Manchester shows

[annie blue]

Hi guys, what a mad few days that has been. Thank you ptn, you are truly amazing. I've been up since 6 edgy and scanning for any new info. I took your advice and went down to ticket office in Leeds. The queue was.......non existent. No-one. Not a soul. The lovely man that can took my details and said to leave it with him, he would get me best available at 10. I went back at 9.50 drumming my fingers nervously on the counter and me, lovely man and lovely lady stared at 2 screens waiting for the tickets to go on sale. Stalls or circle would have been perfect obviously but I only managed two for the gallery Wednesday BUT I'm in the same room as a man I've idolised for 38 years so WOW and OMG!!!!! And it does look snug to say the least.

Once again, thanks ptn. I never noticed btw, are you going to see the man?

I need either strong coffee or a snooze and the kettle is too far away ........

[John J]

I was on line to Ticketmaster reserved my tickets for Wed night 2 great seats in the stalls
then they kicked me out before the transaction finished, it was then impossible to get back in

eventually I managed to get 2 tickets in the Gallery for £ 160 on the phone through
ticket master, also managed to get good seats in London through ticketline
£ 137.50 for 2 so all in all not bad

Once again ticketmaster got it wrong they far too many major concerts going on sale at the same time, they are in effect a licensed tout

[Jonnie Falafel]

It was a tense few moments as the ticketmaster system rejected my requests for Wednesday & Friday tickets... then it crashed when I tried Tuesday. Finally I got good stalls seats for Tuesday .... then I could breathe again!

[confetti]

I'm really glad some of my advice has been of help! I know how frustrating Ticketmaster's systems can be, so I like to give any advice I can

ptn thanks for all your help, just another point about ebay and tickets, if for some reason a gig was cancelled and we had bought tickets from ebay,is it possible to get a refund? I only ask because when someone came into me to get a refund for an Amy Winehouse gig, I was told that they had to take it back to where it was purchased. If the customer has bought from ebay they won't be able to take it back to where it was purchased, what would happen. Is it just at buyers risk?

[ptn]

Once again, thanks ptn. I never noticed btw, are you going to see the man?

Would have loved to, but price was a bit steep for a student like me

Got to live the excitement tho, as I was getting tickets for my Mum and her friends - 'I've been waiting to see him for my whole life!' No pressure then...

Once again ticketmaster got it wrong they far too many major concerts going on sale at the same time, they are in effect a licensed tout

It's a problem in that the people who organise the concerts are the ones who get to decide when the tickets are onsale. We often get massive events dropped on us the day before they go onsale. It's not the easiest thing in the world to have a website and call centre that can deal with a few thousand customes in the space of a couple of hours.

It's tricky with the touting thing - TM (along with all other ticket companies) don't make any money from the face value of the tickets, so the only money we make is from the service charges, which have to cover the cost of a website, a call centre, and all the staff needed to run these (though I agree that these charges can often be rather... 'ambitious'). You can avoid service charges by heading down to the venue's box office, but in many cases travelling to the venue and missing a few hours of work negates the savings people would make by not paying the charges.

I agree that the company does sometimes take the piss, but I think it's a bit unfair to lump it in the same group as the touts.

[annie blue]

well what a little poppet you are ptn, and a wonderful son too I'm sure had any of us known, we would have had a whip round to get you a ticket. hope mum has a good time. coffee and wednesdays dexter for me now, i passed on the snooze

[ptn]

if for some reason a gig was cancelled and we had bought tickets from ebay,is it possible to get a refund?

That's a tricky one. We obviously offer refunds for cancelled gigs (or, if the gig has just been resheduled, the tickets remain valid for the new date), but the refund will go back into the account of the person that originally purchased the tickets.

As tickets bought from eBay will still (according to our systems) belong to the original buyer, you'd be dependent on them to enact any refunds or anything.

I think there is an option to transfer payments, so that the details on a sales account are changed to a new customer, but I think the options for this are quite limited and I'd be surprised if many ebay sellers wanted to go through with the process of doing this. It's not a process I know much about, so I wouldn't want to rely on it.

Basically, if the event was cancelled, without any rescheduled date to cover for it, you would have to get the original buyer to claim a refund, then persuade them to refund the money for your eBay purchase.

While there may be some people who will do this (non-tout sellers who can't make it and have to sell the tickets, for instance), I highly doubt some of the more unscrupulous sellers would go through the effort of getting you a refund...

[ptn]

well what a little poppet you are ptn, and a wonderful son too

Haha. I might have to print that out for my mum to see

[annie blue]

tis surely true

[iknowitsover]

I suppose the real problem with a refund from an Ebay purchase (even if the seller were the nicest person on earth) is that you will only get back the 75 quid face value whereas you bought it for 8 thousand pounds!!!!!!

[confetti]

I suppose the real problem with a refund from an Ebay purchase (even if the seller were the nicest person on earth) is that you will only get back the 75 quid face value whereas you bought it for 8 thousand pounds!!!!!!

hmmm never thought about that, I shall use that one on my customers. I like to try and discourage people from selling and buying tickets on ebay, i think if nobody bought the tickets, the touts would soon stop buying them up, and it really annoys me that the real fans are the ones that suffer.

[Whizzer]

Hi Lizzytysh..you sexy beast !
Just saw your note to William.Are you coming to sunny Manchester?
Managed to get tickets for M/C and Edinburgh, and in between, go to Hydra again
with John (the sick Scottish patient from last year!).
Would be nice to get another photo taken together......which brings me to ; Where
has our picture disappeared to from the gallery page of 2007 ???
Assume you've got tickets somewhere,and that you'll have a glass or two !
Tony (Whizzer) from Manchester ( City ). x

[goldfish]

touts aren't the only villains at work here.

how can you advertise tickets at £50, when £50 will not buy you a ticket?

Two £50 tickets cost £112.50. Each ticket has a £5 handling charge, plus it somehow costs £2.50 to put them in an envelope.

Of course ticket agents should get a slice for selling tickets, but the price advertised should be what you pay.

It's like these budget airlines who say you can fly to Italy for £20. But if you want to take a suitcase with you on your holiday, it will cost an extra £15. And if you want to come home, the flights are £65. Plus your tax. Plus something else. Next thing you know, the getaway you were under the impression was going to cost you £50 tops, ends up three or four times that amount.

I mean, ticket handling charges from Box Offices should be against the law. When you buy a ticket from the actual venue of the event and they charge you a handling fee when they pass it through the ticket window? In effect they are charging you for selling you something.

You want fries with that? It's 99p for the fries, but an extra 75p handling fee for shovelling the food into a bag and passing it to you...

[confetti]

Well it is more than handing over a ticket. We have to be in on time to sell the tickets for start, pay for electricity, bank fees, (which are extortionate by the way), higher insurance in case of robbery, and having to listen to sometimes intolerable abuse when something sells out in front of the customer. Mind you saying all that there are a few perks, like being able to get my LC tickets today.

[maxstrammer]

Absolute bummer that Manchester's sold out already Fortunately able to get 2 for the O2 event :

Last saw our man in Munich back in '83 (?). After the show had "finished" he came back on by himself and sang for another hour, what an atmosphere!