Get rid of Ticketfly

[fatskippy]

Shadrach, I appreciate the help.  I am not worried about getting tickets to this festival, I will either get them tomorrow or off craigslist/stubhub.  What annoys me is the Phish sale was a disaster and obviously nothing has improved since then.  If you look at the other venues ticketfly supports, they are all significantly smaller than Merriweather.  Why then would ticketfly go through the expense of upgrading their servers to handle demand for a few shows per year at one venue?  They won't, it doesn't make sense financially because ultimately the tickets will sell anyway, even if we are initially wasting our time trying to refresh a broken site.  It is incredibly frustrating to know that any time a high demand show at Merriweather goes on sale, we will have to deal with this garbage.

[serpent boy]

I'd much rather wait 15-20 extra minutes for Yada to post a backdoor link or wait for the site to load properly than deal with Ticketmaster/Live Nation. Thank you 9:30 Club for keeping Ticketfly. I like them.

As a Pearl Jam fan club member, I'm used to a site crashing when tickets go on sale. It's really no big deal.

[TFlyAmy]

Thanks, serpent boy!

[sweetcell]

What annoys me is the Phish sale was a disaster and obviously nothing has improved since then.  If you look at the other venues ticketfly supports, they are all significantly smaller than Merriweather.  Why then would ticketfly go through the expense of upgrading their servers to handle demand for a few shows per year at one venue?  They won't, it doesn't make sense financially because ultimately the tickets will sell anyway, even if we are initially wasting our time trying to refresh a broken site.  

amidst all the noise that skippy brings, he brings at least this one good point. 

i certainly hope that TF is looking into a viable solution for these surges. 

SUGGESTION: have your engineers look into acquiring on-demand capacity.  IBM and amazon will sell it to you, i'm sure there are other vendors who will sell you bandwidth and processing power only when you need it.  it's pretty easy to pick out which onsales you'll need extra capacity for.

another potential option is to use virtual waiting rooms.  not ideal, but i'd rather see a controlled "sit tight, we'll get to you message" vs. a site that doesn't load.

there is an argument in favor of doing nothing, as skippy pointed out the tickets will sell anyways.  realize that it comes at the cost of customer goodwill. 

As a Pearl Jam fan club member, I'm used to a site crashing when tickets go on sale. It's really no big deal.

sure, but the thing about Ten Club is that there is no advantage in getting your order in first - it's all done by seniority. 

[Justin Tonation]

i certainly hope that TF is looking into a viable solution for these surges. 

SUGGESTION: have your engineers look into acquiring on-demand capacity.  IBM and amazon will sell it to you, i'm sure there are other vendors who will sell you bandwidth and processing power only when you need it.  it's pretty easy to pick out which onsales you'll need extra capacity for.

My hypothesis about the "crash" is that TF was setting up outsourced extra capacity just before the sale started. It may have required them to temporarily take down their site. Hiccups occur and it wasn't that long after 10 that it came back up. Once the sale began it worked very well.

[hutch]

I don't understand why the consumer should prefer Ticketfly to TIcketmater

The charges are very steep either way!

It would be one thing if it was "put with Ticketfly cause you save money.."

[sweetcell]

TF's fees for MPP shows are definitely lower than TM's.

TF's fees for 930 club shows are high/same as with tickets.com

[Vas Deferens]

if 930 uses Brown Paper Tickets, I'd be buying everything online.....

"We offer the lowest service fee in the industry (Never more than $1.99!) with no hidden costs. No credit card service fees, no "holiday" fees, and no print at home fees. Relax and enjoy your event."

[atomicfront]

There's nothing sarcastic about what I wrote.  The point isn't that people shouldn't be whining about not getting FREE tickets.  The point is that the Club and IMP should having a ticketing company that can handle the demand of their ticket sales so that their customers don't have to waste an hour of their day (workday or not) dealing with a really bad ticketing company.  Your and TFlyAmy's responses on the forums do not really solve this problem and just seem like an attempt to make the customers, who are also donating money to charity in this case, feel bad about complaining about a very frustrating situation.  How about explaining how TF is going to manage on Saturday when we have another chance?  Or how about explaining why more than 6 months into this new arrangement, TF still can't handle the demand?

