today I was so angry I tried to write them a complaint. But being the big corporation that they are, their customer service system scanned the complaint I wrote and offered several pre-made responses. I know my complaint was futile, but I just wanted a human being to read it and understand how mad I am at Ticketmaster. Unfortunately, I really enjoy concerts and sporting events. If I didn't I would never use their service again. But because of the monopoly they have set up, I am forced to. Why didn't they get slammed for monopolistic practices back when Microsoft was being sued? Anyway, I am really mad. I will probably tell as many people about it as I can today and then forget about it tomorrow. But I will be reminded when I have to shell out some extra dough to see this concert. Anyway, I just had to get this off my chest. The moral of the story is that Ticketmaster is evil.