Phish info from Ticketfly.com

PT still unresponsive.

Mr.Whippy wrote:
I didn't try for Phish tix (not a fan), but I followed threads on this here and on PT some just because I'm curious at how this was going to go with Ticketfly.

I can understand people's frustration with the crashing system, etc., but doesn't it seem like Ticketfly might be more fair to average fans than Ticketmaster?  

If you look at the seats people are talking about pulling, people are getting some great seats once they actually get through.  Wlm pulled front row apparently.  I ended up with insane seats for My Morning Jacket through ticketfly (4th row center).  I mean, think about your experiences with Ticketmaster.  How often do you pull amazing seats through Ticketmaster?

Maybe Ticketfly does less of holding tix back and feeding them direclty to scaplers and thus average fans have a better chance of getting great tix with this system.  

i've gotten plenty of great seats through TM.  getting a good seat is on the user - have a fast connection, be fast with the captchka, refresh at the right moment, etc.

ticketfly, on the other hand, sh*ts the bed for you.  i'm an experience ticket buyer and the best the system would let me buy is lawns, 40 minutes after the sale started, and even then only because a human posted a working link for me.  a few people got good seats, a whole lot more were shut out b/c of the site crash while those good seats were being allocated.  there was NOTHING i could do today to improve my chances.

if today's TF experience is going to be the norm, i'll take TM any day.

sweetcell wrote:

Mr.Whippy wrote:
I didn't try for Phish tix (not a fan), but I followed threads on this here and on PT some just because I'm curious at how this was going to go with Ticketfly.

I can understand people's frustration with the crashing system, etc., but doesn't it seem like Ticketfly might be more fair to average fans than Ticketmaster?  

If you look at the seats people are talking about pulling, people are getting some great seats once they actually get through.  Wlm pulled front row apparently.  I ended up with insane seats for My Morning Jacket through ticketfly (4th row center).  I mean, think about your experiences with Ticketmaster.  How often do you pull amazing seats through Ticketmaster?

Maybe Ticketfly does less of holding tix back and feeding them direclty to scaplers and thus average fans have a better chance of getting great tix with this system.  

i've gotten plenty of great seats through TM.  getting a good seat is on the user - have a fast connection, be fast with the captchka, refresh at the right moment, etc.

ticketfly, on the other hand, sh*ts the bed for you.  i'm an experience ticket buyer and the best the system would let me buy is lawns, 40 minutes after the sale started, and even then only because a human posted a working link for me.  a few people got good seats, a whole lot more were shut out b/c of the site crash while those good seats were being allocated.  there was NOTHING i could do today to improve my chances.

if today's TF experience is going to be the norm, i'll take TM any day.

Yes, you are probably right in the end that TM is a better system.  I have gotten good seats through TM, but nothing like front row for an amphitheater show like someone reported today.  With TM I am just very suspicious at weather average fans even have a shot at the really good seats or if they go right to brokers.  I think the latter is often the case.

Also, scoring good tix with TM seems to be about random luck more than getting through the system quickly.  For the recent Muse show, I finally pulled some really good seats after pulling about 8 sets of mediocre ones. 

hutch wrote:

sweetcell wrote:
so during the ticket buying process, my main credit card was declined.  i used my backup, then called the bank to find out what was up with my main card.  turns out "PhishTickets" tried hitting my card several times earlier this week but had a detail wrong like the expiry date.  after several attempts it locked my account. 

so i got tix through the presale, but something (not sure if it was my mistake or theirs) c*ck-blocked me… and instead i got the privilege of being part of today's shit-show.  great, just great.

Its amateur hour!

Who is next? Somebody forgot to pay their internet bill? Lost the password?

would this have happened if the show was in Richmond?  ;D

Guys, it's Phish. If anything ticketweb is teaching you a lesson and doing you a favor. Jesus Christ.

Julian, wrote:
Guys, it's Phish. If anything ticketweb is teaching you a lesson and doing you a favor. Jesus Christ.

god . . . i waited all day for you to comment.

Hey all, Dan Teree here. I am one of the founders of Ticketfly. While many of you were able to buy Phish tickets immediately today, we know that some fans had a difficult experience during the first 45 minutes until we had our systems humming again. I speak for the whole Ticketfly team when I say that our performance was not up to our standards. You deserve the best ticket buying and show-going experience on the planet and we have a great team in place that is committed to making sure you get it. We appreciate all of your feedback today on Twitter, Facebook and in the forums. Thanks for sticking with us as we build a powerful ticketing alternative for you.

PS - Tickets remain for both Phish shows at Merriweather: http://www.ticketfly.com/tickets/event-list/?q=Phish

TflyDan wrote:
Hey all, Dan Teree here. I am one of the founders of Ticketfly. While many of you were able to buy Phish tickets immediately today, we know that some fans had a difficult experience during the first 45 minutes until we had our systems humming again. I speak for the whole Ticketfly team when I say that our performance was not up to our standards. You deserve the best ticket buying and show-going experience on the planet and we have a great team in place that is committed to making sure you get it. We appreciate all of your feedback today on Twitter, Facebook and in the forums. Thanks for sticking with us as we build a powerful ticketing alternative for you.

