Remember the good old days when you found out that your favorite band was coming to town? I remember walking up to the customer service department of the local Hecht’s store. That’s where you would by your concert tickets. Back then, I’m not 100% sure if it was run by TicketBastard or not. But you would wait your turn in line and anxiously keep glancing at the clock because for every minute that passed, your seats were drifting further and further back. But eventually, you were able to purchase your seats. And in most cases, you would be satisfied. The price seemed fair and the seats were usually close enough to the stage. And, unlike today, the “service charges” were minimal.
(By the way, my very first concert was a Ted Nugent show at the old Capital Center back in 1980. Keep in mind, Nugent was one of the top concert draws in the US at that time. I still have the ticket stub. The ticket price? $8.80.)
Fast forward to present day……
This past Saturday, I attempted to purchase two tickets for the Kenny Chesney show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in May. Tickets went on sale at precisely 10:00. So, I sat down in front of my computer and logged into my TicketBastard account a few minutes before 10:00. When it came time to buy, I put my order in for two tickets. I figured I’d get pretty decent pavilion seats because, after all, THEY JUST WENT ON SALE! Not the case. I could not buy two seats together in the pavilion. The only “seats” that were left were on the lawn. What a bunch of bullshit! How can roughly 16,000 seats sell out in less than half a second????
Look, it’s bad enough to have to pay the ridiculous face value of today’s tickets. But there are also the service fees, convenience fees, parking fees, facility fees, etc. Where does it end? If that’s not bad enough, you can’t even buy a ticket in the traditional way! Now, you’re almost forced to go to a retail broker (I think we used to call this scalping!) and pay two to three times the face value. What’s more troubling is that TicketBastard owns a company called Tickets Now. If you go to their website, you’ll see that MANY of the pavilion seats for the Chesney are now selling for insane amounts. Some are over $1000! How is this even legal?
There are many other scalping companies out there. And there’s also the old classified ads (or Craigslist) where people offer to sell you inflated tickets. I don’t understand this either. Isn’t this against the law? I mean, it wouldn’t be hard to catch these people, the person’s name and telephone number are right in the ad.
It’s funny, if you go to an Oriole’s or Raven’s game, they have dedicated “no scalping zones” What’s up with that? Does that mean if you’re out of “the zone” you’re free to charge whatever you want?
Hey, maybe they’ve changed the laws. Or maybe no one even cares. But I look at this as just another example of the average person getting screwed!
KW
(By the way, my very first concert was a Ted Nugent show at the old Capital Center back in 1980. Keep in mind, Nugent was one of the top concert draws in the US at that time. I still have the ticket stub. The ticket price? $8.80.)
Fast forward to present day……
This past Saturday, I attempted to purchase two tickets for the Kenny Chesney show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in May. Tickets went on sale at precisely 10:00. So, I sat down in front of my computer and logged into my TicketBastard account a few minutes before 10:00. When it came time to buy, I put my order in for two tickets. I figured I’d get pretty decent pavilion seats because, after all, THEY JUST WENT ON SALE! Not the case. I could not buy two seats together in the pavilion. The only “seats” that were left were on the lawn. What a bunch of bullshit! How can roughly 16,000 seats sell out in less than half a second????
Look, it’s bad enough to have to pay the ridiculous face value of today’s tickets. But there are also the service fees, convenience fees, parking fees, facility fees, etc. Where does it end? If that’s not bad enough, you can’t even buy a ticket in the traditional way! Now, you’re almost forced to go to a retail broker (I think we used to call this scalping!) and pay two to three times the face value. What’s more troubling is that TicketBastard owns a company called Tickets Now. If you go to their website, you’ll see that MANY of the pavilion seats for the Chesney are now selling for insane amounts. Some are over $1000! How is this even legal?
There are many other scalping companies out there. And there’s also the old classified ads (or Craigslist) where people offer to sell you inflated tickets. I don’t understand this either. Isn’t this against the law? I mean, it wouldn’t be hard to catch these people, the person’s name and telephone number are right in the ad.
It’s funny, if you go to an Oriole’s or Raven’s game, they have dedicated “no scalping zones” What’s up with that? Does that mean if you’re out of “the zone” you’re free to charge whatever you want?
Hey, maybe they’ve changed the laws. Or maybe no one even cares. But I look at this as just another example of the average person getting screwed!
KW
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