Chronicle of my clash with the Ticket Giant
Chronicle of my clash with the Ticket Giant
Ticketmaster is essentially the only automated ticketing services company, selling over 60 million tickets a year through approximately 2,900 retail ticket outlets, 25 nationwide telephone call centers and Ticketmaster's Internet site.
Ticketmaster is a monopoly with a stranglehold on the live entertainment
industry in America. As a result, customer service is relatively non-existent
and pricing is out of bounds compared to other industries in which healthy
competition exists. Concertgoers, performers and producers all are forced
to suffer unto the bloated pig that is Ticketmaster and fall in line with
the inflexible system they have single-handedly imposed on the concert
industry. Things get done their way or no way.
Although I have been a concertgoer for years now, and have long been accustomed to the unfriendly treatment typical of the concert industry thanks to Ticketmaster and their participating venues, I recently had the pleasure to experience their disservice in a big way. I had ordered tickets for the November 15th Chemical Bros. show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan Center in New York City. After spending $124 in admission and surcharges for myself and three friends and driving three hours in a noreaster to ensure that I was present, I was delighted to find that I had not been granted admission to a ballroom, but had been arbitrarily designated tickets to the Mezzanine (balcony) section. Contrary to the information given to me by the Ticketmaster sales agent, there were actually two different types of tickets for this event, and it was deemed that my friends and I should sit in balcony seats and watch the Chemical Bros. push buttons from afar. My friends and I did not stay for this fiasco.
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