PS - Tickets remain for both Phish shows at Merriweather: http://www.ticketfly.com/tickets/event-list/?q=Phish

it takes some amount of courage to come in to a lion's den like this, so kudos to you.

your third sentence seems like an attempt at whitewashing - "many" were successful, while "some" had difficulty?  makes it sound better than it was, i'd say that "a few" had success and "the majority" witnessed the site's meltdown.

you state that you have a team working on the problem - good to hear.  i'd be interested in hearing what steps you will be taking.  it's easy to say "we're working on it", but we've all heard that before.  do share with us what you're doing… adding server capacity and/or bandwidth?  renting on-demand computing?  new selling process (ex, virtual waiting room)?  new infrastructure with load balancers?

the fact that there was such a huge demand earlier today yet there are still unsold tickets now should tell you that you missed an opportunity. 

The level of hyperbole with regards to these tickets going on sale, suggest some of you are practicing for future iPad reviews.  It's taken TM years to get where they are in the "ease" of getting tickets on big onsale days, I remember having hit reload over in order to place an order.  Or having to wait for the system to let you place the order. 

And Sweetcell how does this Ticketfly experience compare to the Livenation Phish ticket buying experience?  I'm guessing for one there was customer service providing alternate ways of getting tickets.

http://www.930.com/forum/index.php?topic=18399.msg273301#msg273301

"so, last week a buddy of mine calls me up and asks "you're good at scoring tickets to concerts, can you help me get 2 tickets for the phish show in camden?"  now i haven't seen this friend since he got married last summer, and i've never seen phish and the scene that comes along with the band, so i proposed that we make a group outing of it and that i and the missus join them to the show.  on the friday that tickets went on sale, we loaded up livenation-dot-com, hit refresh at 10:00 AM and… complete and utter system meltdown.  time-outs, database errors, lost orders, garbled pages, "processing your request" timers that didn't move for 5+ minutes, etc.  way worse than anything i've ever experienced on tickets.com, this was an utter implosion.  i eventually got 4 lawn tickets - at 11:44 AM.  how's that for an indictment: thousands of people trying to get tickets, yet it took over 2 hours to sell out a show.  TM would have this taken care of in less than 15 minutes.  if anyone wants a laugh, i suspect that the phish message boards were on fire that day (jan 30)."

***

And who could forget this Phish TM debacle…

http://www.930.com/forum/index.php?topic=18629.0

I don't exactly see the courage in copying and pasting the same message that is posted on the ticketfly website on this thread (and others), and I'm sure countless other places.

What I find to be most frustrating is that those who were able to purchase tickets right away did not follow the instructions posted in this thread.  There were many that I've spoken to that had success by going through the main page of ticketfly, not the links supplied here.

This was worse than livenation on the last tour.  We know at this point that essentially all sites can not handle the traffic of shows of this size (although UVA's ticketing had no problem last fall.)  Having a site crash is one thing, I understand that, but this was a new brand of failure.

You guys do understand all of your complaints have to be taken with a grain of salt since you were all, no doubt, high while attempting to order? Hell, there might not even be a phish show you all could've been tweaking so bad…

Julian, wrote:
You guys do understand all of your complaints have to be taken with a grain of salt since you were all, no doubt, high while attempting to order? Hell, there might not even be a phish show you all could've been tweaking so bad…

i would give up my tickets just to hear you ramble on some more for two hours or so about the world of phish.  ;)

kosmo wrote:
It's taken TM years to get where they are in the "ease" of getting tickets on big onsale days, I remember having hit reload over in order to place an order.   

yes, and that was circa 2001.  

kosmo wrote:
And Sweetcell how does this Ticketfly experience compare to the Livenation Phish ticket buying experience?  I'm guessing for one there was customer service providing alternate ways of getting tickets.

valid question - it was very similar (as in similarly bad).  livenation was trying to take on TM so it looked worse for them, i don't think ticketfly has such lofty aspirations.  that someone was tweeting back doors was indeed a nice personal touch but it was putting band-aids on a sinking ship.

bekessler wrote:
I don't exactly see the courage in copying and pasting the same message that is posted on the ticketfly website on this thread (and others), and I'm sure countless other places.

what, do you expect them to craft an individual response to each forum?  they have one message, if anything you'd want consistency across channels.  i was impressed that they actively sought to post a response.  we got diddley squat whenever tickets.com imploded, and livenation responded by eventually giving up (and merging) with no attempts at communicating with disgruntled consumers.

I don't expect anything one way or the other.  I was only commenting that I disagreed there was any amount of courage shown in the post.

I wish there was no learning curve here, but that's how it's going to have to be

we think it will make for a better world eventually

bekessler wrote:
I was only commenting that I disagreed there was any amount of courage shown in the post.

Agreed. A canned, PR response on a forum where any serious counter-complaint would be met with the thread getting deleted and/or the member banned is not exactly a textbook example of courage.

we'll have to agree to disagree.  i'm not saying he should get the medal of valor but it would have been easier to say nothing, stay hidden, not acknowledge that there was a problem, etc.  did we ever hear anything from tickets.com management when their site melted down?

if anything, we now have someone to PM ;D

I am sure the CEO of ticketfly posted the message himself and will diligently monitor this thread as well any future posts or PMs on the subject.

Seth wrote:
I wish there was no learning curve here, but that's how it's going to have to be

we think it will make for a better world eventually

look . . . he did it again.  sethy likes to capitilize the first sentence, but not the second.  interesting.

some people seem to take issue with me being a capitalist