If you had just wasted an hour of your life (which I did not, so I'm not bitching about not getting FREE tickets, just raising the point that TF failed when I tried for the few minutes I had free at 10am), I'm pretty sure you would be kinda pissed, too.

Your sarcasm doesn't answer my question.

Were you unable to secure your FREE tickets?

The system only sucks more because the tickets were free.  It doesn't work for high demand tickets that people pay lots of money for, either 

I am sure there will be 125 dollar tickets available to get at your leisure.  If your time is so valuable you can go that route.  I am sure everyone knows the Ticketfly site had problems today.    I usually don't get tickets to merriweather online.. it is much cheaper just to go to mpp and get the tickets there. 

[Shadrach]

If you think that your points on here aren't being taken and considered and used for future reference then you clearly don't know how we operate. Obviously we try our very best to give the patrons of 9:30 and MPP the very best ticketing experience and customer service possible and when things don't go as smoothly as they should, haven't we always done what we can to make up for mistakes and do what's right by you folks? That being said there is a certain redundancy in these posts and frankly I believe that some of you are complaining just for the sake of complaining... I'm looking at you fatskippy!!!!

There's nothing sarcastic about what I wrote.  The point isn't that people shouldn't be whining about not getting FREE tickets.  The point is that the Club and IMP should having a ticketing company that can handle the demand of their ticket sales so that their customers don't have to waste an hour of their day (workday or not) dealing with a really bad ticketing company.  Your and TFlyAmy's responses on the forums do not really solve this problem and just seem like an attempt to make the customers, who are also donating money to charity in this case, feel bad about complaining about a very frustrating situation.  How about explaining how TF is going to manage on Saturday when we have another chance?  Or how about explaining why more than 6 months into this new arrangement, TF still can't handle the demand?

If you had just wasted an hour of your life (which I did not, so I'm not bitching about not getting FREE tickets, just raising the point that TF failed when I tried for the few minutes I had free at 10am), I'm pretty sure you would be kinda pissed, too.

Your sarcasm doesn't answer my question.

Were you unable to secure your FREE tickets?

The system only sucks more because the tickets were free.  It doesn't work for high demand tickets that people pay lots of money for, either 

[Shadrach]

fatskippy, I'm afraid I have a difficult time taking anything you're posting here with much concerned consideration after discovering that YES, you did indeed manage to secure 2 tickets this morning.

You sir are a liar!

Please enjoy the festival with our compliments.

Shadrach, I appreciate the help.  I am not worried about getting tickets to this festival, I will either get them tomorrow or off craigslist/stubhub.  What annoys me is the Phish sale was a disaster and obviously nothing has improved since then.  If you look at the other venues ticketfly supports, they are all significantly smaller than Merriweather.  Why then would ticketfly go through the expense of upgrading their servers to handle demand for a few shows per year at one venue?  They won't, it doesn't make sense financially because ultimately the tickets will sell anyway, even if we are initially wasting our time trying to refresh a broken site.  It is incredibly frustrating to know that any time a high demand show at Merriweather goes on sale, we will have to deal with this garbage.

[hutch]

Lets face it: Ticketfly is as big a ripoff as Tickemaster.

The issue comes down to the fact that Seth can't very well use Tickemaster because its his competitor.

But come on.. on a $30 ticket you pay $10 in charges with Ticketfly.

TOTAL BULLSHIT. Just add the $10 to the ticket..

It would be more honest than pretending it costs $10 to print a small ticket and mail it to you.

I love IMP and as I wrote elsewhere Seth has my dream job but lets not say its ok to rip people off on ticket charges only because its not Ticketmaster!

[notme]

there is a rumor that ticketfly will crash at 10am on saturday.

[Bags]

I can tell you that four $30 tickets to GBV at 9:30 Club using TicketFly were $148, and four $30 tickets at Terminal 5 using TM were $168.

[James Ford]

Are you going to compliment him by saying he carries his weight well?

Because calling him a liar isn't really complimenting him.

fatskippy, I'm afraid I have a difficult time taking anything you're posting here with much concerned consideration after discovering that YES, you did indeed manage to secure 2 tickets this morning.

You sir are a liar!

Please enjoy the festival with our compliments.

[/quote]