New Ticket Policy Changes Simplified

VanEyck said:

vant0037 said:

pjl44 said:

vant0037 said:

SmallestOceans said:

vant0037 said:

Funny that no one - ahem 10c - has seemed to have considered this possibility: that the very thing they trying to fight (scalping of tickets) exists for the sole reason that there are people willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for tickets to a show.  If someone really wants to get to a PJ show and has the money, what’s to stop them from scalping non fan club tickets on Stubhub?  So if they are 10c members, in theory, this no-resale policy thing could simply result in people who live in a household with multiple accounts, putting in for tickets on each account to ensure they get something, and then reselling the one ticket they can and chalking it up the loss to the cost of getting tickets to a PJ show.  I think a lot of us would be lying (myself included) if I said I haven’t paid over face value for a sold out show I wanted to go to.

Will this result in more tickets in the hands of fans, or more empty single seats?

I’m guessinf the latter with equal amounts of complaining.

Seems like more tickets will go to the real fans, but there's always going to people bitching and moaning. You can't please everybody.

That doesnt really address my point. If a “real fan” is in 10c, has disposable income and doesnt care to pay for two sets of tickets to each show, knowing that they can only use one pair and can only resell one ticket from the second pair, isn’t it likely they will still put in for every pair they can, and eat that extra ticket?  Meaning, people who can afford it have an ability if not an incentive to buy up say 3 of every 4 tickets, leaving a single ticket going to waste.

so the question is: does this fix anything?  It disincentivizes regular members from putting in for multiple shows (eg married couples who each have an account) because the risk of getting drawn for tickets you can’t use is too high, which in turn should create more quantities of tickets available. But where do those tickets go?  The remaining accounts, which again, in some part will be people who are willing to “waste” a ticket or pair if it means they will get tickets at all.  This will result in more unused tickets and less tickets being used by “real fans.”

So I agree...you can’t please everyone.  This is a truth that begs the question: what are they fixing with this change?

They could just transfer it to another fan here, no? Since we're getting them a little further in advance, it might even be more efficient. Cuts out the flake factor when you have to pick up day-of.

You can transfer one ticket from each pair...so for a household of two fans (not uncommon), you use two, transfer one, but eat the other.

Someone please take pro on this. What am I missing?

This topic gets muddied as people are talking about both 10c tickets and the new Verified Fan thing for the general sale. They are different cases but both have new systems in place.

With respect to 10c tickets I think a few pros are:

• They don't have to travel around with a couple million dollars in 10c hard tickets in a road case when they go on tour (never thought about this before it came up on the radio show with The Rob and the TM verified fan guy).
• They don't have to staff up will call for a couple days for a big show (it seemed like a few full time 10c and many local staff at Wrigley/Fenway)
• No more big will call lineups for fans (in addition to merch and GA lines)
• In theory it might eventually be faster (but probably not the first few times as people get used to getting their phones ready with the brightness up etc).
• Limits scalping to a certain degree as the pair of hard tickets are currency the second will call hands them to someone. Now, they can basically track the ticket from initial distribution to the TM account it's scanned from at the door. That's not a perfect system but it's better than the metrics/tracking they had before. 
• 10c lottery winners get their tickets further in advance of the show

Some negatives for 10c Tickets are well discussed in the dozen pages above, but the whole thing about juggling tickets in the fan network is half bungled now and for many years this has been the way to get into shows that they weren't able to win in the lottery. You get someone with one spare and another person with a spare and coordinate 2 pairs that are together or 2 couples into GA etc. The scariest one is that ticket #2 is scalp-able as you can transfer it remotely to anyone. At least at the pre-party, you were pretty sure you were dealing with a fan and vice versa. Also there are less surprises about where your tickets are because you get them earlier. This is both good and bad as someone who gets great tickets (and is a scalper) has more time to try to monkey with the couple of system loopholes to make a killing on golden tickets. 

Some pros for Verified Fan for the general sale (according to the Faithful show on Sirius yesterday)... The TM guy says they see Verified Fan as a way that they "Invite" people to a presale and they have the following formula in place to figure out who to invite based on:

• They try to figure out if you're a scalper if they see that you're buying lots and lots of tickets for other shows (your TM history)
• They see if you're flipping the tickets you bought on the resale market (they control at least 2 of their own, one is right there on TM)
• They see if you are trying to generate multiple accounts in their database by cross referencing email, phone numbers etc. 
• If you hammer away at the system on multiple devices and browsers they shut you down
• TM says this is an attempt to stop bots as well

I could go on, but this book report feels long enough already...

MickeyMouse said:

UseUrIllusions said:

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but say I have a dozen ticketmaster accounts, technically I can register a dozen times? 

This is exactly what Verified Fan seeks to eliminate (on a much larger level).  When you register for Verified Fan for a specific show or tour, you enter your email, name, and your phone number associated with your account.  If Ticketmaster sees 12 accounts linking to the same phone number, you're likely to get flagged as a scalper and not receive anything.  Now if, for instance, you and your wife both have different phone numbers and TM accounts, that's a different story.  But if you have 12 accounts, you're gonna want to have 12 different valid phone numbers and names for those.

Exactly. This is not a fail safe system by any means. I can have fake names, numbers, addresses etc. Meh

VanEyck said:

JimmyV said:

The $45 per ticket processing fees Fenway is charging charging for Billy Joel this morning has me concerned.

Is it still through Fenway's own system?

derbydave said:

giventofly69 said:

Is there wifi at Safeco? or will those of us from Canada (with overpriced crappy cell phone plans) need to buy a roaming plan for the US so we can use the app to show the tickets?

Check with your service provider about this.
When we traveled to Canada for the Ottawa & Toronto shows in 2016,
I went in to my Sprint store and asked what I needed to do to have cell service.
They signed me up for their FREE international plan and walked me thru the process of resetting my phone for the Rogers network in Canada.
The process was really easy and I got unlimited texts & phone calls plus 1GB of data while we were in Canada.

laurenroberts said:

It seems to me that the band is trying to make sure all members get in. If a couple of 2 is putting in for 4 because they are both members,  then the band thinks there's no room for another member which is wrong and not what they want. No offense but I think they're trying to weed out the greedy. Last time at Fenway I heard 2 young girls on the floor bitching that they didn't even like the band but their boyfriends dragged them along. It took everything in me not to scream! I'm hoping this system weeds out the half ass fans. It's all good!

laurenroberts said:

It seems to me that the band is trying to make sure all members get in. If a couple of 2 is putting in for 4 because they are both members,  then the band thinks there's no room for another member which is wrong and not what they want. No offense but I think they're trying to weed out the greedy. Last time at Fenway I heard 2 young girls on the floor bitching that they didn't even like the band but their boyfriends dragged them along. It took everything in me not to scream! I'm hoping this system weeds out the half ass fans. It's all good!