Ticketbastard Glitch?
I got a frantic call from the Joker.
"Dude, I just scored a four day pass to Red Rocks for you and me."
WTF?
Supposedly, Phish released Red Rocks tickets via Ticketbastard sometime on Wednesday night. Word spread fast among Phisheads and hundreds of phans gobbled up tickets. The Joker scored two. The Wookie scored two. Daphne scored two.
I was told that Panic did this for NYE a few years back in an effort to give their fans a chance to get tickets without having to fight overwhelming odds against scalpers and organized rings of ticket bots.
If that's the case, kudos to Phish for trying to outsmart the scalpers. Those fuckers never saw it coming. And if it was a glitch and Ticketmaster messed up, then it ended up working out because true fans were able to get tickets instead of the scumbags who jack up the prices.
Thanks to the Joker for being on the ball and snatching up tickets. We're goin to see the boys for face value.
Well, part of the Coventry crew is confirmed to be dancing our asses off at Red Rocks. See you there!
Update:
7:00PM PT... My buddy JW said that there was an error and Ticketbastard released 3,200 tickets by accident and that Phish's management is livid...
the joker's Update:
12:01 AM 3/19 Thurs: Just got home from the bar, out with friends talking all night about how lucky we are to have Red Rocks tickets...check my TM account and it says the order is canceled. What happens now? Get ready for the TM backlash and shitstorm...
Update
On Thursday afternoon, Phish released a statement...
A Response To Red Rocks Ticketing
Last night we learned Ticketmaster mistakenly put on sale a substantial number of four-day passes to Phish's concerts this summer at Red Rocks Amphitheater, giving some fans an unfair advantage to purchase tickets ahead of the March 26th publicly announced on sale date. Ticketmaster has fully acknowledged this significant error, and to make sure that all of our fans have the same, fair opportunity to purchase tickets to this event, they have cancelled all of these orders with all charges being refunded.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause our fans. We are in active dialogue with Ticketmaster to push them to address the inconvenience their error has caused.
Phish takes this and all ticketing matters extremely seriously. We will seek assurances this type of error will not happen again in the future. The high demand for the tickets on Phish's return has overwhelmed the prevailing ticketing systems and revealed their flaws. We are putting pressure on the ticketing providers to improve their systems. We are focused on the ticket broker activity in our tickets and the inability of the existing ticket systems to stop this. We are actively seeking options to limit this.
As a reminder, the public on sale date for Red Rocks is Thursday, March 26th at 12:00 Noon Mountain time and additionally Phish's ticket request period will remain open until 11:59PM eastern time this Sunday the 22nd. Please visit http://phish.portals.musictoday.com/ to request tickets.
Thank you for your continued support.
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3/19/09 3:30pm EST
From the joker- I just got this in my inbox. $50 ain't bad!
Dear Phish fan:
Unfortunately, the tickets that you ordered from Ticketmaster for performances of Phish scheduled at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre between the dates of July 30th and August 2nd, 2009 were put on sale inadvertently, allowing you to order tickets before they were supposed to have been released for sale to the general public. The sale of these tickets prior to the scheduled onsale date was the result of an inadvertent error on the part of Ticketmaster. While we strive to be perfect, errors do occur, albeit rarely. Per our stated policy and our practice Ticketmaster refunds purchases in such situations and cancels the tickets. In this case, while we asked the credit card companies for an authorization code at order time, we did not and will not charge your card for the purchase price and have canceled your order for tickets.
In addition, we’d like to show our sincere regret for this error by providing you with a gift certificate in the amount of $50.00 that is redeemable for any purchase for tickets to qualifying events on Ticketmaster.com or through our call centers as long as your order was in accordance with our standard order guidelines. You should receive this gift certificate in the next two weeks.
We are sorry that we were not able to provide you with the tickets you ordered and hope that we will have the chance to serve you better in the future. We encourage you to visit Ticketmaster at the scheduled onsale for Phish at Red Rocks currently scheduled for Thursday March 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm MT.
Sincerely,
David Butler
President
Ticketmaster North America
Comments
If the amount you pay for a ticket is incorrect regardless of whether because of an error in a price posted on this web site or otherwise communicated to you, or you are able to order a ticket before its scheduled on-sale or presale date or you are able to order a ticket that was not supposed to have been released for sale, then: Ticketmaster will have the right to cancel that ticket (or the order for that ticket) and refund to you the amount that you paid. This will apply regardless of whether because of human error or a transactional malfunction of this web site or other Ticketmaster operated system.
I really had hoped that there was a wookie sleeper cell inside Ticketbastard who tried to help us out.
"Starting" to get shady?!?! They've been shady and customer-hostile for at long as I can remember. I've been going to concerts since 1969 (Iron Butterfly, Honolulu, when I was 9) and the ticket situation now is totally out of control. The sad thing is, there doesn't really seem to be a good solution because Phish is not going to get in the ticketing business again, LiveNation has a stranglehold on venues and so on.